Louise Candlish names the five best psychological thrillers of all time, and it's Don't Look Now at number one
Louise Candlish and her chosen books
In an article by Anna Bonet in The i Paper on 26th July 2025, she describes how Louise Candlish, the phenomenal writer of psychological thrillers, has chosen her top five books in that genre by other authors.
Louise Candlish is famous for novels including The Other Passenger, The Only Suspect, Our House, and A Neighbour's Guide to Murder, published in hardback earlier this month.
In this article, Louise describes the psychological suspense thrillers that she turns to when she is not writing books of her own. She says these five favourites have shaped her life and writing.
Number one on her list is a book by Daphne du Maurier, and this is what Louise has to say about her choice:
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.
Louise goes on to explain that in the best psych thrillers, the story is all in the character's heads as they navigate their way between sanity and a mind gone awry, and that is precisely what happens to John and Laura in Don't Look Now, as they visit Venice after the death of their daughter. Don't Look Now is a novella, so within a little less than one hundred pages, the strangeness of Venice and its weird inhabitants work on John and Laura's already tortured minds to build towards a terrifying climax. Despite its simple linear structure, it is probably the most frightening piece of writing that Daphne du Maurier constructed. The film, which stays more closely to the book than is often the case, is equally terrifying as the story builds and the fears grow towards the inevitable conclusion.
The other four books that Louise has chosen are:
The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
A Fatal Inversion by Barbara Vine
Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane
and
Testimony by Anita Shreve.
To read more of what Louise has to say about all these books, please click here: https://inews.co.uk/culture/five-best-psychological-thrillers-louise-candlish-3807390