Who doesn’t love a good villain who has a single-minded prize in mind and will stop at nothing to get it? From Patricia Highsmith’s infamous con man Tom Ripley, to Gillian Flynn’s deliciously duplicitous Amy Dunne, these characters, oftentimes outright anti-heroes, can have readers, despite their better judgements, rooting for them in all their glorious conniving and underhanded ways.
Here are five favorite psychological thrillers that revolve around crime characters who are driven by their naked ambition:
Our Kind of Cruelty, by Araminta Hall
Mike Hayes is in love with Verity Metcalf and is convinced they are destined to live out their days together in harmony. No matter that she ended things with him and he’s now received an invitation to her wedding. The invite, Mike believes, is all part of their shared, secret language—a signal from Verity, harkening back to their past, when they were still together and engaged in a high-stakes sex game that involved Verity sending signs to Mike. This story takes obsession-fueled ambition to a fever pitch and I stayed glued to the pages!
Bad Habits by Amy Gentry
Dark, campus academia thrillers are such a blast to read. Claire “Mac” Woods, the protagonist (or antagonist?) of Gentry’s BAD HABITS makes for a delicious portrayal of naked ambition and unsavory behavior on full, unflinching display.
Claire has now attained the life she’s always dreamed of; she’s a successful professor who has risen far above the poverty-stricken days of her hardscrabble youth. She’s worked hard to get where she currently is, driven by a desire to rise above her past and also fueled by a sometimes not-so-friendly sense of competition with her former best friend, the well-heeled and classically-beautiful Gwendolyn Whitney. But now the truth of what happened over a decade ago, when Gwen and Mac were in the pressure-cooker of a graduate program together known as “The Program,” is about to come to a head, as Mac and Gwen are reunited at a glittering hotel that’s the sight of a swanky academic conference.
Written with a dual, propulsive timeline and intricate, flawless, ticking-time bomb plotting, Bad Habits will have you racing through its pages, trying to figure out who to root for (if anyone).
Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage
I love a good Bad Seed-esque type story and Baby Teeth fills this bill in spades. Hanna, 7 years old, is the apple of her father’s eye. She’s seemingly sweet and adorable; Hannah’s dad, Alex, adores his little girl, who can do no wrong.
The trouble, though, is that wily Hanna, who is silent and doesn’t (or can’t) utter a word, does indeed do much wrong, over and over again, only showing her devious, terrifying side to her beleaguered mother Suzette, who becomes, over the course of the novel, increasingly convinced that Hanna is trying to take her out so she can have her father’s adoration all to herself. Told in shifting points of view between Suzette and Hanna, this one will have you eyeing the motives of every kid in sight.
The Girls Are All So Nice Here, by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn
Another twisty campus thriller! It’s been a decade since Ambrosia “Amb” Wellington graduated from college. She’s created a new life for herself and has tried to leave the past firmly where it belongs: buried. But when an invitation to Amb’s ten-year reunion arrives, the pesky past beckons with an anonymous, ominous message that reads: “We need to talk about what we did that night.” This thriller has been rightfully compared to The Secret History meets I Know What You Did Last Summer, weaving between Amb’s college years—where she becomes swept into a dark, toxic friendship with the enigmatic and twisty Sloane “Sully” Sullivan—and the present day, where danger begins to circle her at the reunion. Amb’s character’s journey bears out the book’s dedication: “For every girl who got what she wanted at a cost she couldn’t afford.”
Framed by S.L. McInnis
From the outside, Beth Montgomery leads an idyllic life. She lives in a charming bungalow high in the hills above Los Angeles and is married to a sexy, adoring husband who has a promising road ahead of him as a film producer. But when her estranged best friend Cassie Ogilvy arrives in town looking for a place to crash, Beth’s life soon becomes upended by the sly and shifty Cassie, who not only takes up residence in Beth’s home, but also in Beth’s husband’s fantasies. Cassie’s character is a manipulative frenemy in its most glorious form and Framed will keep readers guessing as to what angle Cassie is working.
The Perfect Nanny by Leila Slimani
As with Zoje Stage’s Baby Teeth, there is something deeply unsettling when a character that you should inherently trust to be good—a child, for instance, and in this case, a caretaker of children, turns out to be villainous instead.
When Miriam, a successful lawyer in Paris, returns to work and places her two young children in the care of Louise—a seemingly perfect nanny with a Mary Poppins-esque ability to pick up after the kids and keep them happy all day—things should be looking up for Miriam and her husband.
But we know from the outset that the children die by the hand of Louise, and the rest of the novel cuts back to Louise’s start from the family. A chilling why-dunnit with whip-smart commentary about social inequity.
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