Which 2020 Thriller Novels Feature Unreliable Narrators?

Has anyone read 'The Black Echo' by Michael Connelly? It's the first Bosch book, so not new, but I revisited it recently. While Bosch is doggedly honest in his pursuit of justice, his narration is unreliable because of his own demons—his Vietnam tunnel rat past, his bitterness, his isolation. He interprets clues through the lens of a deeply damaged man, and sometimes he misses things a more balanced detective would see. It's a different, more character-driven kind of unreliability.

The foreign film scene had a banger in 2020 with 'The Whistlers' (Romanian: 'La Gomera'). It's not a straightforward thriller, more a neo-noir crime film, but the entire plot revolves around deception, double-crosses, and a policeman who is absolutely not telling the audience the whole truth. The narrative structure is deliberately convoluted, making you question the order of events and the protagonist's loyalties at every turn. It's a stylish, puzzle-box movie that uses unreliable narration to keep you as disoriented as the main character.

For something truly meta and mind-bending, 'The Book of You' by Claire Kendal is a chilling read. The narrator, Clarissa, is being stalked by a colleague, Rafe. She starts meticulously documenting his every action in a diary, which she intends to use as evidence for a restraining order. The entire book is, in effect, this diary. So you are reading Clarissa's curated, terrified account. But as the story progresses, you start to wonder about her own mental state. Is Rafe truly a monstrous predator, or is Clarissa an unreliable narrator constructing a narrative of persecution? The tension is unbearable because the diary format feels so intimate and real, yet you're constantly aware it's a one-sided account written under extreme duress.

Sometimes the setting is the unreliable element. In 'The Lighthouse' by Fran Dorricott (not the movie!), the remote island location is described through the foggy, strained perception of three friends. The landscape seems to shift, sounds are muffled, and isolation warps their sense of time. The environment itself becomes an antagonist that manipulates their accounts. It’s less about lying and more about the impossibility of accurate perception under duress. This atmospheric approach can be even spookier than a deliberately deceptive character.

Shirley Jackson's 'The Haunting of Hill House' is the blueprint for psychological haunting. Eleanor's narration is a slow slide into instability. Her longing for belonging, her fragile sense of self, and the house's influence blend until you can't separate her thoughts from the house's 'thoughts'. Is the house haunted, or is it just amplifying her existing loneliness and madness? The twists are quiet, moments of realization about Eleanor's state of mind that are more devastating than any jump scare. It's a devastating character study wrapped in a ghost story.

I actually seek out reviews and discussions for books with this trope after I finish them. It's fascinating to see what clues other readers picked up on that I missed, or how our interpretations of the narrator's truth differed. A book that sparked massive debate in my book club was 'We Were Never Here' by Andrea Bartz. Half of us were convinced the narrator was a victim, the other half were sure she was a villain. The fact that the text supported both readings so equally is a testament to how skillfully the unreliable narration was crafted. It's a book designed to be argued about.

Freida McFadden’s 'The Housemaid' is a pulpy, addictive ride. The narrator is a maid with a troubled past working for a picture-perfect family. But her own actions and secrets raise doubts about her motives. Is she a victim or a schemer? The book uses quick pacing and short chapters to constantly shift your allegiance. The twists are dramatic and satisfying if you enjoy soap-opera levels of deception.

I have a soft spot for 'The Basic Eight' by Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket). It's a dark comedy-thriller presented as the edited diary of a teenage girl, Flannery Culp, who is in prison for murder. She's explicitly trying to set the record straight, which immediately makes her suspect. Her voice is witty, sarcastic, and manipulative. The suspense is in decoding her version of events against what you suspect really happened during a fateful high school year. She omits, she emphasizes, she plays for sympathy. It's effective because her voice is so engaging and darkly funny that you want to believe her, even as the evidence of her own text suggests a much darker reality. It's a brilliant send-up of teenage drama and true crime narratives, all filtered through a brilliantly unreliable lens.