In the Lake of the Woods

John and Kathy Wade retreat to a lake in the north woods of Minnesota, hoping to put their lives back together. John, a politician who had been rising fast, has just lost an election badly. Kathy tries to comfort him, but it soon shows that each has kept too much from the other.

Then Kathy disappears, and so does the boat. She may have drowned, or lost her way on the water, or chosen to walk out on her marriage and start again under another life. A large search begins, and with every day the possible explanations multiply and darken.

Finding out what happened means looking hard at John Wade's past. The narrative moves between the missing-person case and the portrait of a man who has built a career on illusion. He is a sorcerer lost inside his own magic, a Houdini who can slip out of anything except the hold of his deepest secret.

This is a literary mystery with a psychological focus. It stays with an unsolved disappearance and an unsettling central figure, and the mood is tense and unsettled, with the answers offered no more simply than the questions.