By Darius Osborne, Adrienne Westenfeld :" A psychological thriller offers one of the most absorbing reading experiences available. The book is the predator, and the helpless reader is the prey, caught in its palm-sweating, mind-bending spell. We've rounded up 15 of our favorites, which exemplify the best of what this depraved genre can offer, as well as the wide variety of stories writers can tell within this familiar framework. Though psychological thrillers often lend themselves to stories of crime and the criminally insane, that's not always the case. (Take Rebecca, for example, a psychological thriller where the derangement is perfectly garden variety. Watching a character spin out, whatever the cause, is where the fun is.) These novels can also be a vector for the ails of our society, illuminating how landmark issues of our time, like the opioid crisis and the racist criminal justice system, can cause a mind to disintegrate."
