The Lake of Darkness
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The Lake of Darkness is a novel by British writer Ruth Rendell, first published in 1980.[1] 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
Set in the Highgate-Archway area of North London, the novel's protagonist is Martin Urban, a young accountant leading a comfortable, complacent and rather dull bachelor life, in his own flat, attended by a peppery, older male cleaner, and visiting his doting parents regularly. When Martin unexpectedly wins a large sum of money in a football pool, he shrinks from telling or sharing his win with one of his clients, a dashing, feckless actor he secretly admires but affects to disapprove of. It was this client who procured Martin the winning ticket. Instead, Martin decides to give half the money away to personally-identified worthy causes, all of whom, to Martin's bemusement and dismay, entirely misinterpret his gestures of generosity. Suddenly, Francesca enters his life, a mysterious young woman who works in a flower shop and captures his heart. He also meets Finn, the self-sufficient, twisted son of his mother's cleaning lady, Lena, a vulnerable eccentric absorbed in astrology, crystals, tarot and so on. Finn works as all-round handyman for a dodgy landlord, who pays him to evict (or murder) sitting tenants from his rental properties. Martin's naivety and misplaced good intentions become fatally entangled with Finn's macabre madness and the machinations of others around Martin he completely fails to understand. The tragic outcome opens Martin's eyes and destroys his world.
References
- ^ "THE LAKE OF DARKNESS | Kirkus Reviews". 1 July 1980.
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- 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
- 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 Saint Zita Society
- The Girl Next Door
- Dark Corners
- 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
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