I want an ambitious big-city thriller about murder, lust and wealth
The Doorman
by Chris Pavone
Chicky Diaz has been a doorman at a fancy Manhattan apartment building for nearly three decades, and in the course of a single, terrifying day will learn that he can’t protect it from the city’s chaos. Meanwhile, the building’s millionaires and billionaires, who feel keenly the disparities in their circumstances, face a host of troubles, many of their own making. While a mystery hums beneath the narrative — it’s clear from the start that someone won’t make it out alive — “The Doorman” is better read as a state-of-the-city novel about contemporary New York, a kaleidoscopic portrait of the city at a singularly unsettled time. Read our review.
I want to read a thriller about something incredibly specific
The Impossible Thing
by Belinda Bauer
Who wants to read a novel about the trade in rare birds’ eggs that thrived in England in the first half of the 20th century but is now illegal? Not me — or at least I didn’t until I read this suspenseful, charming mystery. It begins in Yorkshire in 1926, when young Celie Sheppard daringly plucks a blazing red guillemot egg — coveted by collectors — from the side of a cliff, and takes us through the astonishing history of the egg and the people willing to lie, steal and even kill for it. Read our review.
Give me a smart serial-killer thriller
The Man Made of Smoke
by Alex North
Dan Garvie, a criminal profiler in England — long haunted by his childhood near-encounter with an infamous serial killer known as the Pied Piper — finds himself drawn back into the case after the suspicious death of his father, a police officer. Following clues his father left behind, he soon realizes that there’s a new killer on the loose, targeting people connected to the Pied Piper murders. The plot is beautifully executed, and it’s quite satisfying to watch the three narrative threads of the story — Dan’s, his father’s and that of a young boy named James — come together. Read our review.
I’d like a mesmerizing thriller by an international literary star
Your Steps on the Stairs
by Antonio Muñoz Molina; translated by Curtis Bauer
In this anxious, unconventional thriller by a literary superstar in Spain, an unnamed man, recently relocated to Lisbon from New York, is waiting for his beloved wife to join him in their new apartment. The earth is getting hotter everywhere, and the narrator sees his new home as a refuge, physically as well as emotionally. “If the world is going to come to an end, there’s no better place to wait for it to end than here,” he says. Reading this book feels like hearing a constant alarm ringing in a neighbor’s house. You’ll want to read the ending more than once. Read our review.
I want to read an old-fashioned locked-room mystery
Fair Play
by Louise Hegarty
A group of friends convenes for an overnight murder mystery party in an Irish country house on New Year’s Eve, but the next morning one of them is dead for real. “Fair Play” is a witty, knowing homage to classic 1920s detective fiction, but it’s also a deeply sensitive examination of the loneliness and confusion of grief — and an affecting reminder that every sudden death is a mystery that can’t be fully explained. Read our review.
I’d like a brainy thriller that will keep me guessing
Dissolution
by Nicholas Binge
This chronology-hopping work of speculative fiction about time, memory and scientists run amok is suspenseful, provocative and surprisingly tender. It begins with an interrogation in what appears to be an empty swimming pool, as a man named Hassan forces an elderly woman, Maggie Webb, to delve into her husband’s past memories in order to unearth a critical piece of information. “The fate of all our lives” depends on it, he says. Read our review.
How about a thriller filled with jaw-dropping twists and turns?
Dead Money
by Jakob Kerr
Days before someone shoots him to death, Trevor Canon, the founder of a multibillion-dollar San Francisco “mobility platform,” amends his will to freeze his assets in the event of his murder. That’s the proximate story of this terrific debut, which appears to be a traditional whodunit but is really an unpredictable nesting-box of surprises. Kerr, who worked at Airbnb for a decade, brings an insider’s knowledge and a satirist’s sensibility to the vanities and delusions of Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurs, tech bros and megalomaniacal chief executives. Read our review.
Give me a thriller with characters I won’t soon forget
The Last Illusion of Paige White
by Vanessa McCausland
Jane Masters, a journalist, left her small Australian hometown in Australia to make a new life in Sydney. But when an old frenemy-turned-social-media-influencer from her school days, Paige, dies by drowning after posting a disturbing and enigmatic photo of herself on Instagram, Jane finds herself embroiled in a mystery that demands an excavation of the past. It may sound like a familiar thriller plot, but McCausland elevates it with thoughtful, subtle writing and a clever plot. What makes the novel infinitely more poignant are the chapters narrated by Paige, suffused with regret for her life’s mistakes. Read our review.
Sarah Lyall is a writer at large for The Times, writing news, features and analysis across a wide range of sections.
The post The Best Thrillers of the Year (So Far) appeared first on New York Times.
