The Blurb (from Goodreads):
Rose was lit by the sun, her beautiful face giving nothing away. Even back then, she was a mystery that I wanted to solve.
The lead homicide investigator in a rural town, Detective Sergeant Gemma Woodstock is deeply unnerved when a high school classmate is found strangled, her body floating in a lake. And not just any classmate, but Rosalind Ryan, whose beauty and inscrutability exerted a magnetic pull on Smithson High School, first during Rosalind's student years and then again when she returned to teach drama.
As much as Rosalind's life was a mystery to Gemma when they were students together, her death presents even more of a puzzle. What made Rosalind quit her teaching job in Sydney and return to her hometown? Why did she live in a small, run-down apartment when her father was one of the town's richest men? And despite her many admirers, did anyone in the town truly know her?
Rosalind's enigmas frustrate and obsess Gemma, who has her own dangerous secrets—an affair with her colleague and past tragedies that may not stay in the past.
My Thoughts:
So many brilliant contemporary crime novels being published in Austalia right now! It’s like a new Golden Age of detective novels. And like the Golden Age of the 30s in Great Britain, many of the writers of this new great Australian flowering are women. In recent months I’ve read and loved books by Jane Harper, Dervla McTiernan, and Emma Viskic, and now I need to add debut author Sarah Bailey to the list. The Dark Lake really is bloody brilliant!
Set in a small rundown Australian town, the story centres on the murder of a beautiful young teacher, her body found floating in the lake strewn with red roses. Detective Sergeant Gemma Woodstock went to school with the dead woman, but she hides this fact from her boss and her partner as she is desperate to investigate the crime. Slowly Gemma’s obsession with her old school friend deepens, threatening to derail her life and destroy all that she holds dear.
This is the kind of book that – once started – you really can’t put down. As more and more secrets are revealed, and more and more of Gemma’s life exposed, the mystery of how Rosalind Ryan died becomes increasingly gripping. And the story has a very satisfactory ending, as all good crime novels must have. I can’t wait for Sarah Bailey’s next book now!
