The best contemporary suspense novels with jaw-dropping twists

Set against the backdrop of a New York couple’s failing marriage, wife Amy Dunne disappears. Every clue points to her abduction and possible murder. The finger of suspicion points to husband Nick—especially after Amy’s diary is found. In it, she has detailed her relationship with Nick from its rosy beginnings to the point where she fears for her safety at his hands.

It was obvious to me where this mystery was heading—until I turned the page about halfway through the book. The brilliant switch in POV and the realization that Nick might possibly become a victim of a miscarriage of justice was a solid punch in the gut—and the inspiration for me to write my third novel.

I’ve read many thrillers in my genre touted for their mind-blowing twists, but which have left me disappointed. The Boys lives up to its hype. Totally.  

Ethan is a husband who has an extreme fear of parenting. To help him overcome his fears, his wife Barb arranges for them to foster two brothers. Ethan takes to his parenting role so diligently that Barb has to take a breather from the marriage while Ethan takes the boys on a biking trip to Italy.  

It is here—a little more than halfway through the novel—that the reader learns the shocking truth about the boys. Nothing prepared me for this twist. At all. Or, for the revelations and resolution that followed—all of which made the twist totally plausible and comprehensible.  

The action opens in 1954 with Teddy Daniels, one of two US marshals heading for a criminally insane facility on the remote Shutter Island. Their assignment? To search for a female inmate who has escaped. But the hunters become the hunted when they appear to stumble onto secret mind-altering experiments being conducted on the inmates. When Teddy is caught trying to leave the island, the doctor in charge reveals what is really going on. It’s a mind-blowing twist that had me turning back the pages to see how Lehane had pulled it off.

Slaughter is one of the best storytellers I’ve read in the last ten years, and Pretty Girls is her gold standard. The thriller, which is a complex tale about the unsolved disappearances of teenage/college girls, opens with the author’s trademark: a brutal, graphically-written scene. Here, it is the fatal stabbing in a back alley of Paul, a brilliant, rich architect. The murder is witnessed by his wife, protagonist, Claire.

After the funeral, Claire is faced with a series of mystifying discoveries on Paul’s computer which suggest that her loving, perfect husband was involved in making snuff videos for a torture porn ring which is protected by local cops. Slaughter’s skillful plotting and set-up to the midway point render the twist gasp-inducing rather than preposterous.

This 2003 novel is ostensibly the story of a mass school shooting perpetrated by teenager, Kevin. But it is really the story of a marriage and motherhood where Kevin’s mother, Eva, always suspected there was something wrong with her son whereas Kevin’s father, Franklin, never saw that side of his son.

It’s a conflict that apparently led to their eventual estrangement since it is told in the form of letters written by Eva to Franklin. In the letters, Eva struggles for understanding: Is she to blame for Kevin’s mass murder of his schoolmates, or was Kevin born bad?

The sickening twist that occurs in Eva’s recollection of the actual day of the shootings answers that question even as it reveals exactly why Eva and Franklin could no longer stay together.