Authors would sometimes pause the story to address the audience. If you’ve read much Victorian literature, you’ve come across “Dear Reader” comments.
Most modern fiction, especially crime fiction, is told from either a close third person or a first person point of view. When handled well, this creates a connection between you, the reader and the character. You may also feel a sense of immediacy.
Every once in a while, though, you’ll run across a story in which the author has used a second person point of view.
You don’t just read the story—you’re invited to step in and live it. That’s the promise of second person point of view. When a writer says you, they hand you the flashlight, the blood-stained note, the uneasy feeling that someone’s watching. You become the detective, the victim, the perpetrator. And in crime fiction, that shift can be electric.
You feel the tension more intimately. Every creaking floorboard, every lie you tell, every clue you miss—it’s yours. The second person doesn’t let you hide behind a character’s choices. You are the character. That immediacy can heighten suspense, blur morality, and make the reader complicit in the crime. You’re not just watching someone break into the house. You’re the one turning the knob.
This perspective can be very unsettling. Its use is not common, and that makes it all the more powerful. You’re thrown off balance. You question your instincts. In psychological thrillers, second person can mimic dissociation or guilt. You’re split from yourself, watching your own hands do something terrible. Or maybe an omniscient narrator is addressing you. Someone who tracks your every move.
It can be particularly effective with an unreliable narrator.
Sometimes only part of the story is told this way, toggling between mesmerizing scenes that grip your soul and others with less intensity.
In crime fiction, that’s the point. You’re not just solving the mystery. You’re tangled in it.
Have you read any of these examples of second person point of view?
Pears, known for An Instance of the Fingerpost, took a daring turn with The Portrait, a psychological thriller written entirely in second person. The narrator, Henry MacAlpine, is a self-exiled portrait painter. He invites an art critic and former friend to sit for a portrait, all the while plotting retribution for perceived wrongs.
Jay McInerney – Bright Lights, Big City
More of a phycological tale than a mystery, this novel follows an unnamed character for a week as his life
Michel Butor – La Modification
In this French classic, Léon Delmont, a middle-aged Parisian businessman, is on a train journey to tell his paramour he is leaving his wife and convince her to move to Paris to be with him. The entire story takes place on the train ride, while he struggles with this self-imposed dilemma. Translations to English are available under several different titles.
Caroline Kepnes – You
Joe Goldberg, owner of a New York City bookstore, becomesobsessed with Guinevere Beck when she comes into his store. His stalking and concentration on “you”—Guinevere, but by extension, the reader—is eerie and unsettling. Netflix made a movie based on this.
Are you ever tempted to try writing from the second person point of view?
