Michael J. Seidlinger is a Filipino American author of My Pet Serial Killer, Dreams of Being, The Fun We’ve Had, and nine other books.At CrimeReads he tagged ten of the most terrifying home invasions in fiction, including:
Her Every Fear by Peter SwansonRead about the other entries on the list.
This one’s psychological thriller with a capital P. Swanson’s novel is perhaps the one novel on this list that can act as the “benchmark” for the home invasion as narrative device: it has displacement, deception, and above all the disturbing undertones that make our normal spaces so nefarious. Inthis case, we see one Corbin Dell helping a cousin, Kate Priddy, by swapping apartments after Kate experiences successive panic attacks after being kidnapped by a vengeful ex-boyfriend. But just as soon as Kate moves in, the next door neighbor is murdered and what commences is right out of the best that psychological horror affords—where Kate’s own sanity is questioned while at the same time, the home invasion dynamic becomes as layered as in, say, the famous Hitchcock film, Rear Window. It’s about what you do know that harms you.
--Marshal Zeringue
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