After graduating, she worked as a financial consultant at
PricewaterhouseCoopers, while writing in her free time. After two failed attempts at novels, Pessl began writing a third novel in 2001 about the relationship between a daughter and her controlling, charismatic father.
Kirkus Reviews called it "sharp, snappy fun for the literary-minded." Peter Dempsey writing for
the Guardian, despite giving it a mixed review overall, called it "a page-turning murder mystery with a gratifyingly complex plot, a dizzying
Usual Suspects-style narrative with nods to detective novelists conventional (
Agatha Christie) and unconventional (
Carlo Emilio Gadda). On a second reading, what appeared to be a high-school tale spatchcocked on to the story of an amateur detective is seen to be a ground-laying exercise of immense skill." Pessl's second novel,
Night Film, a psychological literary thriller about a New York
investigative journalist looking into the apparent suicide of the daughter of a renowned filmmaker ("a fictional mash-up of
Stanley Kubrick,
Roman Polanski and
David Lynch"), was published by
Random House on August 20, 2013. It was ranked sixth on
The New York Times Bestseller’s list following its release. Pessl's third novel,
Neverworld Wake, was released on June 5, 2018. It is described as a "psychological suspense novel with a sci-fi twist." It is set in
Watch Hill, Rhode Island. Pessl said in an interview, "I was working on my next adult novel, and I had this little germ of an idea about these five teenagers who used to be friends coming together in a sort of Agatha Christie-style, claustrophobic mansion type setting where they’re stuck. And at the time, I was very much interested in the brain and the consciousness and what’s real and what isn’t, so I definitely started going down this rabbit hole of trapping them and having them stuck in a way that went beyond anything Agatha Christie ever came up with." == Writing style ==