On Writing the Reread

A thriller designed to be reread is a different book from a thriller designed to be guessed.

A guessable thriller is built like a magic trick. The author plants enough that the alert reader can, in theory, work out the twist before page two hundred. The pleasure is the puzzle. The reread, if it happens, is mechanical: now you go back to see where the clues were.

A rereadable thriller is built like a photograph. The image looks like one thing on first glance. It looks like a different thing the second time you stand in front of it — not because new clues have appeared, but because the eye has learned where to look.

I am, increasingly, only interested in the second kind.

The first read

In a rereadable thriller, the first read should feel like the right book. The reader shouldn’t feel cheated when the twist arrives. They shouldn’t feel they’ve been kept in the dark. The first read should land as a complete, satisfying story — the version of events that the protagonist believed they were living through.

This is the hardest part. The temptation is always to wink. To let the alert reader know, by raised eyebrow, that the book is being clever. Don’t. The wink ruins the reread. If the first read is full of nudges, the second read has nothing to discover.

The second read

The second read is where the work pays off. The reader, now armed with the ending, sees:

• Lines that meant something the speaker didn’t know they were saying
• Smiles that were not, in retrospect, friendly
• A repeated detail (the lock on the back door, the way she folds her napkin) that the reader has been seeing since chapter two without seeing
• A character who has been telling the truth the whole time, just not in answer to the question the protagonist asked

None of those things are visible the first time. All of them are visible the second time. The second read is, in effect, a different book that was always there.

The trick

The trick is to plant the second-read material without flagging it. The reader on read one should feel exactly the right amount of tension — no more, no less. The line that is going to land like a brick on read two should land like, oh, that’s a nice detail on read one.

I do this by writing scenes twice. The first draft is the scene as it appears to the protagonist. The second pass is the scene with the ending in mind. The third pass is the scene rewritten so a reader on the first read still feels they are inside the protagonist’s head — but a reader on the second read has access to the other story.

It is a slow way to write a book. It is also the only way I know to write a book that rewards the reader who comes back.

That’s the contract. I want to write the kind of book a reader finishes on a Sunday night and starts again on a Monday morning. Designed to be read twice.