because the screeching bombshell twist happens like 1/3 of the way in and you have to read it all to get it.

There's something like that in Dorothy B. Hughes' The Expendable Man (1963) and it's one of the reasons I love the novel as deeply as I do; it's not exactly a twist, it's a reframing, and some audiences will catch it sooner than others, but it's central to the novel's entire project and I am pretty sure it renders the story unfilmable. Nothing that happens in the book makes any sense without it.