Genres
Psychological thriller
A genre combining the thriller and psychological fiction genres, building suspense from mental states and unstable perceptions of reality.
The psychological thriller combines the thriller and psychological fiction genres: stories of characters' mental states, perceptions, thoughts and distortions, often told through psychologically stressed narrators with a dissolving sense of reality. Suspense comes from uncertainty about characters' motives, honesty and worldview; recurring devices include plot twists, unreliable narrators, MacGuffins and red herrings. Patricia Highsmith is its standard-bearer author, and Psycho, Shutter Island and Gone Girl its named examples.
The craft load falls on narration that misleads honestly: what each viewpoint character can know and admit is the machinery of the whole plot, which makes point of view the load-bearing decision.