“Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists - Alice was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer.”
I’m Betty Martin with "Martin’s Must Reads" and those lines begin the first chapter of Alex Michaelides’ thriller The Silent Patient. Many of the chapters, like this one, are in the voice of criminal psychotherapist Theo Faber but some are entries from Alice’s diary that document her life in the months before her husband’s murder.
Alice has been in a secure psychiatric unit in North London for six years since the murder trial. She hasn’t spoken a word since the murder. Psychotherapist Faber is fascinated by her silence and wants the opportunity to work with her to unravel the mystery of her husband’s murder.
Faber interviews a variety of people in Alice’s life: her brother-in-law, her cousin, the gallery owner who holds her art work and the therapist who worked with her before the murder. They all seem to be hiding something...just like his wife who he discovers is having an affair. In this, his first novel, author Michaelides weaves quite a tapestry of evidence, doubts and suppositions and then in the last twenty pages solves the mystery. You’ll never see it coming.
I don’t usually read mysteries, but I couldn’t put this one down. It has just enough of a creep factor to make it difficult to fall asleep if you read it at night. If you love a well written psychological thriller then you must read The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides.
