Louise Candlish is a master of the psychological thriller, where ordinary lives unravel in extraordinary – and often chilling – ways. With bestsellers like The Other Passenger, The Only Suspect and Our House, which was adapted into an ITV drama starring Martin Compston, she has carved out a reputation for twisty, character-driven tales that keep you second-guessing until the final page.
But when she’s not crafting her own psychological suspense, which thrillers does she turn to for inspiration and pure reading pleasure? Here, Candlish shares her five favourites which have shaped her life and writing…
Don’t Look Now by Daphne du Maurier
“Du Maurier is the giant on whose shoulders all psychological thriller writers stand and while it’s Rebecca you’d expect to see in a selection like this, Don’t Look Now is for me the crown jewel.
It’s all in your head in the best psych thrillers, in the navigation of that precipice between sanity and a mind gone awry – which is exactly the experience of John and Laura when they visit Venice following the death of their daughter.
The city and its weirder inhabitants conspire to stir ghosts rather than lay them to rest in a story that we might now call horror-adjacent but is, at its heart, an examination of grief.
“Technically a short story at under 100 pages, its lasting influence owes much to the screen adaptation starring Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie, with its ground-breaking flashbacks and flashforwards. These are now a staple in the genre, both on page and screen – I can’t remember the last time I read a thriller with a simple linear structure.”
Penguin Classics, £9.99
The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
“So predictable I almost felt I couldn’t include it, Highsmith’s magnum opus is in the end too influential ever to discount and remains my favourite thriller. A psychopath’s head should be an unsettling place to access and yet it’s mere pages before you find yourself complicit in Tom Ripley’s misadventures. First, he tries to pass himself off as moneyed wastrel Dickie Greenleaf’s equal (or at least his entertaining sycophant), and then, following a brutal crime, to carry off an impersonation – the entire time keeping clear water between himself (whoever he is) and the authorities.
“The whole affair is conducted in cool, impassive prose style by an author who you sense understood she was creating an eponym for the ages even as the typewriter keys clattered under her fingertips. Seventy years on, ‘Ripleyesque’ still describes an amoral, narcissistic chameleon, more of whom move among us than we might like to think.”
Vintage, £9.99
A Fatal Inversion by Barbara Vine
“I was late to Ruth Rendell’s psychological alter ego Barbara Vine, and like many 11th-hour converts I am quite the zealot. From an author’s point of view, her novels are so psychologically lethal she either inspires you to do better or convinces you there’s no point continuing because she’s already mined every last crevice of the human mind and there’s nothing left to say.
“A Fatal Inversion is a slow-burn thriller about the mistakes of youth coming back to bite, a familiar trope but especially threatening when said youth is enjoyed to the degree of lawless abandon that it is by Adam, Rufus and Shiva, who spend a summer in a Suffolk mansion living ‘like sultans’ with various hangers-on. Ten years later, new owners have found a couple of skeletons in the grounds and to say the news has the now-proper grown-ups regretting their summer of hedonism is an understatement. A masterclass.”
Penguin, £9.99
Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane
“Like its predecessor One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest and successor The Silent Patient, Lehane’s best-known work places its characters in a psychiatric setting. Shutter Island houses a hospital for the criminally insane, so we know from the start we are dealing with unstable minds and, just maybe, unreliable narrators.
US Marshal Teddy Daniels arrives on the island to investigate the disappearance of a patient, Rachel Solando, incarcerated for drowning her three children, and – like many island-set thrillers – much of the tension arises from his solitude, the (in)convenience of his being cut off from outside communications.
“In recent decades, the best psychological thrillers have delivered a final twist or rug pull and Shutter Island has the best in the business. I remember gasping when I read it. I placed the book on my lap and mouthed my congratulations to Lehane and the thriller gods.”
Bantam, £9.99
Testimony by Anita Shreve
“Some may be surprised to find Shreve on a list of psychological thrillers but I see her as a key forerunner to the explosion of female-authored classics in the 2010s (Gone Girl et al). Were Testimony to be published today, it would certainly be marketed under the thriller umbrella, involving as it does disturbing transgressions and heart-stopping suspense.
“The plot investigates a familiar theme – a sex scandal at an elite New England boarding school – but what elevates this one is the cunning kaleidoscopic structure, with multiple characters from school and community offering accounts of contradiction, betrayal and, ultimately, revelation. One day, I’ll sit down and deconstruct this book and figure out just how Shreve did it.”
Abacus, £9.99
