In the background there are dangers lurking and a sense of impending doom.

We have all the ingredients for a suspenseful and nuanced thriller, drawing you in through the thoughts of the therapist/patient combo of Theo and Alicia. Her last picture is titled Alcestis after the Ancient Greek story popularised by Euripides about another wife driven to silence by love. Then there’s Alicia’s symbolic and dramatic art. Michaelides also allows Alicia’s own voice to tell the story through a hidden diary, which throws up some interesting questions. He interviews Alicia’s friends and relatives – the brother-in-law solicitor, Max, who has a bit of a temper Alicia’s cousin Paul who still lives in the ramshackle house they grew up in with his monstrous mother and Alicia’s old friend and art curator, Jean-Felix, who like pretty much everyone else is holding something back. He is convinced he can help Alicia and manages to persuade his boss, the avuncular Dr Diomedes and Christian, Alicia’s surly psychologist, to reduce her meds and let him try.Īs well as tensions at The Grove, which is under threat of closure, not to mention volatile patients who do violent things, Theo gets into trouble by breaking rules. The story is told mostly through the voice of Theo, himself a survivor of a terrible childhood and for whom psychotherapy has changed his life. But because of her suicide attempts, Alicia is highly medicated at The Grove, doesn’t interact with other staff or patients, nor does she respond to any kind of therapy. If Theo can persuade Alicia to speak about the night her husband died, Alicia may begin to heal.

The media have made a lot of their story which has done heaps to push up the value of Gabriel’s work. Alicia is a former artist of some note who has remained unable to talk since supposedly murdering her husband, the famous photographer Gabriel Berenson. Theo Faber has recently taken a post at The Grove, a care facility for troubled minds and is particularly interested in one patient. The Silent Patientticks all the boxes, combining a troubled narrator who in this case is a psychotherapist, an even more troubled patient and the mystery surrounding the death of her husband. There’s nothing like a good psychological thriller to while away a wet weekend.

Alcestis the silent patient