The mystery of Freida McFadden, the brain injury doctor who became a bestselling author with 'The Housekeeper'

Like one of those superheroes with a dual identity, Freida McFadden (New York, 45) is, during the workday, a doctor specializing in brain injuries working in Boston, United States. She probably spends her free time writing, because outside the hospital, she's a bestselling author, the most popular writer in the psychological thriller genre , arousing passions and selling tons of copies. "She lives with her family and her black cat in a three-story, centuries-old house facing the sea," says the jacket of her books, and this is some of the little personal information known about her. With her stories full of intrigue and unexpected plot twists, this woman with glasses and bangs, so prolific (more than 20 books in 12 years), has sold more than 750,000 copies in Spain (just since 2023) and more than 20 million worldwide. She seems superglued to the best-seller list: she's always there. And, like a superhero, she's very protective of her secret identity.

Her best-known work is the series that begins with the novel The Housemaid , about a wealthy family, the Winchesters, who hire Millie as a live-in domestic worker: she cleans the house, picks up their daughter from school, and prepares delicious meals for the whole family before retreating to her small room to eat alone. All right... except that this housemaid has a mysterious criminal past. And the apparent perfection of the Winchesters' life is just a facade. And their room only locks from the outside. And from there... everything gets complicated.

The story that is thus presented is developed in The Assistant , The Assistant's Secret , The Assistant Watches You or The Assistant's Wedding , all of them published in Spain, since 2023, by Suma de Letras . What is the secret of her success? “McFadden writes in a simple but very effective way, her plots are disturbing and very fast-paced, they give the reader no respite and play with their expectations, taking them from one conclusion to the next. Just when you think you know the answers, a new twist blows them out of the water,” says Inés Vergara, literary director of International Commercial Fiction and Non-Fiction at the Penguin Random House group, to which Suma de Letras belongs. “ She is the queen of endings that blow your mind .”

Her novels currently occupy the second, third, eighth, nineteenth, and twentieth spots on Amazon's best-seller list in Spain. A film adaptation of The Housemaid , starring Amanda Seyfried and Sydney Sweeney , is in the works. And on July 10th, her new book, Never Lie , was published in Spain. It tells the story of a couple, Tricia and Ethan, who, in search of their dream home, find themselves immersed in a mystery in the remote mansion of a missing psychiatrist.

McFadden is a figure as mysterious as the plots of her novels: it's hard to find photos of her beyond those provided by the publisher (and in the ones the author does provide, she always seems to look and act the same). Her name isn't her real name: it's a pseudonym, because she wants to spare her patients the strange feeling of being treated by a best-selling author. “At work, I want to be a doctor. A lot of my books have medical aspects, and I don't want people to say, 'Is this based on me?'… I think it's unprofessional,” she told The New York Times in one of the few interviews she has given .

From 'amateur' to 'best-seller'

Writing at night for entertainment (she'd always wanted to write novels), she began self-publishing medical-related books based on her own work experience through Amazon in 2013. For example, The Devil Wears Scrubs , about a doctor who is exploited and humiliated by his supervisor. "I thought, maybe I'll publish this book, maybe a thousand people will buy it, and that will be the end of my story as an author," McFadden told The New York Times . "But that's not what happened."

She managed to stand out among thousands of anonymous aspirants to the literary world and claims to have earned 60% of her income through digital and audiobooks (to which she retains the rights, in a very advantageous contract). The phenomenon began in 2021 when the e-book publishing house Bookouture noticed her and commissioned her to publish her most famous novel to be sent through its newsletter .

And from there, the unexpected literary explosion began: traditional imprints within the Penguin Random House group, paperback editions, and a strong presence not only in bookstores but also in airports, train stations, and large retail stores, as befits this type of commercial, best-selling literature. McFadden's thrillers appeal to all types of readers, of all ages and profiles; they are accessible as well as exciting. And they leave them wanting more. "We're seeing that it's attracting a lot of young people , and people in general, who may not have deep-rooted reading habits, but have heard about The Housemaid and are curious," says Vergara. And they usually get hooked.

The daughter of a psychiatrist and a podiatrist, raised in Manhattan and a young reader of masters of suspense such as Mary Higgins Clark and Robin Cook , McFadden is the most followed author on the reader platform Goodreads, where her fan club has more than 3,200 members (they are nicknamed McFans ) who engage in lively conversations: they ask each other about their favorite book or character, they suggest their next read, and the most acerbic ones question whether the author copies other authors. The phenomenon also owes a lot to the social network TikTok, where thousands of people comment on the stories. “ The Housekeeper is the book of the moment and people don't want to be left without experiencing it for themselves and sharing their opinion,” says Vergara.

But McFadden suffers from a certain degree of social anxiety (perhaps due to the bullying she suffered as a child), which makes her avoid interviews and even presentations, talks, or public encounters—the literary life that so attracts other writers. Apparently, she doesn't need it. "I don't want to write War and Peace ," McFadden has said, "I'm just trying to entertain."