Review by New York Times Review
IN A1945 essay in which he dismissed most detective and mystery fiction as little better than crossword puzzles, the critic Edmund Wilson asked a question that still rankles readers who enjoy the genre: "Who cares who killed Roger Ackroyd?" The answer, over the 75 or so years since, seems to be "millions of people do." That would include me. I also care who killed Eunetta "Cleo" Sherwood and Tessie Fine. Theirs are the murders investigated by Madeline "Maddie" Schwartz in Laura Lippman's haunting new novel. What makes this book special, even extraordinary, is that the crossword puzzle aspect is secondary. Lippman, who is the closest writer America has to Ruth Rendeli, is after bigger game. The arc of Maddie's character - her mid-1960s "journey," if you like - reflects the gulf which then existed between what women were expected to be and what they aspired to be. When Maddie leaves her conventional and basically uninteresting husband to strike out on her own, she remains a Mrs. pending her divorce, but after going to work at an afternoon newspaper and taking a lover, she thinks of herself as something else, a thing for which she has no name. Ms. - the form of address that would create a narrow bridge between Mrs. and Miss - was then not in common usage. Set in Baltimore, Lippman's home stomping grounds, "Lady in the Lake" covers just over a year, from October 1965 to November 1966. Spiro Agnew will soon be elected governor, Maddie's middle-class Jewish enclave is centered in the suburb of Pikesville and the town supports three thriving newspapers. Maddie goes to work for The Star after she and a friend discover the body of Tessie Fine, a young girl whose neck was broken. After pointing out a flaw in the supposed killer's story and coaxing him into correspondence (Maddie is good with men), she finally gets a byline - but only after she's rewritten by Bob Bauer, the paper's popular columnist. Her paltry reward for this scoop is a job as the mailscreening assistant to Don Heath, a timeserver who writes a feature called Helpline. "The real joke is," Don confides, "I have the stupidest column in the paper, but it's also the most popular." One of the letters Maddie screens is a complaint about the lights being out in the fountain at the center of Druid Hill Park. It's not juicy enough for the Helpline column, so she passes it on to the Department of Public Works guys, who find the problem's grim cause: A decomposing body, dumped in the fountain months before, has shorted out the wiring. Thus does Cleo Sherwood become the Lady in the Lake, and Maddie Schwartz's new obsession. Maddie believes she's at least partially solved the murder of Tessie Fine (she's not entirely right about that and will suffer the consequences), and wants to feel that high again. More, she wants to beat and trick and charm her way past the men who are trying to keep her from fulfilling what she sees as her destiny: becoming a columnist in her own right. Her pursuit of that destiny is far from lovely - she will badly hurt one person who loves her before she's done - but the times weren't lovely. After a fruitless attempt to rattle a wealthy businessman who may have been Cleo's lover, Maddie muses, "The men made the rules, broke the rules and tossed the girls away." Maddie refuses to be tossed. More than one person around her pays for that. Lippman's point - which takes this book far beyond the works of Agatha Christie and Rex Stout, although Lippman does not fail to honor her genre roots - is that Maddie also pays, and in blood. Interspersed with Maddie's story are a chorus of voices straight out of "Our Town," most of them unhappy. Don Heath fears he's suffering from dementia. The newscaster Wally Wright (actually Weiss) still carries a torch - and a resentment - for Maddie, whom he once dated in high school. The political fixer and the nightclub owner are unhappily closeted gay men, socalled "Baltimore bachelors." The only optimistic voice we hear is that of the legendary Baltimore Orioles outfielder Paul Blair, and he seems unnecessary here from a narrative perspective (so, for that matter, does the masher who fondles Maddie's knee during a movie). Even Cleo Sherwood speaks from beyond the grave, sort of like Joe Gillis in "Sunset Boulevard," another murdered floater. That parallel may or may not have been intended. It's the Lady in the Lake who opens the story, in fact, and it's Cleo's ambivalence about her place in what James Brown called a man's, man's, man's world that sets the tone of this angry but craftily crafted book. "Men need us more than we need them," Cleo says on the first page, but almost immediately contradicts herself: "A woman is only as good as the man at her side." Maddie, victimized by a much older man while still in her teens, is similarly conflicted; although Cleo is black and Maddie is a white middle-class Jew, they are eerily alike. Maddie uses her looks to flirt her way into the newspaper business, but must keep her actual (and very powerful) sex drive carefully hidden, even after she leaves her husband and son, which she does with coldblooded calculation. Lippman walks a fine line, balancing a cracking good mystery with the story of a not always admirable woman working to stand on her own. Lippman never loses sight of Maddie's options and her obstacles. Both turn out to be men. "Women ... learned early to surrender any idea that life was a series of fair exchanges," Maddie thinks. "A girl discovered almost in the cradle that things would never be fair." Maybe not, but Cleo, the Lady in the Lake, sees another side, pointing out that the source of both of Maddie's scoops was a man: "Wasn't it, Maddie Schwartz? A woman like you - there's always going to be a man." Although Lippman's heart clearly rests with Maddie and her struggle to become more than just Mrs. Milton Schwartz, and although she gives a splendid picture of the newspaper business in an era when newspapers mattered a lot more than they do today, she never loses touch with the twin mysteries at the center of her story. We care about Maddie, sure, but we also want to know who helped Tessie Fine's killer move Tessie's body from the place where she was murdered. And as for the murder of Cleo Sherwood? Apologies to Mr. Wilson, but we care quite a bit. Lippman answers all outstanding questions with a totally cool double twist that your reviewer - a veteran reader of mysteries - never saw coming. There are even glints of humor, a trick Ruth Rendeli rarely managed. When Maddie asks a bartender which Baltimore paper he prefers, he tells her he likes The Beacon. "It's the thickest," he says, "and I've got a parakeet." Lippman balances a cracking good mystery with the story of a woman working to stand on her own. Stephen KING'S next novel, "The Institute," will be published in September.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 4, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
Laura Lippman and Thomas Perry have something in common. As good as their crime series are, they both show the full range of their talents more completely in their stand-alones, as Lippman demonstrates in this riveting historical thriller set in Baltimore in the 1960s. In A Doll's House fashion, Madeline ""Maddie"" Schwartz walks away from a seemingly happy marriage to carve a life for herself, landing a clerical job at a Baltimore newspaper and setting the goal of becoming a reporter. It happens, but slowly and not without causing significant injury to the lives of others in her wake. Maddie becomes obsessed with the story of Cleo Sherwood, an African American cocktail waitress whose body is found in the lake of a city park. As she jumps between Cleo's life before her body is discovered and Maddie's attempt to solve the crime (in which her paper has little interest), Lippman does some innovative things with narrative: not only does the ghost of Cleo speak directly to the reader, excoriating the reporter for digging into the past that Cleo wants left undisturbed, but we also hear from a Greek chorus-like assembly of voices, some fictional, some historical (including former Baltimore Oriole Paul Blair and Violet Wilson Whyte, the first black person to be appointed to the city's police force), who add texture to the portrayal of the city's racial politics. In the middle of all that is Maddie, a significantly flawed especially in her relationship with her black lover, a Baltimore cop but always compelling figure, an utterly human mix of compassion and self-centered ambition. This is a superb character study, a terrific newspaper novel, and a fascinating look at urban life and racial discrimination in the '60s.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Lippman's critical acclaim and sales figures continue to climb, and this genre-crossing thriller will extend her reach still further.--Bill Ott Copyright 2019 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Set in 1960s Baltimore, this smoldering standalone from Edgar winner Lippman (Sunburn) trails Madeline Schwartz, an affluent 37-year-old Jewish housewife who separates from her husband after dinner with an old classmate reminds her that she once had goals beyond marriage and motherhood. Maddie relishes her newfound freedom, renting an apartment downtown and starting an affair with a black patrolman, but she yearns for more. After discovering the corpse of 11-year-old Tessie Fine and later corresponding with Tessie's incarcerated killer to determine his motive, Maddie leverages her story for an assistant's position at the Star. She dreams of becoming a reporter, though, and starts investigating a crime otherwise ignored by the newspaper: the murder of Cleo Sherwood, a young black woman whose body turned up in the Druid Hill Park fountain. Lippman relates the bulk of the tale from Maddie's perspective, but enriches the narrative with derisive commentary from Cleo and stunning vignettes of ancillary characters. Lippman's fans will devour this sophisticated crime novel, which captures the era's zeitgeist while painting a striking portrait of unapologetic female ambition. Agent: Vicky Bijur, Vicky Bijur Literary. (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Two murders in mid-1960s Baltimore change the life of 37-year-old housewife Madeline Morgenstern Schwartz. Maddie has already decided to leave her husband, Milton, when she's turned away from a search group of Jewish men looking for missing 11-year-old Tessie Fine. On impulse, she heads to the arboretum where she used to park with dates and spots Tessie's body. Her subsequent interview by a newspaper columnist sparks her interest in reporting, and her persistence gets her hired as assistant to the paper's helpline column writer. When she responds to a question about why lights are out in a park, police find the body of long-missing Cleo Sherwood, an African American woman, in the fountain. Maddie may be untrained and inexperienced, but she's ambitious and persistent, writing to the suspect in Tessie's murder and searching for hints to Cleo's. First-person accounts by persons who interact with Maddie--including Cleo's, in italics--add texture and insight to what Lippman describes as "a newspaper novel." VERDICT While short of the adrenaline-fueled suspense of other Lippman stand-alones (Sunburn), this work captures a time and place as it mixes fact with its fiction, plus a protagonist who challenges norms. With its well-drawn characters and lucid prose, this newspaper novel shines. [See Prepub Alert, 1/23/19.]--Michele Leber, Arlington, VA
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Baltimore in the 1960s is the setting for this historical fiction about a real-life unsolved drowning.In her most ambitious work to date, Lippman (Sunburn, 2018, etc.) tells the story of Maddie Schwartz, an attractive 37-year-old Jewish housewife who abruptly leaves her husband and son to pursue a long-held ambition to be a journalist, and Cleo Sherwood, an African-American cocktail waitress about whom little is known. Sherwood's body was found in a lake in a city park months after she disappeared, and while no one else seems to care enough to investigate, Maddie becomes obsessedpartly due to certain similarities she perceives between her life and Cleo's, partly due to her faith in her own detective skills. The story unfolds from Maddie's point of view as well as that of Cleo's ghost, who seems to be watching from behind the scenes, commenting acerbically on Maddie's nosing around like a bull in a china shop after getting a job at one of the city papers. Added to these are a chorus of Baltimore characters who make vivid one-time appearances: a jewelry store clerk, an about-to-be-murdered schoolgirl, "Mr. Helpline," a bartender, a political operative, a waitress, a Baltimore Oriole, the first African-American female policewoman (these last two are based on real people), and many more. Maddie's ambition propels her forward despite the cost to others, including the family of the deceased and her own secret lover, a black policeman. Lippman's high-def depiction of 1960s Baltimore and the atmosphere of the newsroom at that timeshe interviewed associates of her father, Baltimore Sun journalist Theo Lippman Jr., for the detailsground the book in fascinating historical fact.The literary gambit she balances atop that foundationthe collage of voicesworks impressively, showcasing the author's gift for rhythms of speech. The story is bigger than the crime, and the crime is bigger than its solution, making Lippman's skill as a mystery novelist work as icing on the cake.The racism, classism, and sexism of 50 years ago wrapped up in a stylish, sexy, suspenseful period drama about a newsroom and the city it covers. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
