The Dark Lake

Police work comes easily to Det. Sgt. Gemma Woodstock, the narrator of Australian author Bailey’s stellar first novel and a rising star in her rural hometown of Smithson. It’s the rest of Gemma’s life that’s problematic, and about to become precarious, with the discovery of Rose Ryan floating, Ophelialike, amid blood-red roses in the lake behind the high school where she taught English and drama. Though it has been a decade since Gemma and Rose graduated from that same institution, weeks after the suicide of Jacob, the boy they both wanted, the case opens the floodgates to secrets Gemma has struggled to repress. But as she and detective partner Felix—with whom she’s pursuing an affair that could torpedo both his marriage and her live-in relationship with her son’s father—discover, beautiful, brainy Rose had skeletons of her own. Bailey interweaves her sympathetic protagonist’s past and present with uncommon assurance—including letting readers in on a crucial revelation Gemma doesn’t share—creating a page-turner that’s both tense and thought provoking. [em]Agent: Lyn Tranter, Australian Literary Management (Australia). (Oct.) [/em]