The Lake of Darkness

The Lake of Darkness
First edition (UK)
Author	Ruth Rendell
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Genre	Crime, Mystery novel
Publisher	Hutchinson (UK) Doubleday (US)
Publication date	April 1980
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	201 pp
ISBN	0-09-140810-5
OCLC	15591919

The Lake of Darkness is a novel by British writer Ruth Rendell, first published in 1980. It won the Arts Council National Book Award for Genre Fiction in 1981.

The title comes from a quotation from Shakespeare's King Lear:

"Frateretto calls me; and tells me Nero is an angler in the lake of darkness. Pray, innocent, and beware the foul fiend".

Plot summary

Martin Urban is a young accountant leading the comfortable though somewhat dull life of a bachelor. Unexpectedly he wins a very large sum of money in a football pool (104,754 pounds 46 pence), but he decides to give half the money away to the poor. Then Francesca enters into his life, a mysterious young woman who captures his heart. And when he meets Finn, the twisted son of his mother's cleaning lady, the good intentions of Martin become fatally entangled with the macabre madness of Finn, with deadly results.

Ruth Rendell

Inspector Wexford novels	From Doon with Death A New Lease of Death Wolf to the Slaughter The Best Man to Die A Guilty Thing Surprised No More Dying Then Murder Being Once Done Some Lie and Some Die Shake Hands Forever A Sleeping Life Put on By Cunning The Speaker of Mandarin An Unkindness of Ravens The Veiled One Kissing the Gunner's Daughter Simisola Road Rage Harm Done The Babes in the Wood End in Tears Not in the Flesh The Monster in the Box The Vault No Man's Nightingale

Stand-alone novels	To Fear a Painted Devil Vanity Dies Hard The Secret House of Death One Across, Two Down The Face of Trespass A Demon in My View A Judgement in Stone Make Death Love Me The Lake of Darkness Master of the Moor The Killing Doll The Tree of Hands Live Flesh Heartstones Talking to Strange Men The Bridesmaid Going Wrong The Crocodile Bird The Keys to the Street A Sight for Sore Eyes Adam and Eve and Pinch Me The Rottweiler Thirteen Steps Down The Thief The Water's Lovely Portobello Tigerlily's Orchids The St Zita Society The Girl Next Door Dark Corners

As Barbara Vine	A Dark-Adapted Eye A Fatal Inversion The House of Stairs Gallowglass King Solomon's Carpet Asta's Book No Night is Too Long The Brimstone Wedding The Chimney-sweeper's Boy Grasshopper The Blood Doctor The Minotaur The Birthday Present The Child's Child

Short story collections	The Fallen Curtain Means of Evil The Fever Tree The New Girlfriend The Copper Peacock Blood Lines Piranha to Scurfy

TV series	The Ruth Rendell Mysteries

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