Lady in the Lake

Lady in the Lake: The Mysterious Death of Sphinx Barmaid Shirley Parker is the real story that author Laura Lippman has based her book Lady in the Lake on. 

Lippman took a 1966 unsolved mystery and created a novel around what may have happened.  Madeline "Maddy" Schwartz is unhappy in her everyday life.  Married with a teenage son, she feels like something is missing.  Not sure what she is looking for she leaves her marriage of almost twenty years, her son and the upper middle class suburbs for inner city Baltimore. 

Leaving behind a pampered lifestyle, Maddie is trying to recreate herself, bring back some of her youthful passions and leave a mark behind when she is gone.  Also working through some deeply held secrets from her past, she sets out to become a journalist.  Fighting her way into a male dominated business, she uses some of the techniques she developed as a young ingenue.

She defies logic and the norms of the time, having an affair with a young black policeman, she meets in the neighborhood.  She helps to solve a murder of a young girl, finding the body and informing the police., which leads to her first job at the Star, the city's afternoon newspaper.

Twisted in between the chapters about Maddie Schwartz are the reflections of a woman speaking to us from the beyond.  Looking down and watching Maddie, Cleo's ghost wants Maddie to leave her alone, to stop her poking and prying.

Wanting to make a name for herself, Maddie hears about the recovery of the body of a young woman who has been missing. It seems to be 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.  Maddie realizes this could be her big break.  She names her the Lady in the Lake and starts to investigate.  It seems that no one is really interested in the case, so she throws herself into the inquiry at full speed, disregarding how it will affect others around her.  Her failure to listen to the people around her will lead to tragedy and turmoil in her ambitious, driven, rush to prove herself.

This is a story of what life was like racially, socially,  politically and sexually during the 1960s.  Blending fact and fiction, Lippman has created a story which is much bigger than the crime being solved.