Lady in the Lake

Lady in the Lake is a 2019 historical crime novel written by Laura Lippman and published by William Morrow. It was inspired by two historic true crime cases from Baltimore: The murder of 11-year-old Esther Lebowitz and the disappearance and discovery of the remains of Shirley Parker, both in 1969. Lippman, author of more than 20 crime novels as well as a former reporter, took inspiration for Lady in the Lake from her experience working at the Baltimore Sun and growing up in Columbia, Maryland. She is the recipient of the Edgar, Nero, Gumshoe, Seamus, Agatha, and Anthony awards for her work in fiction. A forthcoming series also titled Lady in the Lake was optioned by Apple TV+ and will star Natalie Portman as Maddie Schwartz and Moses Ingram as Cleo Sherwood.

This guide uses the 2020 paperback P.S. tie-in edition of the novel.

Content Warning: This novel involves themes of racism, racial violence, police violence, murder, statutory rape, murder of a child, fetishism, antisemitism, drug use, and abortion. Note that the “lover” that the main character Maddie alludes to having when she was 17 is revealed to be a man in his forties. In the chapter summaries, this guide initially follows Maddie’s characterization of this man to retain continuity with Maddie’s perspective; once the man’s age is revealed, though, chapter summaries refer to the “affair” as what it was: a sexually abusive arrangement predicated on Maddie’s belief that she is a willing participant, a belief she sustains even in adulthood.

Plot Summary

Lady in the Lake consists of three parts. Each part alternately features the perspectives of Cleo Sherwood, Maddie Schwartz, and various minor characters. Cleo’s chapters, which always appear in italics under the title “Interstitial,” are related in first person. The chapters that depict Maddie Schwartz’s experiences adopt a third-person omniscient perspective and are titled with the month and year in which they take place. The various minor characters each have only one respective chapter. Each of these chapters, titled with an anonymous descriptor, e.g., “The Columnist” or “The Waitress,” uses first person.

One night in the Baltimore suburbs in October of 1965, Maddie Schwartz is rattled when her husband of 20 years, Milton, informs her that local news anchor Wallace Wright will be coming to dinner at their house. Wally’s visit sends Maddie hurtling back to memories of a secret affair she had when she was 17 years old. Dissatisfied with the course of her life, Maddie goes to bed that night having decided that she will leave her husband.

By January of 1966, Cleo Sherwood, a local mother of two boys and an employee of the Flamingo Club, has been reported missing by her family. Maddie finds an apartment for herself in downtown Baltimore, staging a robbery to collect on the insurance money from her engagement ring once she finds supporting herself financially to be challenging. In filing the police report, she meets Ferdie Platt, a Black patrolman assigned to the area, and the two begin a sexual relationship that lasts for nine months; this relationship never progresses beyond the confines of her bedroom. While Maddie waits for the alimony she expects from Milton, she considers work options. In the meantime, she volunteers to look for a local missing girl named Tessie Fine, only for the search to end with the discovery of the child’s body. Maddie writes to the suspect of the murder, then uses the letters to finagle a job at the Baltimore Sun.

At the Baltimore Sun, Maddie becomes interested in the discovery of the body of Cleo Sherwood, found in a fountain lake at a local park. Despite insistence that there is no story in Cleo’s demise, Maddie pursues leads throughout the city; she is determined to uncover the identity of the man she believes to have been Cleo’s secret boyfriend. Pursuing the clues, Maddie begins asking questions of local senate hopeful (and Cleo’s married lover) Ezekiel Taylor. When she does, Shell Gordon, owner of the Flamingo, orders his bartender, Thomas Ludlow, to confess to Cleo’s murder.

Following up with the Fine case despite Ferdie’s urging to keep the lead under wraps, Maddie is attacked by the suspect’s mother, who is revealed to have assisted her son in killing the 11-year-old girl. Maddie survives, waking in a hospital room. There, the real Cleo Sherwood sneaks in to tell Maddie that Cleo and Thomas staged her death by using her roommate’s body as a stand-in after a timely drug overdose. Cleo warns Maddie to stop snooping into her life. Ferdie, who hoped to become a detective one day, sees Maddie one last time to tell her that her carelessness and selfishness in pursing the lead cost him his 10-year career on the force. Maddie converts her exclusive first-person account of being nearly murdered by a child killer into a more prestigious position at the more respectable Baltimore Beacon; by the end of the novel, she has worked there for 20 years.