The Lady in the Lake by Jeremy Craddock

Jeremy Craddock is a lecturer and former journalist with a genuine talent for narrative. I've known him for a number of years and I was extremely pleased by the success of his first true crime book, The Jigsaw Murders, a readable and long-overdue account of the Buck Ruxton case, which has fascinated me for years - so much so that, at one time, I toyed with the idea of writing it up myself. 

Now he's turned his attention to a more recent mystery. Again it's one in which I've long been very interested, not least because it's a Cumbrian case - and in fact it was a real life cold case, though rather different from those with which Hannah Scarlett has to deal in my novels. Not only is it one of the most extraordinary British murder cases of the past fifty years, it's one with which Jeremy has some personal connections, arising from his time as a reporter working in the Lake District. 

The Lady in the Lake is the story of the case of Carol Park, the teacher whose body was found in Coniston in 1997, long after she disappeared back in 1976. One of the truly shocking and hard-to-believe human details in the story is that, in a completely unrelated scenario, Carol's sister had also been murdered. The agonies her family must have gone through are unimaginable.

Jeremy gives the narrative a personal flavour, and this works well. His incidental observations on the changing nature of journalism are of real interest. He explains that the obvious suspect in the case was Gordon Park. At the time Carol's body was discovered, Park was a retired teacher who had married for the third time. It should also be mentioned that various members of his family believe to this day that he was an innocent man. The police struggled to find compelling evidence of his guilt, even though there were various highly suspicious circumstances. However, seven years after the body was discovered, he was found guilty of Carol's murder, and in 2010 he committed suicide in prison. A recent campaign to secure a posthumous pardon has failed.

The Lady in the Lake tells a gripping story and tells it well. The Jigsaw Murders was nominated for the CWA Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction and I expect this book to do at least as well. One minor quibble is the absence of an index. The publishers should not, I think, have skimped on this. There aren't many non-fiction books that don't benefit from an index. Overall, though, this doesn't matter much. The Lady in the Lake is a successful and consistently interesting study of an extraordinary murder case.