When I completed my first novel Cold Caller, I was certain I had written a psychological thriller. In all my queries to editors and agents I even wrote "enclosed is my psychological thriller Cold Caller," and like most first-time authors I got dozens of rejections. Then an editor sent me a nice note, apologizing because his house doesn't publish "noir fiction." It had never even occurred to me to describe my book as noir. Figuring I might as well give it a shot, I started sending out the manuscript as "my noir novel Cold Caller" and I quickly found a publisher.
My next several novels were marketed—in the U.S. and U.K.– mainly as noir fiction and crime fiction, but I’ve always felt that psychological thriller is the best description for my books. All of my novels have crime in them, and many have the doomed protagonist associated with noir fiction, but I think it’s the psychology of my characters, and their flawed decision making, that drives most of my stories forward.
I think my new novel, The Follower, moves me indisputably into psychological thriller territory. I tell the story in third-person, from several points of view, and focus on types of characters that have been in the background in my previous books. The plot concerns a young woman, Katie Porter, who has recently moved to Manhattan’s Upper East Side after college. She works at an entry-level job and just wants to meet a nice guy. But she doesn’t know that Peter Wells, a guy who grew up with her in a small town in Massachusetts, is also living in New York now, and he has big plans for their future.
This is my first novel with a female protagonist, and unlike most of my previous books, Katie isn’t an instigator. She’s an innocent victim in the story, an ordinary person who gets caught up in an extraordinary situation. There’s also a police detective who becomes a major character in the story. The detective, John Himoto, has appeared as a minor character in a couple of my past novels, but this is the first time I’ve ever given someone in law enforcement a major role.
But while Katie and Himoto are a big part of the story, I didn’t want to sacrifice the dark, twisted vision of my previous books. I’ve created many murdering psychos, but Peter is my all-time favorite. I didn't want him to be a surfacey villian, someone who readers could easily forget. I wanted his chapters to be just as intimate as Katie’s and Himoto’s. I felt if I could get readers to really know Peter, to understand his twisted psychology, it would amp up the tension, and make his ultimate confrontation with Katie even more terrifying.
InThe Follower, I enjoyed manipulating readers by switching points of view at key moments and ending chapters at the right times. I featured bigger set pieces than my previous books and created a plot that constantly builds toward a climax. But in psychological thrillers it’s sometimes the smaller moments, what the characters don’t know about each other, that create the best opportunities for suspense. In Hitchcock’s films, for example, when the audience knows more than the protagonist the tension becomes unbearable, and these are the types of moments I wanted to focus on in The Follower. Readers always know a lot about my characters, but my characters are always in the dark.
Jason Starr is the Barry and Anthony Award-winning author of eight novels. His latest psychological thriller, THE FOLLOWER, is now available from Orion Books in the U.K. and St. Martin’s Press in the U.S.
