Lady In The Lake by Laura Lippman

 

It's 1966 and Maddie Schwartz is determined to live the life she chooses.  She has left her husband and son and the comfortable country club life she had.  Now she lives in a tiny apartment downtown and after finding the body of a missing girl, has managed to parlay that into a job at one of Baltimore's newspapers.  She wants to be a reporter but is instead the assistant to the man who writes the advice column.

Maddie is determined to find a story that will make her bosses give her a shot as a reporter.  The discovery of a woman's body in a nearby fountain at a lake gives her an opportunity.  Cleo Sherwood was a black woman at a local nightclub.  Maddie is sure that Cleo was having an affair with a local politician and is sure she can find if that led to her death.  Maddie has fallen into an affair with one of the policemen she reported the missing girl's body to, and she uses that to get inside information.  Ferdie, the policeman, tells her she can't use anything he tells her as the department will know the information came from him, but Maddie is headstrong and sure she can write the story without leaving any clues behind.  Can she make her dreams come true?

Laura Lippman is one of the best authors in the mystery genre.  She is known as a feminist and her books feature strong women and her beloved city of Baltimore.  Maddie is not really sympathetic as she uses everyone around her to get her way, but it is a story of how women fought to be allowed to work in occupations that had been closed to them before.  It is also a historical look at race relations in the 1960's.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.