‘Rock Paper Scissors’ by Alice Feeney is a recent one that hooked me. The couple, each with their own hidden agendas, are narrating alternating chapters during a weekend trip to a remote chapel. Both are lying to the reader and to each other, and the ‘investigation’ into the strange happenings and their failing marriage is a double-blinded puzzle. You constantly switch allegiances as new layers of deceit are peeled back in each chapter.
‘Sharp Objects’ by Gillian Flynn is a brutal, fantastic example. Camille Preaker is a journalist sent back to her hometown to report on two murders, and she’s about as unreliable as they come—a self-harming alcoholic with severe familial trauma. Her ‘investigation’ is constantly sidetracked by her own psychological unraveling and repressed memories resurfacing. You’re never sure if she’s seeing clues or projections of her own pain, which makes the final revelations hit like a truck.
‘My Sister, the Serial Killer’ is a short, sharp read. The narrator, Korede, is a nurse who keeps cleaning up after her beautiful sister who seems to keep killing her boyfriends. Her narration is a mix of loyalty, resentment, and justification, making you question the true sequence of events and who the real victim is. The investigation here is internal—Korede investigating her own complicity and moral boundaries as the body count potentially rises.
‘One by One’ by Ruth Ware is another isolated-group scenario, this time a tech company retreat at a ski chalet. The shareholders are voting on a buyout when an avalanche traps them and people start dying. The narration shifts between two employees with very different stakes in the outcome, and both have reasons to misrepresent events and alliances. The investigation is messy because every character, including the narrators, is a potential suspect with a motive.
Haven’t seen 'Gone Girl' mentioned yet, and that feels like a crime. Amy’s diary entries craft this whole narrative of the perfect victim, while Nick’s chapters show him bumbling through a murder investigation where he’s the prime suspect. The ‘unreliable’ part isn’t just a twist—it’s the entire engine of the plot. You spend the first half sympathizing with one perspective, only to have the rug pulled out so completely it changes how you read every thriller afterward.
2026-07-23 11:48:18
17
عرض جميع الإجابات
امسح الكود لتنزيل التطبيق
الكتب ذات الصلة
Who's the Real Detective Here?
Perfect Timing
10
3.2K
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.
A series of past murders catch the attention of the police and the media.
All the people who were killed were women, all of which had some sort of relationship with a well known and successful businessman named Asriel Parker.
For some reason, the murders all point to him as the number one suspect and connection between them. The reasonable thing to do is to put him behind bars but there is one problem.
"Everyone is innocent in the eyes of the law until proven guilty."
There isn't a shred of evidence that actually pinpoints Asriel Parker as the culprit.
With that statement in mind, Selena March, a good police officer and detective is sent undercover as his live-in Personal Assistant to dig up whatever information she can use to put the murderer behind bars.
Selena has no idea what she signs up for but she knows for a fact that falling in love is not part of the whole 'undercover' mission
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.
Murder Inquiry is a crime fiction, whose plot is about Edwin Wolfgang, a rich New York based banker, who gives out loans for which he accepts artworks as collateral, but kills his customers before they are able to pay back the loan. And a FBI agent attached to the New York field office, who's charged with the task of bringing Mr Wolfgang to book. The story is set in three cities, in three different continents, and is full of twists and turns from the killing of Wolfgang's last two victims, up to his eventual arrest.
When Emma's sister vanishes, she's thrust into a deadly game of cat and mouse. A mysterious figure, hidden behind a mask, demands Emma play a twisted game of puzzles and clues to rescue her sister. With time running out, Emma must use her wits to unravel the mysteries and face the sinister forces behind the game. But as the stakes grow higher, Emma realizes the game is designed to test her limits, and the truth about her sister's disappearance may be more terrifying than she ever imagined. Will Emma solve the puzzles and save her sister, or will she become the game's next victim?
"He's gone, Elizabeth," her captain Charles Johnston tells her. Elizabeth blinks back her tears. Her face full of shock and disbelief. Her frozen stare interrupted by his words. "He left his badge." "There's no way," she thought. He wouldn't leave her like this. No warning, no phone call, no letter. She was more to him than that or at least so she thought. That conversation has plagued her for 3 years. For 3 long years, Detective Elizabeth Ryan tried to shut out him, to finally be able to move on. But just as she does, he abruptly returns seeking more than what either of them anticipated. Will Elizabeth be able to forgive him, or will the past be too much to swallow? What happens when life throws her too many twists to handle?
Hmm, I'm trying to think of a good historical mystery that uses this. Maybe something where the narrator is a chronicler or diarist with a clear agenda, like they're writing for a specific audience and slanting the facts. That political or personal bias could make for a fascinatingly untrustworthy guide through a thriller plot.
Paul Tremblay's 'The Cabin at the End of the World' uses ambiguity as a weapon. The narration is third-person but closely focused on one family's perspective during a home invasion by strangers claiming to be preventing the apocalypse. Are the invaders telling the truth? Is this a cosmic event or a psychotic break? The book refuses to give a definitive answer, making the reader grapple with the same terrifying uncertainty as the characters. The 'unreliability' here is in the nature of reality itself, which is somehow even scarier.
Paul Tremblay's 'The Cabin at the End of the World' plays with this in a terrifying way. The 'investigators' are the protagonists, a family trying to figure out if the strangers who have invaded their home are terrorists, cultists, or telling the truth about an impending apocalypse. Their narration is fractured by panic, disbelief, and the desperate need to protect their child.
Their perception of events—what's real, what's a threat, what's a rational response—is completely unreliable because they are in an extreme, surreal stress scenario. The reader is trapped in their crumbling subjective reality, trying to investigate the truth alongside them, with no objective foothold. It's investigative paralysis.