NY Times 50 Best Thrillers of the 21st Century

Their take: "Alix Summers, a successful podcaster, meets Josie Fair at her local pub, where — coincidentally — they’re each celebrating their 45th birthday. Before long Alix has agreed to make Josie the subject of an upcoming show. But as Josie tells her story and the women’s lives become increasingly entwined, Jewell’s expertly constructed slow-burn moves from mildly disquieting (why is Josie always wearing at least one form of denim?) to actively creepy (doesn’t she have her own house?) to unputdownably terrifying (what is she doing on Alix’s ring camera?). Until the last page, you won’t know who, exactly, to believe."

My take: It's been hanging around my TBR for a while, but I generally don't love an untrustworthy narrator. I often find it to be a sort of cheap crutch you can use to allow plot holes and unnecessary trickery. BUT, I continue to hear this is good, and I think I'm going to have to make time for it.

Their take: "This fiendishly clever nesting-doll of a novel comprises two stories — wildly different, equally delicious — for the price of one. In the first, a British book editor named Susan Ryeland reads the latest submission by a famous, irascible mystery writer (no one sends up his own profession as delightedly as Horowitz) and finds it dotted with clues to a real-life crime. In the second, there is the manuscript itself, a pitch-perfect Agatha Christie pastiche set in a quaint English village and featuring the proudly umlauted detective Atticus Pünd. Like Pünd’s dim but enthusiastic sidekick, you’ll find yourself in the dark until the very end."

My take: When authors write about the profession, it's like catnip for other authors (and many reviewers). This one sounds great.

Their take: "Christine Lucas, diagnosed with not one but two forms of amnesia, is doing what she can to get on with her life. But as her memories begin to flicker and return, the stomach-churning details flooding her mind don’t add up with the story she’s long been told by her husband and her psychiatrist. In the thriller world, an amnesia diagnosis, a sinister husband and an unreliable shrink may be all-too-familiar tropes, but Watson deftly exploits them as, in the words of our reviewer, 'goose bumps rise.'"

My take: Ooh, I'd forgotten about this book. I know I read it, but I can't remember if I really liked it or really didn't. Oh, the irony, given the central theme of the book is amnesia! I kind of think this might have been a miss, but I'll defer to Riley Sager who put it at the top of his list and assume it was worth it.

Their take: "A crumbling manor, an impulsive marriage, a miasma of family secrets: Moreno-Garcia’s historical horror novel takes all the hallmarks of a classic Gothic thriller and transposes them to 1950s Mexico. The socialite Noemí Taboada is unsettled when her cousin, recently married to a scion of an English silver mining family, claims that her new husband is trying to kill her. When Noemí flies to her side, she discovers that things at the family’s estate are even more ominous than she’d imagined."

My take: I haven't forgotten about this one, and this is the first place where I think the list definitely misses. There was so much buzz about this book when it came out in 2020, but I found it to be more silly than spine-tingling. I would skip it.

Their take: "We all did things in high school we later regret. But almost certainly not as much as Georgina “Geo” Shaw, who was smitten enough with a volatile heartthrob named Calvin to help cover up his rape and murder of her best friend, the beloved clique queen bee Angela. That loyalty landed Geo a five-year prison sentence as an accomplice and sent her now-ex away for life. So when a series of brutish copycat crimes begins soon after her release, another member of their old friend group — now a detective with the Seattle P.D. — is determined to uncover the truth. Trust us, it’s ugly."

My take: I almost confused this with Heartsick by Chelsea Cain (good book, by the way). I'm pretty sure I read this, and I'm pretty sure it was quite good. And, it was S.A. Cosby's pick (perhaps my favorite author—this is not the last time we'll see his name mentioned), so I'm even more confident this is worth your time.

And...now I've got that Christina Perri song stuck in my head. Dammit.

Their take: "Price’s soulful eighth novel, set on the gentrifying Lower East Side of Manhattan, begins when three men...are mugged, and one dies. An N.Y.P.D. detective struggles to make sense of this barbarity. Some criminals are “athletes of evil,” he thinks, while others are merely “stupid and fantastically self-centered.” Price is an old pro in his prime here. The pace is quick. The restaurant scenes are superb; so is the author’s poised assessment of life in the big city, and of the varieties of urban dreams."

My take: Have not read it, but Price rarely misses.

Their take: "When Guinevere Beck sashays into the East Village bookstore where he works, Joe Goldberg is beguiled — and, as the reader learns from his self-deprecating narration, soon becomes obsessed. After learning everything he can about Beck online (“the internet was designed with love in mind,” he notes), Joe begins to remove every obstacle to their inevitable romance."

My take: The book that started it all with charming stalker Joe Goldberg, spawning a Netflix series and four additional books (and counting).

Their take: "David Beck fell in love with his wife, Elizabeth, in second grade, and he is still grieving her loss eight years after her abduction and murder on an anniversary trip to Lake Charmaine, where they shared their first kiss. So when a coded email that could only have come from her arrives in his inbox — and two more bodies are discovered near the lake, with evidence that incriminates him — David is forced to investigate, and finds a far more complicated truth."

My take: I remember this cover, and I remember reading it...but it's been 25 years and that's as far as the memory goes. Moving on.

Their take: "A 'Sliding Doors' for the science-minded set, this what-if thriller follows a college professor named Jason Dessen who wonders how things might have turned out if he’d pursued his passion for quantum physics instead of choosing a quieter life of family and academia. He gets the chance to find out when he is taken at gunpoint by a masked man and wakes up in a world where his wife is now a stranger and his son was never born."

My take: An honorable mention in my 2018 rankings, in which I said "An interesting take on the whole 'Butterfly Effect' / dimensional travel thing set against the protagonist trying to find his way back to his reality. Plus, takes place in Chicago with a good amount of city detail, which is fun for any of us who have lived there." Things can get confusing and messy when you start talking about parallel dimensions, but Crouch manages to pull it off without confusing readers completely. It's good.

Their take: "Dickens never wrote a Victorian novel like this one, an absolute ripper of a tale about a thieving orphan named Sue who is conscripted in a moneymaking scheme to pose as a maid for a wealthy, sheltered heiress — and ends up falling for her instead. Add an unhinged mental asylum, a daisy chain of family secrets, and at least one double-triple cross (the story is told from both girls’ perspectives, “Rashomon”-style) and the book becomes not just a twisty Gothic melodrama but a proto-feminist swashbuckler, brimming with queer eroticism and adventure."

My take: Never read it, and I'm not sure what to make of the description. It sounds like it could be completely intriguing but also like it has the potential to be something that is just not for me. I feel like I have to make time to read it and find out!

Their take: "Who is Pilgrim? A former top-shelf secret agent known among his peers for writing a niche but influential handbook on forensic pathology, he’s happily slipped into retirement. But when it appears that a gruesome murder scene in a seedy New York hotel has taken very specific inspiration from his book, he is drawn into a case whose tentacles reach all the way to the Middle East, and to a looming biochemical threat."

My take: Man, I love this book so much. The only thing that prevented it from being my top book of 2014 was a little novel called The Martian. As I wrote at the time, "This might be 1b, but it was edged out only because of a very convenient coincidence late in the novel. Other than that, this was one of the best thrillers I've read in several years. What opens with a murder in a NYC apartment eventually turns into a cat and mouse game between an elite US special agent and a jihadist with a bioterrorism plot to wipe out America." It's terrific, and one of my favorites of all time. I would recommend it to anyone.

Their take: "Grace Park works at her family’s pharmacy in a Korean American enclave of the San Fernando Valley; Shawn Matthews, who’s Black, is trying to escape his past in a downtown Los Angeles neighborhood. Separated by race and culture, the two might never have met but for the reverberations from a three-decade-old murder, which juxtaposes their personal dramas against the city’s larger dynamics. Inspired by a real shooting, the novel combines the elegance of literary fiction with the nail-biting suspense of a classic thriller."

My take: It won the Los Angeles Times book prize in 2019, but somehow it never made it on to my radar. Sounds really interesting.

Their take: "After Alicia Berenson tied her husband to a chair and shot him five times in the face, she never spoke again. Theo Faber, a new psychotherapist at the facility where she’s been sent, has long been obsessed with her crime and believes he can convince her to open up. As we begin to understand the reality of Alicia’s past — and Theo’s — everyone becomes unreliable, and everyone becomes connected. The conclusion is shocking, unsettling and unforgettable."

My take: Everyone loves this book, except me! It’s not the worst thriller I’ve ever read, but it felt contrived and I think people latched on to the 'shocking' conclusion with too much fervor. It seems like there’s one of these each year (The Girl on the Train, The Woman in the Window) that generate a bunch of buzz, but that I finish going, “Really? That’s what everyone is talking about?”. It's fine—possibly even good—but there are better books ranked behind it on this list.

Their take: "The body of a young woman who was stabbed and left to die is discovered in the Irish countryside, and not only is she the spitting image of Cassie Maddox, a Dublin homicide detective, but her name — Lexie Madison — is fake, invented by Cassie in an earlier undercover operation. The investigation sends Cassie undercover again, this time taking on the borrowed identity of the dead woman. Can she figure out who Lexie was, and solve her murder? Set aside your skepticism about this implausible scenario, and luxuriate instead in French’s gorgeous investigation of identity, secrecy, longing and guilt."

My take: Another book I love, and my favorite book by another of my favorite authors (who, like Cosby, we will see again on this list). The premise does require a healthy amount of suspension of disbelief—Cassie passes herself off as the dead girl to the girl's closest friends—but French writes it in such a way, with all of the knife-edge tension you'd expect as Cassie teeters on the brink of being discovered as an imposter, and pairs that with a really rewarding mystery. This one is excellent.

Their take: "The charmed life of a Dublin art gallery rep shatters when he is savagely beaten during a burglary. Broken and traumatized, he moves back to his ancestral home to recuperate, only to find another kind of violence there: a human skull hidden in the hollow of a centuries-old elm tree on the property. The setup is a corker, but French, in her sole stand-alone novel, has much more in mind than standard mystery-of-the-week thrills: “The Witch Elm” brims with big-sky ideas about identity, privilege and memory."

My take: Well, it didn't take long for us to see Tana French again! Interestingly, this is not among my favorites of hers. It's still good, but not on the same level as some of her best, and certainly not better than The Likeness, sitting one place behind it on the list.

Their take: "Ansel Packer is set to be executed for serial murder — in 12 hours, to be exact. And he’s guilty; we know that from the start. The suspense in this chilling novel comes from learning how he got here: by listening to the myriad stories and voices of the women in his life. What made him snap? Was it his mother, his marriage? As soon as one theory emerges, Kukafka explodes it. What could feel preachy or didactic is instead a fascinating, unexpected study in empathy. Against the backdrop of a ticking clock, Kukafka makes us question everything, and everyone, until the last page."

My take: I have not read this one, but every now and then it pops up in book chats as a novel one must read. I need to add it to the list.

Their take: "For such a smart guy — he’s an assistant district attorney, and a good one — Andy Barber can’t seem to believe that his taciturn 14-year-old son, Jacob, may have stabbed a classmate to death, even when a scary knife turns up in the kid’s room. Andy’s wife, Laurie, is more clear-eyed. The family’s story, refracted through two courtroom trials, plays out in almost unbearably tense scenes. There are two gut-punch twists at the end, and you’ll never see either one coming."

My take: I loved this book, and it was even more fun to recommend it as an under-the-radar winner before Apple TV brought it more fully into the mainstream. Like other books on this list—most notably The Push and (coming soon) We Need to Talk About Kevin—it explores parental love in the face of one's child potentially committing an act of evil. The twists are perfect in this one.

Their take: "This striking debut novel, the winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, blurs genres. It’s a spy thriller, an effervescent political satire and what you might call a literary novel. The main character — an unnamed, conflicted Communist spy who’s a North Vietnamese mole in the South Vietnamese Army — was once a cultural adviser on the production of an American film that sounds a bit like “Apocalypse Now.” This novel is all about dual identities. It never grows leaden.”

My take: I haven't read it, but I've heard great things!

Their take: "Jacob Finch Bonner is a washed-up novelist turned writing teacher when one of his students, Evan Parker, shares his idea for a surefire best seller. The concept sticks with Bonner, who adopts it as his own when he learns Parker has died. The resulting book is indeed a huge hit; all is going swimmingly for Bonner until he receives a message that says, simply, “You are a thief.” Then come the threats. Korelitz is a master of sly humor and skies that darken so slowly, you barely notice until you’re sitting in the pitch black."

My take: I sped through this novel in one or two days—it's a page-turner and a solid thriller. That being said, it didn't wow me enough to pick up the follow-on effort, aptly titled The Sequel, so not generally one I think of in the context of the greatest thrillers of the last 25+ years.

Their take: "'The baby is dead,' begins Slimani’s bone-chilling domestic thriller about a Frenchwoman who, having been hired as a nanny by a wealthy Parisian couple, becomes increasingly, insidiously enmeshed in the family she so meticulously cares, cleans and cooks for — until the day she murders both of her young charges. The suspense in this novel has little to do with the gruesome act itself, the details of which are clear from the outset; Slimani’s achievement is in building a tortuous portrait of the tensions between parent and caretaker, the racial and socioeconomic forces underpinning the balance of domestic responsibility in upper-class households, and the unthinkable extremes to which humans can be driven by their own loneliness."

My take: My first time hearing of this one, and oof: it sounds like a rough (but potentially interesting) read. At just 238 pages, you could finish this one in a day.

Their take: "Even if you think you know the story because you’ve seen the marquee HBO series (it won eight Emmys and four Golden Globes), Moriarty’s source material is a different animal, full of texture and detail. Her sharp-eyed portrait of several mothers whose lives intersect at the primary school in an idyllic Australian coastal town quickly flips its sun-soaked atmosphere, revealing a wasp’s nest of secrets that include spousal abuse, an extramarital affair and schoolroom bullying."

My take: I watched the show, but as the NYT points out, it's probably worth taking the time to go back and read the book. With a sequel (Big Little Truths) coming out later this month, there's never been a better time to get caught up.

Their take: "It’s hard to convey to readers who weren’t there what a sensation this book was in the mid-2000s. Whole sections of big chain bookstores were devoted to knockoffs, spinoffs and earnest explorations of pagan and Christian symbolism in Western art and culture. What a time to be alive! But even after that craze subsided, this remains Brown’s best, most Brownian novel."

My take: I still have the hardcover sitting on my bookshelf, purchased long before there was a movie or several subsequent Robert Langdon novels (none of which could quite match this novel's peak). Enough time has passed that it's easy to forget what an absolute phenomenon this book was when it came out, as the NYT noted. It took the reading world by storm—with good reason—and it's still a great read.

Their take: "At 16, Ree Dolly has already had adulthood forced upon her. Not only is she the caretaker for her two younger brothers and her heavily medicated mother in their ramshackle house deep in the Ozarks, she’s the sole provider, too. When a sheriff’s deputy arrives to tell her that her meth-cooking father — who put up their home and the land it sits on as his bond — has disappeared a week before his court date, Ree must find him on her own or lose everything she knows. Woodrell packs his sentences with potent backwoods atmosphere (many squirrels get skinned), but it’s the scrappy, fiercely indomitable Ree whose voice lingers."

My take: It's a bit sad that Winter's Bone is probably better known for launching the career of Jennifer Lawrence than for the novel that came first, but Lawrence's star-making turn in the movie adaptation can be attributed as much to the novel's source material as to her Oscar-nominated performance of it. Worth a read.

Their take: "A book that gives new, parched meaning to 'atmospheric.' The Melbourne federal agent Aaron Falk hasn’t been back to Kiewarra, his drought-ridden hometown, since he was 16. And when he returns for the funeral of his onetime best friend — dead in an apparent murder-suicide — he discovers the place is a tinderbox of secrets, ready to ignite. 'Harper throws out so many teasing possibilities that it’s hard to believe this is her first novel,' our critic wrote."

My take: Another stellar entry, and my favorite overall book of 2017. It was Jane Harper's debut, and it very well still may be her best (although The Lost Man and Exiles are both excellent as well).

Their take: "When a terrorist’s bomb detonates at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it kills several patrons, including the single mother of a 13-year-old boy named Theo. In the ensuing chaos, a dying man in the crowd convinces a shellshocked Theo to steal a small but priceless Dutch masterpiece. After that (literally) explosive start, Tartt pivots, unfurling a complex character study of one grieving kid trying to find his way in the world while saddled with the terrible secret of his crime. The hallmarks of a good thriller are present — international intrigue, devious art thieves — but they’re nestled in a moving and richly imagined coming-of-age tale."

My take: My wife Stephanie is delighted to see this on the list—it's one of her favorite books of all time. While it's not in my all-time top 5, this was a clear 5-star read for me that was levels ahead of the competition in 2013. It's excellent.

Their take: "Though she’s murdered offstage in a remote corner of Kenya in the opening chapter, Tessa Quayle — a champion of the poor and disenfranchised — is this book’s most vivid character. Her death spurs her husband, a British government functionary in Nairobi, to emerge from his bureaucratic torpor and “plunge into the heart of her secret world,” however dangerous that might be. He follows Tessa’s trail into a plot by a pharmaceutical company to use unsuspecting Africans as guinea pigs for a dodgy new drug. This is vintage post-Cold War le Carré, a howl of outrage against a world order he found increasingly repugnant."

My take: Despite his prolific and decorated writing career, I've somehow never read any of le Carré's novels.

Their take: "What can children know, except the world you build around them? Donoghue pulls off an ingenious literary trick in having her novel narrated from the point of view of a 5-year-old boy whose whole universe is in fact one room: the 11x11 garden shed in which he and his Ma have been imprisoned by the kidnapper and sexual abuser he knows only as Old Nick. When Ma decides to break for freedom, she’ll need her little boy’s complete cooperation and trust to escape their captor. But getting away isn’t the end of the story; terrors of a different kind still lurk."

My take: By all accounts a great book, but also almost universally identified as a difficult read. I could never pull the trigger on immersing myself in that sad world.

Their take: "The murders are as horrifying as they come: a frenzied attack on a family of four that left the father and children dead, the mother clinging to life. That it took place in one of the few occupied homes in a half-built Irish luxury development that went bankrupt during the Great Recession adds an element of state-of-the-nation horror. As in all her Dublin Murder Squad books (this is the fourth), French interweaves the detectives’ own stories with their investigation of the crime at hand to create something far greater than the sum of its parts."

My take: More Tana French! Interestingly, this is my least favorite of her novels. There's a weird "haunted house" element that never came together for me. Among the Dublin Murder Squad collection, this was the only true miss.

Their take: "A collection of teeth, a passel of dead girls, some unexplained illnesses — Flynn’s debut is a stew of seriously creepy ingredients, darker and more disturbing than Gone Girl. Once you visit Wind Gap, Mo., you’ll know why Camille Preaker, a Chicago newspaper reporter prone to self-harm, fled this tiny, dysfunctional town as soon as she could. When her editor sends her back home to cover a murder, she’s forced to look deep inside her family, all the way back to the death of her beloved younger sister, years ago. This is Southern Gothic at its most unnerving."

My take: I don't have my favorites ranked for 2006, but if this wasn't at the top of the list, it was darn close. Long before Gone Girl, Flynn announced herself with this tremendous debut and never looked back. Man, I wish she was still actively publishing novels!

Their take: "Few crimes have captured the American imagination as much as the broad-daylight murder of John F. Kennedy. For King, like many in his generation, it remains one of history’s great turning points — how would the rest of the Sixties have unfolded had Kennedy lived? In this novel, the Maine schoolteacher Jake Epping gets the opportunity to go back in time and stop Lee Harvey Oswald from pulling the trigger that day in Dallas. Save the president, save the world. Easy enough, right? Not when your main antagonist is time itself."

My take: King rarely misses, and he certainly doesn't here. While the novel contains some of King's supernatural signature (but not horror, outside of the murder of a sitting President), it is appropriately included here as a thriller. It reads more like Day of the Jackal than something supernatural, and it's one of his best.

Their take: "September 1954: a hard-bitten cop; an isolated hospital for the criminally insane on an island in Boston Harbor; a murderer on the loose. Trust Lehane to drop readers into this combustible mix, throw in a major weather event — a vicious hurricane bearing down on the island — and still find ways to upend every expectation of where it’s all headed. As the U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels doggedly pursues a convicted child killer through the maelstrom, the novel’s narrative vise tightens, slowly and then explosively."

My take: I was already on the Dennis Lehane train by the time this came out, thanks to the outstanding Mystic River as well as his Kenzie & Gennaro series. This one expertly builds tension throughout before a bombshell ending. Interestingly, if I was going to pick a second Dennis Lehane book to add to the list after Mystic River, I would have chosen 2023's Small Mercies, his excellent novel set against the racial tensions of Boston school busing during the summer of '74 with perhaps his most memorable leading character in Mary Pat Fennessey. With all due respect to the excellent Shutter Island, I would have preferred to see Small Mercies in this slot.

Their take: "How many thriller writers dream up not one but two indelible series characters? Thirteen years after the dyspeptic L.A.P.D. homicide detective Harry Bosch first appeared in “The Black Echo,” Connelly introduced us to his half brother, Mickey Haller, a brash, sleazy defense attorney who conducts his business from the back seat of a Lincoln Town Car and gives his favorite bail bondsmen Planters nut tins stuffed with cash at Christmastime. Mickey flicks away thoughts of guilt or innocence “because everybody was guilty. Of something.” Watching him wheel, deal and scheme his way through a complex assault case is pure theater."

My take: I read it twenty years ago, and I saw the Matthew McConaughey movie, both of which are enjoyable. It belongs on this list if for no reason other than societal impact (with the current Netflix series expanding its cultural reach even more). But setting impact aside, Connelly is a master of the craft, and this, like his Harry Bosch novels, is a timeless thriller.

Their take: "'Lord of the Flies' gave us boys gone wild; 'Dare Me' suggests that the fairer sex can more than match them for feral, cruel and downright diabolical behavior. Abbott’s sixth novel is immersed in the hothouse world of a high school cheerleading squad whose charismatic new coach, Colette, upends the team’s power dynamic and sends the girls’ competitive instincts into overdrive. When a man in their orbit turns up dead, it’s like gasoline poured on a fraught mix of friendship, ambition and teen sexuality. Abbott lights the match."

My take: It made Amazon's Best Books of 2012, but somehow I missed it. Sounds great, though, and it's headed to the TBR pile.

Their take: "The question of nature versus nurture haunts Shriver’s taut, unnerving novel, a standout in the already rich field of books about bad-seed offspring. Relayed as a series of letters from a woman whose teenage son has committed a school massacre, the narrative offers one of the all-time thorny portraits of motherhood, slowly peeling back the layers of ambivalence, avoidance and outright hostility that led to the unthinkable."

My take: It's been referenced countless times, whenever a book explores a child that might just be born with an evil streak. The aforementioned The Push and Defending Jacob, and even this year's excellent Five all carry similar plots or sub-plots, but this still feels like the seminal work on a tricky subject.

Their take: "Here we go! In the first of Atkinson’s six Jackson Brodie books — twisty, thinky, gritty detective stories that are just weird enough to keep you looking over your shoulder — Brodie, a cop turned private investigator, gets a call that draws him deep into the past. As various plot threads connect, forming an ever more twisted web of family secrets and community shame, one of the main characters lays her cards on the table: 'Novels gave you a completely false idea about life, they told lies and they implied there were endings when in reality there were no endings, everything just went on and on and on.'"

My take: The closest Kate Atkinson has made it to me reading one of her books is with 2013's Life After Life, which I purchased in 2013 (according to my Amazon history) but never got around to reading.

Their take: "Rachel Watson is a hard character to love: a messy, flailing alcoholic whose behavioral issues have led to both the end of her marriage and the loss of her job. Still, she continues to commute into the city every day, in part because she can catch a voyeuristic glimpse of her ex’s happy new life and spy on another seemingly perfect couple on whom she becomes increasingly fixated. When she believes she’s witnessed something terrible one day, what is seen from the train does not stay on the train; the series of reveals that follow upend everything, and give outrageous new meaning to the term 'gaslighting.'"

My take: File this under those cultural phenomenon books that most love—like the aforementioned The Silent Patient—that just didn't land with me. It's fine, but it's missing the depth and creative structure that so many others on this list have. I was underwhelmed, and probably undone by inflated expectations before I had read a page.

Their take: "Welcome to a meandering stretch of Highway 59, which links rural communities in the Piney Woods of Deep East Texas, and meet Darren Mathews. The Texas Ranger has been suspended from his job, and “without the badge, he was just a Black man traveling the highway alone.” Still, he can’t resist chasing the case of two bodies found in a local bayou. As he navigates race, identity and secrets in an insular region that plays by its own rules, Mathews — committed to justice but all too aware of what he’s up against — begins to question what it really means to belong."

My take: It's interesting that this falls adjacent to an S.A. Cosby novel—it sounds like something he might write, and consequently something right up my alley. I haven't read it, but I will.

Their take: "The title of this book — the first in what is so far a nine-volume series — comes from Slough House, a godforsaken suite of offices in London where the British intelligence service sends its misfits. This island of broken toys is overseen by Jackson Lamb, an MI5 lifer with a filthy mouth and unspeakable personal hygiene. Herron has been hailed as a successor to John le Carré, which is a bit misleading. These books aren’t as much about geopolitics or spycraft as they are about the intrigue and indignity of modern office work, albeit with gunplay and terrorist threats and crackerjack prose."

My take: Even more in the zeitgeist now thanks to the Apple TV show of the same name. Nine books (and counting) is a lot in the series, but the books continue to deliver, if you judge by average rating.

Their take: "Thrillers tend to evoke a range of primal emotions; laughter is rarely one of them. Braithwaite’s breakout debut doesn’t short on body count, but it swerves from the usual grim template in its darkly comic portrayal of two unusually close Nigerian sisters, one of whom keeps inconveniently killing her boyfriends. Each time, the gorgeous and possibly sociopathic Ayoola claims self-defense; Korede, a nurse, isn’t so sure. Still, she always helps her baby sister clean up her messes — until the day Ayoola catches the eye of Korede’s work crush, a kindhearted doctor."

My take: Have not read it, but it sounds darkly absurd and right up my alley. It's going on the TBR.

Their take: "Don’t settle for Joel and Ethan Coen’s (superb) film version. This is McCarthy’s most direct and relentless piece of storytelling, nearly impossible to put down. It takes its title from the first line of W.B. Yeats’s poem “Sailing to Byzantium,” and it deals out its themes (fate, violence, moral decay) with an implacable confidence. Set in 1980 along the Texas-Mexico border, it’s about the aftermath of a drug deal gone bad — and about killings with a pneumatic cattle-gun. McCarthy’s bleak vision of life is consistently on display."

My take: The book is great...but this is a rare instance where I think the movie may even be better. You can't go wrong in either case.

Their take: "Larsson’s Millennium juggernaut began here, with one of the more indelible literary creations of the 21st century: a goth-punk Swedish computer hacker named Lisbeth Salander whose technical brilliance is matched only by her antisocial tendencies. She’s an unlikely match for the middle-aged journalist Mikael Blomkvist, but when the pair are thrown together to research the long-ago disappearance of a wealthy industrialist’s great-niece, the cold case becomes a hot pursuit of truth and justice in a vast, spidery conspiracy."

My take: Like with The Da Vinci Code, it's hard to overstate how broadly this one spread throughout the cultural zeitgeist. People who never read thrillers (and certainly not ones translated from their original Swedish) were picking up this book, and somewhat surprisingly almost universally loving it. It's very good, but it's different enough that I'm surprised that the masses latched onto it at the level they did.

Their take: "On an ordinary day in 1984 suburban Ireland, three children walk into the woods; only one, bloodied and stunned, comes out. The boy remembers nothing, and the case remains unsolved. Flash forward two decades and he’s become a homicide detective with a new name, a new accent and a lot of survivor’s guilt. His subsequent assignment to the killing of a 12-year-old girl at a local archaeological site provides the book’s contemporary hook, but French’s Edgar Award-winning debut is much more than the launch of her Dublin Murder Squad series: It’s an astute and wildly atmospheric portrait of loss, memory and the endless mysteries of human behavior."

My take: It's kind of incredible to think this was French's debut, given how good it is. She appears more on this list than any other author, and deservedly so. In the Woods is just as good as any of her other novels (although I slightly prefer The Likeness), and it's one I've recommended countless times over the years. It can be a bit polarizing—it's not as neat and tidy as many in this genre, and that leaves some people bothered, but it's one of many reasons I loved it a little more.

Their take: "Lehane remains one of the most naturally cinematic writers in the genre (no wonder so many of his novels have been turned into movies, often very good ones). But it’s hard to top the torque and flow of “Mystic River,” in which the consequences of a fraught incident experienced by three boyhood friends in working-class 1970s Boston reverberate across decades. When one of those now-grown boy’s teenage daughters is murdered 25 years later, the book becomes an enthralling study in remorse, revenge and the long tail of emotional trauma, told in Lehane’s inimitably tender and profane style."

My take: Twenty-five years (and many excellent books) later, this still stands up as Lehane's best. It's a perfect example of how a writer can take a very well-plotted mystery and add layers of depth that turn it into something so much more than your average thriller. It deserves its stellar ranking on this list.

Their take: "Flynn’s sly, trick-mirror tour de force begins as the fairly straightforward tale of a Missouri woman named Amy Dunne who goes missing on her fifth wedding anniversary. Could her husband, Nick, be responsible? After all, he’s moody, struggling financially, maybe even having an affair. But Amy’s diaries, which flash back to the couple’s former life in New York and the much rosier beginnings of their romance, reveal other complicating factors. The narrative, with its nimble switchbacks and misdirections, excels at building tension right up to the final thunderclap reveal. But it’s Flynn’s stinging, whipsmart insights — let us all pause here to honor the iconic “cool girl” monologue — that land “Gone Girl” its richly deserved spot in the modern pantheon."

My take: Regardless of what your criteria are for determining rank among so many excellent books, it's hard to argue this one's place at the top of the pile. It has everything: a unique and compelling idea; a tightly crafted plot; great characters; and a cultural impact that rivals almost all of the behemoths on this list. I was a Flynn fan after Sharp Objects and confirmed she was for real with Dark Places, but Gone Girl took things to another level.

And then...poof. No books for fourteen years. There is hope; she's allegedly still planning to publish novels and is on record saying there are drafts in progress. The expectations are probably unattainable, but I will still hold out hope that this isn't the last novel that Flynn has in her.