Maddie Schwartz - recently separated from her husband, working her first job as an assistant at the Baltimore Sun - wants one thing: a byline. It isn't hard to understand why: it's 1964 and neither the police, the public nor the papers care much when Negro women go missing. Aside from her parents and the two sons she left behind, no one seems to have noticed. 'Lippman is a natural storyteller at the height of her powers.' Lee Childįrom the New York Times bestselling author of Sunburn, and soon to be a major AppleTV series starring Natalie Portman and Lupita Nyong'oĬleo Sherwood disappeared eight months ago. 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.'Haunting. But for all her ambition and drive, Maddie often fails to see the people right in front of her. Maddie’s investigation brings her into contact with people that used to be on the periphery of her life–a jewelery store clerk, a waitress, a rising star on the Baltimore Orioles, a patrol cop, a hardened female reporter, a lonely man in a movie theater. Cleo’s ghost, privy to Maddie’s poking and prying, wants to be left alone.

Maddie’s going to find the truth about Cleo’s life and death. No one seems to know or care why she was killed except Maddie–and the dead woman herself. Cleo Sherwood was a young African-American woman who liked to have a good time.

Drawing on her own secrets, she helps Baltimore police find a murdered girl–assistance that leads to a job at the city’s afternoon newspaper, the Star. Working at the newspaper 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. Maddie wants to matter, to leave her mark on a swiftly changing world.

This year, she’s bolted from her marriage of almost twenty years, determined to make good on her youthful ambitions to live a passionate, meaningful life. Last year, she was a happy, even pampered housewife. In 1966, Baltimore is a city of secrets that everyone seems to know–everyone, that is, except Madeline “Maddie” Schwartz.

The lady in the lake lippman