Reading Psychological Suspense

Psychological suspense is what I most enjoy reading, but despite the popularity of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girls and a flood of books labeled psychological suspense and promoted as “The next Gone Girl!” I have trouble finding enough of it to feed my habit.

I’m not sure many people, including New York publishers, know what it is.

When I asked friends if they’d read any psychological suspense novels they could recommend, a surprising number suggested murder mysteries and gory thrillers. And some books labeled “chilling psychological suspense” by their publishers turn out to be either (1) slow-moving mysteries in which the characters think a lot or (2) pallid thrillers with shallow characters and write-by-numbers plot twists. (“It’s page 100, time to throw in a threatening phone call or e-mail.”) Many otherwise excellent crime novels are also erroneously labeled psychological suspense.

The blending of subgenres that’s so common these days contributes to the confusion. Many modern mysteries and thrillers contain more insight into human behavior than genre novels of the past. Tana French, for example, demonstrates exquisite understanding of emotion and motivation—but that doesn’t make her novels psychological suspense. She writes superb mysteries about cops solving murders, and the investigation drives every plot. I’ve seen them described as “psychological mysteries” and believe that’s an accurate label.

A psychological suspense novel may contain murder, but crime-solving isn’t the driving force. The focus is on the emotional and mental impact of events on the protagonist, and on the character’s struggle to survive what is happening to him or her. The pace is usually slower, with less physical action, fewer of the jolting twists that mark modern thrillers. Suspense builds gradually, until the sense of dread becomes overwhelming. Something terrible is going to happen, but neither the protagonist nor the reader knows what to expect or when it will come. Fear of an unknown, unpredictable danger is at the heart of psychological suspense, and tone is everything. People and situations are never what they seem.

Three of my favorite authors of psychological suspense are Thomas H. Cook, Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine, and Lisa Unger. My favorite Cook novel is an older one, Mortal Memory, although I enjoy everything he publishes. The Barbara Vine novel A Dark-Adapted Eye is a masterpiece, and such Rendell books as The Bridesmaid perfectly fit the definition of psychological suspense. Unger is brilliant at creating damaged characters caught up in nightmare scenarios. In her latest book, In the Blood, echoes from a young woman’s horrific childhood threaten to wreck her carefully constructed present life, with a young boy serving as the agent of destruction.

One of the most engrossing psychological suspense novels I’ve read in the last few years is Until I Go to Sleep by S.J. Watson, told from the viewpoint of a woman who awakens every morning with no memory of her identity and past. Her struggle to retain some scraps of memory from day to day, and to discover what obliterated her life, is riveting and terrifying. The isolated heroine, doubting her own sanity, has long been a staple in the subgenre, but Watson made a stock character into something wholly original.

Domestic turmoil is fertile ground for writers of psychological suspense, and some of the most compelling recent novels in the subgenre are tales of families trapped in terrifying situations.

The Cry by Australian Helen Fitzgerald is an outstanding novel that deserves the kind of acclaim and broad readership that Gone Girl has received. Rather than fitting tightly into a genre category, it deals with issues familiar to most people and succeeds as a novel on every level. Throughout the book, we know that Joanna, the Scottish protagonist, is on trial in Australia, but exactly what she has done isn’t clear. The story that unfolds follows the characters through the kind of ordinary domestic dramas that can lead, with one bad decision, to catastrophe. Joanna fell in love and had a baby with Alistair, a journalist married to another woman. Alistair’s wife, now his ex, has taken their teenage daughter back to the family’s home country, Australia, which forces him to travel there if he wants to see his first child. During a grueling flight from Glasgow to Australia, the baby cries constantly and Joanna, ill and exhausted, tries to calm him while Alistair blissfully naps in his seat. Other passengers, annoyed by the baby’s crying, become verbally abusive toward the harried Joanna, and she erupts into a tirade. Her behavior serves as evidence against her later, when the baby disappears in Australia and the case becomes an international sensation. The reader knows the truth, knows how much Joanna and Alistair are hiding, and the torment Joanna endures is harrowing. This is an unforgettable story.

The Lie of You by Jane Lythell also revolves around a mother, a baby, and an intruder in a happy family’s life. Kathy, an architectural magazine editor, has no idea that a junior colleague, a recently hired Finnish beauty named Heja, hides a raging jealousy behind her cool exterior. Telling the story from both women’s viewpoints, the author lets the reader watch as Heja carries out her plan to destroy Kathy’s marriage and career. Why is she doing it? The answer lies in the past and involves devastating secrets.

Until You’re Mine by Samantha Hayes is trickier, challenging the reader to figure out what’s really going on. To the observer, Claudia’s life is wonderful: she’s dedicated to her job as a social worker, she’s happily married with two stepsons she loves, and she’s pregnant with her first baby. When she hires Zoe as a nanny and helper, the household becomes increasingly unsettled and nasty cracks open in the perfect façade. This novel has an ending that made me go back and start again to see how the author did it.

This Is the Water by Yannick Murphy doesn’t live up to the publisher’s promise of “a fast-paced story of murder, adultery, parenthood, and romance” but it has other qualities that make it memorable. A group of parents in a small New England community become entangled in one another’s lives as their young daughters train for a swim meet at “the facility.” Annie, who stands out as the protagonist in a swirl of viewpoints, has two daughters on the swim team and a husband who has lost interest in her. While she’s in the bleachers flirting with a friend’s husband, a killer—who gets his own viewpoint—watches one of the girls. The girl is later murdered, and the killing triggers a series of events that test relationships and lead to a stunning conclusion. This book’s biggest handicap—or its greatest pleasure, depending on your taste— is the way the author tells the story. She begins many sentences, perhaps a majority, with “This is” and uses second person for Annie’s scenes, as in: “This is you, waiting for your daughters…” I found the device so intrusive that it almost ruined the book for me. I also learned more than I ever wanted to know about children’s competitive swimming and the petty jealousies of “swim moms.” Yet the final section of the novel is excellent, and the book overall has many moments of striking insight that give it depth and resonance.

That, above all, is what I look for in psychological suspense: depth and resonance.