The Sunday Times columnist and bestselling author of the comic novel Mutton, India Knight, and Sunday Times book critic and author of the psychological suspense debut The Missing One, Lucy Atkins, discuss the new genre that has publishers in a frenzy.

There has been an explosion of psychological suspense novels in which home life – families, marriages, husbands, wives – implode dangerously. This year, Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn, one of the most talked about novels of 2013, becomes a Hollywood movie. A movie of S J Watson’s Before I Go To Sleep is also in production. And publishers are clamouring for more.

Knight and Atkins discuss why this so-called ‘domestic chiller’ genre (also known as ‘chick noir’) has become so popular. Why can we not get enough of books in which spouses turn out to be psychopaths, families become lethal, and nothing at home is as it seems? Is the name ‘chick noir’ belittling or accurate? Is this all a displaced fear of terrorism or a response to social media? Is this genre really new? The discussion will range from Jane Eyre and Rebecca to women’s and detective fiction, social media, and what it is like to be a writer faced with current literary trends.