Stillhouse Lake

Stillhouse Lake (2017) is a novel in the thriller suspense genre written by Rachel Caine. It is the first novel in the Stillhouse Lake series of six books, published over 2017-2022. The Stillhouse Lake series became bestsellers across the United States. A novelist since 2010, Caine amassed a corpus of over 40 books that span young adult and adult fiction across the crime, psychological thriller, and fantasy genres, often exploring dark themes. Rachel Caine died in 2020 at age 58; the final book in the series was a collaboration with the author Carrie Ryan, who helped with its completion. Rachel Caine received a Paranormal Pearl Award, an RT Booklovers Award, and a Career Achievement Award from Romantic Times.

This guide refers to the paperback edition published by Thomas & Mercer in 2017.

Content Warning: This guide refers to murder, sexual violence, torture and mutilation, child abduction, harassment and hate speech, threat to life, and rape threats, which feature in Stillhouse Lake.

Plot Summary

Stillhouse Lake tells the story of Gina Royal, aka Gwen Proctor, an ostensibly normal American housewife and mother of two. One day, Gina goes to pick her children up from school while her husband, Mel, is still at work. Gina arrives back at her street with her kids to find the road blocked off by police because an intoxicated driver has crashed his car into Gina’s garage, which served as Mel’s woodworking workshop. The police arrest Gina because they have found a woman’s body in the garage.

Gina learns that her husband is a serial killer—but she never knew because she never went in the garage and Mel cut women’s vocal cords out so they couldn’t scream. Gina is tried but found to be innocent. Mel is arrested and convicted and put on death row. People continue to harass and threaten Gina and her children, so they’re forced to move around a lot and change their names.

Four years after the discovery of Mel’s crimes, Gina changes her name to Gwen Proctor, and she and her children move to Stillhouse Lake, Tennessee. Gwen meets some residents around Stillhouse Lake, but she is suspicious of everyone. A policeman, Officer Graham, brings her son Connor’s cell phone back, which he apparently lost on the bus. Connor says it was stolen, not lost, but Gwen doesn’t worry about it, even though she usually worries about everything. Gwen lets a neighbor named Sam Cade fix her roof, and Connor helps him. Her daughter, Lanny, and Connor start feeling comfortable in Stillhouse Lake, and Gwen develops a romance with Sam.

Mel somehow continues to send letters to Gwen, though how he manages this is a mystery. Gwen pays her hacker contact, Absalom, to have someone beat up Mel in prison. Then Gwen visits Mel in prison and threatens to kill him if he tries to meddle in her or her children’s lives. Mel responds that he has arranged to have Gwen’s personal details released to the public if he’s murdered in prison, which rattles her.

Soon, a dead body appears in Stillhouse Lake and bears disturbing similarities to Mel’s murders. Gwen becomes a suspect and the police learn her true name. Her location is promptly leaked online. People start harassing Gwen, and a second dead body appears. An officer named Kezia offers to protect Gwen and her children, but Kezia is drawn away from Gwen’s house by a false “officer down” call, and someone kidnaps Gwen’s children. Gwen becomes a suspect in this too, until the police finally let her leave with Officer Graham.

In a plot twist, Officer Graham tries to kill Gwen and is revealed to be the kidnapper. Officer Graham is a corrupt police officer who is involved in the investigation into the murders Mel committed but is actually collaborating with the murderer. Mel used Officer Graham to ensure his letters reached Gwen, and the corrupt officer is responsible for the copycat murders in Stillhouse Lake. Officer Graham has also been working with Absalom, who Gwen thought was her ally, to repeatedly lead her into traps.

Gwen escapes Officer Graham by hitting him in the head with his police radio. Kyle, one of Officer Graham’s teenage children, threatens Gwen with a gun, and it transpires that Officer Graham has manipulated his sons into helping kidnap Gwen’s children. Gwen punches Kyle, scaring him off, and manages to shoot Officer Graham. Gwen demands the officer tell her where her children are. During the ensuing argument, she pushes him, and he is impaled on a tree branch.

Gwen calls Kezia, who is with Sam at the police station. The pair drive to Gwen’s assistance, and the trio rescues Gwen’s children from a hunting cabin, where Officer Graham's sons have continued to hold them hostage.

At the close of the novel, Gwen learns that Mel has escaped from prison and resolves to find a way to kill him in order to free herself and her children, setting up suspense for the series to follow.