My Sister, The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
This is such a fun read! And perhaps that’s a weird thing to say when it’s narrated by a woman who’s helping her sister clean up after she’s murdered her boyfriends (!) but to me it was a brilliant example of how there can be an element of lightheartedness, even comedy, in the thriller genre. I love Korede’s matter-of-fact narration and deadpan humour.
I also like that alongside the thriller elements there’s a brilliant exploration of the complex, thorny bond between sisters. The love, the jealousies, that tension of sameness and difference — of coming from exactly the same background but being very different people (hint: in this book one sister saves lives for a living, the other one takes them). I love the sense of place: the book is set in Lagos, Nigeria and there’s such a strong depiction of local customs, culture and language. It’s also utterly gripping: Oyinkan Braithwaite writes in short, punchy chapters and somehow moves back and forth in time so deftly you don’t notice she’s doing it: she has the lightest touch. Because of that light touch, when we are confronted with the darkness in Korede and Ayoola’s past, it comes like a punch in the gut.
Adele by Leila Slimani
I found this book gripping and deeply troubling and, as with Leila Slimani’s The Perfect Nanny, I couldn’t stop thinking about it long after reading it. Adèle is a deeply flawed, fairly unlikable and yet utterly fascinating character. She’s a woman who seems to have it all: the stellar career, the beautiful apartment, the surgeon husband, the family.
And yet she is a sex addict who regularly risks everything for the thrill of a quick hook up — the more debasing and sordid the better. Initially these hook ups are with strangers but perhaps to make the thrill all the greater — by making the encounter more dangerous — she moves things closer to home, propositioning a neighbour’s husband at a dinner party. It’s about desire and self-destructiveness, about impulse control. It feels like a 21st century take on Madame Bovary and the film Belle du Jour. It’s arguably not technically a thriller but it has the grip and pace of one, and the reader is left on tenterhooks waiting to find out whether Adèle will finally push things too far, whether the house of cards that is her perfect life will come tumbling down around her.
Sex and Lies, Slimani’s latest book, is another fascinating look a female sexuality — it’s a non-fiction collection of essays about young Moroccan women (Slimani herself is Franco-Moroccan) and how they grapple with a law that forbids all forms of sexual contact outside marriage and provides only two options for their sexual identity: virgin or wife.
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
My murder mysteries owe a huge debt to Agatha Christie’s writing: it’s safe to say I’m a mega-fan! I first read her books as a child and enjoyed them for the pure puzzle, trying to guess the solution. Later, I came to realise quite how dark they really are: not at all the cosy crime they’re sometimes made out to be.
Her murderers are husbands and wives, neighbours, doctors, shopkeepers: Christie looks at what makes ordinary people kill one another — and to me that’s a far more terrifying premise than the crazed axe-murderer. I particularly love this book simply because it’s so clever, the sort of read that makes you actually chuckle with surprised pleasure when you read the solution, because it was there all along but so well-hidden in plain sight. It’s also equally enjoyable a read when you know the solution and read through, as I have done, trying to work out how Christie does it.
You by Caroline Kepnes
I was lucky enough to meet Caroline at a writing festival last year and she is a born storyteller: she had everyone on the edge of their seat as she told one particularly creepy anecdote about how she discovered she was renting an ex serial-killer’s apartment.
Joe, her narrator in You, has to be up there with the best literary creations of all time: his voice is so powerful, so worryingly insidious that as the reader you find yourself starting to think like him, agree with him… even as he starts to pick off his victims one by one. There’s great wit and satire alongside the darkness (and it does get seriously dark). He’s the ultimate love-to-hate or hate-to-love character for me: one you can’t help almost rooting for despite his heinous actions.
Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction by Patricia Highsmith
I love Patricia Highsmith’s writing for her brilliant plotting and her ability to create characters we’re drawn to in spite of ourselves. Tom Ripley is the ultimate anti-hero. He’s a sociopathic murderer and yet the reader finds themselves hoping he won’t get caught (or at least I did!)
Because we’re subtly encouraged to empathise with him as the outsider who never had the advantages of the spoiled, rich characters in the book — yet manages to get one over on them all the same. Anyway, I picked this book as I found it invaluable when writing my first murder mystery, The Hunting Party — so much so that I read it again when I came to write The Guest List. Highsmith shares her own writing failures and setbacks, her approach to plotting and to brainstorming ideas. I’d call it a must read for anyone thinking of writing their own thriller or writing in general.
