Wilde Lake - Laura Lippman

'Wilde Lake is a knockout.' Stephen King

'Intriguing premise, stunning reveal, irresistible read.' Val McDermid

'Wilde Lake is a standout novel: an intelligent, emotional, satisfying mystery that explores huge themes in small-town microcosm, in the manner of To Kill A Mockingbird, the inspiration on which it reflects.' Alex Marwood

'Wilde Lake is engrossing, suspenseful and substantial.' Scott Turow

Luisa 'Lu' Brant is the newly elected - and first female - state's attorney of Howard County, Maryland, a job in which her revered father famously served. Fiercely intelligent and ambitious, she sees an opportunity to make her name by trying a mentally disturbed drifter accused of beating a woman to death in her home.

As Lu prepares for the trial, the case dredges up painful memories, reminding her small but tight-knit family of the night when her brother, AJ, saved his best friend at the cost of another man's life. Only eighteen, AJ was cleared by a grand jury. Now, Lu wonders if the events of 1980 happened as she remembers them. What details might have been withheld from her when she was a child?

The more she learns about the case, the more questions arise. Propelled into the past, she discovers that the legal system, the bedrock of her entire life, does not have all the answers and that the truth might be a dangerous thing to learn.