The New York Times Book Review’s recent list of the 50 best thrillers of the 21st century — as voted by authors, editors, librarians and other book lovers — contained a wide range of thrillers, from serial killer novels to spy fiction. A look at the list, however, makes one commonality abundantly clear: Great thrillers — which are plot-driven by definition — lend themselves well to adaptation. More than half of the titles on the list have been turned into movies or TV shows. Here’s a look at the best.
No. 1 on our list
Gone Girl (2014)
In the capable hands of the director David Fincher, Gillian Flynn’s twisty missing person story turned revenge saga becomes a darkly comic masterpiece — one whose delightfully insane turns of plot are grounded by the top-tier performances of co-stars Rosamund Pike and Ben Affleck. Read our review.
No. 2 on our list
Mystic River (2003)
Clint Eastwood’s pitch-black take on Dennis Lehane’s mournful tragedy is about as bleak as stories come, full of child kidnappings, murders, betrayals and abuse, delivered in a full-throated, almost operatic register. The film earned two acting Oscars, for Sean Penn and Tim Robbins. Read our review.
No. 4 on our list
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2011)
Stieg Larsson’s outrageously popular series of Scandi-noir potboilers have made it to the screen a number of times, initially as a Swedish film series starring Noomi Rapace in 2009. The best of the bunch is an adaptation of the first book directed by David Fincher who, in tandem with the stars Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara, gives the source material a pulse-pounding energy and compelling gravitas. Read our review.
No. 5 on our list
No Country for Old Men (2007)
Considering the distinctive style of Joel and Ethan Coen, it’s surprising that their adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel remains so faithful to the source material that it practically recreates it word for word. A lean and mean neo-western (and Best Picture winner) about the hands of fate — as represented by one man’s doomed quest to pilfer a $2 million windfall — has no shortage of superlative qualities, none more memorable than Javier Bardem’s memorable turn as the Terminator-like hit man Anton Chigurh. Read our review.
No. 9 on our list
Slow Horses (2022)
The popular Apple TV+ show, now approaching its sixth season, is based on a series of caustic espionage novels by Mick Herron. It stars Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb, the brilliant but irascible head of Slough House, the dumping ground for the dregs of the British domestic intelligence service. Herron’s novels are frequently compared to those of fellow British spy novelist John le Carré, but the sleek, well-made series, like the books, has a wry voice all its own. Read our review.
No. 14 on our list
We Need To Talk About Kevin (2011)
Lionel Shriver’s difficult, thorny epistolary novel about the mother of a reclusive school shooter was adapted by the Scottish director Lynne Ramsay as an even more challenging and abrasive film. Starring Tilda Swinton and Ezra Miller, it explores the childhood of the killer through the lens of the woman enduring the aftermath of his crimes. Read our review.
No. 16 on our list
The Lincoln Lawyer (2022)
Michael Connelly’s beloved series of legal thrillers about Los Angeles defense attorney Mickey Haller was first adapted into a 2011 movie starring Matthew McConaughey as the eponymous hero — a decent if forgettable effort that drew its story from the first of the books. It recently returned to the screen as an amiable, no-nonsense Netflix show starring Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, which, keeping the title, kicks off with material from the second novel in the series, “The Brass Verdict.” Read our review.
No. 17 on our list
Shutter Island (2010)
Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s period crime novel takes immense glee in playing up, and then deconstructing, genre conventions. With a scenery-chewing turn by Leonardo DiCaprio and a gloriously exaggerated cinematic style, the story of a grizzled U.S. Marshal’s investigation of an island hospital for the criminally insane becomes a delightfully old-fashioned B-movie thrill ride. Read our review.
No. 18 on our list
11.22.63 (2016)
Stephen King’s late-career coup about a reluctant time traveler who hopes to thwart the assassination of John F. Kennedy is one of his best and most intricately realized novels, and it received a handsome and faithful mini-series adaptation. James Franco stars as Jake Epping, a Maine schoolteacher who slips back to the early ’60s, aiming to thwart Lee Harvey Oswald — if only the past will let him. Read our review.
No. 19 on our list
Sharp Objects (2018)
Capitalizing on the runaway success of Gillian Flynn’s “Gone Girl” and “Big Little Lies,” some of the creative team of the latter reunited to adapt her debut novel. The HBO mini-series made only minor changes to Flynn’s morbid Southern Gothic thriller, staying faithful to its suffocating atmosphere and somber, funereal mood. Read our review.
No. 21 on our list
Room (2015)
The most distinctive feature of Emma Donoghue’s ingenious novel is how it is written: The story of a mother and son living in captivity in a tiny room is told from the point of view of the 5-year-old boy, who has never known anything other than the space he’s confined to. The film features heartfelt performances from leads Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay, and canny editing that makes the most of its tight setting. Read our review.
No. 22 on our list
The Constant Gardener (2005)
“The Constant Gardener,” John le Carré’s story of corruption at pharmaceutical companies in Africa, bears many of the author’s hallmarks — righteous anger, clever construction and a constitutional aversion to spy thriller clichés — and they are faithfully transposed to the screen in this film starring Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz. Read our review.
No. 25 on our list
Winter’s Bone (2010)
Debra Granik’s flinty adaptation of Daniel Woodrell’s Southern Gothic novel, which stars Jennifer Lawrence as a teenager embroiled in a mystery in the rural Ozarks, was a major critical and commercial success. It was a career-making breakthrough for Lawrence, whose performance transformed her into an instant movie star. Read our review.
No. 26 on our list
The Da Vinci Code (2006)
Ron Howard’s blockbuster take on the Dan Brown megahit, starring Tom Hanks as the Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon, was so commercially successful that the actor and director returned for two sequels, “Angels and Demons” (2009) and “Inferno” (2016). Howard retained Brown’s pulpy, guilty-pleasure blend of globe-trotting adventure and extensive (if somewhat dubious) history, rendering Langdon’s quest for the Holy Grail against a glittering European backdrop. Read our review.
No. 27 on our list
Big Little Lies (2017)
A water-cooler sensation when it aired as a limited mini-series (it returned for a second season in 2019), HBO’s acclaimed take on Liane Moriarty’s fizzy psychological drama brought big production values and a star-studded cast that included Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern. Read our review.
No. 30 on our list
The Sympathizer (2024)
Viet Thanh Nguyen’s dark, brilliant, Pulitzer Prize-winning debut follows a North Vietnamese spy living in the U.S. and working as an adviser on an “Apocalypse Now”-like film about the Vietnam War. The HBO adaptation features a standout Robert Downey Jr. in multiple roles. Read our review.
No. 39 on our list
The Handmaiden (2016)
The Welsh novelist Sarah Waters published “Fingersmith,” an erotic crime thriller about a torrid same-sex love affair in Victorian England, to much acclaim in 2002. It was later adapted by Park Chan-wook, the South Korean auteur behind the cult classic revenge flick “Oldboy,” who transposed the story to Japanese-occupied Korea but retained much of its frank sexuality and shocking violence. (For a more traditional adaptation, see the 2005 BBC version.) Read our review.
No. 41 on our list
Tell No One (2006)
Harlan Coben’s tricky, surprise-filled mystery was brought to the screen five years later by the French filmmaker Guillaume Canet. Though it kept the premise (and tone) of the book, Canet and co-screenwriter Philippe Lefebvre drastically altered the book’s ending, changing the identity of the killer. Read our review.
No. 42 on our list
You (2018)
The TV adaptation of the best-selling series by Caroline Kepnes started out on the Lifetime network before moving to Netflix. While the show’s playful treatment of its antihero, the stalker and serial killer Joe Goldberg, began to strain credulity by the end, the series — thanks in large part to Penn Badgley’s charismatic lead performance — never overstayed its welcome, capturing the source material’s self-aware charm. Read our review.
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