8 Greatest Thriller Books of the Last 15 Years, Ranked
Remus is a writer, editor, journalist, and author with an eye for detail and an extremely active imagination. He is an enthusiast of everything to do with the graphic medium, whether it's Western comics and their adaptations or manga and anime. Remus is also the author of the sci-fantasy novel Once Upon a Time in Hyperspace and several works of short fiction in the mystery, comedy, and horror genres.
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The world has changed a lot over the past decade and a half. With the dramatic evolution of the internet economy, massive cultural shifts, and the exponential development of technology, our present day would be unrecognizable to someone from the early 2010s. And just as the world has changed, literature has changed with it, and not always in the ways we might have expected.
In the thriller genre, cyberthrillers and cutting-edge modern narrative styles have been growing in popularity for a good while now, but the 2010s also gave us some great works that build on classic forms and traditions, revisiting older sub-genres with greater sensitivity and depth. And as these trends have grown and developed, we’ve been treated to some brilliant books that have earned critical and commercial success, with some even becoming pop culture landmarks. With that in mind, here’s our ranked selection of some of the greatest thriller books of the last 15 years.
8 ‘The God of the Woods’ (2024)
Written by Liz Moore, The God of the Woods is a thriller novel with a classic setting: a summer camp. Set in 1975, the book explores the search for Barbara Van Laar, a 13-year-old girl and the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp, who goes missing 14 years after her older brother similarly vanished. As the search unfolds, it brings up long-buried secrets of both the wealthy Van Laars and the local people they employ, revealing a dark history.
It would have been very easy for The God of the Woods to be cliché, considering how common the summer camp setting and missing child premise are in thriller fiction. However, Moore crafts an ambitious, well-written story that’s suspenseful, gripping, and full of fascinating complexities. It’s partly a story of class, partly one of parents and children and the divide between them, and it’s a great read in every aspect. The novel became a bestseller at the time of its publication and has been widely hailed as one of the best thriller novels of the 21st century.
7 ‘Final Girls’ (2017)
Written by Todd Ritter under the pen name Riley Sager, Final Girls is a slasher-thriller that explores the titular horror movie trope. The book follows Quincy Carpenter, one of three young women who share a tragic connection: each of them has been the sole survivor of a massacre. Ten years after surviving a vacation gone horribly wrong, Quincy is unable and unwilling to recall that night, but she is forced to confront her past when one of the first Final Girls is murdered, with another Final Girl looking more and more like the most likely culprit.
If you’re a fan of slasher movies like Halloween and Scream, Final Girls is going to be an amazingly fun experience for you. Channeling the energy, tropes, and narrative style of classic slasher cinema, the novel is a highly entertaining read that will not disappoint any thriller fan. The book was quite well-received by critics and readers when it was first published in 2017, and it went on to win the International Thriller Writers Award for Best Hard Cover Novel.
6 ‘Verity’ (2018)
Bridging the romance and psychological thriller genres, Verity is a thriller novel written by Colleen Hoover that follows struggling writer Lowen Ashleigh, who gets a job ghostwriting a bestselling book series after the original author, Verity Crawford, is rendered comatose by a car accident. At the Crawford family home, Lowen navigates her growing attraction to Verity’s husband while learning about the tragic events that led to her accident. Things get even more complicated when she stumbles on an unfinished manuscript that reveals dark secrets about Verity.
Originally self-published before being picked up by Grand Central Publishing, Verity is a departure from Hoover’s previous work, which is primarily in the romance and YA genres, but it draws on her romance work to create a fascinating thriller narrative that’s perfect for fans of books like Gone Girl. With plenty of unexpected twists and a haunting ending, it’s a memorable thriller that explores themes of obsession and deception in fascinating ways. A movie adaptation starring Anne Hathaway and Dakota Johnson was released in 2026.
Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes Which Iconic Detective Should Solve Your Case? Columbo · Benoit Blanc · Jessica Fletcher · Marlowe
Answer eight quick questions and we will tell you who should be assigned to your murder. Four of the most famous detectives ever put on screen, and four completely different ways of getting somebody to admit what they did.
🕵Columbo(Columbo)
🧣Benoit Blanc(Knives Out)
🖨Jessica Fletcher(Murder, She Wrote)
🚬Philip Marlowe(The Big Sleep)
01
What do people assume about you when they meet you? Pick the one that sounds most like you.
02
Pick a coat. No wrong answers here.
03
How do you get information out of people? One answer only.
04
How would your friends describe you? Be honest.
05
Pick a drink. Pick the closest answer.
06
Where do you do your best thinking? Pick the closest answer.
07
What is your car like? Think about the one on your drive.
08
What makes you good at reading people? Last one. This is the one that decides it.
The Case Is Assigned Your Detective Is…
A great detective is really just a personality with a method attached, which is why we keep remaking the same four of them. Here is yours, what it says about you, and the case for them being the best in the business.
Columbo
You let people think you are not a threat and then you simply never go away. Columbo is the only major detective show that tells you who did it in the first ten minutes, because the pleasure was never the puzzle, it was watching a rich man slowly realise he is in trouble.
- You are underestimated constantly, and you have stopped minding because it keeps working.
- The show invented the inverted detective format for television and nobody has bettered it since.
- Peter Falk won four Emmys for the part and played him across five decades.
- Your flaw is that one more question is rarely one more question.
Benoit Blanc
You are the most interesting person in the room and you know exactly how to use it. Rian Johnson built Blanc as a gentleman detective who is also an outsider everywhere he goes, which lets him be charming at people who would never otherwise talk to him.
- You read a room in seconds and you are not above performing a little to speed things up.
- Rian Johnson was nominated for the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for Knives Out in 2020.
- Wake Up Dead Man arrived on Netflix in December, making three Blanc films in six years.
- Your risk is enjoying the performance so much that people stop taking the point seriously.
Jessica Fletcher
Everybody tells you everything, and you have never once asked them to. Jessica Fletcher is a crime novelist from a small town in Maine who is so warm and so obviously trustworthy that suspects confess to her essentially as a social courtesy.
- You are the person friends call first, and you have a frankly alarming amount of information about everybody.
- Angela Lansbury was nominated for the Emmy twelve times for this role and never won once.
- The show ran twelve seasons, and Jamie Lee Curtis is now bringing the character back.
- Your flaw is that being told everything is only a gift if you know what to do with it.
Philip Marlowe
You expect to be lied to and you are almost never disappointed. Chandler wrote Marlowe as a man with a rigid private code in a city that has none, which is why he takes the case, solves it, gets nothing out of it and takes the next one.
- You are the most cynical person your friends know and the one they would call at four in the morning.
- Bogart played him in The Big Sleep in 1946 and the plot is famously impossible to follow, which matters not at all.
- Elliott Gould, Robert Mitchum and Liam Neeson have all taken the part, and every version says something about its decade.
- Your weakness is a code so strict that it mostly punishes the person holding it.
5 ‘Razorblade Tears’ (2021)
Written by S. A. Cosby, Razorblade Tears is a crime novel that centers on the brutal murder of a gay couple, one of whom is Black and one white. When the police investigation stalls, the aging ex-con fathers of the two men join forces to seek revenge, using their underworld connections to track down their sons’ killers. Simultaneously, they are also forced to face up to their own homophobia, racial prejudice, and personal shame.
Published in July 2021, Razorblade Tears was a New York Times bestseller and earned rave reviews from critics. Anchored by its relatable anti-heroes, the book takes readers on a journey that’s both thrilling and thoughtful in equal measure, with violence balanced by emotion. Exploring sensitive and timely themes through the eyes of its less-than-perfect protagonists, the book is a thriller masterpiece that’s pulpy yet literary, melodramatic yet grounded, and thoroughly engaging from start to finish.
4 ‘The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle’ (2018)
English author Stuart Turton’s debut novel, The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle (originally published in the UK as The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle), is a murder mystery book with a unique, experimental narrative structure. The story takes place at Blackheath Manor, where Evelyn Hardcastle will die at precisely 11:00 pm. We see the plot unfold from the perspective of Aiden Bishop, who is stuck in a time loop, waking up in the body of one of eight party guests and reliving the same day over and over again, unless he can discover the name of Evelyn’s killer.
The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle is, first and foremost, a fascinating literary experience. The inventive narrative allows the reader to experience the murder mystery in a truly immersive way, transforming it into a sort of escape room. The book was a bestseller at the time of its publication, earned high acclaim from critics, and won several awards, including the Costa Book Award for Best First Novel.
3 ‘The Killer Question’ (2025)
A modern epistolary mystery novel, The Killer Question is the fifth mystery novel written by Janice Hallett. Presented through text messages, emails, quiz transcripts, and local reports, the book begins with a pitch for a Netflix true-crime documentary about a once-loved country pub, The Case is Altered, its mysterious owners, Mal and Sue Eastwood, and the events that led to its closing. Through the various documents we are presented with, we learn of the pub’s popular trivia nights, which take an unexpectedly dark turn when a suspicious new team starts winning every game.
Arguably Hallett’s best book yet, The Killer Question is wicked, clever, and deliciously meta. All of Hallett’s mysteries utilize the non-linear, mixed-media format, but The Killer Question is the most accomplished execution of that narrative style so far, painting a fully realized world, down to the smallest details. The novel has earned high praise from critics and readers for its brilliant storytelling and pacing, as well as its shocking twists.
2 ‘Magpie Murders’ (2016)
Written by Anthony Horowitz, Magpie Murders is the first book of the Susan Ryeland series. The novel explores the murder of a mystery author through a story-within-a-story structure. Susan, an editor working for a publishing company, searches for the missing final chapter of the deceased author’s new unpublished novel, Magpie Murders, and begins to suspect foul play. Simultaneously, we learn the story of Magpie Murders, a classic detective mystery set in the English countryside in the 1950s.
Anthony Horowitz has a long-established reputation as a great mystery and thriller writer, but Magpie Murders is easily one of the author’s best books, a true masterpiece of detective fiction. The inventive structure and Golden Age homages have earned the novel great praise from critics and fans alike, and it was followed by two sequels, Moonflower Murders and Marble Hall Murders, with a third in the works. All three books in the series so far have also been adapted into TV shows, the latest released in 2026.
1 ‘Gone Girl’ (2012)
Gillian Flynn’s third and most successful novel, Gone Girl is a crime thriller that follows the story of husband and wife Nick and Amy Dunne. When Amy mysteriously vanishes on their fifth anniversary, the investigation reveals evidence of a possible murder and a diary that points to Nick as the prime suspect, sparking a media circus and revealing shocking truths about both of them. The story is told in three parts, exploring competing narratives on the same events as seen from both Nick and Amy’s POVs.
Gone Girl makes exceptionally good use of the unreliable narrator trope, creating a gripping psychological thriller about a turbulent, complicated marriage and toxic codependency. Dark and twisted, with a major mid-story surprise that throws the reader off course momentarily, the book has been widely acclaimed ever since it was first published in 2012, and it’s had a significant influence on the thriller genre. A film adaptation directed by David Fincher from a screenplay written by Flynn was released in 2014, which also earned critical acclaim and commercial success.
- Release Date
- October 3, 2014
- Runtime
- 149 minutes
- Director
- David Fincher
- Writers
- Gillian Flynn
- Producers
- Arnon Milchan, Ceán Chaffin, Joshua Donen
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