Wilde Lake by Laura Lippman

When Lu Brant is elected the first female state's attorney of a county outside Baltimore, it should be the pinnacle of her career, but when she decides to try a murder case against homeless Rudy Drysdale, she's forced to confront buried memories of her own childhood. Lu's brother, A.J, was involved at 18 in an incident where he broke his arm and another man died. Lu was ten at the time, enamored of popular A.J. and his group of friends. No charges were ever brought against anyone, but as Lu proceeds in her case, she finds that Drysdale was two years behind A.J. in school and that they might have known each other. Lu also reflects on being raised by her father, also a state's attorney, after her mother died while Lu was very young. Wilde Lake is a novel that transports you to 1970's and 1980's suburban Baltimore and fully immerses the reader in a world of childhood and family secrets. Like Lippman's best novels, Wilde Lake is a book that stay with you even after the last page is turned.