It’s about to be the start of the holiday season, and with everyone gearing up to spend as much (or as little) time with family as possible, it’s also the perfect time to pick up a psychological thriller and and wonder if Tolstoy would have enjoyed the era of domestic suspense when he wrote: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Anna Karenina would have made a great murderer, is all I’m saying. But I digress…This month’s twisty thrillers feature French mommy bloggers, entwined suburban families, an intriguingly clever meta-mystery, and a snowed-in group of friends with plenty of secrets and just as many motives. Keep an eye on the site in the next few weeks as we quixotically attempt to capture the Year That Was through an enormous number of increasingly specific lists, and as always, thank you for reading.
Delphine de Vigan, Kids Run the Show
Translated by Alison Anderson
(Europa)
Damn, this book got dark. Like, you think it can’t get any darker, then it does. In Kids Run the Show, the younger child of a prominent mommy vlogger is kidnapped, and as the search continues, the reader begins to wonder if the child might be better off wherever they are than at home being constantly filmed. De Vigan has written a blistering critique of influencer culture, the erasure of privacy, and the exploitation of children. The prophetic ending takes us decades into the future to contemplate the psychological wounds of a generation raised to perform on the internet, for a deeply unsettling experience.
Lindsay Hunter, Hot Springs Drive
(Roxane Gay Books)
Two neighboring families become hopelessly entangled in Hunter’s viciously insightful new novel. Jackie and Theresa decide together to lose weight, but as Jackie sheds pounds, she’s consumed by a new hunger: that of feeling wanted, not as a mother, but as a woman. An affair with Theresa’s husband culminates in Theresa’s murder by Jackie’s eldest son, and Lindsay Hunter uses almost the entire second half of the novel to explore the lingering consequences of impulsive acts. This is sure to be considered one of the best psychological thrillers of the year.
Christina Henry, Good Girls Don’t Die
(Berkley)
In this very satisfying thriller, three women wake up in strange versions of classic story set-ups—one is trapped in a domestic thriller, another in a tale of horror, and a third in a gladiatorial competition. Why are they there? Is there a way out? And can this please be turned into a Black Mirror episode?
Nalini Singh, There Should Have Been Eight
(Berkley)
Nalini Singh impressed me greatly with her last book, Quiet in Her Bones, a tense thriller set in a rarified suburban cul-de-sac full of secrets, and her new novel establishes her as one of the leading voices in suspense, in her own New Zealand and elsewhere. There Should Have Been Eight takes place at a remote, crumbling manor high in the Antipodean mountains, in which a group of friends have gathered for a reunion tinged with sorrow—one of their number died nearly a decade before, and none have discovered why. Singh’s narrator is newly diagnosed with a degenerative eye disease, and the flickers at the edge of her vision combine with a series of ghostly disturbances to create a riveting atmospheric thriller. Add in a mysterious recipe book with hidden messages from the 19th century, and you’ll find yourself ready to go down long hallway full of creaking floorboards, no matter how dim the lighting.
