The Lakehouse
Available from Polis Books
After being cleared of his wife’s murder, Todd Norman returns to her small Connecticut hometown in order to finish building their dream house by the lake, only to find new suspicions cast when a young woman’s body washes up on the beach next door.
When Tracy Somerset, divorced mother from the small town of Covenant, CT, meets a handsome stranger in a midnight Wal-Mart, she has no idea she is speaking with Todd Norman, the former Wall Street financier dubbed “The Banker Butcher” by the New York tabloids. The following morning, on the beach by Norman’s back-under-construction lakehouse, another young woman’s body is discovered. Sheriff Dwane Sobczak’s investigation leads him to town psychiatrist Dr. Meshulum Bakshir, whose position at a troubled girls’ group home a decade ago yields disturbing ties to several local, prominent players, including a radical preacher, a disgraced politician, a down-and-out PI—and Sobczak’s own daughter. Unfolding over the course of New England’s distinct four seasons, The Lakehouse is a domestic psychological thriller about the wayward and marginalized, the lies we tell those closest to us, and the price of forbidden love in an insular community where it seems everyone has a story to tell—and a past they prefer stay buried.
Praise
—Publishers Weekly
—Library Journal
“The Lakehouse is a riveting page-turner where the secrets roll at you like dice. Clifford’s gritty and immersive writing style is the perfect vehicle for this tale of a town where nothing is as it seems, where truth after astonishing truth is revealed layer by layer, until it all comes together in a satisfying crescendo. Highly recommended.”
—Jess Lourey, Amazon Charts bestselling author of Unspeakable Things
—J.T. Ellison
“Joe Clifford’s The Lakehouse is a gritty and wonderfully menacing story. You’ll want to rush and slow down while reading. You’ll want to peek and stare down what’s coming. This is one of Clifford’s greatest tricks―and one of his best novels to date.”
—Rachel Howzell Hall author of They All Fall Down