My debut thriller novel, Night Watcher, taps into a lifelong intrigue I’ve had with suspense. As a kid growing up in Los Angeles, I was captivated by the chilling tension of Hitchcock’s Psycho and Rear Window, and the cool confidence of Nancy Drew – women in peril, but never powerless. Whether on the screen or on the page, I was always drawn to stories where something was lurking just out of sight. And years later, a season of my life spent in Portland, Oregon deepened that fascination. There, in the hushed stillness of moss-covered trees and fog-drenched sunsets overlooking the city, I relished another kind of suspense – the quiet dread of being watched, even when no one’s around. That tension became the spine of Night Watcher, where Nola Strate, haunted by a serial killer known as the Hiding Man, must confront the terror of invasive eyes in and outside her own home.
But while Night Watcher leans into visceral dread and voyeuristic horror, it also delves into that true crime impulse: the need for justice, exposure, reckoning of this horrific serial killer known for stalking and silently terrorizing his victims. That’s the emotional engine powering not only my novel, but many of the books I revere – those that twist the slasher model into something darker and more personal. Here are four novels that inspire me, and that echo themes of surveillance, female resilience, and the fixation on catching the ones who lurk in the margins.
You Let Me In by Camilla Bruce
A broken fairy tale and domestic nightmare tangled into one. This novel unfolds through a haunting manuscript left behind by Cassandra Tipp, a reclusive and eccentric author who has vanished under mysterious circumstances. Cassandra has long been surrounded by dark rumors –namely, of the suspicious death of her husband– as well as of her obsession with strange woodland creatures she insists are real. In the books introduction, she instructs her greedy niece and nephew to read her story to find the key to her fortune – but only if they believe what she says is true.
As Cassandra recounts her life, readers are pulled into a world where folklore and trauma blur. Are the ‘Pepper-Man’ and faerie people that visited her since childhood real? Or are they the product of a fractured mind trying to rationalize the unspeakable? What unfolds is an eerie and pulsing blend of psychological horror and dark fable.
Like Night Watcher, it’s about a woman under scrutiny, with a sense of being watched and hunted bleeding into every page as the reader scrambles to find the truth amongst the chaos.
The Lake of Lost Girls by Katherine Greene
A long-dormant secret resurfaces when human remains are uncovered from Doll’s Eye Lake, reopening a case tied to four young women who went missing 24 years earlier. Lindsey, whose sister vanished all those years ago, has been tormented by Jessica’s mysterious case, and, alongside attractive journalist Ryan, is determined to get to the bottom of it – even if it means going to the bottom of the lake.
The story alternates between timelines, moving from the present-day investigation and the gripping retellings of what exactly happened in 1998 – making you eager to unbury all of Mt. Randall’s secrets.
Like Night Watcher, this novel is rooted in female intuition, crucially forcing their protagonist’s to confront the dark past before it swallows someone else whole.
The Whisper Man by Alex North
When Tom Kennedy and his young son Jake move to the small, English town of Featherbank, they hope to start over after the death of Tom’s wife – Jake’s mother. But the town has a chilling and disturbing legacy: the Whisper Man – a serial killer who murdered young boys after luring them from their windows by whispering. And although his legend sounds like something straight out of a childhood fable, Tom’s son begins to hear the whispers himself – getting more than they bargained for with the home purchase. The story toggles between Tom’s grief-stricken fatherhood, the detectives chasing connections between past and present crimes, and a creeping presence that seems to know exactly what you fear most.
Night Watcher and The Whisper Man share a fascination with how trauma echoes across generations, and how fear creeps into the ordinary. Both stories ask: What if the thing you feared as a child was real? And worse – what if it found you?
The Last Girl Left by A.M. Strong and Sonya Sargent
Five years ago, Tessa was the sole survivor of a horrific mass murder on Cassadaga Island – a remote beach town off the coast of Maine now plagued by dark tourists who are obsessed with the gruesome slayings. Although Tessa has spent years trying to move on, she discovers that maybe the only way out is through, and perhaps writing a book about her experience can help in more ways than settling her trauma.
But the island in winter is more ghost town than getaway, and it soon becomes clear that Tessa isn’t just patching up old wounds, she’s being hunted again. But is the person that’s after her now -as she stays in the very same house her friends were slain in- connected to the original killer? This is a classic slasher wrapped in a modern psychological package: foggy coastal home, missing memories, and the gnawing sense that the past is circling back to get her.
Tessa, like Night Watcher’s Nola, is a woman who refuses to stay a victim. And they both know what it means to just barely survive a menacing killer – twice…
I love psychological thrillers – but I really love psychological thrillers that linger. These four books, alongside Night Watcher, don’t just show you the body count: they make you feel the fear, the hyperventilation, and the slow-burning need for justice. They don’t rely on cheap thrills; they build their terror intimately.
But what unites these novels isn’t just suspense – rather, survival. They ask what it costs to confront the truth, and what happens when you finally open the door and face what’s been watching all along.
If you’re ready to step into the dark, these are the stories that won’t let you go…
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