5 Psychological Thrillers to Read After Hunting Alice Bell

The closest book to Channel 4’s Hunting Alice Bell is Lesley Kara’s The Rumor. Both stories start with the suspicion that a woman connected to a notorious crime is living under a new name. In Hunting Alice Bell, an online accusation upends Fran Da Silva’s family life. When she finds other women facing the same accusation, they join forces to clear their names. Their alliance makes for a particularly nasty whodunit. Each woman has good reason to doubt the crowd, and each has to decide how much to trust the others.

These five novels keep that tension alive in different ways. One follows the person who passes on the rumor. Another puts you inside the head of the woman everyone suspects. The comparisons below stick to the setups.

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1. The Rumor by Lesley Kara

Best for a rumor that turns neighbors into suspects.

Joanna hears that a woman who killed a child decades ago might be living under a new identity in her seaside town. She mentions the rumor to her neighbors, and soon she has to live with what she set in motion. UK readers will find the book under the title The Rumour.

This is the first book I’d recommend after Hunting Alice Bell. Fran lives with the consequences of somebody else’s speculation. Joanna has to reckon with what she did when she treated a disturbing possibility as something worth passing along. That shift in perspective makes the resemblance more interesting than the shared premise alone.

Find The Rumor in paperback on Amazon.

2. Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera

Best for a woman whose town has already decided she’s guilty.

Lucy Chase was found covered in her best friend Savvy’s blood and remembers nothing about the night Savvy died. Years later, a hit true-crime podcast brings the case back into the spotlight and pulls Lucy back to her Texas hometown. The interviews give other people plenty of room to explain what they think they know about her. Lucy, with her dry sense of humor, makes for a very different narrator from the woman they describe.

If you liked how quickly strangers became certain about Fran, try this one next. Lucy has to defend herself against a story she can’t fully check against her own memory.

Find Listen for the Lie in hardcover on Amazon.

3. The Lies I Tell by Julie Clark

Best for a cat-and-mouse thriller about assumed identities.

Meg Williams uses different names and occupations to gain people’s trust. Kat Roberts has spent a decade waiting for the chance to expose her. Once Kat gets close, she finds it harder to tell whom Meg is targeting or why.

Clark puts the reader on both sides of the hunt. You get to watch Meg decide who she needs to be in a given room and Kat decide what counts as a clue. Pick this if the possibility of a woman successfully living under another name was the part of the show you kept thinking about.

Find The Lies I Tell in paperback on Amazon.

4. The Widow by Fiona Barton

Best for the questions that follow a woman married to a suspect.

For years, Jean Taylor stood by her husband, Glen, while he was suspected of a terrible crime. After he dies, tabloid reporter Kate Waters wants to hear Jean’s account. Barton moves among Jean, Kate and the detective who investigated the case, giving each a different stake in what Jean says next.

This is the strongest pick if you’re drawn to the questions surrounding Alice herself. What did a woman know about the man she lived with? What did she do with that knowledge? Barton lets those questions sit alongside a harder one for the reader. How much can you tell about someone’s choices from the role the press has assigned her?

Explore the paperback edition of The Widow

5. The Night Swim by Megan Goldin

Best for a community divided over whose account to believe.

True-crime podcaster Rachel Krall arrives in a small town to cover a rape trial. A woman named Hannah asks her to look into her sister’s death years earlier. The two cases give Rachel two ways to see how a town decides whose testimony deserves a hearing.

This is the most courtroom-focused pick. The show asks what happens when an accusation goes public. Goldin also asks what happens when a community has already chosen which account it wants to believe. The book deals directly with sexual assault.

Explore The Night Swim on Amazon!

For more recommendations, browse our guide to the best thriller books, from new releases to backlist favorites.

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