Psychological Thriller - Examples - Examples in Literature

Examples in Literature

• John Fowles - His novel, The Collector, is the sinister story of a sociopathic kidnapper, narrated by both the criminal and his victim.
• Émile Zola – His novel La Bete Humaine is a chilling psychological thriller that focuses on the dark recesses of human nature.
• Patricia Highsmith – Highsmith's novels usually focus on troubled young men who are either sociopathic or emotionally unstable; throughout each story the protagonist is somehow drawn into a murky murder case, and must contend with persistent policemen and suspicious friends. Her most famous character is the charming con man and serial murderer Tom Ripley who, over the course of five books, successfully kills nine people.
• Desmond Cory – Cory's popular novels have been made into successful films (The Mark of the Phoenix, Deadfall) and a television series (Circe Complex). Cory explored many different aspects of the psychological thriller, featuring a wide spectrum of characters that ranged from the jewel-thief to the terrorist.
• Rod Glenn – Glenn's novel, Sinema: The Northumberland Massacre explores the idea that a seemingly well-adjusted individual with an unremarkable upbringing can make a sane decision to commit murder. Sinema features the unusually likeable and charismatic character of Hannibal Whitman as the central anti-hero.
• Paul Parducci – His novel Wet Linda extensively explores the mental states of his characters especially the developing psychopathology of his protagonist.
• Jonathan Kellerman – Kellerman's Alex Delaware novels often deal with various matters of criminal psychology.
• Melanie Wells – Unlike her contemporaries, Wells has taken a different approach to the genre by adding supernatural elements. Her novels, such as When The Day of Evil Comes, The Soul Hunter and My Soul to Keep, feature the psychological mind games of Peter Terry - a demon who seeks to steal his victim's peace of mind and hope.
• Mary Higgins Clark – Clark's novels typically focus on a successful woman caught up in the diaboloical games of men, who are usually either psychotic or sexually perverse. The crimes in her stories often involve children in some way, and occasionally deal with child telepathy.
• Henry James – The Turn of the Screw and other horror stories he wrote.
• Nicci French – The pseudonym of husband-and-wife team Nicci Gerrard and Sean French. Their novels often revolve around a young female protagonist who is either targeted by or is suspected of being a psychopathic killer. The stories are quite unique in that they focus just as much, if not more so, on the victims of crime rather than the actual criminals.
• Stephen King – Although his books Carrie, Cycle of the Werewolf, Thinner and others are considered as horror novels, his book often focus on the protagonist(s) and antagonist(s), their origins, backgrounds for character and certain activities.
• Orson Scott Card – Ender's Game, though usually identified as a science fiction novel, gets more into the life of a child, rather than focusing upon the technology and means of the future.
• Pete Howells – Perspective Disentangled and others are considered to be at the literary fiction end of this market.
• Louise Welsh – Both her first The Cutting Room and latest book The Girl on the Stairs are noted psychological thrillers featuring characters struggling with their perceptions of circumstances around them.