Psychological thrillers generate suspense by exploring a character’s unstable mental and emotional state. Unlike traditional thrillers that focus on external threats, this genre questions the protagonist’s perception, memory, and sanity. Novels that use this trope are often written from the protagonist’s point of view, which introduces subjectivity and thus presents that person as an unreliable narrator whose account of events can’t be trusted, as in Gillian Flynn’s 2012 novel Gone Girl. Alice Feeney’s I Know Who You Are establishes this convention immediately, as protagonist Aimee Sinclair declares, “Lying is what I do for a living” (1).

Also common in psychological thrillers is the missing person trope, as in the 2014 novel The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins, and the presence of gaslighting. In I Know Who You Are, Feeney establishes the missing person trope as central in Chapter 1, as Aimee discovers (after her fight with her husband, Ben, the night before) that he has vanished without taking his phone, wallet, or keys. As is typical, the mystery isn’t easy to solve and involves deep deception, obsession, and protracted manipulation that an antagonist carries out as revenge for a perceived slight. The antagonist is usually obsessed with the protagonist and is intimately familiar with their past, seeking to weaponize it to intensify their doubts about their sanity and their lived reality. This plays out in Aimee’s experience over numerous years and relationships, as Eamonn orchestrates his multilayered plot to target his sister.

As is also typical of psychological thrillers, Aimee’s narrative is riddled with self-doubt and contradictions, suggesting doubt regarding the reality of her experiences. One device for creating such narrative uncertainty is amnesia, and Feeney grounds this trope in a real medical condition: transient global amnesia (TGA). According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, TGA involves a sudden, temporary episode of memory loss, often triggered by emotional stress, wherein individuals cannot recall recent events. Aimee references this childhood diagnosis, noting that doctors believed “my brain had blocked out certain memories because it deemed them too stressful” (40). This provides a plausible explanation for her fragmented memory, raising the question of whether she could have committed acts such as harming her husband and then forgotten them entirely. This technique is reminiscent of films like Christopher Nolan’s Memento (2000), in which the protagonist’s amnesia makes his investigation subjective and unreliable. By weaving a real neurological condition into the conventions of the psychological thriller, Feeney elevates the suspense, making Aimee’s internal struggle as compelling as the external mystery.

To add further complexity and tension, psychological thrillers occasionally make the protagonist a public figure, as in Miranda Smith’s 2025 novel Smile for the Cameras. In I Know Who You Are, Aimee has a successful acting career and is thus the subject of media scrutiny. In addition to fending off nonstop insults from an overbearing rival actress, Alicia White, and enduring continual questioning by Detective Croft, Aimee must constantly deal with an unscrupulous tabloid reporter, Jennifer Jones, who relentlessly pursues a “killer of a story” (179). Jennifer not only accosts Aimee without her agent’s permission but also extorts her costar, Jack, into taking revealing pictures of Aimee in her dressing room. In a dramatic scene at the wrap party, all eyes turn to Aimee as Jennifer publishes her tell-all article claiming that Aimee murdered her husband. By grounding Aimee’s paranoia in the verifiable pressures of modern celebrity, Feeney critiques how society consumes the private lives of public figures for entertainment, revealing the steep personal cost of fame.