What Lies Between Us

A subgenre of crime fiction, the domestic thriller has gained popularity during the 21st century, as the success of such novels as Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl (2012) and Paula Hawkins’s The Girl on the Train (2015) demonstrate. The term “domestic noir,” coined by author Julia Crouch, has also been applied to such works. Crouch defined the genre as follows:

In a nutshell, Domestic Noir takes place primarily in homes and workplaces, concerns itself largely (but not exclusively) with the female experience, is based around relationships and takes as its base a broadly feminist view that the domestic sphere is a challenging and sometimes dangerous prospect for its inhabitants (Crouch, Julia. “Genre Bender.” Julia Crouch, 2013).

While such thrillers share many characteristics with thriller and mystery fiction, they are set apart by their emphasis on personal relationships in domestic settings, rather than broader political or social intrigue. In this way, they draw on 18th-century Gothic novels, such as Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847).

What Lies Between Us exemplifies key characteristics of the domestic thriller genre. It is written in first person from two alternating perspectives, indicated by the chapter headers, whose reliability is not guaranteed. The novel probes the limits of perception as well as the possibility for events to be interpreted in multiple ways.