BEST BOOKS ON... IMPOSTORS
THE bestselling author suggests key novels to help you through the trickier times in life.
IMPOSTORS are always popping up in psychological thrillers. After all, so much of our lives depends on trust, on believing what we tell each other. Without it, all rules of social, professional and emotional engagement go out of the window.
Fortunately, they are more common in books than in life. It’s a complicated business pretending to be someone you’re not; a bit off-putting for the common criminal. But for the writer, all that detail and deceit is the very stuff of suspense.
And psychological thrillers are ofthe-moment in publishing — but just because they are new doesn’t mean they’re the best. In fact, the vintage ones are the most unsettling of all.
Take Marnie, the novel of the Alfred Hitchcock movie, written by Winston Graham. The pretty heroine is a petty conwoman who keeps changing her identity and her job to rip off her employers, one by one. Marnie thinks she is invincible and one step ahead of everyone but, of course, love eventually gets in her way. Dripping with the atmosphere of late Fifties England, this will tie your brain — and your sympathy — in knots.
At the beginning of Daphne du Maurier’s The Scapegoat, impersonation seems a simple enough business. John, an honest Englishman, meets Jean, his French doppelganger, at a railway station and, after a few drinks, finds himself living the enviable life of a French count.
It all seems so glamorous, he decides to go along with it — until he realises why Jean was so keen to get out of there. In the end, both men find they really miss being themselves.
Josephine Tey was one of the earliest mistresses of mystery and her eponymous Brat Farrar is a classic impostor. He turns up at the estate of the Ashbys, claiming to be the lost son who is due to inherit.
He’s done his research and it looks as if he might get away with it. But it turns out that for all you can learn about a family, there is some element of truth you can’t pretend to know.