Peter Swanson: 7 Great Stories of Suspense in a House by the Sea

The trope of a house being a character in and of itself, especially in gothic fiction, is well-known, and well earned. Old dark houses can anchor even the flimsiest stories. They have secrets or their own: locked closets; musty basements; dusty attics; and sometimes even ghosts, literal or figural. Most of the time they have names. Thornfield Hall. Hill House. Bly Manor. And sometimes these houses are perched by the sea, like Grey Gables, situated on the dunes of Truro, on Cape Cod, the house I invented for my new Christmas novella, Do You See What I See?

I have a particular love of the seaside house, both in real life and in books and movies. Here are seven of them from the worlds of fiction (primarily mystery fiction), that grabbed my attention and didn’t let go.

Peril at End House by Agatha Christie

There’s a more famous novel by Christie that involves a large house on a small island, but I thought I’d go with this Hercule Poirot mystery, in which the house is named right in the title. Set along the coast of Cornwall, End House is the primary setting for an ingenious but pretty convoluted mystery. Poirot and his sidekick Hastings are pulled into it when they witness a near murder outside of their seaside hotel. It’s a good puzzle, with lots of dropping bodies, and the atmospheric appeal of the Cornwall coast.

Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier

I suspect that there are people who have never read the famous novel by DuMaurier or seen the Alfred Hitchcock movie version who could still correctly identify the house at the center of this story as Manderley. DuMaurier makes full use of the seaside manor house in the south of England, in her story of the second wife of Max deWinter being brought to her new home, where she can’t escape the shadow of Rebecca, Max’s first wife. There are many moody walks along the seaside cliffs, a startling twist, and one of the more famous endings in gothic history. 

Tough Guys Don’t Dance by Norman Mailer

A flawed novel, for sure, but not boring. Tim Madden wakes up in his seaside house in Provincetown, deeply hungover, sporting a new tattoo he can’t remember getting, and finds that the interior of his car is soaked in blood. He decides to find out what happened during his lost hours. Some of the best parts of this pulpy book (apparently written by Mailer in two months) are his descriptions of Cape Cod and Provincetown. The opening line (certainly not as famous as the one from Rebecca) has the narrator say how he wakes to the chatter of gulls, and how on certain mornings he felt they were feeding on his heart.

The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith

I don’t think this book is commonly thought of as a classic house-by-the-sea novel. But the whole first half of this timeless novel has Tom Ripley insinuating himself into the life of Dickie Greenleaf, who is currently idling away at his summer home in the imagined village of Mongibello on the Italian coast. I love the details of the small villa, the martini lunches, the steep walk down to the beach. And from all that sunlight and bliss Highsmith moves the story into her typically dark, murderous territory.

Slam the Big Door by John D. MacDonald

Another book in which the ideal house by the sea (this time on the Gulf Coast of Florida) hides multiple secrets and marital disfunction. This standalone novel by one of my all-time favorite writers has the perfect set-up. Widower Mike Rodenska is invited by his oldest friend to visit him and his wife at their mid-century beach house in Florida. Once there, Rodenska naturally discovers that all is not well. But between the twists and violence MacDonald paints such a perfect picture of beach-side living, with its constant crashing waves and near-constant cocktail parties.

Last Summer by Evan Hunter

Set on a fake island (modeled after Fire Island, probably) off the coast of New York, this is easily the most chilling novel on this list. Four teenagers, basically unsupervised for the summer, slip into a violent imaginary realm with real consequences. In between their clandestine meetings on the sun-baked dunes, they dip in and out of the summer homes that populate the island, where their parents, oblivious to what their children are doing, host get togethers and ignore the teenagers and their childhood cruelties.

“The Seaside Houses” by John Cheever

Well, I’m cheating with this one because a) it’s a short story, not a novel and b) it’s not really a mystery story. That said, I return to this mesmerizing, chilling tale often. It’s narrated by a husband and father describing his family’s annual beach house rental, and how the house itself, and its previous occupants, begin to infest the interior world of the renter. It’s a psychological study of a marriage breaking down, but it reads like a horror movie, in which the primary ghost is a residence.

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