Thrillers are very popular, but there are many types of thrillers - legal thrillers, spy thrillers, detective thrillers, etc. If you read thrillers, what’s your favorite sub-genre, and who is the best author of that sub-genre, in your opinion?
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My favorite thriller authors are:
Heather Gudenkauf, Kimberly Belle, Mary Kubica, David Bell, and Kate White.
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Thanks, @Elizabeth - I’ll have to check those out, I’m not familiar with any of them.
Do they write in a specific genre, or are they just basic thrillers?
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This question made me realize I don’t make enough time for thrillers! I do enjoy the genre, but I can’t remember the last time I indulged in one. My husband enjoys medical thrillers (ala Robin Cook) and I’ll have to snag one of his in the near future.
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I enjoy the series by Louise Penny and William Kent Krueger.
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Most are domestic thrillers.
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Paula’s response brings up a good point. How do you decide what’s a thriller? I find it challenging sometimes, because I think mysteries and thrillers often overlap. When I think of the authors Paula mentions, I think more mystery - but that’s just me. What do you think separates the two genres?
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Thrillers are not my go to genre, however I do like reading a good thriller that keeps my attention.. I did enjoy reading the two book series -The Plot and The Sequel by Jean Hanff Korelitz.
My favorite from my last summer reads was Editorial License by Ellis Johnson M.D. While browsing on Amazon the cover drew my attention (you will understand if you see the cover) so I downloaded on my Kindle. The ending is a psycho thriller that really blew my mind. The plot includes the countryside and hills outside of Portland so you were with me while I read the book.
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Steve Cavanaugh is my go to
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Favorites of mine, too. I also like John Sandford. He writes mysteries/thrillers starting with one main character but has now two other spinoff series.
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Are “speculative thrillers” a thing? If yes, my favorites would be the Blake Crouch type, Dark Matter and Recursion. Two more in the same realm are Lexicon (so good!) by Matt Barry and Incredible, Legendary, and Obvious by Orest Stelmach.
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Yes, @Holly_Batsell, I do think speculative thrillers are a thing - and you just added a whole bunch of titles to my TBR list! LOL.
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Keep up the suggestions! I’m finding a lot of books here that I want to read (or listen too, as I think this genre works really well in audiobook format).
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I don’t generally search out thrillers, but I have found that I occasionally enjoy John Grisham’s legal thrillers and Robert Harris’ historical thrillers (WW2 and Ancient Rome).
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I favor crime thrillers and the author Don Winslow comes to mind. His newest book is “Final Score”.
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I really like this question! You made me step back and think beyond the main genre to reflect in more detail on what draws me to this genre time and again. Since it’s tough to narrow it down to just one sub-genre, I’ll list three: conspiracy, legal/political and psychological. Picking one author for each of these sub-genres is challenging, but one author I return to repeatedly is David Baldacci. Even though I’ve gotten a little behind on reading all of his books, I find each of his books keeps me guessing right up to the end. I’ve tried reading his books more slowly and taking notes to help me stay focused on figuring out “who done it” - but have yet to ever figure out who did it. My two absolute favorites are “The Lottery” (for his descriptions of one character’s ability to change his appearance like a chameleon) and then his more recent “Calamity of Souls” which is bit of a departure from many of his series, but none the less, an excellent thriller.
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I am so glad you mentioned William Kent Krueger. I just got one of his books out of the library finding “Ordinary Grace” mentioned on Book Browse (can’t recall whether it was through a read alike or as a trivia question). His style of writing and the character development in this book hooked me on page 1.
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For the last several years, I’ve just been using Book Browse’s drop down list as to whether a book is classified as a thriller. But, since you asked the question, my initial thought is that thrillers are so much more suspenseful, faster paced with (usually) higher stakes and often seem to have a lot more characters to throw the reader off track.
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I’ve always wondered how publishers distinguish between a “thriller” and a “mystery”. When I filter the local library e-book site for each term often the same titles appear. Kim, any insight from publishers or authors?
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I enjoy the Thrillers genre, mostly the Psychological, Mystery, Legal sub-genres in any order. Not into the sub-genres of Horror, Medical, Political (there’s enough in the news!). My favorite thrillers have lots of suspense with some believable twists from the beginning to the end that keep me turning pages to test my guesses about the characters and the plot.
A variety of my favorites:
Culpability by Bruce Holsinger
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
Mystic River by Dennis Lehane
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly
The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz
The Stand by Stephen King
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