Psycho Thrillers

There is something about a good psychological thriller. If it's done right, it combines the best of mysteries with the most fascinating characters. Here are three of the spookiest that I guarantee you won't be able to put down.

The Hypnotist
by Lars Kepler
Some of the best thriller-mysteries are coming out of Scandinavia today. In the tradition of Stieg Larsson, the Swedish husband-and-wife team of Alexander and Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril (writing as Lars Kepler) offers a compelling and fast-paced hunt for a killer ― or two. Dr. Erik Maria Bark has sworn never to practice hypnotism again after his last session goes horribly wrong. But he is coerced into one last try when Detective Joona Linna asks him to hypnotize the sole survivor of a horrible triple murder. The 15-year-old boy is gravely hurt, and is the only witness to the crime. When the victim later stumbles out of the hospital and disappears, and then Bark's own son is kidnapped, the chase is on to unravel the mystery. Word to the wise: Don't read this one before bed. (2011 - Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)

In the Woods
by Tana French
Tana French has an uncanny knack for writing such vivid characters that you miss them like old friends when you've finished reading about them. She also is an expert at writing beautiful and atmospheric words about ugly deeds. In the Woods is the story of a cold-case crime. In 1984, a young boy was found in the woods, bloodied and holding tightly to a tree. His two friends were found dead and he has no memory of what happened. Fast-forward 20 years and that boy is now Detective Rob Ryan, a man who has pushed that horrible day far out of his mind. But a new case that seems a little too close to comfort brings his own past rushing back. (2007 - Penguin Books)
Other Recommended Books by Tana French: The Likeness, Faithful Place

Bleeding Heart Square
by Andrew Taylor
In 1934 England, Lydia Langstone escapes her abusive and aristocratic husband to live with her father in a down-at-the-heels boarding house in Bleeding Heart Square. There she finds quirky and sinister characters, as well as an old legend that the devil once danced in the square itself. But it's her own family mysteries, and the disappearance of the boarding house's former owner, that really give Langstone the chills. Has evil danced back into the square, or is someone she is close to giving the devil a run for his money? (2010, Hyperion)