5 Books That Influenced The Last One at the Wedding by Jason Rekulak

My latest thriller begins with a phone call: Frank hasn’t spoken to his estranged daughter Maggie in three years, but she rings out of the blue to announce she’s getting married – and better still, she wants her father to attend the wedding and meet her new in-laws.

Frank is overjoyed: Here at last is a chance to make amends with Maggie and start anew. But in the days leading up to the wedding ceremony, he makes an alarming discovery about Maggie’s fiancé, and he begins to worry that his daughter is making a terrible mistake.

Most of the story takes place over a three-day wedding weekend at a wealthy lakefront estate, where Frank (a delivery driver) feels very much of out of his element. To tell his story, I relied on a number of gothic suspense tropes, and I drew inspiration from plenty of novels, short stories, and films. Here are just five of them:

Waltz Into Darkness by Cornell Woolrich

Cornell Woolrich (1903–1968) is my favorite writer of classic suspense; he’s most famous for his short story “It Had to Be Murder”, which was adapted into the classic Alfred Hitchcock film Rear Window. But I much prefer this novel of a wealthy New Orleans coffee merchant named Louis Durand. The story is set in the 1880s, when it was common for men to seek eligible brides through newspaper advertisements. Louis begins an earnest correspondence with a young woman named Julia – and over a series of exchanged letters, they grow close and agree to marry. But when she finally arrives in New Orleans (on page 15, this book wastes no time getting started!), Julia is much more attractive than her photograph suggested. It’s just the first of many discrepancies, red flags, and warning signs – and soon Louis worries that his new bride might not be Julia at all. Somehow Cornell Woolrich (who published this book in 1943) managed to anticipate catfishing long before the invention of the internet. Or maybe catfishing has been around a lot longer than we realized, and we’ve simply created a new name for it.

Collected Stories by Roald Dahl

As a child, I loved Matilda and The BFG and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. But as a teenager, I discovered Dahl’s short stories for adults – macabre and darkly funny “tales of the unexpected” filled with adulterous spouses, vengeful lovers, murderous landladies, and other assorted sociopaths. Dahl’s most memorable protagonists often have unusual hobbies, occupations, or obsessions (everything from beekeeping and wine-tasting to rare book collecting) that inform their very singular points-of-view. I wanted something similar for my protagonist Frank, which may explain why he’s a 25-year veteran of the United Postal Service, proud of driving over one million miles without a single accident.

Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier

Of course this book needs no introduction. More than eighty years after publication it’s still being read and enjoyed by countless readers – and it’s probably inspired nearly as many novelists. Rebecca is the template for every gothic suspense novel about an emotionally vulnerable person who finds themselves in a mysterious environment where sinister behavior may or may not have occurred, surrounded by strangers and filled with self-doubt. There’s certainly plenty of Manderley in Osprey Cove, the grand lakefront estate where my novel’s wedding takes place.

Bag of Bones by Stephen King

It’s clear that Stephen King admires Rebecca, too – Bag of Bones is filled with references to the Daphne Du Maurier novel, but it’s a wonderful gothic romance in its own right. The story is set in a Maine lakehouse where all kinds of sinister things occur. There are ghostly messages in the refrigerator magnets, sounds of weeping in the attic, specters wrapped in gauzy shrouds, and a mad billionaire confined to a wheelchair (all before the second half of the book, where even stranger things occur). Above all, I think Bag of Bones has a wonderful sense of place. It’s the kind of book I want to live inside, if you know what I mean – but I suppose writing my own lakehouse story was the next best thing.

“Aren’t You Happy for Me?” by Richard Bausch

I may be cheating the assignment because this last one is a short story, not a novel. But it probably influenced The Last One at the Wedding more than anything else on this list. I first came across this story in 1994 and it’s one of my all-time favorites – the story of a father who answers a phone call from his daughter and learns that she’s engaged to a man who . . . well, I don’t want to spoil the rest.  It’s short, mostly dialogue, incredibly suspenseful, riotously funny, and ends with a stunning moment of clarity. You can find copies online (just Google it) but I highly recommend the short story collection of the same title. Every time I re-read it, I find myself wishing the story was longer, that Bausch had expanded the story into a novel that tracked the characters through the engagement to the wedding ceremony. And perhaps this wish inspired me to tell a wedding story of my design.