100 Thrillers: an Insomniac's Guide to Books That Will Keep You Up All Night...

I have often found the lines between two of my favorite mystery subgenres, thriller and whodunnit, somewhat blurry at times, so I looked up the two words as they relate to literature and found what the most definitive explanation, in my estimation, is. Accordingly, thecontentauthority.com provides the following definitions:

  “A thriller typically involves high stakes and a sense of danger or urgency, often with a protagonist trying to stop a villain or solve a problem before it’s too late. On the other hand, a whodunit focuses on a mystery that needs to be solved, usually involving a crime or puzzle that the reader or viewer can try to solve alongside the characters.” [i]

Madison Troyer originally published the list of thrillers below for stacker.com under the title: '100 thrillers everyone should read at least once.'

TITLE	AUTHOR
1. Gone Girl	Gillian Flynn
2. 11/22/63	Stephen King
3. The Silent Patient	Alex Michaelides
4. A Time to Kill	John Grisham
5. And Then There Were None	Agatha Christie
6. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy	John Le Carre
7. Before I Go to Sleep	S. J. Watson
8. The Couple Next Door	Shari Lapena
9. The Talented Mr. Ripley	Patricia Highsmith
10. The Black Echo	Michael Connelly
11. The Lincoln Lawyer	Michael Connelly
12. We Have Always Lived in a Castle	Shirley Jackson
13. Tell No One	Harlan Coben
14. Jaws	Peter Benchley
15. In the Woods	Tana French
16. American Psycho	Bret Easton Ellis
17. Dark Matter	Blake Crouch
18. Fight Club	Chuck Palahniuk
19. The Bone Collector	Jeffrey Deaver
20. The Silence of the Lambs	Thomas Harris
21. The Firm	John Grisham
22. The Woman in White	Wilkie Collins
23. The Moonstone	Wilkie Collins
24. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest	Ken Kesey
25. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo	Steig Larsson
26. The Andromeda Strain	Michael Crichton
27. The Snowman	Jo Nesbo
28. Along Came a Spider	James Patterson
29. The Alienist	Caleb Carr
30. The Hot Zone	Richard Preston
31. The Elephant Tree	R. D. Ronald
32. The Day of the Jackal	Frederick Forsyth
33. Little Fires Everywhere	Celeste Ng
34. Misery	Stephen King
35. The Family Upstairs	Lisa Jewell
36. The Girl on the Train	Paula Hawkins
37. The Holdout	Graham Moore
38. The Guest List	Lucy Foley
39. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde	Robert Louis Stevenson
40. Miracle Creek	Angie Kim
41. Triptych	Karin Slaughter
42. Alias Grace	Margaret Atwood
43. The Surgeon	Tess Gerritsen
44. Lock Every Door	Riley Sager
45. The Whisper Man	Alex North
46. Rebecca	Daphne du Maurier
47. A Simple Favor	Darcey Bell
48. Clear and Present Danger	Tom Clancy
49. We Need to Talk About Kevin	Lionel Shriver
50. The Last Mrs. Parrish	Liv Constantine
51. The Woman in Cabin 10	Ruth Ware
52. Behind Closed Doors	B.A. Paris
53. The Zombie Room	R.D. Ronald
54. The Chestnut Man	Soren Sveistrup
55. Big Little Lies	Liane Moriarty
56. The Last Flight	Julie Clark
57. Fierce Kingdom	Gin Phillips
58. No Exit	Taylor Adams
59. The Shadows	Alex North
60. A Good Marriage	Kimberly McCreight
61. Our Man in Havana	Graham Greene
62. Eileen	Ottessa Moshfegh
63. Helter Skelter	Vincent Bugliosi with Curt Gentry
64. The Spy Who Came in From the Cold	John Le Carre
65. The Broken Girls	Simone St. James
66. The Postman Always Rings Twice	James M. Cain
67. The Dinner	Herman Koch
68. Room	Emma Donaghue
69. Murder on the Orient Express	Agatha Christie
70. The Bourne Identity	Robert Ludlum
71. The Odessa File	Frederick Forsyth
72. Gorky Park	Martin Cruz Smith
73. A is for Alibi	Sue Grafton
74. Never Let Me Go	Kazuo Ishiguro
75. A Madness of Sunshine	Nalini Singh
76. The Sun Down Motel	Simone St. James
77. The Great Influenza	John M. Barry
78. The Shadow of the Wind	Carlos Ruiz Zafon
79. Killing Floor	Lee Child
80. Bird Box	Josh Malerman
81. Angels & Demons	Dan Brown
82. The DaVinci Code	Dan Brown
83. Intensity	Dean Koontz
84. Sharp Objects	Gillian Flynn
85. Eye of the Needle	Ken Follett
86. The Hound of the Baskervilles	Arthur Conan Doyle
87. The Silent Wife	A.S.A. Harrison
88. Shutter Island	Dennis Lehane
89. Trial	Clifford Irving
90. The Woman in the Window	A.J. Finn
91. Anatomy of a Murder	Robert Traver
92. The Wife Between Us	Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen
93. Jurassic Park	Michael Crichton
94. Murder Must Advertise	Dorothy L. Sayers
95. Into the Water	Paula Hawkins
96. In Cold Blood	Truman Capote
97. Mistress	James Patterson
98. The Pelican Brief	John Grisham
99. In a Dark, Dark Wood	Ruth Ware
100. You	Caroline Kepnes

 

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[i] https://thecontentauthority.com/blog/thriller-vs-whodunit#:~:text=A%20thriller%20typically,alongside%20the%20characters.