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Tuesday 23 July 2019

Book Review: LADY IN THE LAKE by Laura Lippman


Author: Laura Lippman
Publisher: William Morrow
Read: July 2019
Expected publication: today, 23 July
My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟


Book Description / Blurb:


The revered New York Times bestselling author returns with a novel set in 1960s Baltimore that combines modern psychological insights with elements of classic noir, about a middle-aged housewife turned aspiring reporter who pursues the murder of a forgotten young woman.

In 1966, Baltimore is a city of secrets that everyone seems to know--everyone, that is, except Madeline "Maddie" Schwartz. Last year, she was a happy, even pampered housewife. This year, she's bolted from her marriage of almost twenty years, determined to make good on her youthful ambitions to live a passionate, meaningful life.

Maddie wants to matter, to leave her mark on a swiftly changing world. Drawing on her own secrets, she helps Baltimore police find a murdered girl--assistance that leads to a job at the city's afternoon newspaper, the Star. Working at the newspaper offers Maddie the opportunity to make her name, and she has found just the story to do it: a missing woman whose body was discovered in the fountain of a city park lake.

Cleo Sherwood was a young African-American woman who liked to have a good time. No one seems to know or care why she was killed except Maddie--and the dead woman herself. Maddie's going to find the truth about Cleo's life and death. Cleo's ghost, privy to Maddie's poking and prying, wants to be left alone.

Maddie's investigation brings her into contact with people that used to be on the periphery of her life--a jewelery store clerk, a waitress, a rising star on the Baltimore Orioles, a patrol cop, a hardened female reporter, a lonely man in a movie theater. But for all her ambition and drive, Maddie often fails to see the people right in front of her. Her inability to look beyond her own needs will lead to tragedy and turmoil for all sorts of people--including the man who shares her bed, a black police officer who cares for Maddie more than she knows.

My musings:


I’ve been wishing for an original but believable mystery to break a chain of far-fetched plotlines that have plagued my reading lately, and am happy to report that this book surely delivered exactly what I was looking for! Actually, if I had to categorise this book, I’m not sure what genre I would assign to it – perhaps “newspaper mystery” (as the author calls it in her author’s notes) would indeed be the most suitable, as Maddie, our main narrator, is an aspiring journalist investigating a crime. However, the crime is not really the main focus of this intriguing mystery, which unfolds slowly and reveals a lot more about Maddie’s life and the circumstances that lead to her “investigation” than the body of the young woman nicknamed the “Lady in the Lake” in Baltimore. In fact, the very role of journalist is more a way for Maddie to break out of her confines as a 1960’s wife and mother than a vocation, though she fits the role very well.

Maddie made for an enigmatic character I could relate to, and her upper class Jewish background was interesting and something that made her stand out from the usual fray of tortured souls that represent your more typical fictional investigator. Maddie had spunk, and I was rooting for her every step of the way, even though she kept sticking her nose into things that would cause a lot of trouble – or perhaps because she was not afraid to stick her nose into things that would stir up trouble! Maddie truly is a rebel: bored with her stale marriage she leaves her husband and teenage son, moves into an apartment in a less “desirable” neighbourhood where she can entertain her black cop lover and inserts herself into a police investigation by writing a letter to the main suspect of the crime. This may not raise any eyebrows in our times, but imagine the gossip it engendered in 1966! By choosing a feisty heroine to tell the tale of an era where women were very much still confined to home and hearth, Lippman really evokes the spirit of the time her story is set in – I felt instantly transported into a different world, the virtual travel possibly more intriguing to me than the actual solving of the mystery.

Ironically, I also really enjoyed the very thing some other readers found annoying, which was the large number of POVs Lippman uses to tell the story of the circumstances surrounding the crime. Here we have everyone from the suspect’s mother, to the victim’s child, to a random waitress and many more peripheral characters recounting random facts that only vaguely connect them to the dead woman. I thought this was a very clever way to set the scene, and it certainly added intrigue and brought the era and the city to life for me. The victim Cleo herself gets to narrate quite a few chapters, and those formed part of a very clever web that finally unravelled right at the end of the book.


I was even more intrigued by the story when I found out that two real life crimes in 1969 inspired the author to write this fictional version of events, and that some of her characters were informed by real personalities of the time. In an interview, Lippman stated that as a reporter herself she had been motivated to write stories about “the kind of people that no one else wanted to write about”, a trait reflected here in Maddie. For me, these kind of novels make up the perfect blend between true crime and fiction, and I really enjoyed doing a bit of digging into the events that inspired this novel. Don’t you love it when a work of fiction also serves as an educational experience? 


Summary:


All in all, LADY IN THE LAKE was an engaging, original mystery featuring a feisty female protagonist I immediately warmed to and rooted for all the way. Inspired by two true crimes in 1969 Baltimore, the author created a rich cast of characters to tell the tale, which made for the perfect time travel and added depth to the story lacking in many other contemporary crime novels. I really enjoyed the journey and look forward to picking up other books by the author.



Thank you to Edelweiss and William Morrow for the free electronic copy of this novel and for giving me the opportunity to provide an honest review.




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