Listen free for 30 days
-
The Lake of Darkness
- Narrated by: David Suchet
- Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged Audiobook
- Categories: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense, Mystery
Add to basket failed.
Add to wishlist failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Listen with a free trial
Buy Now for £20.09
No valid payment method on file.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Make Death Love Me
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: Ric Jerrom
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Alan Groombridge had a fantasy. Husband to a woman he didn't like, father of two children he had never wanted,and manager of the second smallest branch of the Anglian-Victoria bank in the country, Alan was doomed to a life of domestic boredom and tedious routine.All that saved him was that one fantasy: stealing enough of the bank's money to allow him just one year of freedom -one year in which to live a different sort of life. But one day there was no more dreaming and no more games.
-
-
Make Death Love Me
- By Susan Random on 19-11-15
-
Master of the Moor
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: Michael Bryant
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The bleak expanse of Vangmoor was a dark, forbidding place. One victim had been found there, blonde, her face disfigured, her head shorn close to the scalp - killed without motive or mercy. Then a second woman went missing on the moor, and a sense of utter dread gripped the fifty local men who searched for her. Someone watched them in that treacherous place. Was he a killer? Or was he merely angry that a killer had usurped him? For he, and only he, was the Master of the Moor.
-
-
Enjoyable Rendell
- By richard2 on 04-02-22
-
A Judgement in Stone
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: Carole Hayman
- Length: 6 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Four members of the Coverdale family - George, Jacqueline, Melinda and Giles - died in the space of fifteen minutes on the 14th February, St Valentine's Day. Eunice Parchman, the housekeeper, shot them down on a Sunday evening while they were watching opera on television. Two weeks later she was arrested for the crime. But the tragedy neither began nor ended there...
-
-
I wonder if there's anyone she likes
- By Barbara on 25-05-19
-
Dark Corners
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: Ric Jerrom
- Length: 7 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A spectacularly compelling story of blackmail, murders both accidental and opportunistic, and one life’s fateful unravelling from Ruth Rendell, writing at her most acute and mesmerising. When his father dies, Carl Martin inherits a house in an increasingly rich and trendy London neighbourhood. Carl needs cash, however, so he rents the upstairs room and kitchen to the first person he interviews, Dermot McKinnon. That was colossal mistake number one.
-
-
Another Rendell Classic
- By SEA, Charente on 12-11-15
-
Adam and Eve Pinch Me
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: Jan Francis
- Length: 3 hrs and 16 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jock was supposed to have died in the Paddington train crash. Minty had received a letter from the railway company. But, curiously, the police hadn't been in touch. And Jock had gone off with all her savings. Then Jock's ghost starts reappearing to Minty: at home, at work, even in the cinema. He even touches her. Minty started to carry a knife. If he wasn't made of shadows, would he bleed?
-
-
Abridgded version, sadly
- By Anonymous User on 02-06-21
-
Put on by Cunning
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: George Baker
- Length: 2 hrs and 35 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sir Manuel Camargue, one of the greatest flautists of his time, was dead.Misadventure. An old man, ankle-deep in snow, he lost his foothold in the dark, slipping into water to be trapped under a lid of ice. Only a glove remained to point to where he lay, one of its fingers rising up out of the drifts. There’s nothing Chief Inspector Wexford likes better than an open-and-shut case. They’re so restful. And yet there are one or two niggling doubts – and the disturbing return of Camargue’s daughter, now a considerable heiress, after an absence of nineteen years.
-
Make Death Love Me
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: Ric Jerrom
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Alan Groombridge had a fantasy. Husband to a woman he didn't like, father of two children he had never wanted,and manager of the second smallest branch of the Anglian-Victoria bank in the country, Alan was doomed to a life of domestic boredom and tedious routine.All that saved him was that one fantasy: stealing enough of the bank's money to allow him just one year of freedom -one year in which to live a different sort of life. But one day there was no more dreaming and no more games.
-
-
Make Death Love Me
- By Susan Random on 19-11-15
-
Master of the Moor
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: Michael Bryant
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The bleak expanse of Vangmoor was a dark, forbidding place. One victim had been found there, blonde, her face disfigured, her head shorn close to the scalp - killed without motive or mercy. Then a second woman went missing on the moor, and a sense of utter dread gripped the fifty local men who searched for her. Someone watched them in that treacherous place. Was he a killer? Or was he merely angry that a killer had usurped him? For he, and only he, was the Master of the Moor.
-
-
Enjoyable Rendell
- By richard2 on 04-02-22
-
A Judgement in Stone
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: Carole Hayman
- Length: 6 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Four members of the Coverdale family - George, Jacqueline, Melinda and Giles - died in the space of fifteen minutes on the 14th February, St Valentine's Day. Eunice Parchman, the housekeeper, shot them down on a Sunday evening while they were watching opera on television. Two weeks later she was arrested for the crime. But the tragedy neither began nor ended there...
-
-
I wonder if there's anyone she likes
- By Barbara on 25-05-19
-
Dark Corners
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: Ric Jerrom
- Length: 7 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A spectacularly compelling story of blackmail, murders both accidental and opportunistic, and one life’s fateful unravelling from Ruth Rendell, writing at her most acute and mesmerising. When his father dies, Carl Martin inherits a house in an increasingly rich and trendy London neighbourhood. Carl needs cash, however, so he rents the upstairs room and kitchen to the first person he interviews, Dermot McKinnon. That was colossal mistake number one.
-
-
Another Rendell Classic
- By SEA, Charente on 12-11-15
-
Adam and Eve Pinch Me
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: Jan Francis
- Length: 3 hrs and 16 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jock was supposed to have died in the Paddington train crash. Minty had received a letter from the railway company. But, curiously, the police hadn't been in touch. And Jock had gone off with all her savings. Then Jock's ghost starts reappearing to Minty: at home, at work, even in the cinema. He even touches her. Minty started to carry a knife. If he wasn't made of shadows, would he bleed?
-
-
Abridgded version, sadly
- By Anonymous User on 02-06-21
-
Put on by Cunning
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: George Baker
- Length: 2 hrs and 35 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sir Manuel Camargue, one of the greatest flautists of his time, was dead.Misadventure. An old man, ankle-deep in snow, he lost his foothold in the dark, slipping into water to be trapped under a lid of ice. Only a glove remained to point to where he lay, one of its fingers rising up out of the drifts. There’s nothing Chief Inspector Wexford likes better than an open-and-shut case. They’re so restful. And yet there are one or two niggling doubts – and the disturbing return of Camargue’s daughter, now a considerable heiress, after an absence of nineteen years.
-
Harm Done
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: Christopher Ravenscroft
- Length: 3 hrs and 11 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On the day Lizzie came back from the dead, the police and her family and neighbours had already begun to search for her body. She had been missing for three days. A short while later, another young woman disappears, just as a convicted paedophile is released back into the community.
-
A Spot of Folly
- Ten and a Quarter New Tales of Murder and Mayhem
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble, Toby Longworth, Julian Rhind-Tutt, and others
- Length: 6 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Previously uncollected and unpublished: new short stories from a master of psychological suspense. New and uncollected tales of murder, mischief, magic and madness. Ruth Rendell was an acknowledged master of psychological suspense: these are 10 (and a quarter) of her most chillingly compelling short stories, collected here together for the first time.
-
-
Good, but not vintage Rendell
- By DartmoorDiva on 04-11-17
-
The Monster in the Box
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: Christopher Ravenscroft
- Length: 4 hrs and 37 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
'Wexford had almost made up his mind that he would never again set eyes on Eric Targo's short, muscular figure. And yet there he was, back in Kingsmarkham, still with that cocky, strutting walk.Years earlier, when Wexford was a young police officer, a woman called Elsie Carroll had been found strangled in her bedroom. Although many still had their suspicions that her husband was guilty, no one was convicted.
-
The Tree of Hands
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: Isla Blair
- Length: 3 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the writer of the Wexford novels and read by Isla Blair. Once, when Benet was about fourteen, they had been in a train together, alone in the carriage, and Mopsa had tried to stab her with a carving knife. Threatened her with it, rather. Benet had been wondering why her mother had brought such a large handbag with her, a red one that didn’t go with the clothes she was wearing. Mopsa had shouted and laughed and said wild things and then she had put the knife back in her bag.
-
-
Abridged!
- By Elvira Coot on 05-11-21
-
Piranha to Scurfy and Other Stories
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: Lindsay Duncan
- Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A collection of nine beautifully crafted, terrifying and intriguing tales of spine-tingling psychological terror and suspense from Ruth Rendell. The title story, is about a man whose life, in a sense, is a book. Life for Ambrose Ribbon is lonely, paranoid and obsessive without his mother, yet there is one book that he associates particularly with her: Volume VIII of the Encyclopedia Britannica, Piranha to Scurfy'. It marked a very significant moment in their relationship.
-
-
Loved it
- By Marion G. on 10-08-21
-
The Killing Doll
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: Ric Jerrom
- Length: 7 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
No one would have described Manningtree Grove as fashionable. Few would have found it especially interesting. But it was not an unpleasant place to live: the old railway line lay in a valley, and the gardens looked onto it. It was the kind of place where nothing ever happened. Yet it was here that Peter Yearman first sold his soul to the devil....
-
-
The Killing Doll
- By Susan Random on 19-11-15
-
Shake Hands for Ever
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: George Baker
- Length: 2 hrs and 47 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Most people would have screamed. Mrs Hathall made no sound. She had seen death many times before, but she had never before seen a death by violence. Heavily, she plodded across the room and descended the stairs to where her son waited. "There’s been an accident", she said. "Your wife’s dead." Chief Inspector Wexford could discover no motive, no reason and no suspect – all he had were his intuitive suspicions. Probably he was reading meaning where there was none; probably Angela Hathall really had picked up a stranger, and that stranger had killed her.
-
-
Great story, well told
- By sams247 on 27-04-17
-
The Bridesmaid
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: William Gaminara
- Length: 8 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Philip Wardman had more than just the ordinary squeamishness where death was concerned. Yet he could hardly avoid the suspicious disappearance of his sister's friend Rebecca Neave, especially when everyone was ascribing the cause to murder. Philip's feminine ideal is the statue of the Roman goddess Flora in his mother's garden. His marble Flora doesn't fade, doesn't alter, and doesn’t die.
-
-
Very scary and shocking!
- By Susan on 23-04-13
-
A Sleeping Life
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: George Baker
- Length: 2 hrs and 44 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The body found under the hedge was that of a middle-aged woman, biggish and gaunt. The grey eyes were wide and staring, and in them Detective Chief Inspector Wexford thought he saw a sardonic gleam, a glare, even in death, of scorn. But that must have been his imagination, and imagination was almost all he had to go on. The woman was a stranger. Her handbag held little more than three keys on a ring and forty-two pounds in a new wallet.
-
One Across, Two Down
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: Nicky Henson
- Length: 5 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
There are only two things in life that interest Stanley: solving crossword puzzles, and getting his hands on his mother-in-law’s money. For 20 years, the puzzles have been his only pleasure, the money his only dream. It has never occurred to Stanley that his mother-in-law would try to outsmart him and the money would never be his. Until now. It is only now that Stanley, so clever at misleading double meanings and devious clues, decides to construct a puzzle of his own - and so give death a helping hand.
-
-
One Across, Two Down
- By Susan Random on 04-09-15
-
The Water's Lovely
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: Siân Thomas
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The man who had died was Ismay's stepfather, Guy. Nine years on, she and her sister, Heather, still live in the same house in Clapham. But it has been divided into two self-contained flats. Their mother lives upstairs with her sister, Pamela. And the bathroom, where Guy drowned, has disappeared. Ismay works in public relations, and Heather in catering. They get on well. They always have. They never discuss the changes to the house, still less what happened that August day.
-
-
Classic Rendell
- By F. O. Bonney on 28-04-21
-
The Saint Zita Society
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: Carole Boyd
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dex works as a gardener for Dr Jefferson at his home on Hexam Place in Pimlico: an exclusive street inhabited by the rich, and serviced by the not so rich. The hired help, a motley assortment of au pairs, drivers and cleaners, decide to form the St Zita Society (Zita was the patron saint of domestic servants) as an excuse to meet at the pub and air their grievances. When Dex is invited to one of these meetings, the others find that he is a strange man, ill at ease with human beings....
-
-
Disappointed again
- By Saffy on 27-12-12
Summary
When he unexpectedly comes into a small fortune, he decides to use his newfound wealth to help out those in need. Finn also leads a quiet life, and comes into a little money of his own. Normally, their paths would never have crossed. But Martin’s ideas about who should benefit from his charitable impulses yield some unexpected results, and soon the good intentions of the one become fatally entangled with the mercenary nature of the other. In The Lake of Darkness, Ruth Rendell takes the old adage that no good deed goes unpunished to a startling, haunting conclusion.
More from the same
What listeners say about The Lake of Darkness
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- J.Taylor
- 03-06-14
Good performance by David Suchet - story lacking
Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?
David Suchet as always delivers a good performance with this book. However, I was a little disappointed with the story as it didn't capture me and I found myself starting and stopping often with this one. I love Ruth Rendell stories in general, but there was something missing in this one for me.
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Catherine. Mercer
- 11-02-22
Excellent
As with all of Ruth Rendell's books it was excellent. I look forward to going to bed to listen to my book, and David Suchet was wonderful.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- richard2
- 02-12-21
Great performance - but…
Rather unconvincing story - didn’t like or care about any of the characters and all felt contrived. David Suchet deserves better!
-
Overall
- cilla
- 03-12-19
Great classic Rendell
Love Ruth Rendell she was unique and wonderful author. David Suchet gave top class performance of this book. Very enjoyable.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- franjangle
- 30-11-18
Rendell writes her villains so well!
Not a detective story, an unfolding tale of mayhem that winds a drift of characters in an ever tighter knot. The knot unravels and reties itself as fate descends in startling ways. Intriguing story mellifluously read, only took a star off to make space for Rendell's very very best.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Susan Random
- 10-11-15
The Lake Of Darkness
Where does The Lake of Darkness rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
It's a fairly good, if somewhat similar in plot to other Rendell books, murder mystery set in London.
What was one of the most memorable moments of The Lake of Darkness?
Probably the last two chapters which were packed full of emotion and deep passion.
Which scene did you most enjoy?
The way in which Rendell writes about how London was changing during the 1970s and the stark difference of neighbouring postcodes.
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
The somewhat callous nature of the antagonists.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- George Eager
- 07-10-20
Good story ,well read
Short novel in the ironic Rendell msnner. Not gory but engrossing nonetheless. Classic Rendellian twist I didn't see coming.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Jeanette
- 29-10-12
David Suchet was great as usual
Would you try another book from Ruth Rendell and/or David Suchet?
Definitely by David Suchet
Would you be willing to try another book from Ruth Rendell? Why or why not?
Perhaps. Depending on the story
Which scene was your favorite?
When Finn found out he'd killed the girl by mistake
Was The Lake of Darkness worth the listening time?
Yes
Any additional comments?
No
1 person found this helpful