LIT LISTS: Seven thrillers about the role of the witness

Jacqueline Faber is an author and freelance writer. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from Emory University, where she was the recipient of a Woodruff

Scholarship, and taught in the Expository Writing Program at New York University, where she received an award for excellence in teaching. She studied philosophy in Bologna, Italy, and received a dissertation grant from Freie University in Berlin, Germany. Faber writes across genres, including thrillers, rom-coms, and essays. Her work explores questions about memory, loss, language, and desire. Steeped in philosophical, psychological, and literary themes, her writing is grounded in studies of character. She lives with her family in Los Angeles.

Faber's debut novel is The Department.

[My Book, The Movie: The Department; Q&A with Jacqueline Faber]

At Electric Lit Faber tagged seven books in which bystanders must decide whether to speak out or stay silent. One title on the list:

In the Woods by Tana French

This gorgeous thriller was Tana French’s debut and introduced the world to her lush prose and rich characters. It’s included on the list because it circles around a character who is haunted by his own inability to become a veritable witness in a crime perpetrated against him. The novel opens with the disappearance of three children in the woods. Only one resurfaces, but he recalls nothing of the harrowing event, or the fates of his best friends. Twenty years later, they are still missing and he’s on the Dublin Murder Squad, investigating another crime in those same dark woods. The question is: can he quiet his own demons enough to solve it?