Throw a rock in the crime section and you'll hit an unreliable narrator these days. The real challenge is finding one that uses the device to say something meaningful, not just to sell copies. I'd argue 'The Secret History' by Donna Tartt, while older, influenced a ton of 21st-century stuff—Richard Papen is looking back on his involvement with a murder, and his nostalgia, guilt, and desire to justify himself make him profoundly unreliable. You're seduced by his intellectual romanticism, only to realize he's complicit in painting a beautiful veneer over something rotten. That's masterful.
A lesser-known gem is 'Bellman & Black' by Diane Setterfield. The protagonist, William Bellman, makes a careless shot as a boy that kills a rook, and he spends his life believing this act has cursed him, bringing about a series of tragedies. The entire narrative is filtered through his deepening obsession and guilt. Is he truly haunted, or is he an unreliable narrator constructing a narrative of punishment from random misfortune? The mystery is whether the supernatural element is real or a symptom of his deteriorating mind. It's a quiet, gothic-tinged book where the uncertainty is the whole point.
For a deep dive into the 'unreliable due to trauma' angle, 'The Broken Girls' by Simone St. James intertwines two timelines. In the past, a boarding school girl's perspective is limited by her fear and isolation. In the present, the journalist investigating her death is unreliable because of her own sister's unsolved murder, which colors her every move. Both narratives are tinged with grief and obsession, making their conclusions suspect. The haunting atmosphere amplifies the feeling that the truth is being viewed through a dark, distorted lens.
What about novels where the unreliability is shared between two people? 'The Wife Upstairs' by Rachel Hawkins (a 'Jane Eyre' retelling) uses dual POVs where both Jane and Eddie are hiding massive secrets. You switch between two liars, each trying to manipulate the other—and the reader. The fun is in spotting the discrepancies between their accounts and trying to guess who is lying more, or more dangerously. It turns the marriage thriller into a duel of unreliable narratives.
2026-07-24 21:45:31
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A GAME OF LIES
Geneva .A. Zwicker
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1.3K
It started with one scandalous kiss caught on camera.
She expected damage control not to be declared the girlfriend of the billionaire who ruined her life.
He’s cold, calculating, and her ex’s powerful cousin.
They agree to fake it for four months for money, for revenge, for survival.
She became the fake girlfriend of the billionaire who ruined her life
He’s ruthless. She’s vengeful. Four months. One deal. No feelings.
But soon, the lies cut deep… and neither of them can tell if the obsession is still pretend.
Amira Santis, a sharp-tongued investigative journalist, ruins billionaire Montez De Vitalio’s company with one exposé. In return, he blacklists her. Her career is over. But after an odd encounter when photos of Montez sharing a kiss with her in a hotel gets out, he has no option but to announce her as his lover to the public.
Now with them both in a compromising situation, Amira takes his offer to pretend to be his girlfriend in the eyes of the public for a period of four months in exchange that he pays her and gets back at her cheating ex, who also happened to be his cousin but Amira is not the same girl he once destroyed. She has secrets of her own. And Montez? He didn’t plan on falling for the one woman who swore to ruin him.
Their lies ignite an obsession neither can control, and soon, love and war become indistinguishable.
I quit and dipped. City threw a parade.
Only Jenna Blake—my oh-so-gifted junior who claimed she could "see through killers' eyes"—lost it.
At her celebration banquet, she went full drama queen:
"I owe everything to Kate Mercer. Please, bring her back!"
I laughed. Cold. Not happening.
Last time around, I was the hotshot detective. But every clue I found? She dropped it first like she read my mind.
People started saying I was washed.
So I went all in—three months, no sleep, cracked a massive trafficking ring. Led the raid myself.
She beat me there. Again. Place was cleaned out.
Boom. She's the city's golden girl.
I'm the clown with no game.
Pressure got ugly. My head snapped. I died chasing the last scumbag.
Then—bam. I woke up. Same day. Raid morning. Round two.
Lying and holding secrets comes to us naturally, as natural as breathing and looking on either side of the road before crossing. We all do it to protect ourselves because sometimes the truth can hurt us.Some are harmless little white lies, but some secrets hide horrible things. Those lies will always come haunting those who seek to keep their lips sealed. Follow Caroline, Charlotte, Chloe, and Caleb's journey, as their life is turned upside down as they fight to keep their lips sealed about the murder they accidentally committed.Everyone keeps secrets. Everyone lies. You better make sure no one saw what you've done before making up your lies because all it takes is one person with the truth on their lips for your life to be destroyed.
Summary:
Inspector Thomas Bertrand, a methodical and respected police officer, is tasked with investigating a mysterious murder. The evidence seems to point to the assassin being a beautiful and young woman, Isabelle Dufresne. But as soon as he meets her, an irresistible attraction grows between them, a feeling that deeply unsettles him. The battle between his duty to justice and his growing emotions for Isabelle leads him into an intense inner struggle. As the investigation progresses, he discovers that nothing is as it seems and that dark forces are manipulating the truth. His heart and mind are in conflict, and the hidden truth could very well destroy him.
Blind pianist Elena Hart has spent her life proving that darkness cannot silence her. Gifted with extraordinary hearing, she can recognize people by their footsteps, breathing, and even the rhythm of their heartbeat. But one quiet night, while practicing alone in an abandoned concert hall, her remarkable gift becomes a curse.
Hidden behind the stage, Elena overhears a cold-blooded murder.
The killer finds her moments later. When he discovers she's blind, he makes a decision that changes both their lives. Instead of pulling the trigger, he takes her with him, convinced she can never identify his face.
Damien Cross has never failed a mission. As the syndicate's most feared assassin, he trusts no one and leaves no witnesses behind. Yet the woman he abducts is unlike anyone he has ever encountered. Elena doesn't need eyes to uncover secrets. Within days, she has memorized every sound in his hideout, every lie in his voice, and every weakness he tries to hide.
As a powerful criminal empire closes in, hunter and captive are forced into an uneasy alliance. With corrupt officials, ruthless assassins, and hidden betrayals surrounding them, Elena and Damien must decide whether trust is worth risking their lives.
But Elena is keeping a secret of her own.
She remembers far more about the night of the murder than Damien realizes. The sounds she carries in her memory could expose a conspiracy that reaches the highest levels of power and make her the most dangerous witness alive.
In a world where silence can kill and every heartbeat tells a story, surviving may be impossible. But sometimes, the last witness is the only one capable of revealing the truth.
Meet Esmerelda Sleuth. Sleuth is her name and investigating is her game. (Paranormal Investigating, that is.)
Esmerelda makes a good living as an investigator in a rather progressive firm. She lives a stable and sensible life until she meets Lance; an old money "hottie" who works for a real estate firm next to her building. After accepting an invitation for a weekend getaway party, she quickly discovers that Lance has a secret. He is wealthy. That part is true. And, yes, he's procured a job as a realtor in the building next door. His secret is that he belongs to an underground society of humans who didn't abandon their connection to magic centuries ago when religion declared it evil and he has traveled through time specifically to find her and bring her back to his time to marry him. If that isn't enough of a far fetched tale to absorb, he informs her that she was born in his time to a family belonging to that same secret society and was promised in marriage to him as an infant. When enemies who didn't want to see the union of families take place made attempts on her life, her parents sent her into the future and erased her memories of them as a precaution.
Possessing virtually no belief in magic, ghosts, psychics, time travel, etc., it takes some doing on Lance's part to convince her to believe his story and go back with him. When she does, the lies, deceit and attempts on her life start all over again. Will she escape emotionally and physically unscathed?
"The Other Side Of the Mirror" is a steamy-paranormal-romance- mystery-thriller and book one of the Esmerelda Sleuth series.
'Magpie Lane' by Lucy Atkins. The narrator is the nanny of a child who has gone missing, and she's telling the story to the police. Her quiet, observant voice feels utterly trustworthy, which makes the slow reveal of her own biases and hidden connection to the family's history so much more unsettling. It's a slow-burn where the unreliability is in what's not said.
Let's give a shout-out to 'The Turn of the Key' by Ruth Ware. It's presented as a letter from a nanny in prison, pleading her case to a lawyer. So from the start, you know she's been accused of a terrible crime. Her account of events at the 'smart' house in the Scottish Highlands is her version of the truth.
She admits to small lies and omissions upfront, which makes you question everything else. Was she negligent? Was she set up? Is the house's technology malfunctioning, or is it haunted? Her desperation to be believed colors every detail. The modern setting, with its surveillance and automated systems, adds a layer where technology itself could be providing false data, compounding the narrator's unreliability. It's a slow-burn of creeping doubt.
Shari Lapena's 'The Couple Next Door' uses a more grounded unreliability. Every character lies, not necessarily to the reader directly, but to the police and each other. You're following multiple people hiding mundane but damaging secrets (affairs, debts) that complicate the central crime of a missing baby. The unreliability is in the gaps between what they say aloud and what they think. It's less psychological thriller, more domestic suspense built on a foundation of white lies.
Stephen King's 'The Outsider' starts as a straightforward crime with an ironclad alibi, thanks to multiple witnesses and evidence. The initial narration, from the detectives' perspective, seems utterly reliable—until it becomes impossible. Then the book swerves into supernatural territory.
The unreliability here is on a metaphysical level; the rules of reality themselves become unreliable. If you enjoy mysteries that start with a 'howdunit' locked-room puzzle and then evolve into something where the narrator's—and the reader's—understanding of the possible must completely shift, this is a gripping ride.