The Silent Patient

Alicia Berenson's life looks perfect. A celebrated painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, she lives in a grand house overlooking a park in one of London's most desirable neighbourhoods. Then, one evening, her husband Gabriel returns home late and Alicia shoots him five times in the face — and from that moment never speaks another word.

Her refusal to explain, or even to talk, turns a domestic tragedy into a public sensation and hardens into an unsolvable mystery. Alicia is confined to the Grove, a secure forensic unit in North London, where she paints and stays silent. Theo Faber, a criminal psychotherapist who has been fascinated by her case for years, engineers a job at the unit and sets out to reach her, convinced that if he can only get Alicia to speak, he can uncover the truth of that night.

Told through Theo's obsessive investigation and Alicia's own private diary, Alex Michaelides's debut is a tautly plotted psychological thriller that draws on Greek tragedy and builds to one of the genre's most talked-about twists.