Lady in the Lake

In 1966, Baltimore is a city of secrets that everyone seems to know - except Maddie Schwartz. Last year, she was a happy, even pampered housewife. This year, she's bolted from her marriage of almost 20 years, determined to make good on the promises she made to her younger self. Maddie wants to matter, to leave her mark on a swiftly changing world. Drawing on her own secrets, she helps Baltimore police find a missing and murdered girl. This leads her to a job at the afternoon newspaper, the Star, and her quest to find out what happened to a missing woman, whose body has been discovered in the fountain in the center of a city park lake.

Cleo Sherwood was a young African-American woman intent on a good time. No one seems to know or care why she was killed - except Maddie and, as it turns out, the ghost of Cleo Sherwood, who wishes Maddie would just leave her be. These two women's voices are joined by the voices of many others, people whom Maddie encounters glancingly as she makes her way through the world, failing to see that everybody has a story - the girl at the jewelry counter, the waitress at the diner, a rising star on the Baltimore Orioles, a patrol cop, a hardened female reporter, a lonely man in a movie theater. Maddie's inability to see beyond her own needs will lead to tragedy and turmoil for all sorts of people - including the man who shares her bed, a black patrol cop who cares for her more than she knows.