LoveReading Says
LoveReading Says
Written by one of the first journalists on the case, Jeremy Craddock’s true crime tome, The Lady in the Lake, reads like a gripping murder-mystery thriller.
As for the case, in summer 1991, divers discovered a suspicious package in Coniston Water in the Lake District. When it emerges that the package contains the body of Carol Park, a young wife and mother who’d been missing since 1976, suspicion falls firmly on Carol’s husband Gordon, who returns from a holiday with his third wife to face detectives, and packs of journalists.
Among the press is the author of this book, who was at the time a young Lake District newspaper reporter, and ideally placed to closely follow a case that’s stayed with him for decades. Indeed, from the immersive accounts of the unfolding trial that cites evidence of couple’s open marriage, affairs, and Graham Park’s controlling behaviour, readers are given a ringside seat, with pacey, atmospheric writing conjuring a sense that you’re there in court, hearing the evidence, and witnessing Park’s conviction for murder.
But the story doesn’t end there — Park always stated his innocence, and the appeal is every bit as grippingly presented as the original trial, with new interviews with the police, witnesses and family members also giving this book chilling edge.
Spanning decades, from the 1970s to the present day, it’s an edge-of-your-seat, true crime feat that delivers exactly what’s promised in its Prologue — “a narrative woven with lies and heartbreak for a divided family, a story of dogged detective work, of reporters feeding a terrible tale to an electrified public” — from the murky shores of Coniston Water, to the intensity of the courthouse.
Joanne Owen
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The Lady in the Lake Synopsis
A body in a lake. A wife missing for 21 years. A husband’s denial of murder. A crime reporter who was there revisits the shocking crime 25 years on.
The Lady in the Lake is a real-life murder mystery and true crime memoir that reads like a thriller. A dark secret resurfaces after 21 years in the English Lake District to devastate a family.
With powerful themes of murder and denial, the story spans five decades, from the 1970s to the present day.
In August 1997 Jeremy Craddock is a young newspaper reporter in the Lake District. When divers discover a suspicious package weighted down in Coniston Water he is thrust into the heart of the biggest story of his career, a haunting murder mystery that will stay with him for the next quarter of a century. Inside the package is the body of a woman. Police identify her as Carol Park, a young wife and mother missing since 1976.
Now – 21 years later – suspicion falls on her husband, Gordon Park, who is on holiday in France with his third wife. Shocked, he returns to a media frenzy and detectives’ questions. Park is arrested on suspicion of murder. The press nickname the case ‘the lady in the lake’, borrowing the title of Raymond Chandler’s classic detective novel.
As one of the first journalists on the case, Jeremy Craddock bears witness to a strange and dark murder investigation that grips the world’s media. At Park’s later trial, a picture emerges of Gordon and Carol’s open marriage, their infidelities and Park’s controlling nature towards his young wife. Park is convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. But did he really murder his wife and drop her body into the murky depths of Coniston Water? The jury and Carol Park’s brother believe he did. But Park never stops protesting his innocence.
With his now adult children at his side, he begins a long fight to clear his name. Will he succeed?
The Lady in the Lake is a newspaper reporter’s account of a chilling murder case and his re-investigation a quarter of a century later. Using police and court documents, original press coverage and new interviews with detectives, witnesses, lawyers and members of the victim’s family, Jeremy Craddock tells the full story of this shocking case for the first time.
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About Jeremy Craddock
Jeremy Craddock is a journalist and author and teaches journalism at Manchester Metropolitan University. He began his career as a reporter at the Westmorland Gazette in the Lake District and covered the Lady in the Lake case in the 1990s, including Carol Park’s inquest in 1998.
He is the author of The Jigsaw Murders: The True Story of the Ruxton Killings and the Birth of Modern Forensics, which was longlisted for the 2022 Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction. The Jigsaw Murders has been optioned for television by Elaine Collins, producer of ITV’s Vera and BBC’s Shetland, and is being adapted by Martha Hillier, showrunner of the Netflix hit The Last Kingdom.
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