Lady in the Lake had a lot of potential to be a phenomenal story. Taking place during the 1960s in Baltimore, and told from many different viewpoints, the racial and feminist tones of that decade permeate throughout. Two unrelated murders unexpectedly place Maddie, a former housewife who wants to strike out on her own, in the center of the investigation. While trying to determine what happened to Cleo Sherwood, a young woman of color, Maddie is caught between the past and present.

The beginning and middle of the story are rather slow and many different voices narrate-the format is a little disjointed but not unexpected for an ARC. The last half of the book really picks up pace and brings the story together with some surprises and unexpected ending. With a little less narration and a more straightforward approach it would be a solid 4 star rating.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for my honest feedback.

It's 1964 when Cleo Sherwood disappears. It's been eight months and no one is looking for her. Cleo was out to find a better life for her and her sons. Cleo wishes Maddie would stop looking for her. 

There was a voice for every character. I wasn't sure at first if Cleo was the Lady in the Lake. New characters kept showing up and got their own chapters. It was confusing.

The story centers around Cleo's voice and Maddie's voice. Maddie is married to a rich man. She has a lot of secrets and while she talks a lot to herself, we have no idea what is behind her character. 

I got bored about halfway through. There was nothing to like or dislike. It was just boring. And that is not what I would expect from the author. I will definitely be reading more of her.

NetGalley/ July 23rd, 2019 by Faber & Faber

Atmospheric, stand alone noir set in 1960s Baltimore, and told through the first person narration of a wide variety of people involved in the discovery of a dead woman in a park fountain. Lippman's knowledge of both the city and the local news establishment deeply infuse the plot and the context.

How can you go wrong with this one?! It is the late '60's with history being made at every turn.

This is the story of a missing person that no one notices and a journalist that is trying to make a name for herself in a male dominated industry. There is so much more to this book and I know that this review does not do it justice. Get this book and see for yourself!

Many thanks to Netgalley and Faber and Faber Ltd for this advanced readers copy. This book is scheduled for release in July 2019.

Thank you to Netgalley and William Morrow for the opportunity to read this book.
I have enjoyed each of the Laura Lippman books I have read. I have found myself still thinking of the main characters in this book and marveling at them. Despite focusing on two separate murders in Baltimore in the 1960s, this novel touches on so many more topics that were prevalent at that time. Some of which are still occurring today. I did not love the chapters from minor character’s viewpoints that were interspersed with the main character’s tale. However I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and recommend it to anyone who is looking for something a bit different from the “usual” murder-mystery or historical fiction book.

I feel that there's way too much going on in this book. I tried to like it, I really did, but the chapters with various characters speaking all throughout the book became tedious to read. Sometimes too much is just too much. Stick with the basics. Have the main character or two or three tell the story, not a whole bunch of characters. While this was well written, I just did not enjoy it as I thought that I would. This is a solid 3/5 at best.

A divorced Jewish woman. Baltimore in the 60's.Segregation runs rampant. Sexism abounds.Thus begins the new novel by Laura Lippman that is a slow burn with short chapters and a new character introduced at every round. Once I got used to it, the style was easy and smooth flowing, The writing style was as smooth as putting butter on a hot piece of toast. I read it quickly,BUT, I couldn't wrap my arms around this novel. I found the main character's dialogue not fitting with who she was and the plot rather simplistic.I also hated how she badgered families who had lost loved ones and didn't feel that fit in with her character. Normally I am a big fan of Lippman's but this just didn't cut it for me.

The premise of this book was really interesting. Set in the 60s in the US. Lots of racial tensions and inequalities were addressed true to form.
Well developed characters

Thank you to NetGalley and Farber & Farber Publishing for gifting me with an ARC of Laura Lippman’s newest novel. In exchange I offer my unbiased review.

This was my first time reading Laura Lippman and I was instantly captivated. Her writing is strong and effortless and I was easily transported to 1960s Baltimore. I enjoyed the skilled. weaving of multiple characters and the way their viewpoints were seamlessly blended into the story. While not quite a thriller, I would categorize this book as literary crime noir.

The story centers around two missing bodies. One is Cleo Sherwood, an African American single mother and Tessie Fine, an eleven year old Jewish girl from a wealthy prominent family. Tessie’s disappearance quickly garners city wide interest but nobody seems too concerned with a missing Negro woman. Enter Madeline Schwartz. Maddie a local girl, married to a successful attorney, a respected homemaker and hostess is feeling restless. Wanting more to life than being a trophy wife, Maddie leaves her marriage & pampered existence and yearns to become a local news reporter. When Maddie inadvertently stumbles into both missing persons cases, she is finally presented with an opportunity to seek the job she always wanted. However for Maddie, she might be getting more than she anticipated.

This was a solid read, with a satisfying storyline and some good twists along the way. I enjoyed the setting and time as much as the mystery. This book will appeal to all readers. I’m excited to go back now and read more of Laura Lippman’s extensive work.

I loved how each chapter represented a different perspective from a different character. This made for a new outlook on what was sort of a classic murder mystery.

What a great book. Ive been reading Ms. Lippman since her first Tess book and she keeps getting better.

My favorite aspect of this book is the alternating narrative from the characters we meet in this book. The majority are from the Lady in the Lake but there are police officers, a bartender, a psychic and more. It's a wonderfully inventive way to get a fresh perspective as one reads.

Maddie Schwartz decides to leave her husband and strike out on her own. She moves into an apartment in a not so nice area of town or at least where nice Jewish ladies don't live. She makes a younger friend and one night they discover the body of a missing child. Everything leads from there. She meets a man, starts a new career and in the course of that job she helps find another body, The Lady in the Lake.

Segregated life, gay men hiding their private lives, Baltimore underworld all make their presence known in this book which takes place in the late 60's.

Excellent read.

"Lady in the Lake" centres on Maddie Schwartz, a Baltimore housewife who wants more from life than catering dinner parties for her husband's colleagues and visiting the country club. She walks away from her marriage in order to live a more meaningful life, and in doing so, manages to secure herself a job at the city's newspaper. Maddie is given what is tantamount to grunt work, until she finds the story that gives her the opportunity to make her name: a young black woman named Cleo Sherwood whose body has been found in a local lake.

The novel follows Maddie's investigation into Cleo's death, with chapters narrated by Maddie interspersed with chapters in the voices of other characters who have something to offer in terms of perspective or insight, some minor characters, some major.

This one isn't about quick thrills or cliffhanger chapter-endings - it's a finely-written slow burn of a novel which explores so much more than the death of its titular character - gender and race in 1960s Baltimore, interracial relationships, and the quest for one woman to not only find answers but to find herself.

(A copy of this book was provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest and impartial review).

Lady in the Lake is the latest stand-alone novel from Laura Lippman and tells the story of the death of a young woman in 1960s Baltimore from the perspective of several different characters. The primary narrator is Maddie Schwarz, a housewife who recently left her husband to explore life on her own. Maddie is a complicated character, and not entirely likeable, but I admired her for figuring out what she wanted and how to get it.

Lippman does a brilliant job of shifting perspectives from one character to another and of evoking a different time in her beloved Baltimore. While I would not characterize this as a page turner, the book skillfully weaves a compelling mystery with the stories of what it was like for each character to exist in the turbulent period of the 1960s.

Thank you to Faber & Faber and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Laura Lippman does it again! Perfectly recreating mid-1960s Baltimore, and the social and racial strata that defined who you were and what possibilities were open to you, this compelling story follows the unlikely liberation of Maddie, a young-ish Jewish housewife who leaves her husband and teenage son, to live on her own and try to become a reporter. Having parlayed knowledge of a child murder case (she and a friend happened to find the body) into an unsatisfying job at a local paper, she sees the case of the "Lady of the Lake" as her big ticket. Unfortunately, her naivété about the social and racial implications of digging into said case, and her dogged determination to uncover the facts, get her into hot water.

The storytelling is intelligent, the characters complex and well-written, and I loved the plot device of having narration change from chapter to chapter between Maddie, the "Lady of the Lake" and assorted characters with whom Maddie comes into contact, telling their own stories to give a wider perspective. This is a stand-alone, but I did get a chuckle out of how Lippman managed to work the meeting, courtship and marriage of Tess Monaghan's parents, who is one of my favorite female PIs, into the story.

Highly recommended!

This was a fascinating noir blend! I have been a fan of Lippman’s previous novels, but this takes the cake! Think if Betty Draper from a Mad Men was the Girl on the Train. A delightful read

Another good book from Laura Lippman. Great ending, a nice twist. Although I wished there was more Cleo and less Madeline. And I'm not sure if all the additional POVs needed to be there, though it was interesting to see how two different people perceived the same situation. Would have liked more on the Tessie Fine case too.

Thank Netgalley and the publiser for the opportunity to review this book.Maddie Schwartz is a wife a mother in 1966 hosting fabulous dinner parties. But she wants more. Maddie leaves her husband and teenage son and finds a
job as a clerk for a Baltimore newspaper. Soon she becomes obsessed about the body of a woman,Cleo Sherwood found in a lake. Maddie begins to investigate Cleo's life and friends and family. The author provides insight and intrigue by switching voices throughout the story. Soon I was just as invested as Maddie in finding the truth about Cleo Sherwood’s life and death.

The 1960s were a tumultuous time socially, and racially in the United States. These themes were woven into the story adding another layer of intrigue. As Maddie searches for answers and finds her own way the truth ultimately is revealed. Maddie was a complex character embodying all the social and political unrest of the time.



Laura Lippman is a wonderful storyteller. This did not disappoint. There were twists and turns.
And surprises I didn't see coming.

a netgalley that I picked up because I had read some books by the author and the summary was intriguing. A married woman leaves her husband and starts investigating the disappearances of a child and a young woman in Baltimore in the 1960s. She's struck by the attention the missing white child receives compared to the black woman, and enthusiastically tries to get involved, partly for her sense of justice, but mostly because she sees a way to change her life. This was a fascinating picture of a city on the verge of substantial change, from the new opportunities for black policemen to young Jewish women trying to break away from the rules on marrying within the community. It felt real, perhaps most when the women characters talked about their problems getting into careers, and how they coped. I loved the picture of the hard bitten reporter who had taken over one of the women's bathrooms and converted it into her own office to find a way to adapt in an unwelcoming newsroom. It just didn't seem to have much of a sense of direction, and I got distracted from it several times by more pacey reads.

There are many different ways an author can grab readers from the very first page. Sometimes it's an intriguing first line that draws you in, sometimes it's a stark incident or piece of action that tractor-beams you straight into a propulsive narrative. And sometimes its something subtler but even more powerful (in the right hands): just the pure, mesmerising quality of the writing, the voice.

LADY IN THE LAKE, the latest standalone from the superb Laura Lippman, is a pretty great example of the latter. From the first lines we know we're in the hands of a master storyteller as we're enticed deep into 1960s Baltimore by the voice of Cleo Sherwood, a poor young black woman who's recalling the first time time she saw Maddie Schwartz, then a finely dressed Jewish housewife.

Maddie Schartz would go on to create a whole host of problems for a lot of people, including Cleo, who might have preferred to have been forgotten, despite all the tragedies in her young life.

Cleo and Maggie, two mothers in 1960s Baltimore, different in many ways but both shackled by prejudice. Both woman also hungered for more in their lives, and would risk a lot to chase it.

Perhaps too much.

Unlike Cleo, who goes missing and is rather forgotten and becomes the 'Lady in the Lake' when a body finally emerges from a fountain, Maddie Schwartz gets a chance to be more.

LADY IN THE LAKE follows a pivotal year in Maddie’s life as she flees her stable but stale marriage, trading affluence for independence, domesticity for a search for passion and meaning.

After helping the police find a missing white girl whose story filled the newspapers, Maddie is looking for another story to help her get a foothold in the male-dominated field of journalism, and turns her attention to Cleo, a black woman whose story has been left untold by the white press.

Lippman intercuts Maddie's narrative with rich vignettes, first-person perspectives from a variety of people that Maddie encounters along the way. These chapters really texture the novel and weave together to form a stunning portrait of Baltimore life in that era - the place and the people living in it.

The multiple perspectives also give the reader differing views on how Maddie and her efforts are seen by herself and others. Readers themselves may have mixed feelings about Maddie, and some of the decisions she makes. She is a complex, fascinating character, and has an interesting arc from bored and rather repressed housewife to independent, ambitious career woman unafraid of breaking rules. Throughout it all, Cleo lingers as a contemptful specter as Maddie throws stones into several ponds, oblivious to the dangerous ripples she may be creating in her pursuit of a story to make her name.

Overall, Lippman has forged a sublime, suspenseful tale that flows along so wonderfully that it perhaps obscures its own genius. I was reminded of watching a brilliant musician onstage, or perhaps a particularly special athlete on the field - in each case they can make things that are incredibly difficult look deceptively simple. There's a flow and ease because of their mastery, and we're so entranced but what we see or hear that it's easy to overlook the skill involved. Lippman is that level.

This is a stylish, rich tale from one of the crime genre's very best.

I've been wanting to read a book by this author for awhile now and the synopsis for this one sounded good. so I finally took the plunge. While this book can be classified as historical fiction, it also fits in the mystery and women's fiction genres. I ended up really enjoying this novel and look forward to reading other books by Laura Lippman.

It's 1966 and Madeline "Maddie" Schwartz. lives in Baltimore with her husband and teenage son. It might seem like she has it all but she wants more than just playing the role of dutiful housewife. In search of living a more meaningful life, she leaves her husband and eventually finds work at a local newspaper. She is on the low end of the totem pole there but she thinks the right story will get her some attention. Maddie is particularly interested in finding out what exactly happened to Cleo Sherwood, a young African American woman who was found dead in the fountain of a city park lake. However her eagerness to find out the truth could come at an awful price for some.

I was surprised at how many different things the story was able to touch on such as race, religion, women in the workforce, the newspaper industry, and politics to name a few. For me what really drove the story was the mystery of Cleo Sherwood more so than the Maddie "finding herself" storyline. While Maddie's perspective was predominately featured, other characters, including Cleo gave their spin on events throughout the book. For the most part I liked this method of telling the story especially as it really demonstrated how Maddie's actions affected other people. However, a few characters really had nothing much to do with advancing the plot so even though the appearances were brief, they just felt unnecessary.

This is the type of book in which there is a little bit of something for everyone and what each reader takes away from it might be different. Definitely recommend especially if the 1960s Baltimore setting peaks your interest like it did for me.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an advance digital copy in exchange for an honest review!