The inner lives of the wealthy has always been a juicy topic for writers, but this tireless theme has hit new heights of popularity again lately, with trending shows like Succession and White Lotus pulling back the curtain and looking at how the gilded few with fortunes often live on a different intellectual, rational and moral plane than those with lesser means.
Psychological thrillers often use wealth divides, from the subtle to the extreme, to turn up the tension in stories and explore the different consequences of financial disparity. In my latest novel, When She Was Gone, I use a thriller set-up to examine how the power dynamics and self-centred interests of the wealthy can alter the course of a police investigation. When a young au pair, Louisa, goes missing from a remote Australian beach with two very small children from the powerful and wealthy Fisher family, the patriarch, Jock Fisher, immediately comes to the scene and tries to take over the investigation. However, as the mysteries unravel, it’s soon clear than many members of the Fisher family are either behaving badly or have something to hide.
I enjoy playing with the female dynamics in this kind of story too. In When She Was Gone, the mother of the missing youngsters, Frannie, has considerable means at her disposal to help find the kids, but she begins to go to pieces. Meanwhile, it’s left to Rose, Louisa’s mother, and a former police officer, who comes into the scenario in far less fortunate circumstances, to try to ask the right questions, make her own investigative moves, and strengthen the search for the missing trio.
I had great precedents to follow in exploring these kinds of scenarios, because some of my favourite writers have tackled similar themes. Here are five novels by women authors I love, which all play with ideas of wealth in the context of dynamic female relationships.
Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty
Set in the parenting world of affluent suburbia, in Big Little Lies we learn straight away that there has been a murder at the school trivia night, and as the narrative perspectives unfold they’re interspersed with police interviews taken soon after the event. The main story details the intertwined lives of a group of school mums working hard to keep up appearances while hiding their darkest secrets from their dearest friends, while the darker themes convey the ways in which money cannot buy happiness, and might even make it harder to escape your worst nightmares.
God of the Woods by Liz Moore
A camp counsellor wakes up to find that thirteen-year-old Barbara Van Lear has gone missing from her bunk at Camp Emerson. This terrifying scenario is made even more powerful because Barbara is the daughter of the elite Van Laar family, who own the camp, and 14 years ago her brother Bear disappeared too, and was never found. The search for Barbara is told from multiple perspectives, as the deep, dark secrets of the Van Laar family are slowly revealed.
A Simple Favor by Darcey Bell
When single mum Stephanie, a widowed blogger, is asked by her wealthier friend Emily to pick up Emily’s son from school, she happily agrees. But then Emily goes missing, and Stephanie is embroiled in the race to find her, while also guarding secrets of her own. This is a story about the realities behind the illusion of wealth, and how so much of what we see online can be deceiving.
The Guest List by Lucy Foley
A celebrity wedding on a secluded island, with guests all harbouring secrets and grudges. What could possibly go wrong? Well, after the ceremony is suddenly plunged into darkness, there’s a scream, and by the time the lights come back on, somebody is dead. Foley’s page-turner skewers how wealth can breed resentment and tear friendships apart in this locked-room-style thriller.
None of this is True by Lisa Jewell
Alix Summer is leading a very comfortable life, as the host of a well-known podcast, with a family and home she loves, when on her 45th birthday she meets Josie Fair, her ‘birthday twin’. Soon after, Josie approaches Alix to do a podcast together, suggesting that Alix might find her story interesting. However, as Josie begins to reveal dark secrets on the podcast, she also begins to infiltrate Alix’s life, overstepping boundaries at every turn, and eventually moving in, until Alix isn’t sure what to make of the woman any more. And then Josie disappears – leaving Alix’s life in disarray and her family as the subject of their very own true crime podcast, in this absolute page-turner from the queen of family-driven suspense.
Sara Foster is a critically acclaimed, bestselling fiction author with a passion for contemporary psychological suspense and a keen interest in exploring zeitgeist issues and strong female characters in her nail-biting novels. Her work includes You Don’t Know Me, The Hidden Hours, All That is Lost Between Us, Shallow Breath, Beneath the Shadows and Come Back to Me. Sara sometimes likes to write across genres, and The Hush, a near-future dystopia, was created as part of her PhD thesis. Two of her books have been optioned for television. Sara lives in Western Australia with her husband and two young daughters.
