Laura Lippman
Since 1997, author Laura Lippman has been gaining a
well-earned reputation as one of the best chroniclers of contemporary life in
the USA.
A former journalist, Lippman, who lives in Baltimore, has
been awarded every major prize in crime fiction and is best known for her
ultra-smart series of novels featuring Tess Monaghan, a reporter turned private
investigator.
But this thrilling writer is not just a one-trick pony and
her superb standalones – not least last year’s gripping Sunburn, a bold and
unsettling story about a pair of lovers locked in a dangerous game of
cat-and-mouse – have seen her novels soar into the upper echelons of crime
writing.
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| MASTERPIECE: Laura Lippman |
And 2019 must surely be the year when she hits the loftiest
heights with Lady in the Lake, a sophisticated, multi-genre, crime noir
masterpiece which explores a breathtaking range of issues from race, gender and
sexism to press power and male prejudice, all set amidst the volatile politics
of 1960s America.
In 1966, Baltimore is a city of secrets that everyone seems
to know… everyone except Madeline ‘Maddie’ Schwartz. Last year, she was a
happy, 36-year-old Jewish housewife, mother to teenage son Seth and wife since
the age of 18 to wealthy Milton Schwartz. Now she has had ‘a glimpse of the road not taken,’ has
bolted from her stale marriage, found an apartment, and is 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 and drawing on her own secrets, she helps Baltimore police find
murdered 11-year-old girl Tessie Fine, assistance that leads to a job at the
city’s afternoon newspaper, the Star.
Working at the paper 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 black 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 even though Cleo’s ghost, who is privy to Maddie’s poking and prying,
desperately wants to be left alone.
Maddie’s investigation brings her into contact with people
who used to be on the periphery of her life… a jewellery store clerk, a
waitress, a hardened female reporter and a lonely man in a film theatre.
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.
Lady in the Lake was always going to be an ambitious
undertaking but Lippman pulls it off in style with an intriguing murder mystery
forming the central core of a story which perfectly captures the mood,
atmosphere and social politics of both time and place by fielding a chorus of narrative
voices from all walks of life through which truth and lies are exposed.
This is an author almost uniquely attuned to the rhythms of
human thought, allowing her readers access to every corner of the city and
every secret thought as a panorama of events, both past and present, scatter
clues and red herrings across the pages.
Lippman’s writing flows like a river in full spate as the
two principals, Cleo and Maddie, and a seemingly random cast of disparate
secondary players, act out their parts in a plot tingling with suspense and
sexual frissons, only for the final act to knock all whodunit theories for six.
Lady in the Lake is clever, compelling and the classiest
murder mystery you will read this year…
(Faber & Faber, paperback, £12.99)
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