I Know Who You Are: A Novel

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