The plot of Laura Lippman's latest standalone suspense novel, Dream Girl, arises not only out of this anxiety about who gets to tell whose stories, but also out of the #MeToo movement. Worry over manuscripts falling into the wrong hands is nothing new in mystery fiction after all, Edgar Allan Poe, the acknowledged Father of the form, relied on that plot for his 1844 short story, "The Purloined Letter." But this years' crop of mystery and suspense novels puts a socially-conscious spin on the missing manuscript tale: they're about the anxiety of appropriation, about one character in a position of privilege - in terms of gender, financial security, or race -laying their sticky mitts on the writing or life story of another character who's not so advantaged. The rundown includes: The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz, A Lonely Man by Chris Power, The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris, Palace of the Drowned by Christine Mangan, and A Slow Fire Burning, the forthcoming novel by Paula Hawkins of Girl on the Train fame.
The plot of almost every thriller I've read in the past six months has had something to do with one character stealing the story of another character and passing it off as their own.
Something strange is afoot in mystery and suspense fiction.
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