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. Brilliantly rendered, The Dark Lake has characters as compelling and mysteries as layered as the best thrillers from Gillian Flynn and Sophie Hannah.

Meet Gemma Woodstock, sturdy rural Australian police investigator with a life of determined stability and routine: work, child, partner, lover. But secrets from Gem’s past threaten her carefully constructed life when she is called in to investigate the death of a young woman she knew in high school.

The murdered woman is a teacher beloved by all—but no, as it turns out, she was not so well-liked, and why is that? And why must Gem keep her own history with the woman hidden? Is the murder related to the past or the present, or both, and can Gem figure everything out before another death occurs? Gem is a dogged investigator, but what are her true motives?

A live wire of intersecting stories, this debut novel hops and jumps with past and present obsessions rearing up, and long-hidden secrets surfacing like bloated corpses broken free of weighted chains.

Grim imagery? Perhaps. But it’s the sinister undertones that Bailey manages so well, keeping readers off balance as we rip through the pages of the book, wanting more, always more. And more, wonderfully more, is what author Bailey hands over, with cunning, patience, and skill.

Gem is always straight with us, her hooked readers, but she is also cagey. Slowly, the details of her past come out, connecting her—and us—to the present investigation. A history of cruelty and deceit emerges, and with every detail, the urgency of finding out whodunit builds. Only when the final page turned, did I allow myself to sit back and take a deep breath. I’d emerged from The Dark Lake satisfied, exhausted, and, I admit it, ready to jump in all over again.