The Best Thrillers of All Time

Ready for your hair to stand on end -- while reading a book? They're just as good as the movie, maybe better as you nurse them over a three night span. Makes bedtime  much more pleasant. You read until you really want to sleep. These books below are all at your local library or online used, at ABEBOOKS.com  (how to order, my secret cheapie method) Check out this list of these 10 great thriller genres, and their titles and you can google for more titles. Or go to abes which has a dynamite search engine that dwarfs all other book stores.

What makes a thriller thrilling? Nonstop action, precarious situations,
hair-raising suspense, and heroic characters all exemplify the best
thrillers on the market. But how can you be sure the book you choose is
electrifying, not exasperating? Just consult the book editors at Reader's
Digest Select Editions who've spent 50 years finding the best, most
satisfying stories that will race your heart and grip your imagination
while you turn the pages. "People always ask us what are really the best
books out there," says Laura Kelly, editor-in-chief of Select Editions.
"They know we're simply looking for well-told stories and won't be fooled
by all the hype around certain books and authors."

They're organized by 10 popular thriller categories.

1. The Spy Thriller
The Spy Who Came In from the Cold by John le Carré (1963) is the
quintessential espionage thriller. Set during the Cold War, this rich tale
still captivates with its spellbinding portrayal of the world of secret
agents. And don't miss The Avenger by Frederick Forsyth (2003) the 21st
century's top spy pulse-pounder, by the author of The Day of the Jackal.

2. The Techno Thriller
Gadgets, gadgets and more gadgets. Ian Fleming started it all with James
Bond and his arsenal of clever, useful gadgets, some not so far-fetched
anymore. The best Bond book? From Russia with Love (1957). Get to know the
real Bond, not Sean, Roger, Timothy or Pierce, by imbibing him on the
printed page. For a more recent techno thriller, The Blue Nowhere by
Jeffery Deaver (2001) stimulates the imagination with its truly surprising
twists and turns, and a fascinating computer-based plot.

3. The Classic Thriller
The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells (1898) was one of the world's
pioneering thrillers, introducing this genre, unknown at the time, to
worldwide acclaim. And the story is still alive and well today. We agree:
Tom Cruise is cute, but treat yourself to the real deal and snatch up the
book. For a more recent classic thriller, try Whiteout by Ken Follett
(2004), the latest gem by the author of Eye of the Needle. It's the
chilling story of what happens when biological weapons fall into the wrong
hands, and the blizzard that builds over the course of the book will cool
you right off at the beach. (Visit www.selecteditions.com for excerpts from
Whiteout and info on Ken Follett.)

4. The Psychological Suspense Thriller
If you get your adrenaline rush from mind games rather than chase scenes,
psychological suspense is for you. For sheer creepiness and terror, nothing
beats The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris (1988). More recently,
Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane (2003), will not only scare you silly but
fool you as well. Just try to guess the ending. Our one admonition: Don't
read these books home alone at night!

5. The Legal Thriller
Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow (1987) features terrific characters, a
deftly executed plot, and fascinating legal insight, making it the
definitive legal thriller. And for an exciting new author, don't miss In
the Shadow of the Law by Kermit Roosevelt (2005), a firecracker of a debut
by a former clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter.
The Firm by John Grisham is a page turner.

6. The Medical Thriller
Medical paperwork these days is pretty terrifying, but you can get true
terror in these two great medical thrillers. Read Coma by Robin Cook
(1977), the unforgettable saga of patients who check into the hospital for
"minor" surgery and never wake up. For the strong of stomach, The Surgeon
by Tess Gerritsen (2001) is gruesomely chilling and addictively
page-turning.

7. The Sci-Fi Thriller
Sure he's done dinosaurs and television emergency rooms, but Michael
Crichton's first novel, The Andromeda Strain (1969), still ranks as one of
the top science fiction thrillers of all time. What could be scarier than
microscopic killer germs run amok? Representing the larger end of the
weird-creature spectrum, Mammoth by John Varley (2005) imaginatively spins
a yarn starring a billionaire, a brilliant nerd, and a gifted animal
wrangler whose newest charge happens to be a woolly mammoth.

8. The Military or Wartime Thriller
You've seen the movie, but don't miss the book. The Great Escape by Paul
Brickhill (1950) is even more captivating on paper, with perhaps the most
hair-raising POW escape scene ever written. Remembering tha t this novel is
based on a true story renders it doubly nerve-racking. For contemporary
military thrillers, nothing beats the Jack Reacher series by Lee Child. Try
the first Reacher novel, Killing Floor (1997) or Child's latest bestseller,
One Shot (2005). Or, for that matter, pick up any riveting Reacher book in
between. Stephen Hunter's "MASTER SNIPER" works.1978's Eye of the Needle.,
the best novel ever from Key to Rebecca author Ken Follet. Jackdaws, another..

9. The True-Crime Thriller
Yes, real life can be stranger than fiction, and true-crime thrillers prove
this. The most famous book in this nonfiction genre is Truman Capote's In
Cold Blood (1966). The author spent months in the Midwest painstakingly
retracing the steps of two young rural killers -- and then wrote about it
chillingly. Another excellent and more recent true-crime book is Green
River, Running Red by Ann Rule (2004), the true story of the notorious
Green River serial killer who terrorized the Seattle area for decades.

10. The Action/Adventure Thriller
Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors by Piers Paul Read (1974) set the
gold standard for heroic survival stories, with this true tale of a
Uruguayan rugby team whose plane crashes, resulting in an incredible
10-week physical and emotional ordeal. Changing altitudes from mountains to
the ocean floor, Shadow Divers, the hit 2005 book by Robert Kurson,
re-enacts the story of an extraordinary deep-sea discovery and adventure.

You can see why thrillers have always been one of the most popular modern
reading genres, with dozens of them dominating the bestseller lists each
year. "Thrillers stand alone for their sheer page-turning quotient," says
editor Kelly. "Once you've been in the grip of a good thriller you can't
wait for your next thriller fix."
~^~^~^~^~^~
This next reviewer http://www.objectivistcenter.org/ct-1894-Top_thrill.aspx
caught some of my favorite authors, robert parker, Lee Child, Robert Crais.
Read 'HOSTAGE" it's a thriller. And he listed a few others I didn't know about
or had read years ago like Fleming and forgotten.

Nelson DeMille (www.nelsondemille.net).Here’s another thriller veteran who
for years has served up big, well-researched, solidly character-driven
novels with clever plots and plenty of action. DeMille’s stories have
ranged from The General’s Daughter, a cunning murder mystery in a military
setting, to The Charm School, a Cold War spy thriller, to Plum Island, a
story of deadly intrigue set on Long Island.

Plum Island is written in first person from the point of view of NYPD
homicide cop John Corey, another wise-cracking maverick who’s so appealing
that he’s broken out to become an ongoing series character. Corey is
crusty, independent, very smart, and very funny. His best adventure to date
was The Lion’s Game, a chilling novel about terrorism published in
2000—made especially scary because DeMille was stunningly prescient about
the kind of terrorist attacks that were to come in New York only a year
later.

Strictly in terms of literary quality, DeMille shines. The Lion’s Game, for
instance, alternates in viewpoint from that of Corey, presented in the
first person, to that of the terrorist, narrated in the third person. It’s
extremely difficult to write that way without distracting the reader. For
example, Robert Crais has employed the same device in several recent novels
and I don’t think he’s been entirely successful. But DeMille somehow makes
it work without calling too much attention to itself.

The man is a master, well worth your time.

Jack Higgins. That’s the pen name for Harry Patterson, an Irish-born writer
who also published under the pen names James Graham, Hugh Marlowe, and
Martin Fallon. A prolific writer for more than four decades, Higgins crafts
engrossing, suspenseful plots with great heroes and villains characterized
by a devil-may-care gallantry in action. Years back, he and I corresponded
a few times, and he explained the core of his appeal: “The Higgins hero
will always go back for the girl.”

You always feel a sense of nobility and grandeur in Jack Higgins’s
protagonists. Even many of his bad guys aren’t all bad: even some of his
professional assassins, IRA terrorists, and Nazi officers frequently reveal
a redemptive sense of honor.

Unlike most of the other novelists I’ve mentioned, Higgins has a style that
is much more impressionistic—spare and stripped down to strong nouns and
verbs, providing characterization and local color in a few bold, broad
strokes of the pen. (Literally: he still writes long-hand.) But his plots
are strong, fast-moving, and dramatic.

Among the best of his scores of books: The Eagle Has Landed (his
breakthrough novel), A Game for Heroes (my personal favorite), Solo, The
Run to Morning, East of Desolation, The Khufra Run, The Savage Day, Night
of the Fox, and the haunting A Prayer for the Dying. These are mostly older
titles; the books he’s written during the past decade or two are often
disappointingly derivative, with recycled ideas and even character names.
But at his best, Jack Higgins is a wonderful thriller writer.

John Clarkson. Here’s a thriller author that almost nobody knows about, and
I’m delighted to bring him to your attention, for he’s become one of my
favorites. Clarkson’s first novel, And Justice for O­ne, introduced Jack
Devlin, an action hero best described as a cross between Mickey Spillane’s
Mike Hammer and Lee Child’s Jack Reacher. It’s a brutal, violent tale of
revenge that stays with you a long time. And you’ll love Devlin.

Clarkson followed this with One Man’s Law, a Devlin novel almost as good as
the first, then One Way Out, which for me was a disappointment. But try the
first o­ne, and I’ll bet you want more. Clarkson also has written a couple
of other thrillers in recent years without Devlin as the hero. A
fascinating, gripping, and totally unconventional one is Reed’s Promise, a
mystery thriller whose tough-guy hero is an amputee. Improbable? Clarkson
pulls it off brilliantly, offering a remarkably fresh and rich character
study along with plenty of thrills.

Matt Reilly. (www.matthewreilly.com) This young Australian is a recent
discovery for me, and I’ve only sampled a few of his books—but I’m sold on
reading the rest.

Reilly is a brilliant storyteller whose strengths are larger-than-life
heroes; furious, headlong action scenes; ingenious plot premises; and
exotic settings, authentically rendered by means of exhaustive research.
His weaknesses are a certain crudeness in writing style and superficiality
in characterization; but he propels his stories along at such a breathless
rush that you won’t even care.

So far, I like best his novels featuring an indomitable, Joe Pike–like
Recon Marine (sunglasses and all) named Scott “Scarecrow” Schofield. Reilly
introduced him in the white-knuckle Ice Station and continues his exploits
in Area 7 and Scarecrow.

Wilbur Smith. For decades, Smith has been a master craftsman of macho
adventure. Best known for several long series of sprawling,
multigenerational historical adventures set in his native South Africa,
he’s also penned some fine contemporary action masterpieces.

A memorable story set in the early days of international terrorism was The
Delta Decision (also titled Wild Justice), a tale so suspenseful that I
defy anyone to put it down during the first hundred pages. My personal
favorite, however, is Hungry As the Sea, which, though not a shoot-’em-up
sort of thriller, has o­ne of the best heroes and some of the most exciting
action sequences you’ll ever read, packed into a rich, romantic story.
You’ll love its sense of life.

David Morrell. A fine contemporary thriller writer, whose First Blood gave
our culture the immortal Rambo, Morrell handles characterization very well
and creates dazzling action scenes. I’m especially a fan of his earlier
works: The Brotherhood of the Rose, The Fraternity of the Stone, and The
League of Night and Fog. However, some of his stories are tinged with
downbeat, even cynical tones. Let the buyer beware.

Vintage Thriller Writers --Today’s first-rank action authors stood on the shoulders of giants. If
you’re not familiar with the great thriller masters of the past, I urge you
to go online and haunt second-hand paperback shops to rediscover the
brilliant work of the following writers from decades past.

Alistair MacLean. In 1955, this late Scottish writer made his memorable
debut with a classic wartime naval adventure, H.M.S. Ulysses. Before long,
Alistair MacLean set the standard for modern thriller writing. He was the
pioneer of heroic, man’s-man action stores, and he’s been a seminal
influence on countless other authors. MacLean’s justly famous
titles—especially his earlier ones—remain as compelling and entertaining as
when first published. You just can’t go wrong with The Guns of Navarone,
Where Eagles Dare, Ice Station Zebra, The Golden Rendezvous, When Eight
Bells Toll, and Night Without End. And if you’ve seen some of the exciting
film versions of these, let me assure you: the books are even better.

Desmond Bagley. Another terrific Brit thriller author, Bagley was a lot
like Maclean in style, but with plenty of intrigue. Running Blind, The
Golden Keel, and The Spoilers are among his best.

Mickey Spillane. Yeah. The Mick. Founding Father of hardboiled, private-eye
thrillers. Punchy dialogue. Scenes that whiz by like tracer bullets.
Vintage, mid-twentieth-century male chauvinism that will make you laugh ...
alas, nostalgically.

Mickey’s break-the-mold, tough-guy hero, Mike Hammer, became a cultural
icon in the late ’40s and early ’50s. And you’ll see why if you pick up the
first in the series, I, The Jury. Mystery. Beautiful, voluptuous dames. A
shocker ending that will blow you away. And a two-fisted hero who’s often
imitated but rarely equaled in modern fiction.

The first half dozen or so of the Hammer stories were all very good, with
One Lonely Night being perhaps the very best. A word to the wise, though:
Mike Hammer has never been properly rendered on-screen, see? So hey, pal,
don’t let those cheesy TV and film versions stop you from giving Mike a
fair shot.

Donald Hamilton. I urge you to sample this author’s “Matt Helm” series.
Like Mike Hammer, Matt Helm, a ’60s-era spy hero, has been vandalized and
satirized on the big and small screen. In the novels, he’s a mature,
tough-as-nails agent as far removed from the persona of bon vivante Dean
Martin as is Uma Thurman from Rosie O’Donnell. The first novel in the
series, Death of a Citizen, remains one of the finest, most gripping spy
thrillers you’ll ever read, and I’m confident it will hook you o­n Helm.
Incidentally, author Hamilton is a gun expert and even penned a volume On
Guns and Hunting, so the gunplay described in the novels bears the stamp of
authenticity.

Ian Fleming. What can I say about the creator of James Bond that hasn’t
already been said? No list of thriller authors would be complete without
him. Plotting was not Fleming’s strongest suit, but his delightfully
original characters, led by 007, have rightly become immortal in our
culture. I was delighted when the impressive new adaptation of Casino
Royale, the first Bond story, made it to the screen last year, giving the
film franchise a new lease on life, and perhaps bringing new readers to
this classic series.

Single Novels - Let me conclude with a few recommendations of stand-alone thrillers that
merit your attention.

One of the finest tales of international intrigue I’ve ever read was The
Red Fox, the debut novel of Canadian novelist Anthony Hyde. I liked Tom
Clancy’s Without Remorse, but I confess I haven’t yet gotten into Clancy
that much. Though I find Clive Cussler a crude writer, I enjoyed his Raise
the Titanic! more than hero Dirk Pitt’s subsequent adventures. Mystery
writer Dick Francis writes a lot like Jack Higgins, tight and lean; a
standout in my memory was his early thriller Nerve. I also enjoyed early
Ken Follett novels, especially The Eye of the Needle and The Key to
Rebecca.

Okay, I’ve given you enough reading assignments for many years of armchair
thrills. I don’t pretend that this list of great thrillers is exhaustive.
How could it be? Who could keep up with all the new entries? The good news
is that as long as the human spirit craves adventure, self-assertion, and
romance, fresh new talents skilled in the art of storytelling will always
come along to try to satisfy those appetites.

I say “try,” because I know that they’ll never quench my own thirst for
thrilling stories of man at his best.

~^~^~^~^~

Alan Furst is fascinated by the heroism of ordinary people. The world of
his historical spy novels, which take place in Europe between 1933 and
1943, is one in which a hedonistic French film producer wakes up one
morning to find that the Nazis have taken control of his beloved Paris.
Soon he is reduced to penury, living in a cheap hotel room under a false
name, almost as afraid of the concierge as he is of the Gestapo.
Eventually, he joins the resistance. And so it goes with many other Furst
protagonists. It is a world in which poets become spies, strangers become
lovers, and everybody's life is turned upside down.

Mr. Furst loves that world, and the people in it. He believes that novels
must be about human values and a threat to human values, and the Europe of
the 1930s and 1940s was rich in both. It was ravishingly beautiful, yet
filled with poison. The summit of civilization, and its nadir, too. Mr.
Furst feels lucky to be writing about it.

"How do you write about the present?" he asks. "Somebody gets up in the
morning and looks at their e-mail?"

On the afternoon I met him, Mr. Furst had just made the three-hour journey
into New York from his home in Sag Harbor, Long Island, where he lives with
his wife, Karen, a landscape architect. He was preparing for a reading at
an uptown Barnes & Noble. "You have to campaign a novel now," he said.
"It's show business."

Dressed in a blue shirt and khaki pants, Mr. Furst, 63, looked fit and
energetic, eager to engage with the world. He has dark, intensely
expressive eyes, and a quick, impassioned manner. On the mostly bald crown
of his head, strands of black hair still do valiant battle. Sitting in his
hotel room, smoking a cigarette, he might almost have been one of his own
mittel European characters. Only it was an expensive hotel, the pack of
cigarettes was full, and no one was waiting to arrest him outside.

Mr. Furst's latest novel, "Dark Voyage," takes place in 1941 aboard a Dutch
tramp freighter whose captain, Eric DeHaan, is called upon to perform
clandestine service for the British in the war against Germany. It begins
in Tangier - "A white city, and steep; alleys, souks, and cafes, their
patrons gathering for love and business as the light faded away" - and
ends, thousands of miles later, in Finland. Between those two points, we
see how even the most peripheral and seemingly minor of missions, carried
out in this case by a multinational crew that includes an Egyptian radio
man and a dissident female Soviet journalist, contributed to the overall
Allied victory.
 

VINCE FLYNN (www.vinceflynn.com). Thrillers tend to follow the
preoccupations of the times, and the world after 9/11 has provided new
fears for action-oriented authors to confront. Perhaps the most successful
of these authors is Vince Flynn.

Flynn launched his literary career pre-9/11 with the outstanding debut
novel Term Limits, a violent tale of high-level political and military
skullduggery. He followed up in 1999 with the sensational Transfer of
Power—a frighteningly plausible page-turner that has a group of Middle
Eastern terrorists take over the White House. In that novel, Flynn
introduced an iconic hero for the Age of Terrorism, CIA
agent-extraordinaire Mitch Rapp.

Rapp is a one-man army, America’s secret weapon in the fight against
terrorists. After his debut, his adventures continued in a rapid-fire burst
of stories filled with furious action, political intrigue, and
astonishingly realistic “insider” knowledge of government agencies,
operations, and machinations—a level of detail that easily rivals that of
Tom Clancy. Flynn seems to have the blueprints for every top-secret
building in Washington, from the White House to the Pentagon to the
CIA—plus private access to their security cameras and microphones. His
depictions of Secret Service procedures, Special Forces operations, CIA
interrogations, and the arcane tradecraft of counterterrorism give you the
sense you’re peeking into keyholes in the corridors of power. Clearly, this
man has cultivated sources.

To his impressive research, Flynn adds excellent characterizations, good
dialogue, and fascinating intrigue. But the glue holding the series
together is the character of Mitch Rapp. Flynn’s values and politics are
emphatically right-of-center, so it’s no surprise that Rapp is a
hot-tempered, unapologetic American patriot. To save his country from its
enemies, he plows ahead with the unrelenting force of a bulldozer,
demolishing every obstacle and opponent in his path. You find yourself
wanting to jump up and cheer.

In every novel, his enemies include cowards and traitors at the highest
levels of American politics and media—people whose leftist ideology or
venal ambitions prompt them to sell out their nation’s security. But
there’s also a regular cast of supportive good guys: former SEAL team pals;
dedicated agents of the White House Secret Service detail; and the female
head of the CIA—Rapp’s boss, mentor, and protector, who accepts his
outrageous violations of rules and laws with stoic patience and boundless
loyalty.

If Rapp sounds a bit like the Jack Bauer character from TV’s “24,” it’s no
accident: Flynn actually has been called in as a consultant to the show in
recent years. And like Bauer, Rapp is a kind of Lancelot figure, enduring
the terrible scars of a lonely battle, but soldiering on with courage and
dedication. There are also interesting differences between Bauer and Rapp,
but revealing them here would spoil your fun.

My only gripe about the series is that its author and publisher desperately
need to hire a good proofreader to catch the egregious grammar and spelling
mistakes that recur in each book. But that’s a minor distraction. Unlike
many novelists who run out of steam over time, Flynn has only gotten
better. Once again, Mitch Rapp’s saga grows from book to book, so the
novels are best read in order of their publication.

Stephen Hunter. In my opinion, this writer is simply in a class by himself.
A Pulitzer Prize–winning film critic for the Washington Post, Hunter is the
grand master of the thriller genre today.
http://www.stephenhunter.net/edelman.htm
Quite a long time ago, I ran across his Cold War–era nuclear nightmare
novel The Day Before Midnight and found myself hijacked onto the best
thrill ride in memory. For some unaccountable reason, I didn’t try another
Hunter story for years. Eventually, though, I read Point of Impact, which
introduced me to one of the most original and compelling action heroes ever
to stride across the fiction landscape: a lean, stoic, former Marine sniper
with the unlikely name of Bob Lee Swagger. Once again, Hunter told me a
story of matchless excitement. (A screen adaptation of Point of Impact has
just been released under the title Shooter, starring Mark Wahlberg.)

After that stunning introduction, I plunged into Bob Lee’s further
adventures. Then, I took up the ingeniously interwoven adventures of his
equally heroic state trooper father, Earl Swagger.

Now, “ingenious” is a vastly overused word. But Hunter’s creative
imagination and writing skills are simply breathtaking. The wealth of
detail he provides for period and place; his refined ear for dialogue and
dialects; the psychological depth and originality of his characterizations;
the serpentine twists of his dazzling plots and their unbearable suspense;
the furious, frenzied action sequences that he renders so palpably; and,
above all, his majestic heroes—hard, driven men of almost mythic stature.
What more could any reader possibly want?

This guy writes scenes so scary-real that you want to run away and hide.
From Point of Impact, just after Bob Lee has been double-crossed and shot:

It was winding down on him. His breathing came with the slow, rough
transit of a train that had run off its tracks and now rumbled over the
cobblestones. His systems were shutting down, the wave of hydrostatic shock
that had blown through him with the bullet’s passage upsetting all the
little gyros in his organs. He felt the blood in his lungs; there was no
pain quite yet but only the queer sensation of loss, of blur, of things
slipping away. "Then something cracked in him.

No you aren’t going to let it happen

You been shot before
You can fight through it
You be a Marine
He took a deep breath, and in the rage and pride he found what would
pass for energy and without exactly willing it, he stood up, again
surprised that there was no pain at all, and with a strange, determined
gait began to move toward the door.

As the various Swagger novels unfold, Hunter brilliantly interweaves their
characters in startling, often poignant ways. The stories enrich and inform
each other, elaborating on the backgrounds of the heroes and villains and
their complex, unexpected interrelationships. Soon, all these wonderful
tales reveal themselves as individual threads in a grand, overarching,
multigenerational adventure tapestry.

You can certainly read any of the Swagger novels and enjoy it on its own.
But to fully appreciate the author’s genius, try them this way. First read
the Bob Lee Swagger trilogy: Point of Impact, Black Light, and Time to
Hunt. Then read Dirty White Boys, a novel that bridges the stories of the
Swaggers, father and son. Follow up with the Earl Swagger tales: Hot
Springs, Pale Horse Coming, and Havana.

After that, perhaps you’ll want to sample his earlier, stand-alone tales.
Only The Day Before Midnight rivals the best of the Swagger stories, but
even a lesser Hunter novel is, by any measure, a very fine thriller.
 

STEPHEN HUNTER knows a lot about guns/ military, WWII & writes well, builds plot tension well.. His list:
# 1980 Master Sniper
# 1982 The Second Saladin
# 1985 Target (film novelization)
# 1985 The Spanish Gambit (reissued as Tapestry of Spies)
# 1989 The Day Before Midnight
# 1993 Point of Impact
# 1994 Dirty White Boys
# 1996 Black Light
# 1998 Time to Hunt
# 2000 Hot Springs
# 2001 Pale Horse Coming
# 2003 Havana
# 2007 The 47th Samurai
# 2008 Night of Thunder
# 2009 I, Sniper

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