The Lake House

Raised on a literary diet rich in Enid Blyton tales, Kate Morton says she’s still separated from slumber at night by ‘mysteries and secrets that dance around the edges of her mind’. Having studied for the stage, she released her first novel The House at Riverton to wild acclaim in 2007, and has since continued to write ‘books she can disappear inside’. The Lake House is one such book, which spins the threads of three mysteries through a 70-year period, connecting them with Loenneth, a grand house in Cornwall set within an abundant lakeside garden. At the start of the novel it is the tragic setting for the unexplained disappearance of 11-month-old Theo Edevane on the eve of his family’s beautiful midsummer party; then, 70 years later, it is the abandoned and overgrown estate that Sadie Sparrow, a London detective constable on an enforced break from the beat, discovers while running near her grandfather’s house. Alice Edevane, who was just 16 when Theo vanished, lives in London in Sadie’s present as an elderly detective novelist who has spent her life trying to escape that terrible night. The narrative jumps back and forth, introducing the child abduction case Sadie has been forbidden to pursue, and going back to Alice’s past a year before the party, all while thickening the plots of these mysteries with different perspectives and embellishing them with secrets.