The missing woman has been a hallmark of the psychological suspense genre since Gillian Flynn typed ‘The End’ on the final draft of Gone Girl. In the ensuing 12 years, some of the biggest books in the genre have used the trope in innovating and twisty ways including Paula Hawkins (The Girl On the Train), Lisa Jewell (The Night She Disappeared), Liane Moriarty (Apples Never Fall), Megan Miranda (All the Missing Girls), Riley Sager (Lock Every Door), Mary Kubica (The Good Girl), and countless others.
As a Black American woman who’s a long-time crime fiction lover – domestic suspense is often at the top of my To Be Read pile – I was desperate to see characters who looked like me, my mom, sisters, aunts, nieces, and friends.
Though no one’s done a formal study on why Black women are literally missing from the suspense genre, I have my own theories. There’s the bigger issue of a glaring lack of diversity in publishing overall, but there’s also the issue of domestic suspense tropes. Elements like unreliable narrators are
