In like a lamb, out like a lion: if you reverse the proverb, March is rather suspense-coded, don’t you think? Which is my awkward transition into praising this month’s bounty of psychological thrillers, all of which, taken together, form a masterclass in genre writing. As always, all blurbs are by me unless otherwise stated. Happy reading!
Kirsten King, A Good Person
(Putnam)
This book was incredible. Kirsten King’s love-to-hate narrator thinks she’s found the perfect man, at least until he dumps her unceremoniously then turns up dead the next day. Even worse, her boyfriend had a fiancee she’s just now learning about, a pearl-and-twinset brahmin who she fixates on as the ultimate foil, the respectable WASP who could never allow herself the mistreatment that King’s protagonist has endured. Who is a good person? What treatment do they get that allows them to remain that way? While the unlikeable female narrator has had its day as a trend, A Good Person reinvigorates the trope for a new era of complicated antiheroes ready to rage against the patriarchy.
J.R. Thornton, Lucien
(Harper Perennial)
Lucien is a vicious sendoff of class hierarchy, art world snobbery, and academic exclusivity, centered around a naive, struggling artist roped into his wealthy classmate’s scheme to copy masterpieces, then sell them as the real thing. The book is already earning comparisons to Highsmith’s work, and for good reason: Thornton delights in skewering society’s upper echelons and has an enjoyably warped sense of characterization.
Georgia McVeigh, Sorry For Your Loss
(Dutton)
The most fucked up support group since Fight Club! McVeigh’s twisty thriller follows two damaged souls who meet in a bereavement and cautiously form a new romance. Both are not who they seem, and both pose more threat to the other than either could have imagined. Sorry For Your Loss feels like the platonic ideal of psychological suspense: you can’t get truer to the spirit of the genre than this book.
Lai Sanders, The Plans I Have for You
(Simon & Schuster)
After a humiliating encounter on the subway results in public cancellation, Shelley Hu retreats to Florida, stuck working the desk same motels as her mother once cleaned, and fuming over the injustice. A path out of her dilemma comes from an unexpected source: a woman with a young family claims to recognize Shelley while checking into the hotel, and offers her the chance of a lifetime: change her name, change her appearance, insinuate herself into the lives of those responsible for her humiliation, and destroy them. The Plans I Have for You functions perfectly as both classic tale of revenge and haunting meditation on modernity.
Avery Curran, Spoiled Milk
(Doubleday)
Boarding school mysteries will never stop sending me, and Spoiled Milk nails the genre with its Picnic at Hanging Rock vibes and cool girl sensibility. After a student’s shocking plunge from a high bannister, the upper class cohort bands together for a seance, only to awaken the repressed desires of a century of schoolgirls. Eerie, atmospheric, and lyrically driven, Spoiled Milk may be the most intriguing gothic of the year.
Tana French, The Keeper
(Viking)
Tana French is back!! And so is Retired Chicago detective-turned-Irish-transplant Cal Hooper, who is investigating the death of a young woman engaged to the son of a county bigwig. But in doing so, he finds himself unearthing feuds, old grudges, and more local politics than he could have ever imagined. As usual, French has conjured a pulsing, thoroughly atmospheric thriller with endless heart. –Olivia Rutigliano
T. Kira Madden, Whidbey
(Mariner)
At the start of Whidbey, T. Kira Madden’s heroine is headed to a remote location to work on her novel and hide from the world. On a boat, she meets a stranger, one who makes her an offer she can’t refuse: he will find the man who once hurt her as a child, and kill him. As the narrator reads, writes, and rages, another victim of the same pedophile publishes a memoir, one full of blatant exploitation of the narrator’s experience. When the man who harmed both women is found murdered, suspicion does not fall evenly, and the case threatens to send the central characters into a spiral with no return. Beautiful, haunting, and full of fury, Whidbey is essential reading for literary and genre fans alike.
