Lady in the Lake

Lady in the Lake is set in Baltimore over the course of one year, beginning in the fall of 1965. Consistent with cities across the United States, in the 1960s, the demographic makeup of many neighborhoods once predominantly home to densely clustered ethnic groups (often made up of first- and second-generation European immigrants) began to transform as the population of Black American residents grew. As Maddie observes, Baltimore was in an era of “white flight,” a term that encapsulates the deliberate, large-scale departure of white families from their homes in the wake of the changing racial and ethnic makeup of their neighborhoods; these white families shifted instead into suburbs, which they perceived as safer due to the systemic racism that barred people of color from moving into suburbs. Beginning in the 1950s, the city of Baltimore implemented measures to structure housing in the city. The aim was to promote integration, which would guarantee new and native Black residents of Baltimore access to opportunities for tenancy and ownership of properties from which they had previously been excluded. Despite the city’s efforts, many white people maintained prejudicial attitudes toward areas that were traditionally or increasingly diverse, and these areas remained or became undesirable. The criticism that Maddie faces for residing in the area she occupies downtown is both racist and misogynist; prevalent throughout the novel are characters’ assumptions that Maddie, as a single white woman living alone, is not only more vulnerable to violence but also a more appealing target.

The attitudes adopted by the white police officers and newspapermen who Maddie encounters when she shows interest in the Cleo Sherwood case are consistent with midcentury Baltimore. Newspapers like the Star, the Beacon, and the Sun would’ve considered themselves mainstream, catering to a predominantly white audience under the privileged presumption that their subscribers represented both the majority and the norm. That the Afro-American gives minimal attention to Cleo is indicative of a more widely held sentiment that crosses racial lines and is rooted in chauvinism: victim blaming, while identifiable as an enduring contemporary issue, was so ingrained in 1960s American culture that the news media as portrayed by Lippman would not have considered it prejudicial. Characters throughout the book exhibit this behavior: Some believe that Cleo should have known better than to date so many men at once and was thus complicit in her death. Still others assert that Cleo was a foolish girl who got what she deserved for failing to conform to societal expectations.

Baltimore, like many American cities, has a historic reputation of systemic police brutality against its Black community. Over the course of the decade leading up to the opening of Lady in the Lake, protesters demonstrating in support of civil rights and more complete integration often clashed with Baltimore police. The police, in return, reacted with disproportionate violence. In 1966, the Baltimore police commissioner instituted a policy that called for extensive data gathering on anyone who frequented advocacy groups that were fighting for racial equality and legal justice for illegal treatment. Stop-and-frisk approaches toward Black men and women often escalated to beatings and arrests, a practice excused by the rising crime rate secondary to an increase in drug use and trafficking in Baltimore, which police attributed to the Black community. Maddie encounters this prejudicial assessment when she visits the medical examiner’s office. The examiner posits, without evidence or a determinate cause of death, that Cleo may have climbed into the fountain under the influence of heroin and drowned.