Literary Thrillers with Slow Burn and Obsessive, You-and-Me-against-the-Rest-of-the-World

I yearn for slow burn descent of a pairing that grows codependent on and obsessed with one another, even to the point of descent to madness and murder, though, that’s optional, and a paring where other love interests are never pursued in a tender way, if you know what I mean. I really loved the Hannibal tv show for example, and chase this sensation of an intimate, intertwined pairing ever since. It doesn’t have to be like Hannibal, that’s why I didn’t put it in the title, I read the threads about recs for this already. I’m not bound to a genre. Psychological thriller would probably fit best, but I’ll read horror, mystery, and literary books as well. I like really dark themes, and have almost no triggers, and I don’t need a picture perfect happy end, and I take any pairing ff, fm, or mm, it doesn’t matter. For that I loved

“These Violent Delights” by Micah Nemerever,

“The Monster of Elendhaven” by Jennifer Giesbrecht,

“Two” (“Les Mauvais Anges”) by Éric Jourdan,

“Wuthering Heights” by Emily Brontë,

and adjacently “Heartsick” by Chelsea Cain and “Rebecca” by Daphne du Maurier.

I’m a great fan of vivid, witty prose, and love classical literature like Nabokov, Kafka, Brontë sisters, and so on. I also love niche novels, but it’s hard to find those I would like, so I hope you can help me. I’ve browsed the internet for hours, and have been utterly disappointed by the books I bought because of this. Dark Romance is often badly written and instant love, thrillers are often focussed more on thrill than the dynamic of a pairing, fantasy has often a big cast of characters with fillers I don’t care for, and horror is often more shock than substance.

For example I read

“The Picture of Dorian Grey” by Oscar Wilde, the prose I love, but it doesn’t really fit what I’m looking for,

“Exquisite Corpse” by Poppy Z. Brite, the prose was exquisite and the themes were dark, but one of the protagonists was more in awe with another character than the other protagonist, which I found repulsive,

“The Necrophiliac” by Gabrielle Wittkop, the prose is awesome and the themes dark, but it’s not about a pair,

“The Collector” by John Fowles was fine, and “Lolita” by Vladimir Nabokov has the best prose, but not the dynamic I’m looking for,

I was bored by “This Is How You Lose the Time War”, and I didn’t like “How Meat Loves Salt”, “Interview With The Vampire”, “Lemonade”, “The Charioteer”, and “The Talented Mr. Ripley” because they have couples that aren’t really devoted, and “Maurice” wasn’t really interesting.

Thank you in advance if you took he time to read this. 🙂

by Sense_and_Sentiment