Lisa Jewell on literary bunny-boilers Ever since Single White Female, the 1990 novel which was turned into a supremely scary film, the idea of a seemingly normal woman who will stop at nothing to get what she wants has become an abiding literary trope. There's something uniquely unsettling about the unhinged woman on a single-minded mission. Especially when she's the last person you ever imagined to harbour a dark and seething soul. For example, Suzy in Louise Millar's The Playdate (2012) is the type of super-organised yummy mummy everyone recognises. Who could be more trustworthy? What dark secrets could she possibly be concealing? And bland, workaday Frances in Alys, Always (2012) by Harriet Lane, who passes unseen through the peripheries of the life she'd like to be living until a chance meeting with a powerful man who's just lost his wife. And solid, dependable Barbara, Sheba Hart's shoulder to cry on in Zoë Heller's Notes on a Scandal (2003). Why would a kind-hearted woman like her devastate her friend's life? And what about that nice woman you walked blithely into an affair with, who descends to insanity when you try to extricate yourself, like Sally in the twisted The Mistress's Revenge (2011) by Tamar Cohen. But my favourite creepy woman has to be Sylvie, the slight, almost invisible wreaker of discord and disaster in Sleep With Me (2005) by Joanna Briscoe. She comes from nowhere and inserts herself insidiously and destructively between the perfect couple she meets at a dinner party. Sometimes the mice have all the power.