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20 Top NYT Best Selling Mystery & Thriller Books This Year

Despite the unusual circumstances surrounding this year, it was a phenomenal one for mystery & thriller books. These twenty New York Times Bestsellers run the gambut from heart-pounding legal thrillers to mysteries seeped in intrigue and secrets waiting to be unearthed. Whether you’re looking for a quick binge or an in-depth look at the darker side of complex family dynamics, you’re sure to find something to devour.

A Time for Mercy

John Grisham

Clanton, Mississippi. 1990. Jake Brigance finds himself embroiled in a deeply divisive trial when the court appoints him attorney for Drew Gamble, a timid sixteen-year-old boy accused of murdering a local deputy. Many in Clanton want a swift trial and the death penalty, but Brigance digs in and discovers that there is more to the story than meets the eye. Jake’s fierce commitment to saving Drew from the gas chamber puts his career, his financial security, and the safety of his family on the line.

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by David Baldacci

FBI Agent Atlee Pine's search for her sister Mercy clashes with military investigator John Puller's high-stakes case, leading them both deep into a global conspiracy—from which neither of them will escape unscathed.

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The Law of Innocence

by Michael Connelly

On the night he celebrates a big win, defense attorney Mickey Haller is pulled over by police, who find the body of a former client in the trunk of his Lincoln. Haller is immediately charged with murder but can’t post the exorbitant $5 million bail slapped on him by a vindictive judge.

Related: Michael Connelly On His Five Favorite Crime Novels of All Time

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Moonflower Murders

Anthony Horowitz

Featuring his famous literary detective Atticus Pund and Susan Ryeland, hero of the worldwide bestseller  Magpie Murders , a brilliantly complex literary thriller with echoes of Agatha Christie from  New York Times  bestselling author Anthony Horowitz.

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The Sentinel

Lee Child; Andrew Child

As always, Reacher has no particular place to go, and all the time in the world to get there. One morning he ends up in a town near Pleasantville, Tennessee. But there’s nothing pleasant about the place. In broad daylight Reacher spots a hapless soul walking into an ambush. “It was four against one” . . . so Reacher intervenes, with his own trademark brand of conflict resolution.

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Where the Crawdads Sing

Delia Owens

Where the Crawdads Sing  is at once an exquisite ode to the natural world, a heartbreaking coming-of-age story, and a surprising tale of possible murder. Owens reminds us that we are forever shaped by the children we once were, and that we are all subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps.

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Fortune and Glory

Janet Evanovich

The twenty-seventh entry in the #1  New York Times  bestselling series isn’t just the biggest case of Stephanie Plum’s career. It’s the adventure of a lifetime.

Related: Read The Latest Excerpt From Janet Evanovich's Fortune and Glory

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Clive Cussler; Boyd Morrison

It is up to Juan Cabrillo and the crew of his ship, the  Oregon , to stop a terrorist plot to release a deadly chemical weapon across the globe in the explosive new novel in Clive Cussler's #1  New York Times  bestselling series.

The Searcher

Tana French

Cal Hooper thought a fixer-upper in a bucolic Irish village would be the perfect escape. After twenty-five years in the Chicago police force and a bruising divorce, he just wants to build a new life in a pretty spot with a good pub where nothing much happens. But when a local kid whose brother has gone missing arm-twists him into investigating, Cal uncovers layers of darkness beneath his picturesque retreat, and starts to realize that even small towns shelter dangerous secrets.

Related: Where To Start With Tana French

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Stuart Woods

Stone Barrington must track down an enemy intent on disturbing law and order in the latest action-packed thriller from the #1  New York Times bestselling author.

Three Women Disappear

by James Patterson

by Shan Serafin

A man is murdered in his home. Sarah, his personal chef. Anna, his wife. Serena, his maid, all had access. Now all three women are missing. 

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Hidden in Plain Sight

Jeffrey Archer

William Warwick has been promoted to Detective Sergeant, but his promotion means that he, along with the rest of his team, have been reassigned to the Drugs Squad. They are immediately tasked with apprehending Khalil Rashidi, a notorious drug dealer, who operates his extensive network out of South London.

The Dirty South

John Connolly

It is 1997, and someone is slaughtering young women in Burdon County, Arkansas. But no one in the Dirty South wants to admit it. In an Arkansas jail cell sits a former NYPD detective, stricken by grief. He is mourning the death of his wife and child, and searching in vain for their killer. Obsessed with avenging his lost family, his life is about to take a shocking turn. Witness the dawning of a conscience. Witness the birth of a hunter. Witness the becoming of Charlie Parker.

Invisible Girl

Lisa Jewell

Young Saffyre Maddox spent three years under the care of renowned child psychologist Roan Fours. When Dr. Fours decides their sessions should end, Saffyre feels abandoned. She begins looking for ways to connect with him, from waiting outside his office to walking through his neighborhood late at night. She soon learns more than she ever wanted to about Roan and his deceptively perfect family life. On a chilly Valentine’s night, Saffyre will disappear, taking any secrets she has learned with her.

Related: Read an Excerpt From Invisible Girl by Lisa Jewell

The Coast-To-Coast Murders

James Patterson; J. D. Barker

A detective and FBI agent join forces on what seems like an open-and-shut case—but a new rash of killings sends them on a pulse-pounding race against time in this intense thriller.

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Mexican Gothic

Silvia Moreno-Garcia

After receiving a frantic letter from her newly-wed cousin begging for someone to save her from a mysterious doom, Noemí Taboada heads to High Place, a distant house in the Mexican countryside. She’s not sure what she will find—her cousin’s husband, a handsome Englishman, is a stranger, and Noemí knows little about the region.    Noemí is also an unlikely rescuer: She’s a glamorous debutante, and her chic gowns and perfect red lipstick are more suited for cocktail parties than amateur sleuthing. But she’s also tough and smart, with an indomitable will, and she is not afraid: Not of her cousin’s new husband, who is both menacing and alluring; not of his father, the ancient patriarch who seems to be fascinated by Noemí; and not even of the house itself, which begins to invade Noemi’s dreams with visions of blood and doom.

Related: Mystery and Thriller Books All About Family

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The Guest List

A wedding celebration turns dark and deadly in this deliciously wicked and atmospheric thriller reminiscent of Agatha Christie from the  New York Times bestselling author of The Hunting Party .

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Walk the Wire

Amos Decker—the FBI consultant with a perfect memory—returns to solve a gruesome murder in a booming North Dakota oil town in the newest thriller in David Baldacci's #1 New York Times  bestselling Memory Man series.

Related: Every David Baldacci Thriller In One Place

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Total Power

Vince Flynn; Kyle Mills

When Mitch Rapp captures ISIS’s top technology expert, he reveals that he was on his way to meet a man who claims to have the ability to bring down America’s power grid. Rapp is determined to eliminate this shadowy figure, but the CIA’s trap fails. The Agency is still trying to determine what went wrong when ISIS operatives help this cyber terrorist do what he said he could—plunge the country into darkness. With no concept of how this unprecedented act was accomplished, the task of getting the power back on could take months. Perhaps even years.

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America’s top mystery book critics break down the year in crime

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Amid the ongoing COVID-19 threats and racial reckoning that have marked 2021, reading crime (fiction and nonfiction) has provided both some much-needed escapism and, in the proliferation of diverse new voices and urgent themes, a bracing tonic — a harbinger of hoped-for change.

What more is there to say about the year in crime writing? A lot, if you ask the critics who keep a close eye on its multitude of genres. Below are the edited results of a rolling email correspondence with several of them: Steph Cha , author of “ Your House Will Pay ” and series editor of “The Best American Mystery and Suspense”; Oline Cogdill , mystery reviewer for the Sun-Sentinel and other outlets; Maureen Corrigan , book critic for NPR’s “Fresh Air”; CrimeReads Senior Editor Molly Odintz; and Sarah Weinman , author and crime fiction columnist for the New York Times Book Review.

The 20 best books of 2021

We asked four critics to name their five favorite books of the year. None of them overlapped. Here are their 20 candidates for best of the year

Dec. 20, 2021

How would you characterize this year in crime?

Cogdill : The genre continues to expand, reenergize and elevate itself. The stories continue to take us to new levels, showing deeper plots and characters.

Corrigan : I felt as though almost every mystery and suspense novel I picked up this year featured an “anxiety of appropriation” plot. Ever since Edgar Allan Poe wrote “The Purloined Letter” in 1844, the theft of a manuscript has been a standard plot, but this year, it packed more of a political charge, often revolving around a less powerful person reclaiming ownership of what was originally theirs through elaborately plotted acts of revenge.

That reminds me of a line from “Medea” that Alison Gaylin used as an epigram for her thriller “ The Collective ”: “Hate is a bottomless cup; I will pour and pour.” Why do you think revenge-motivated fiction is increasingly popular?

Weinman : We all feel rage, particularly over the last five or so years, so it has to be channeled somewhere. We will certainly see more revenge thrillers in the near future.

Cha : We are helpless in so many ways, and revenge thrillers provide a fantasy of retribution and brutal justice that is miles beyond anything we might hope to see in real life.

What debuts made an impression this year?

Cogdill : Mia P. Manansala folded in a lively mixture of Filipino culture, food and family bonds in “ Arsenic and Adobo .” Catherine Dang in “Nice Girls” and Amanda Jayatissa with “My Sweet Girl” brought a youthful angst while exploring their cultural backgrounds. Questions of identity have long been a mainstay of mysteries, and Alexandra Andrews with “Who Is Maud Dixon?” and Abigail Dean with “Girl A” brought a fresh perspective.

I’m also encouraged to see established writers continue to grow and evolve. Naomi Hirahara’s historical mystery, “Clark and Division,” was a real departure from her other mystery series.

Corrigan : I think it was gutsy of Lisa Scottoline to publish historical fiction this year. As she’s said in interviews , she’s wanted to write in that genre for decades. I enjoyed “Eternal” (set in fascist Italy), and I admired the fact that Scottoline hasn’t let her enormous success box her in.

Cha : I know he’s best known for his pedigreed literary fiction, but Colson Whitehead has been working with crime elements since “The Intuitionist,” and “Harlem Shuffle” is an absolute delight that embraces the genre. And there’s a sequel coming — a first for Whitehead.

Cogdill : Megan Abbott continues to produce provocative novels that show us the dark side of female ambition, competition and anxiety with her latest, “The Turnout.” Michael Connelly , who delivered a generational shift when he introduced Renée Ballard with “The Late Show” in 2017, has taken it to a new level in “The Dark Hours.”

Speaking of Connelly, as we reassess the role of policing in our society, how have police procedurals fared this year?

Cogdill : Connelly has consistently and unflinchingly shown the good and the bad cops. This is especially true in “The Dark Hours,” in which Connelly, without taking sides, shows how racial justice protests, the Jan. 6 insurrection and the pandemic have affected the LAPD’s officers, decimated morale and caused some to question their career choices.

Weinman : I admit to being discomfited by the procedural. But I also don’t want to make any definitive conclusion about this subgenre for at least another two to three years, when writers have had the time to really grapple with the last few years.

I was encouraged to see more crime fiction by queer authors.

Odintz : I loved so many, including: Robyn Gigl’s “By Way of Sorrow”; Michael Nava’s “Lies With Man”; Cheryl Head’s “Warn Me When It’s Time”; and Amanda Kabak’s “Upended.” Timothy Schaffert’s “The Perfume Thief” entranced me.

Corrigan : I’m thrilled to see the resurgence of LGBTQ+ crime fiction. There was so much energy in the 1980s and 1990s around queer crime writers like Nava, Liza Cody, Katherine V. Forrest, Joseph Hansen and J.M. Redmann, to name a few. Then something changed, making it harder for both LGBTQ+ writers and writers of color to keep going. A friend and colleague of mine insists that the demise of independent mystery bookstores had a lot to do with the ebbing of diversity in crime fiction. These days, podcasts and online crime fiction sites are helping readers discover writers whose profiles don’t fit “just the usual suspects.”

Odintz : I thought Caitlin Wahrer’s “The Damage” was really great ally fiction, as was S.A. Cosby’s “Razorblade Tears.” Like Cosby’s book, “The Damage” used its platform to explore the effects of toxic masculinity on straight cis male characters, which used to just go as an unquestioned norm of crime protagonist behavior. That’s a huge improvement.

But I’ve also noticed what seems like a preponderance of gay men securing publishing contracts over lesbian and other queer authors.

Cogdill : I hope this may be turning in terms of mainstream publishers. Edgar finalist Kathleen Kent ’s trilogy about Dallas Detective Sgt. Betty Rhyzyk and her wife, Jackie, just wrapped up this year with “The Pledge.” Next year, I’ll be watching for Dawn Winter’s “Sedating Elaine,” Katharine Schellman’s series debut, “Last Call at the Nightingale,” along with books by some smaller imprints.

Odintz : I agree, there are a lot of small presses that are doing better when it comes to publishing a diverse array of queer voices. However, it’s not only up to the publishers; it’s also up to the readers to read, request and recommend as many works by underrepresented queer authors as possible.

I am thrilled to read crime fiction by more writers of color than ever. Were there any that stood out for you this year?

Cha : I agree. I already mentioned Whitehead, but I was also really impressed by Silvia Moreno-Garcia ‘s “Velvet Was the Night,” James Han Mattson ’s “Reprieve” and Cosby’s “Razorblade Tears.” We’re dealing with an industry that has been dominated by white voices for centuries, so every writer of color is recovering ground. We’re still in an era of firsts and onlies, where, for example, Cosby is treading new territory by writing rural Southern noir about Black people.

Corrigan : I think Cosby’s novels are standouts. They summon up the noir predicament of being fated to a certain “no exit” destiny; given that he’s writing about characters of color, that familiar noir predicament is recharged with contemporary commentary.

Weinman : But the key point is staying power. If they sell, we will get more. I don’t want what happened in the 1990s to happen again. Then, Black writers were published in greater numbers than ever before but weren’t given much chance to find an audience and thus were dropped by their publishers. Readers lost out when writers like Charlotte Carter, Penny Mickelbury and Valerie Wilson Wesley didn’t get the support they deserved. It’s heartening to see many of these writers reemerge (I love the reissues of Charlotte Carter’s Nanette Hayes novels dearly) but even more so to see an ecosystem that recognizes more of these voices and nurtures them.

True crime seems to be more popular than ever. Why do you think it has secured a growing place in readers’ (and publishers’) imaginations?

Weinman : I’ve always said true crime is a perennially popular genre dating back at least three centuries. People love to read about the worst of humanity. What is different now, of course, is a greater preponderance of stories that center on those who were harmed and murdered, giving them three-dimensional portraits and contextualizing the crimes as part of broken systems and subcultures. Elon Green’s “Last Call” does this exceptionally well.

Odintz : I like to think of true crime as military history for women and any group disproportionately affected by violence.

Domestic suspense is a growing subgenre, too, though the term itself is a bit polarizing.

Odintz : I’ve been enjoying how domestic suspense has sparked a revival of gothic fiction — a natural progression, given that both often include a woman in danger in a large, mysterious house. Much of domestic suspense has been more of the suburban psychological thriller variety, but we all love to read about horrible things happening in sumptuous settings, and I (and many others) have noticed a trend toward richer protagonists. Ooh, and smart houses. Lots and lots of smart homes showing up lately.

Weinman : Here’s where I would like to chime in and beat a particular drum: “Domestic suspense,” as I used it in my 2013 anthology , was specifically meant to classify crime novels and short stories by women written between the early 1940s and the mid-1970s. Mary Higgins Clark ‘s “Where Are the Children?” (1975) marked the end of “domestic suspense” and the beginning of contemporary psychological suspense, culminating in Gillian Flynn’s “ Gone Girl ” (2012) and A.S.A. Harrison’s “The Silent Wife” (2013). We’ve been in the post-“Gone Girl” phase ever since, and I think now it’s time for some other descriptor.

One of the trends I’ve also enjoyed is the growth of crime fiction that intersects with horror or other genres. “Reprieve,” Laura Lippman’s “Dream Girl” and Zakiya Dalila Harris’ “ The Other Black Girl ” come to mind.

Corrigan : I think the splicing of crime fiction and horror is part of a current trend of “literary intersectionality” that’s affecting all genres. Think of Kazuo Ishiguro’s latest novel, “ Klara and the Sun ,” which invokes sci-fi, dystopian fiction and “straight” literary fiction. Then there‘s Nghi Vo’s inventive “The Chosen and the Beautiful,” a reimagining of “The Great Gatsby” — heavy on fantasy — narrated by a Jordan Baker who’s queer and Asian.

Odintz : This was the year I discovered I was into horror! Psychological thrillers are the perfect gateway drug into further nightmares of the mind. Crime readers have long had an appetite for psychological thrillers and gothic fiction, which are both steeped in horror tropes, and a serial killer novel is absolutely both crime fiction and horror. Some types of crime novels become less problematic considered as horror. A home invasion story portrayed as ordinary and/or plausible is always annoying, but someone’s nightmare of a home invasion story with, like, clowns is much less annoying.

There are also a lot of experiences — in particular, women’s bodily experiences, and the gaslighting and physical harm society inflicts on marginalized people — that can be best represented by horror. Statements of fact or realistic fiction are often not enough to do justice to emotional truths, even in something as dark as crime fiction. And there are also some traditions — I’m thinking of Latinx and Native American fiction — that have a long history of incorporating horror and fantastical elements into crime stories. Plus, you can’t discount the influence of “Midsommar” and “Get Out” in marketing [comparisons] alone.

Cogdill : This is another way the genre continues to expand.

Woods is a book critic, editor and author of the “Charlotte Justice” series of crime novels.

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Best Mysteries and Thrillers of 2021

APRIL 6, 2021

by Flynn Berry

A poignant and lyrical novel that asks what is worth sacrificing for peace—and provides some answers. Full review >

JULY 6, 2021

by S.A. Cosby

Violence and love go hand in hand in this tale of two rough men seeking vengeance for their murdered sons. Full review >

MARCH 1, 2021

MYSTERY & DETECTIVE

by Brian Freeman

This cockeyed, suspenseful exploration of roads not taken is a dizzying delight. Full review >

OCT. 12, 2021

THRILLER & SUSPENSE

by Anne Mette Hancock ; translated by Tara Chace

Scandinavian noir at its noirest. It’s hard, maybe unthinkable, to imagine how Hancock will follow it up. Full review >

JUNE 1, 2021

by Zakiya Dalila Harris

A biting social satire–cum-thriller; dark, playful, and brimming with life. Full review >

AUG. 3, 2021

by Stephen King

Murder most foul and mayhem most entertaining. Another worthy page-turner from a protean master. Full review >

FEB. 2, 2021

by Sergei Lebedev

A darkly absorbing intellectual thriller by one of Russia's boldest young novelists. Full review >

SEPT. 28, 2021

by Richard Osman

A clever, funny mystery peopled with captivating characters that enhance the story at every quirky turn. Full review >

JULY 27, 2021

by Brad Parks

A textbook one-sitting read whose fiendishly inventive details only intensify its remorseless momentum. Full review >

MAY 4, 2021

by Chris Power

An entertaining literary thriller that traces intrigue from the writer’s mind to the latest headlines. Full review >

JULY 20, 2021

by Karin Slaughter

Combines disarming sensitivity to the nuances of the tangled relations among the characters with sledgehammer plotting. Full review >

APRIL 13, 2021

by Kaoru Takamura ; translated by Allison Markin Powell & Marie Iida

Takamura’s challenging, genre-confounding epic offers a sweeping view of contemporary Japan in all its complexity. Full review >

SEPT. 14, 2021

by Colson Whitehead

As one of Whitehead’s characters might say of their creator, When you’re hot, you’re hot. Full review >

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Alien Terrors, Vampire Conspiracies and More in 4 New Horror Books

Our columnist reviews this month’s latest scary releases.

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By Gabino Iglesias

Gabino Iglesias is a writer, editor, literary critic and professor. He is the Bram Stoker and Shirley Jackson award-winning author of “The Devil Takes You Home.”

If you want to read a novel that feels like a puzzle, look no further than Thomas Olde Heuvelt’s ORACLE (Tor Nightfire, 376 pp., $29.99) . The novel, which is translated from the Dutch by Moshe Gilula, opens with two friends, Luca and Emma, who one morning spot a hulking shape in the middle of a flower field. The object is the Oracle, a sailing ship from the 18th century. Curious, Emma goes down the ship’s hatch and vanishes in the darkness beyond. She never comes out. Soon, others — including Luca’s father — and a handful of police officers suffer the same fate.

Eventually, a government agency sweeps in, spins lies about the boat and the missing people, then transports the vessel to a secure location for research, recruiting Robert Grim, a retired paranormal expert with a drinking problem (who also made an appearance in Olde Heuvelt’s previous novel “Hex”), to study the ship. Meanwhile, Luca is accosted by dark visions; people refuse to stay quiet about their missing loved ones; foreign forces try to acquire the ship; and nobody seems to see the menace the Oracle is bringing their way.

In “Oracle,” Olde Heuvelt deftly juggles many characters while delivering chapters full of supernatural mayhem. This is a novel that toys with the end of humanity, but the threshold to the apocalypse has seldom been so fun. This is Olde Heuvelt’s sharpest, most compelling work to date.

Vampires are back, and C.J. Tudor’s THE GATHERING (Ballantine, 336 pp., $29) comes to join the fun.

Detective Barbara Atkins works for the Forensic Vampyr Anthropology Department. When a boy is murdered in Deadhart, Alaska, Atkins is sent to investigate. The town’s citizens are pinning the killing on a nearby vampyr group called “the Colony,” and they say they have video proof, but as Atkins does her job, she discovers that the evidence has been staged and things are more complicated than they seem. To crack the case, she teams up with Deadhart’s previous sheriff, and together, they must find the culprit before residents do something they’ll regret.

The novel’s blend of police procedural and horror works well. The story’s fast pace and numerous twists keep you hooked, and Tudor’s witty dialogue beautifully punctuates the narrative’s constant action. However, Tudor’s efforts to turn the narrative into an allegory about bigotry feel underdeveloped. There are a few heavy-handed analogies (at one point someone says an anti-vampyr tattoo is “akin to a swastika”), but otherwise the novel doesn’t delve into racism, homophobia or antisemitism, which would be rampant in a small town that hates those who are different from them. Despite those flaws, Atkins is a great character and there is enough action, tension and gore here to satisfy most horror readers.

Relentlessly creepy and fantastically atmospheric, S.A. Barnes’s GHOST STATION (Tor Nightfire, 377 pp., $27.99) shows that no matter where humans go, our brains can be our worst enemy.

Dr. Ophelia Bray is a psychologist who studies the treatment and prevention of “Eckhart-Reiser syndrome,” a mental illness that afflicts those who spend too much time in space and turns them homicidal and suicidal. In one case, an E.R.S.-fueled episode left 29 people dead. Ophelia is working to make sure events like that won’t happen again.

For her research, Ophelia is assigned to a small exploration crew on a dead planet, but the crew’s standoffish demeanor and cruel pranks make two things clear: They don’t want Ophelia there, and they’re hiding things. When their pilot is murdered, Ophelia and the crew must work together to solve the crime, but cooperating with people she doesn’t trust proves extremely difficult, especially because she’s haunted by her past and because the planet has secrets of its own.

“Ghost Station” is space horror at its best. Barnes explores internal terrors, like psyches spiraling from trauma, guilt and grief, and extraterrestrial ones, like frozen mysteries hidden in towering alien ruins. But no matter what she’s showing, Barnes makes the reader feel as if doom is just around the corner, and that constant tension makes it hard to put this book down.

Some anthologies are more than the sum of their parts. THE BLACK GIRL SURVIVES IN THIS ONE: Horror Stories (Flatiron, 354 pp., $19.99) , edited by Desiree S. Evans and Saraciea J. Fennell, is one of them. A wonderful young adult collection of uncanny tales, this anthology makes a statement: Black women belong in horror.

The stories featured in the collection are diverse in theme and approach, but they all center Black female leads and their experiences. Standouts include L.L. McKinney’s “Harvesters,” a story that brings eerie doppelgängers to another level; Evans’s “The Brides of Devil’s Bayou,” which follows a young Black woman haunted by a family curse; and Monica Brashears’s “The Skittering Thing,” which perfectly captures the feeling of being hunted by something in the dark.

“The Black women in this anthology are asserting that we matter,” the horror legend Tananarive Due states in her foreword. And they do. Projects like this — brave, necessary — celebrate Black women, and will hopefully inspire the future of the genre.

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A bestselling New York Times thriller that’s worth all the fuss

Posted by Mal Warwick | Crime Novels , Mysteries & Thrillers | 0

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Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

I think I may be in love with Gillian Flynn .

This is the story of Amy Elliott Dunne and Nick Dunne, the perfect couple in the ideal marriage. It’s a storybook tale . . . or maybe it isn’t. One day Amy goes missing, and it slowly begins to dawn on you that one (or both) of the two is a sociopath. Gone Girl is plotted almost as diabolically as Catch 22. It’s near-perfect, with jaw-dropping shocks and shivers all the way to the very last page. It’s a rare New York Times thriller that truly thrills.

Amy is the Golden Girl, raised in wealth and privilege in New York’s intellectual society, brilliant and drop-dead gorgeous. She is Amazing Amy, the subject of her loving parents’ eponymous series of children’s books that instilled in a generation a powerful sense of right and wrong. Amazing Amy is everyone’s ideal.

Gone Girl  by Gillian Flynn (2012) 434 pages ★★★★★ 

Nick is a son of Missouri, a Tom Sawyer-like figure who grew up near Hannibal and literally once held a job impersonating Huck Finn for tourists. Himself drop-dead gorgeous and a brilliant writer, Nick is the perfect husband for the perfect woman.

An expertly crafted New York Times thriller

As this story unfolds in Flynn’s expert hands, we learn more and more about these extraordinary people. At length, we figure out that things can’t possibly turn out well. But we can’t possibly guess how.

The style with which this thrilling tale is told is simply intoxicating. Gone Girl is one of the very best novels of of suspense I’ve ever read. For once, a novel is topping the New York Times bestseller list that isn’t (a) written on James Patterson ‘s assembly-line, (b) a potboiler about the rich, powerful, and famous, or (c) female S&M porn. If you have even remote interest in thrillers, read this book.

For related reading

You’ll find this book on The decade’s top 10 historical novels, mysteries & thrillers, and science fiction and on 26 mysteries to keep you reading at night .

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Tuesday's Newsletter

Mysteries & Thrillers Tuesday includes my latest mystery and thriller book review, with links to other science fiction content.

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Book Reviews

5 new mysteries and thrillers for your nightstand this spring.

Bethanne Patrick

Welcome back, mystery and thriller devotees! These books will take you from murder in present-day Texas to cryptography in Cold War Berlin to an online community that might hold the solution to a missing-person case.

Happy reading!

Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera

Savannah Harper, the sweetheart of Plumpton, Texas, died from blows to her head. A few hours later, her best friend forever, Lucy Chase, was found wandering the town streets covered in blood. While Lucy was never formally charged with the murder, the community convicted her lock, stock and a full plate of barbecue. Five years later, Lucy has come home just as true-crime podcaster Ben Owens arrives to produce an episode of his show "Listen for the Lie."

As Ben encourages the tetchy, secretive Lucy to share her side of the story with him, she relaxes beneath his sunny, handsome gaze and starts to look at the truth. Unfortunately, truth doesn't matter much to the residents of Plumpton, who long ago made up their minds about a young woman whose persona chafes against their ideas of femininity. Fortunately, by the time you meet the Plumptonites, you'll have been mesmerized by Lucy's hilarious, self-deprecating first-person narration. "It's probably unfair to say that a podcast ruined my life," she tells readers, and then, as she talks about making dinner during which she'll break up with her clueless boyfriend: "Let this be a lesson to all the men out there who can't handle conflict — man up and dump your girlfriend, or you might end up living with a suspected murder indefinitely."

Podcast episodes interspersed between Lucy's chapters form a clever way for Tintera (already a bestselling YA author; this is her debut for adults) to draw out the suspense. Revealing too much about the other characters might ruin that cleverness, but it's important to note that even when the story has ended and the murderer found, there are secrets within secrets, the kind that women have long used to protect each other.

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Where You End by Abbott Kahler

Abbott Kahler's debut centers on a young woman named Katherine "Kat" Bird, who has a near-death experience after her car collides with a deer, and wakes to near-total amnesia. She remembers her twin sister, Jude, who tries to fill in all of the blanks in Kat's memory, but as Kat slowly recovers, she realizes Jude's recounting of events contradict her own.

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Did the sisters have an idyllic childhood, or were they raised in a cult? If the latter is true, why would Jude be trying to pretend it never happened? Kahler (who has written acclaimed nonfiction as Karen Abbott) constructs a thriller so perfectly paced that you actually will not be able to put it down. You'll be longing at each step to see how much Kat remembers and how much Jude complicates the memories. Each clue (there are few pictures of the sisters together, for example) has a flip side, a structural technique that works particularly well since the book is set in 1970s Philadelphia, with all of that city's grittiness, community, and culture.

Kahler based her novel on the real-life story of Alex and Marcus Lewis, 18-year-old British identical twins. In 1982, Alex awoke from a coma following a motorcycle accident and remembered nothing except his brother's name and face; Marcus decided to use the opportunity to invent new lives for them both. Kahler expands on their situation by going deeper into the effects of trauma for women and girls, making Where You End incredibly relevant, right up to the truly shocking ending.

The Night of the Storm by Nishita Parekh

Answer to a question you didn't ask: In the UK, the board game Clue is known as Cluedo, a portmanteau word for "clue" plus "ludo," the Latin for "I play." In Nishita Parekh's debut, a locked-room mystery that toys with everyone's memories of playing Clue, readers may want to keep that active verb in mind. Set in Houston among a group of upperclass suburban Desi friends, The Night of the Storm puts family drama above anything resembling, say, Cape Fear -style hijinks — but the word "storm" in the title can mean so many things.

Protagonist Jia Shah, single mom to Ishaan, decides they'll both shelter from Hurricane Harvey at her sister Seema's large home in Sugar Land. Seema's husband Vipul and some of his relatives make things more complicated for Jia, through both their busy presence and because Jia and Vipul have some sexual tension going on; one of the things that makes this book fascinating is the look at a second-generation immigrant family enjoying their new country while also feeling the pull of hereditary expectations.

If you're looking for a thriller — and this book is labeled one — you've come to the wrong place. The Night of the Storm resembles nothing so much as a Golden Age mystery, and if you appreciate those, you've come to the right place. Parekh has clearly read her Christie, Marsh, and Allingham; she also clearly relishes those authors and their attention to cohesion and convention. Come on in and shelter from this Storm with a truly unreliable cast of characters.

Rabbit Hole by Kate Brody

A decade ago, Teddy Angstrom's older sister Angie disappeared at age 18. When their father chooses suicide on the anniversary of Angie's death, the now 26-year-old Teddy leaves the private school in Maine where she teaches English for home to sort out family matters with her grieving mother. Teddy discovers Mark Angstrom had grown obsessed with Reddit boards about true crime, some of them specifically about Angie's case.

Her initial look at the discussions soon turns into an obsession equaling her father's, one that will pull her into the orbit of 19-year-old Mickey, a local college student with multiple tattoos and perhaps multiple motives for the assistance she gives Teddy. The weird friendship these women create reflects the darkness into which Teddy descends, continuing her addiction to the internet as she develops an addiction to alcohol, and accidentally outing herself as Angie's sister to the various members of the Reddit boards.

Brody wisely builds the suspense around Teddy's dissolution and paranoia, rather than focusing on the details of Angie's fate, creating an atmosphere so suffocating and panicky that readers will feel the effects of loss, grief, and confusion as surely as if they were inside Teddy's very smart and once better-adjusted mind. Teddy's longing not just for her sister's survival but for their ability to share life as 20-somethings marks her more indelibly than Mickey's body ink.

The Berlin Letters by Katherine Reay

Brilliant cryptographer Luisa Voekler, whose talent was nurtured by her grandfather's frequent code-based scavenger hunts, wants to move up in the CIA, but finds her career sidelined in the late 1980s as she translates World War II documents. One day she recognizes a tiny symbol that will lead her down a dangerous path. Her discovery involves her father, Haris, who remains in the East Berlin his family left in 1961 as the East German government put up a wall dividing the city.

Reay has written a number of novels based on Brontë and Austen characters, as well as a couple of lighthearted looks at women's friendships in Illinois, but in 2021 she turned to darker territory, setting books about spycraft in London, Moscow — and now Berlin and Washington, D.C. The cover of The Berlin Letters announces both its relatively recent time period, with the figure of a young woman dressed in contemporary clothing, yet also nods to the singularity of modern Berlin, with a backdrop of the Wall covered in graffiti and the trunk of an iconic East German Trabant or "Trabi" auto (known for being constructed from lightweight resin).

The author knows East and West Berlin inside out, discussing details like the houses on Bernauer Strasse that allowed inhabitants, for a time, to easily defect simply by walking out of their front doors. However, those details never overwhelm a fast-paced story told by father and daughter from their different vantage points, as Luisa learns the truth of her past, and both stories reach the shocking, history-making night when The Berlin Wall fell on Nov. 9, 1989.

Bethanne Patrick is a freelance writer and critic who tweets @TheBookMaven and hosts the podcast Missing Pages.