The Lake of the Dead by André Bjerke
A haunting whodunit
Imagine, if you will, a fairly cozy mystery novel in the vein of Agatha Christie, in which an assorted group of intellectuals journey to an isolated cabin in the woods in the hope of solving a murder…
This is the setup for what is commonly regarded as the greatest Norwegian thriller novel ever written.
Thriller is an appropriate genre descriptor for The Lake of The Dead, as it sits equally comfortable in both the realm of crime/detective fiction and horror.
To give a more extensive explanation of the plot: a scholar from Oslo purchases property deep in the Norwegian woods. This particular cabin has long been abandoned as it is associated with an alleged murder that occurred more than a century before… A mad man killed his sister and her lover — drowning them in a nearby lake. The murderer then drowned himself, although it is said that he still haunts the place. Supposedly, anyone who has spent any length of time there in the decades since have similarly wound up dead — murdered by the deadly ghost of Tore Gruvik.
Naturally, the learned bunch of characters the novel focuses on generally (though not entirely) scoff at this superstitious curse. Until, that is, that their friend disappears. Disagreeing with the local police’s deduction that he committed suicide, they venture out to the cabin to try and solve the mystery for themselves.
When they get there, however, it seems increasingly probable that the ghost story they’d previously rejected might actually have some truth to it. In reading the diary of their missing friend, they discover an unsettling account involving deathly quiet woods, a chill in the air, and the suggestion of possibly paranormal visitations to the cabin.
Could it be that the ghost of Tore Gruvik is real — and that he killed their friend?
It certainly seems as though that might be the case, as the friends discover footprints in the woods that are attributed to the specter, and at least one of their number is apparently possessed in the middle of the night and throws herself into the cursed lake.
Each night, it seems, some creepy new clue comes to the fore, and the friends each attempt to theorize an explanation, leaning on their own various areas of bourgeois expertise: psychoanalysis, criminology, esotericism.
But can any of them unravel this puzzle before they themselves fall victim to whatever evil lurks in the woods?
Originally published in 1942, this book still holds up remarkably well today; although one must surely attribute credit a great deal of that to the translation by James D. Jenkins, which is fresh, sprightly, and breaths contemporary energy into a text which is actually more than 80 years old.
The Lake of the Dead is a creepy, cozy, ghostly, mystery novel which hints heavily at a supernatural cause throughout. Indeed, it is a horror novel take on the classic murder mystery.
Not just a revered favorite Norwegian classic, it is an engaging and highly-entertaining page-turner of a horror novel.