A storyteller whose account can't be fully trusted - through bias, deception, naivety, or limited knowledge.
An unreliable narrator tells the story slant: they lie, misremember, self-deceive, or simply lack the vantage to see the whole truth. The gap between what they report and what actually happened becomes its own suspense, and the reader learns to read around them for the real picture.
It demands control. The narration has to leak the truth through details the narrator discounts, so the reveal feels earned rather than sprung. A first-person or close point of view is the technique's natural home, since distance from the character is exactly what's missing.
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