The Lake of Darkness


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:

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, 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.