The Silent Patient

by Alex Michaelides

growing up on the island of Cyprus, I was used to extreme heat and knew how it affected people’s moods and their behavior. I feel there is a lot of passion as well as tension bubbling under the surface in The Silent Patient, and so I wanted to use the heat wave to emphasize that.

looking at the books on her shelf—and selecting And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie. I read it in a state of terror and panic and didn’t sleep all night. I was probably scarred for life—and all I wanted was more. The next summer at the beach, I read nothing but Agatha Christie—they were the first adult books I ever read—and I would devour one every couple of days, then go to the book shop at the hotel on the beach and buy a new one—and that summer, sitting by the sea, reading Agatha Christie, wriggling my toes in the sand, is among my happiest memories. Agatha Christie made me into a reader—and a writer. There is something about the structure of a whodunit—crime, investigation, and final twist—that is so satisfying to me, so beautiful. As P. D. James said, it brings order from disorder. I see it as a structure that can hold so much. I always knew I wanted to write a book—and it had to be that kind of book.