All in the Family: On the Mesmerizing Subgenre of Familial Crimes

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A good thriller yanks the reader in and holds them tight straight through to the end, but the subgenre of familial crimes is especially mesmerizing. We can’t look away. They were the perfect family. How did this happen? How could the family not know? Or even more compelling…What leads a person to betray their family?

Those are the themes that bubble up in my debut thriller, Junkyard Dogs. Comped to Ozark and Shameless, on its surface Junkyard Dogs is the story of a high school basketball player thrust into a criminal scrapping ring when his dad suddenly disappears. But really Josh’s story is about family deceit and betrayal. When Josh digs too deep in search of his father, he uncovers dark family secrets and risks adding his own life to the growing piles of bodies. Publishers Weekly describes Junkyard Dogs as “a gritty, emotionally nuanced read . . . Utilizing atmospherically tense prose and layered, moving characterizations” and Kirkus calls it “a visceral story.” That emotional nuance comes from the way the adults in Josh’s life use and manipulate one another and even Josh, leading him to realize that blood doesn’t always make family and some bonds can be broken forever.J osh discovers that blood doesn’t always make family—and some bonds can be broken forever.

Below I’ve listed my favorite crime in the family thrillers. These are stories that hinge on family secrets, skeletons that won’t stay locked in closets, and the realization that no matter how close you are to a person, you can never really know them.

We Are All the Same in the Dark by Julia Heaberlin

Featuring two female protagonists, this story is full of twists and turns it is like driving down a country road at midnight with a busted out headlight (but in a good way). Local police officer, Odette Tucker has remained friends with Wyatt, the brother of her missing best friend, despite the blame everyone else in town is eager to pin on him. When Wyatt discovers a girl abandoned on the side of the road old suspicious reignite, leaving Odette in a race to solve both crimes before the townspeople come to fulfill their vendetta.

The Girl in the Headlines by Hannah Jayne

From the first paragraph in which the main character, Andrea McNulty, introduces herself as a center forward on the field hockey team who did not kill her parents, I was riveted. Told from the perspective of Andrea who is a suspect in the murder of her parents and disappearance of her younger brother, the story follows Andrea’s desperate attempts to remember what happened the night of her eighteenth birthday before the police or the real murder find her.

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

Most people know Gillian Flynn from her bestseller-turned-movie, Gone Girl. My favorite of Flynn’s works is still Sharp Objects because its unflinching take family dysfunction. When reporter Camille Preaker returns home to investigate the case of a missing girl, she finds herself right back in the drama of the family she’d moved across the country to escape. As she follows the clues to uncover what happened to the missing girl, she discovers terrifying connections to her own past. Although the language and tone are raw and explicit, they perfectly capture Camille’s disillusionment with the world and men in particular. Bonus—the book was made into a Netflix series featuring Amy Adams!

Stalking Jack the Ripper by Kerri Maniscalco

In this historical thriller, readers are introduced to Audrey Rose, an apprentice in her uncle’s forensic laboratory who asks, “What must it be like, knowing you raised the devil? It probably felt the same as knowing you sat by a monster day in and day out, never noticing the blackness of his soul.” As Audrey Rose investigates the murderer who is leaving behind a slew of bodies, she begins to realize he might just follow her home. Based on the 1888 Ripper Murders in London, the book includes chilling images from the setting and time period.

Allegedly by Tiffany D. Jackson

Fifteen-year-old Mary Addison served six years in “baby jail” for allegedly killing a child left in her mother’s care before being transferred to a group home. The group home isn’t much of an improvement over jail, but it does allow Mary to volunteer at a retirement center where she meets and falls in love with Ted, a parolee from another group home. Mary has never talked much about the events that led up to her incarceration, but when she discovers she is pregnant and that the state might take away her baby, Mary decides it is time to talk. The story she tells paints her mother as a narcissistic abuser, but it is up to her to prove it.

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