Thrillers

The act of reading always involves identification: with the story, the characters, the author’s intentions. Renée Knight takes this concept and pushes it to dangerous extremes in her psychological thriller Disclaimer (Doubleday, £12.99, pp. 304, Spectator Bookshop, £11.69). Catherine Ravenscroft finds a novel in her house which she doesn’t remember buying, and which seems to be telling the story of her own life. Her deepest, most terrible secrets are included. And the final page ends with her own murder. Is this a threat? How can the author have such an intimate knowledge of Catherine’s life, of events and feelings that she’s kept hidden even from her husband? This is a

‘Do it with scissors’ was Alfred Hitchcock’s advice for prospective murderers, though a glance at these two biographies reminds us that scissors are also the chosen implement of the silhouettist. Hitchcock’s profile —beaky nose, protuberant lips, conjoined chin and neck — is emblazoned on both dustjackets like a logo. A logo is what it was. You don’t get to be the most famous movie director in the world merely by directing movies. Hence the wordless walk-ons Hitchcock made in almost every one of his 53 pictures. Hence the city gent uniform (blue suit, white shirt, black tie) worn throughout even the most stifling Californian summers. Hence, one sometimes suspects, the

The publisher has whipped up a tsunami of excitement around The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair (translated from the French by Sam Taylor; MacLehose, £20, Spectator Bookshop, £16). More than two million copies have already been sold. Its author, Jöel Dicker, is apparently ‘Switzerland’s coolest export since Roger Federer’.The novel, which is billed as a literary thriller, has been garlanded with ecstatic reviews and prizes on the continent. It’s the story of a young, successful but blocked writer who tries to re-energise his muse by visiting Harry Quebert, the Great American Novelist who put him on the road to fame. Harry lives in a beachside house in Maine. Unfortunately,