So I looped throughout Laura Lippman’s self-serving reimagining of what might have become of Marjorie Schwartz nee Morgenstern a couple decades years after Wally famously reported the end of her story. Lady in the Lake is not a sequel to Herman Wouk’s classic novel, Marjorie Morningstar. 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. But for all her ambition and drive, Maddie often fails to see the people right in front of her. Maddie’s investigation brings her into contact with people that used to be on the periphery of her life-a jewelry 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.

Cleo’s ghost, privy to Maddie’s poking and prying, wants to be left alone. Maddie’s going to find the truth about Cleo’s life and death. No one seems to know or care why she was killed except Maddie-and the dead woman herself. 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.Ĭleo Sherwood was a young black woman who liked to have a good time. 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. Maddie wants to matter, to leave her mark on a swiftly changing world.

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. Last year, she was a happy, even pampered housewife. In 1966, Baltimore is a city of secrets that everyone seems to know-everyone, that is, except Madeline “Maddie” Schwartz. 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.

Laura lippman lady in the lake review