Guest Post: My Top 5 Psychological Thrillers by Emma Kavanagh

Today I'm delighted to welcome Emma Kavanagh back to the blog as part of her blog tour for her debut novel Falling which was published in paperback on Thursday.   Emma has kindly written a piece about her top 5 psychological thrillers and you can also read an extract of Falling on Dead Good Books site here.

There are so many books that I could have selected for this! These are just five of the many psychological crime books that made me want to spend my life learning to write like these incredible authors. 

And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie: Agatha Christie really is the queen of crime and I love so many of her books, but this was the one that truly chilled me. Such an air of foreboding hangs over the events that it really does stay with you. 

Presumed innocent, Scott Turow: There’s nothing like an unreliable narrator to create complexity in a novel and this one left me questioning everything I thought I knew about the characters. One of the classics of complicated characters. 

Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn: Carrying on the theme of the unreliable narrator, this book brings life to the maxim that there are three versions of any story, his, hers and the truth. I love the way Gillian Flynn plays with her readers and although you end up disliking pretty much everyone, you still can’t stop reading. 

Apple Tree Yard, Louise Doughty: I just loved this book. It was so well written and executed that I really couldn’t put it down. The characterisation was so strong. 

Faithful Place, Tana French: For me, psychological thrillers are fundamentally about people and few authors demonstrate this better than Tana French. The plot evolves from the characters themselves and that is endlessly fascinating to me.

A plane falls out of the sky. A woman is murdered. Four people all have something to hide. 

Jim is a retired police officer, and worried father. His beloved daughter has disappeared and he knows something is wrong. 

Tom has woken up to discover that his wife was on the plane and must break the news to their only son. 

Cecilia had packed up and left her family. Now she has survived a tragedy, and sees no way out. 

Freya is struggling to cope with the loss of her father. But as she delves into his past, she may not like what she finds. 

‘Before the plane crash, after the plane crash, such a short amount of time for the world to turn on its head… ‘

Falling by Emma Kavanagh, published by Arrow, at £6.99.