There are phenomena that escape you at first glance. We saw this summer, with a distracted eye, that The Housekeeper (I read) by a certain Freida McFadden triumphed in the Edistat bestseller charts, all genres and formats combined. But when the three titles of this mini-series were comfortably installed there this fall, the first two in hand, the third, The cleaning lady sees everythingat City Editions, its independent large format publisher, we ended up wondering and investigating this unknown woman from across the Atlantic. Who had the honors of New York Timesin June 2024, deciphering the epic tale of this 44-year-old woman, with this title “How a Boston doctor conquered the thriller genre” – after a decade of self-publishing, this brain injury specialist and mother is currently the best-selling thriller author in the United States, beating James Patterson, David Baldacci and John Grisham! So much so that McFadden’s insatiable readers call themselves “McFans.”
His register? Your choice: psychological suspense or domestic thriller. In France too, the sauce has taken hold. Commentary from Hélène Fiamma, the boss of J’ai lu, and Anne Maizeret, the publisher who rushed to buy the rights from the “discoverer”, Frédéric Thibaut at City Editions. “It’s very good popular literature with brilliant narrative mechanisms, like the woman who takes revenge on her torturer by using the same means as him. It’s the revenge of the weak on the well-off. The younger generations, few readers of thrillers, members, which greatly widens the circle.”
Upon reading, we agree. Despite some lengths and repetitions, The Housekeeper holds up. Thanks, in particular, to the cheekiness of its heroine, Millie, just released from ten years in prison and hired for her greatest (ephemeral) happiness in a beautiful residence on Long Island. Very quickly, Mrs. Winchester, the lady of the house, becomes scathing while Andrews, her handsome husband and rich businessman, tries to smooth things over. Obviously, the roles could be reversed… Intriguing title, clever cover (an eye in a lock), poster campaign in stations with the slogan “We read it in 2 hours. And you?”… fuel the phenomenon.
Result: after a promising start, 30 to 40,000 copies in the first months, sales of The Housekeeperpublished in paperback in October 2023, have continued to progress to exceed nearly 500,000 copies these days, while the second part, Secrets of the housekeeperflies away with more than 200,000 copies less than two months after publication and that the third, released at the same time by City, reached nearly 40,000 – we hadn’t seen such a hit since 2015 and The Girl on the Trainby Paula Hawkins. When we learn that The Housekeeper is going to be adapted for the cinema and that the lady has written 23 novels, we understand that Dr McFadden is not about to disappear from the publishing landscape.