Best Thrillers of All Time

Gillian Flynn has made a name for herself with incredibly dark, twisting narratives centered on complex, seemingly unsympathetic female characters. With Gone Girl, Flynn brought readers deep inside a narrative hall of mirrors — a slow burn, noir-tinged maze built to keep the reader constantly off-balance.The story of Nick and Amy’s courtship, crumbling marriage, and Amy’s eventual disappearance is an extraordinary exercise in literary sleight-of-hand. It’s nearly impossible to put down until the final devastating page.

Published posthumously, Toni Cade Bambara’s final novel, Those Bones Are Not My Child, is described as her magnum opus by her editor and close friend Toni Morrison. Inspired by the tragic rampage of Atlanta serial killer Wayne Williams — who James Baldwin’s The Evidence of Things Not Seen also examines — Those Bones Are Not My Child unfolds with the disappearance of a twelve-year-old boy and his mother’s tireless search to find him. Throughout the pages of the novel, Bambara envelops readers into the mindset of a community turned upside down by violence and grief. From beginning to end, Bambara’s words simultaneously offer her audience a heartrending portrayal of a family altered by tragedy and an unflinching excavation of America’s past. As poignant as ever, Those Bones Are Not My Child is a compelling and urgent story about love, justice, and loss.

In one of the most disturbing opening scenes in literature, two men are thrown together as part of a makeshift rescue team when a little boy is carried off in a runaway hot air balloon. But things only get more disturbing from there, when Jed becomes obsessed with Joe, his fellow rescuer. Based on a true story, McEwan’s penchant for detail and flair for obsession makes Enduring Love a perverse reverse-love story.

While Carrie and Salem’s Lot introduced Stephen King as a writer to watch, The Shining firmly situated him as one of his generation’s preeminent voices in horror literature. The Shining was King’s first hardcover bestseller and it made him the household name he is today. King’s story of a troubled man’s slow descent into madness while serving as the winter caretaker of an isolated and haunted hotel makes The Shining a truly unsettling, unforgettable thriller.

Troubled marriages have always proven to be great fodder for psychological thrillers — Fiona Barton’s debut novel, The Widow, is a perfect illustration of this. When her husband was suspected of a twisted crime, Jean stood by him, filling the dark spaces of their marriage with the façade of being a dutiful and perfect wife. But now, with her husband dead, there’s no longer a reason to stay quiet about the secrets she’s held … and the lies she’s told herself.

Inspired in part by his experiences in the 1950s as an orderly in a mental health facility, Kesey’s novel left permanent scorch-marks on the American conscience, and as a result has been continually challenged in schools and libraries ever since. His anti-hero Randle McMurphy (played by Oscar-winner Jack Nicholson in the inevitable film adaptation) confronts institutional oppression head-on, and Kesey’s electric prose makes a strong case for the neglect of our inmate populations as a reflection on our society at large.

After over two decades in the trenches of sci-fi and horror fiction, Koontz earned his first hardcover bestseller with 1986’s Strangers, which revolves around a band of individuals who find themselves drawn to a motel in the Nevada desert from thousands of miles apart, united in an escalating sense of terror which manifests differently in each of them. This page-turner signifies the moment when Koontz announced himself to the mainstream as an indisputable authority on the art of building suspense.

Otessa Moshfegh’s chilling and award-winning novel is a somber yet mesmerizing successor to the works of literary titans like Shirley Jackson and Flannery O’Connor. At the end of the opening chapter, Moshfegh’s protagonist, who works as a counselor at a juvenile correctional facility for teen boys, reveals the conceit of the novel in an unnervingly straightforward way: “This is the story of how I disappeared.” Moshfegh’s prose possesses a similar directness, each sentence reaching for the jugular of its reader. Gritty, grim, and notably haunting, Eileen holds a mirror up to the darkness that exists inside of each of us and does so without apology. As beautiful as it is alarming, this novel is more than a thriller. It’s a meditation on humanity.

In Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train, the emotionally fraught Rachel Watson wrestles with her obsessive feelings for her ex-husband. As she tries to heal after their relationship dissolves, Rachel manages to sift through her thoughts and fears during her daily commute via train from Oxfordshire to London. Each day during the trek, the train passes the house she used to live in with her ex. In attempts to distract herself from the reality of their separation, Rachel shifts her attention to a home near her former home, occupied by a man and a woman who she imagines are happy and deeply in love. When the woman goes missing and her disappearance becomes fodder for the local tabloids, Rachel’s life is turned upside down. An exhilarating glimpse into one woman’s inability to cope with the past, The Girl on the Train articulates a distressing truth about violence and love.

On the heels of her twin sister Zelda’s death, Ava leaves Paris to return to her hometown in New York. As she helps her parents plan Zelda’s funeral, Ava starts to question the details surrounding her sister’s death, which only multiply when she starts getting emails and DMs from the supposedly deceased Zelda. As Ava’s strange correspondence with her sister continues, she discovers that her twin faked her death as an attempt to escape a mountain of debt that she accrued due to substance abuse. Armed with clues to where her sister might be, Ava embarks on a journey that will change her life. Caite Dolan-Leach’s striking debut is an unpredictable examination of sisterhood, secrets, and intimacy.

Published in 1938, Daphne du Maurier’s romantic thriller Rebecca has never gone out of print. A bestseller in its day and beyond, spawning a film adaptation by none other than the master of suspense himself, Alfred Hitchcock, Rebecca takes inspiration from one of the greatest novels in the English language, Jane Eyre. A nameless narrator has married a European playboy and moved into his vast manse. But she finds herself haunted by the memory of his dead wife, Rebecca, and her still very loyal servant, Mrs. Danvers.

When considering the thriller as literature, The Big Sleep should be one of your first destinations. Not only does it serve as the debut of hardboiled detective Philip Marlowe, it showcases Chandler’s ruthless economy with words, wringing the maximum amount of tension and atmosphere from the sparsest descriptions. The title (a euphemism for death) couldn’t be more misleading — once you begin, you’re barely going to blink until you’ve turned the last page.

John Le Carré’s spy classic Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is so complicated that most screen versions have failed to adequately adapt its complex plot. Through the winding narrative, Le Carré captures the essence of espionage and the futility of the work, even of war itself. Now considered one of the greatest spy thrillers ever written, even CIA agents, writing anonymously of course, called it “one of the most enduring renderings of the profession.”

In the Woods introduced readers to the detectives of the Dublin Murder Squad, as well as the nuanced and emotionally resonant thrills of Tana French. The story follows Detective Rob Ryan and his partner Cassie Maddox as they investigate a bizarre murder with disturbing similarities to a horrifying event from Ryan’s past. It is an atmospheric, ingenious, and unflinchingly bleak thriller that’s sure to keep readers guessing until the final reveal.

Conan Doyle had basically abandoned the character of Sherlock Holmes until his reappearance in The Hound of the Baskervilles, first serialized in 1902. The novel and Holmes himself were both so popular with readers that Conan Doyle was compelled to bring him back from the dead. The novel has spawned countless television, film, and radio adaptations, and even its own psychological term, the Baskerville effect: the belief that there is an increased number of deaths from cardiac arrest on days of the month considered to be unlucky.

The wrong-man thriller is a reliable source of narrative tension across a wide variety of storytelling mediums. In her 1963 novel The Expendable Man, Dorothy B. Hughes delivers an unnerving plot, following a doctor whose travels in the Southwest lead to involvement in a murder investigation. But Hughes also incorporates larger sociopolitical themes, turning a gripping story into a social indictment.

After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive—and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive. Chances are, though, he won’t have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old “human error” are much more likely to kill him first.

The book that inspired a million knuckle tattoos, Davis Grubb’s Southern Gothic thriller may or may not be a strange biblical allegory. A corrupted chaplain with a mysterious past provides hideous insight into the nature of evil while stalking his juvenile prey. Later adapted into a classic expressionist film starring Lillian Gish, shout outs to this story can be spotted in a handful of disparate movies ranging from “Rocky Horror” to Do “The Right Thing.”

A foundational text of noir literature, Cain’s classic story was adapted into the influential film of the same name, with the haughty Barbara Stanwyck taking the role of the book’s villainous vixen. The character Phyllis Nirdlinger (renamed Phyllis Dietrichson in the movie), who coerces an insurance agent into a deadly scheme, is emblematic of the femme fatale archetype so often seen in thrillers. But tragedy awaits anyone whose wishes are so wicked.

Chester Himes’s Harlem Detective series has proven to be a groundbreaking piece of hard-boiled noir fiction — and it all started with A Rage in Harlem. Set in a Harlem that at once feels larger-than-life and authentic, A Rage in Harlem introduces Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones to a rough and tumble world of grifters, prostitutes, and dangerous vendettas. It’s a landmark piece of crime fiction that put Chester Himes in the company of names like James Ellroy and Raymond Chandler.

In this tautly plotted thriller, Jean-Patrick Manchette tells the story of Aimée, a hired killer laying low in an idyllic small town. Manchette blends tense scenes of underworld life with satirical depictions of small-town mores. The result is an upending of familiar genre tropes, delivered in a potent distillation.

While Nordic noir existed long before the late Stieg Larsson introduced the world to a misanthropic hacker named Lisbeth Salander, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo brought the genre to an international audience in a way few others have. It is a bleak and labyrinthine exploration of a decades-old missing person’s case, long-held familial secrets, and the damaged psyche of one of the most fascinating heroines in recent memory.

You can chalk up this book’s historic success to the fact that it has something for truly everybody, staging an elaborate murder mystery at the exact point where religion, history, art, and conspiracy theories intersect, digging into cultural pressure points that remain sensitive to this day. The conversations regarding Brown’s research and creative license are just as intense, which makes reading this thriller something like an initiation into a secret society of truth-seekers, worthy of investigation by protagonist Robert Langdon himself.

Set in 1930s California, Amanda Quick’s bestseller The Other Lady Vanishes opens with Adelaide Blake’s search for a fresh start in a resort town frequented by Hollywood bigwigs after her escape from a sanitarium. Quick’s heroine lands a job at an herbal tea shop where she becomes accustomed to determining the truth that lies beneath the masks that her glitzy clientele habitually wear, including Madame Zolanda the celebrity psychic whose presence threatens to expose details from Adelaide’s past that she’d rather not revisit. An enchanting mystery infused with nostalgia and suspense, The Other Lady Vanishes is as fascinating as the historic era that it resurrects.

Green claims to have written Orient Express with the intent to get the book made into a film. Classified as an “entertainment” novel at the time (as opposed to more high-minded literature), the book’s tortuous narrative is not without intellectual or artistic merit. Following disparate passengers on an eponymous train trip, Green’s Depression-era anxieties are palpable on each page.

Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest has inspired numerous works since its publication in 1929, including films like Akira Kurosawa’s “Yojimbo” and Rian Johnson’s “Brick.” In telling the story of an investigator who pits two warring gangs against one another, Hammett ratcheted the detective novel up to another level, adding new layers of moral complexity.

Like the previous twenty-four novels in Sue Grafton’s acclaimed Alphabet/Kinsey Millhone series, Y is for Yesterday deftly and steadily ratchets up the tension through Grafton’s clever plotting and incisive character work. Y sees private investigator Kinsey Millhone embroiled in an unnerving mystery centered around a decade-old sexual assault and murder at an elite private school. Amidst this twisted drama, Millhone finds herself matching wits with a volatile sociopath who holds a longstanding grudge against the private eye. Unfortunately, Y is the last in the late Sue Grafton’s acclaimed and long-running series. It’s also one of her best.

Anyone who’s ever been to Vegas knows what a different world awaits once you step off the strip. Abani’s novel plays upon the reader’s dreams of the desert city, constantly shifting locations and perspectives to tell a sordid story about lives and histories spiraling far outside the mainstream, leaving investigators with a trail of horrifying murders to study. Those who prefer a revenge plot will find plenty to salivate over, but none of it would fly without Abani’s knack for convincing, utterly unusual characters.

Derek Raymond’s Factory novels, of which this is the first, offer a harrowing glimpse of police work and the psychological strain that the investigation of brutal crimes can have on those doing the investigating. Raymond creates an atmospheric, almost tactile sense of place here. It’s a memorably bleak take on the procedural.

The book that established wandering ex-military investigator Jack Reacher as a force to be reckoned with in the criminal underworld and spawned not one but three prequels (The Enemy, Night School, The Affair) has also cemented Child’s place among the genre’s great writers. Reacher makes for a bolder, more energetic protagonist than you’ll find elsewhere – “an unstoppable force,” according to his creator, which the body-count in Killing Floor seems to confirm.

Caleb Carr’s turn-of-the-century page-turner is one part historical fiction, one part grisly procedural, and all parts murder mystery thrills. With 19^th century New York City as its colorful backdrop, The Alienist introduced readers not only to the brilliant and driven psychologist Laszlo Kreizler, but also to a New York City populated with larger-than-life characters, seedy neighborhoods, and all manner of graft and vice. Throw in a brutal and well-constructed murder mystery and it’s not hard to see why this classic became an instant bestseller.

Tom Clancy has made himself synonymous with the tech-savvy military thriller. The Hunt for Red October is where it all started and remains one of his best. It laid the groundwork for much of Clancy’s later work, including the introduction of CIA analyst Jack Ryan. The novel is a well-hewn game of cat-and-mouse in which Jack Ryan tracks down a high-tech Soviet submarine and its crew of defectors. With The Hunt for Red October, Clancy cemented himself as a marquee thriller writer and proved he’s the best in the game.

Natsuo Kirino’s award-winning Out follows the intersecting lives of four women who work the night shift together at a factory in Tokyo where they assemble boxed lunches. The women become more than coworkers when Yayoi, the youngest of the four, seeks out their help after she murders her abusive, compulsive, gambler of a husband. Together the women cut up and dispose of Yayoi’s husband’s corpse, a gruesome act that seals their bond with each other. By covering up Yayoi’s crime, their bloodstained solidarity gradually turns the group into accidental vigilantes as they struggle to navigate life in a city dominated by the patriarchy’s grip. A literary predecessor of the #MeToo Movement and #TimesUp, Kirino’s Out is an ominous snapshot of trauma, vengeance, and survival.

What’s the statute of limitations on a lifelong romance? A doctor’s grief over his wife’s murder transforms into intrigue – and then obsession – once he stumbles across the possibility that she might still be alive, a revelation that may beckon him to his own doom. One good plot twist deserves another, and another, which could be why this remains the author’s bestselling book to date. In addition to his hefty literary career, Coben has also written two crime drama series or television.

The Shadow of the Wind incorporates a host of elements that could each sustain a thrilling read: a young man caught up in a conspiracy he barely understands, an investigation of a mysterious death decades later, and the horrific authoritarianism of Franco-era Spain. Here, all of them are interwoven with the history of a mysterious novel — one that obsesses some and drives others to murder.

John le Carré is truly in a class of his own. His densely-plotted spy fiction essentially reinvented the genre, largely due to le Carré’s own experiences working as spy and intelligence agent. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold launched le Carré’s career as an internationally bestselling author — and brought his intelligence career to an end. It also introduced readers to George Smiley, an unassuming and methodical man as far removed from the likes of James Bond as one could imagine. With its twisting narrative, duplicitous machinations, and devastating conclusion, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold remains the standard against which all other espionage fiction is measured.

Shirley and Coenraad’s affair has been going on for decades, but her longing for him is as desperate as ever. She is a Toronto housewife; he works for an international organization known only as the Agency. Their rendezvous take place in Tangier, in Hong Kong, in Rome and are arranged by an intricate code based on notes slipped into issues of National Geographic. He recognizes her by her costume: a respectable black dress and string of pearls; his appearance, however, is changeable. But something has happened, the code has been discovered, and Coenraad sends Shirley (who prefers to be known as “Lola Montez”) to Toronto, the last place she wants to go. There the trail leads her through the sites of her impoverished immigrant childhood and sends her, finally, to her own house, where she discards her pearls and trades in her basic black for a dress of vibrant multicolored silk.

Anne and Marco Conti seem to have it all—a loving relationship, a wonderful home, and their beautiful baby, Cora. But one night, when they are at a dinner party next door, a terrible crime is committed. Suspicion immediately lands on the parents. But the truth is a much more complicated story. Inside the curtained house, an unsettling account of what actually happened unfolds. Detective Rasbach knows that the panicked couple is hiding something. Both Anne and Marco soon discover that the other is keeping secrets, secrets they’ve kept for years.

A beautiful young woman’s corpse is found dumped in a garbage-strewn alley. Now laid out in the office of medical examiner Kat Novak is an unidentified body that betrays no secrets—except for a matchbook clutched in one stiff hand, seven numbers scrawled inside. When a second victim is discovered, Kat begins to fear that a serial killer is stalking the streets, using a deadly drug to do his dirty work. The police are skeptical. The mayor won’t listen. One of the town’s most prominent citizens, with a missing daughter of his own, is also Kat’s chief suspect. As the death toll rises, Kat races to expose a deadly predator who is close enough to touch her.

With searing prose and a collection of antiheroes who push at the limits of morality, James Ellroy’s take on detective fiction (including the Los Angeles Quartet) revolutionized the genre. In American Tabloid, he moved from the local scene to the national one, describing a series of interwoven conspiracies leading up to the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

An astonishing technique for recovering and cloning dinosaur DNA has been discovered. Now humankind’s most thrilling fantasies have come true. Creatures extinct for eons roam Jurassic Park with their awesome presence and profound mystery, and all the world can visit them—for a price. Until something goes wrong. . . . In Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton taps all his mesmerizing talent and scientific brilliance to create his most electrifying technothriller.

Toward the end of the Vietnam era, in a snug little Rhode Island seacoast town, wonderful powers have descended upon Alexandra, Jane, and Sukie, bewitching divorcées with sudden access to all that is female, fecund, and mysterious. Alexandra, a sculptor, summons thunderstorms; Jane, a cellist, floats on the air; and Sukie, the local gossip columnist, turns milk into cream. Their happy little coven takes on new, malignant life when a dark and moneyed stranger, Darryl Van Horne, refurbishes the long-derelict Lenox mansion and invites them in to play. Thenceforth scandal flits through the darkening, crooked streets of Eastwick—and through the even darker fantasies of the town’s collective psyche.

David Peace made a powerful first impression with this, the first novel in his Red Riding Quartet, which follows a host of corrupt police, sinister criminals, and haunted locals grappling with an interwoven array of crimes and conspiracies. Nineteen Seventy-Four follows a journalist investigating a murder, who gradually becomes convinced that there is more to it than meets the eye, setting in motion a series of unsettling events.

What separates a person’s altruism from their cruelty? Can our basest instincts be suppressed? Stevenson explores man’s depraved desires in his 1886 novel about a mad scientist who unlocks a diabolical alter ego after using himself as a test subject for an experimental psycho-pharmaceutical. Did Jekyll’s serum drive him insane or simply unlock the depravity he had been keeping at bay? And can he be stopped before it’s too late?

Perhaps best known for inciting a nationwide Halloween panic decades after its original publication, H.G. Wells’s taut novel traces a Martian invasion with almost uncanny verisimilitude. Presented as a factual account of events, Wells’s fictional story about an extraterrestrial attack would go on to inspire scores of sci-fi writers and real-life scientists for centuries to come. Meanwhile, the extreme violence of the aliens serves as both an existential parable for the uncaring cosmos and a cruel reminder of the inherent viciousness of war.

Feuding advertising executives set their nefarious sites on marketing prodigy and so-called “cool hunter” Cayce Pollard in this dystopian thriller. Written before the era of Instagram, Gibson’s dark predictions about the ubiquity of lifestyle branding were almost entirely realized with the invention of social media some years later. The impeccably precise fashions of the book even spawned a collaboration between the author and Buzz Rickson, bringing the protagonist’s signature look to life.

The young Walter Hartright is walking home one night in London when he’s accosted by a desperate woman in white. He realizes later one of the women in the family he befriends bears an eerie resemblance to the woman in white. Published in 1859, the book is considered by many scholars to be the first “mystery” novel ever written. While The Woman in White‘s epic case of mistaken identity makes it feel like something out of Shakespeare, the greedy machinations of its villains are undeniably modern.

Sarah Waters, author of cult classics Tipping the Velvet and Fingersmith, delves into the gothic Victorian ghost story with 2009’s The Little Stranger. After WWII, a doctor visits a decrepit old house inhabited by a similarly aged family who find themselves in dire straits, claiming the house is haunted. Diverting from her other work on the lesbian experience, The Little Stranger is a compelling thriller that at its heart, like all great ghost stories, is a fascinating allegory of a rapidly changing world.

The story behind the idea for Frankenstein is nearly as fascinating as the novel itself: Mary Shelley was said to have written it one stormy night after a dare from Lord Byron. While her finished product was undoubtedly terrifying, creating one of the most recognizable and beloved monsters in Western civilization, the themes about creation have more in common with the experience of motherhood than they do with playing God. Frankenstein is a deeply felt thriller that could have only been written by a woman familiar with the devastating and dangerous risks of creation.

No one on this book’s editorial team, not even Benchley himself, thought a novel about a killer shark would resonate with readers. Benchley was criticized for the lack of characterization when it came to the human characters, but readers praised the intense scenes featuring Jaws himself. The novel’s inclusion in the Book of the Month Club captured the attention of Steven Spielberg, who turned it into the seventh-highest-grossing film of all time. Years later, Benchley expressed guilt over giving sharks a bad name, insisted Jaws was fiction, and became a passionate marine life conservationist.

If you only know Dexter Morgan by way of Showtime’s acclaimed adaptation, this is the perfect time to get acquainted with Jeff Lindsay’s original vision for the sociopathic vigilante. While the first season of “Dexter” follows the events of Darkly Dreaming Dexter pretty closely, there’s a surreal and almost supernatural element to the novels — particularly in the later entries in the series — that add an entirely new and intriguing side to Dexter Morgan.