On a winter's night in 1974, a crime took place that would obsess the nation.

It was an extraordinary news story.

The story of an aristocrat, Lord Lucan, who's said to have killed the family Nanny,

mistaking her for his wife, then somehow just disappeared.

One of the great mysteries in English criminal history. We're still looking for Lucan.

It's honestly one of the most powerful stories of my lifetime.

I'm Alex Fondunzelman.

This is The Lucan Obsession.

Listen on BBC Sounds.

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.

To learn what we fear is to learn who we are, wrote Shirley Jackson.

As she puts it, horror defies our boundaries and illuminates our souls.

Women have long been the subjects of horror stories, not to mention victims of their violence,

but in recent years there's been a resurgence of women reclaiming

the genre as authors too, and that's what we'll be illuminating today on Open Book. So, are we seeing a

new wave of horror writing authored by women that explores monstrosity from a different perspective?

Later, I'll be discussing that with Claire Coder and Sophie White. But first,

Mariana Enriquez, an Argentinian writer who's been dubbed the Queen of Latin American Gothic

and who has plaudits from Casua Ishiguru to Patty Smith. Our share of night is the first of her

novels to reach English-speaking readers thanks to a new translation by

Megan McDowell. It tells the dark and often gruesome story of a medium called Juan,

who's on the run from a sinister organisation known as the Order, and his son, Gaspar,

...