BEDSIDE MANNA

Millions of 'McFans' keep Freida McFadden's books on the bestseller list, and her novel 'The Housemaid' has become a hit movie. Annabel Nugent on a (formerly) medical marvel

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Have you read the one about the doctor with a double life writing globally bestselling thrillers? The twists of Freida McFadden’s career are not unlike the jaw-dropping plots of the novels she writes, novels that have crowned her the new queen of the literary thriller. The fact that McFadden is a pseudonym only adds to the intrigue. “I have no interest in being famous,” she told The Times this week.

McFadden, bespectacled with an angular bob, accounts for four of the five bestselling novels on Amazon, with four more of her titles listed in the retailer’s top 50. Her grip on the ebook world is equally vice-like - she wrote no fewer than 10 of Kindle’s 50 most popular titles. Exact figures are hard to come by, but she is reckoned to have sold more than 36 million copies worldwide. It helps that she’s so prolific, having penned a total of 27 novels in the past 13 years, including the newly published Dear Debbie, a wild ride that chronicles one woman’s transformation from a kind, caring agony aunt columnist into a vengeful mastermind.

The Freida McFadden supremacy is not a new development in the book world - household names like John Grisham and James Patterson have found themselves pipped to the post in recent years by the author - but the hugely successful adaptation of her 2022 novel The Housemaid has turned up the spotlight significantly. And beyond the star power helping to propel its popularity (Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried), it’s easy to see why the film raked in $300m (£218m).