Ex-alcoholic Gerry is roped into helping his cousin, Marnie, run an outdoor camp for difficult children. The location is an unfinished government camp in the middle of nowhere next to a large lake. Helping them is Jim, Marnie’s boyfriend, and they are responsible for 11 teenagers and one kid. Notable among them is Corey, who has trouble with following orders, Leigh who enjoys making the men uncomfortable and Ben, the youngest who is fascinated by dinosaurs. At the camp, they find it habitable although the lack of wildlife in the area is disconcerting. After a few days while sorting out a trail for the kids to follow, Gerry and Jim find a submerged jeep buried in the lake followed by a large shape in the water. Things turn for the worse when they leave on a day trip to the nearby town of Montworth and return with their minivan almost out of order and that their radio, the sole means of communication with the outside world, is missing. Gerry then finds that the earthquake that struck the area a while ago has opened a hole from a hidden waterway and is allowing things to cascade through a waterfall and escape into the lake. Tragedy strikes when Gerry takes Jim to source of the waterfall and watches helplessly as Jim falls to his death. As he tries in vain to revive him, he sees the remains of someone being eaten by a large monster and decides that he has to reach the local town as quickly as he can. But the only way to do that is to canoe over the very lake that contains the monsters terrorising the camp.

Lake Ness is more of an science-fiction adventure with monsters thrown in, than a horror story. The plot is fairly straightforward and concentrates more on the characters than the situation they find themselves in. While the children are as obnoxious as you might expect them to be, they come across as those with troubles in their past. The adults are slightly different and you wonder how they came to be taking care of the children in this way as only Marnie seems to have any idea of what she is supposed to be doing. However when you find out how she got use of the camp and some of the other decisions that are made, you begin to wonder if the kids running the camp would be a better idea. The shocks and surprises in the story only really come in towards the end, which means it is hard for the story to build any real tension through the story, with the unfortunate side-effect that the story reveals much of the would-be surprises before they arrive. While it tries to follow the same formula as such classics as Jaws with showing as little as possible, when it does appear it’s beyond the time it is expected. The other part is Gerry’s plan to canoe over the lake instead of hiking out, while daring, still makes you curious as to why.

There are several threads within the story that don’t go anywhere eg. the toy gun that Corey starts with. Also character such as the FBI Agent who arrives, feels like setup for future stories, but feel extraneous to the current one. While reading through there were a few odd sentences that stood out, but overall it was well laid out and the chapters neatly encompassed the beats of the story.

Overall, it is a fun read, it has it’s flaws but aside from a few moments it does fill out it’s length trying to up the tension as well as exploring the attitudes of the children and their reactions. In some ways, it could have been more interesting in seeing this world through more than one set of eye’s than just Gerry’s.