Books about the Loch Ness Monster These are the only books I can recommend as introductions. Most or all of them are out of print, but probably available on Interlibrary Loan through the local library.
I’ve also found it very easy to get the used books I want via the Internet, through
or
The most comprehensive and up-to-date description of sightings and events is
The Loch Ness Story by Nicholas Witchell; many editions, revised several times, most recently 1989.
The best book for teen-age readers (but also enjoyable for adults) is
The Story of the Loch Ness Monster, by Tim Dinsdale, Target, 1973; also good is
The Great Monster Hunt by David C. & Yvonne Cooke, W. W. Norton, 1969
The best book for youngsters---and the only one I can recommend, there are some dreadfully bad ones---is
The Mystery of the Loch Ness Monster by Jeanne Bendick, McGraw-Hill, 1976
My own book (University of Illinois Press, 1986, paperback 1988),
The Enigma of Loch Ness: Making Sense of a Mystery
discusses why searching for Nessies is different from doing science, and why the controversy about whether they exist had not been resolved after half a century
Tim Dinsdale has described how he came to make his film, and how he tried to get scientists interested, in
Loch Ness Monster, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961. He added to later editions (1972, 1976, 1982) appendixes describing later events in the searches that were carried out by others as well as by him. In Project Water Horse (1975) Dinsdale describes the searches and the searchers, many ingenious attempts.
An excellent book is about similar creatures in another Scottish loch, Loch Morar:
The Search for Morag by Elizabeth Montgomery Campbell with David Solomon (Tom Stacey, 1972). That similar creatures are sighted in more than one loch lends credence to the idea that these are sea creatures that became landlocked, surviving in some very large and deep lakes.
There are three books by confirmed disbelievers:
The Loch Ness Mystery Solved by Ronald Binns (several publishers since 1983);
The Elusive Monster by Maurice Burton (Rupert Hart-Davis, 1961);
The Evidence about the Loch Ness Monster by Steuart Campbell (several publishers and revisions since 1986). All try to explain away the Dinsdale film by postulating that the triangular black hump, which submerges while still throwing up a large wake, must have been a boat. That claim is answered fully in my article,
The most comprehensive collection of DATA up to the mid-1970s is in
The Monsters of Loch Ness by Roy Mackal.
Of considerable HISTORICAL INTEREST are
The Loch Ness Monster by Rupert Gould (1934, reprinted 1969) and
More Than a Legend by Constance Whyte (1957)
