Unrequited Love Lake

Unrequited Love Lake is a murder mystery story, heavily inspired by Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie’s murder mysteries. It follows an Indian American bi teenage girl living in rural Oregon, obsessed with solving crimes, while also dealing with living alone and facing racism in smalltown Oregon. She becomes embroiled in what looks like a copycat murder, events repeating themselves from the famous case ten years prior.

The story focuses on the main character, Mitin Roy, dealing with her unprocessed grief surrounding her dead parents and her distant aunt. The story has her constantly trying to pull away from her friends but drawn back into human relationships by a new girl she meets at the lake, Anne Catherick. This all culminates in her forming a sort of Sherlock-Moriarty relationship with the killer, using her unique knowledge of crimes, her ingenious brain, and her vast familiarity with literature to solve crimes that baffle the local police force.

It happened one strikingly crisp winter evening in 2008, or so the story goes. Probably, no one would ever know why young, precocious Jack Lovelace and his teenage sister chose this particular night to drive that long, long, winding dirt road, known by all the locals as Unrequited Love Lane. Probably no one would ever know why they found themselves in Jack’s old Cadillac, rocketing through the Forbidden Forest to Unrequited Love Lake at midnight on this specific evening. Probably, no one would ever know why the two had chosen to go out onto the frozen lake that particular evening. And probably, no one would ever know who they met out there—or who met them. But what was crystal clear was that they had met somebody, for the next day, Jack’s body was discovered on the center of the icy sheet that was Unrequited Love Lake. And it was the talk of Theophany, Oregon for many months and for many years. The Murder at Unrequited Love Lake.

Legend has it that on this particular night, the lake was particularly eerie. But, I suppose, that is to be expected from such an affair. Likely, the effervescent glow of the nearly-full moon sliced through the thick fog around the lake, like beams of heavenly light—But Heaven did not intervene on this particular evening. No, this was more of a hellish occurrence. I bet the surrounding forest was alive with the sounds of owls... or perhaps, a family of red foxes slinking their way through the night? Can’t you just picture it? The silence. The quiet. Punctuated by a gunshot. Animals scattering, blood splattering on the ice. And a forest quickly returning to the status quo—silence. A soul departed.