Given her grounding in realistic fiction and her fascination with the obsessed or disintegrating mind, it is quite in keeping with her work that Oates has chosen to write a series of thrillers. She wants these to be popular novels, thus she writes linear, suspenseful plots that build tension by slowly increasing the level of madness in the characters. Precedents for Oates's techniques include Edgar Allan Poe's madmen in stories like "The TellTale Heart" (1843), "The Black Cat" (1843), and "The Cask of Amontillado" (1846), and Henry James's invaded children in "The Turn of the Screw" (1898). Oates also draws on various religious and cultural beliefs in such images as twins, cats, and snakes and in concepts embodied in such abstractions as the nemesis and the soul.