The most suspenseful thrillers where fact & fiction meet

I was immediately taken with author/filmmaker Nicholas Meyer's brilliant pairing of a flailing, cocaine-addicted Sherlock Holmes with a winningly rendered Sigmund Freud, whom a desperate Doctor Watson has recruited to save the self-destructive detective.

Freud’s efforts eventually teased out the darkest of secrets driving Holmes’ notorious substance abuse in a manner I found enthralling. I believe the best historical novels confidently ground you in a time and a place that captivates but also conjures a reality all their own in their blending of fact and fiction, which this novel does in spades.

I’ve revisited it many times over the years. A wonderful film adaptation by Meyer was also released many years ago, starring Nichol Williamson as Holmes and Alan Arkin as Freud.

James Ellroy’s 1987 novel exploring the infamous unsolved and ghoulish murder of Elizabeth Short, the so-called “Black Dahlia,” gripped me with its chilling portrayal of two very different cops who become obsessed with solving the 1947 murder.

Although this is a relatively early work of Ellroy’s and extremely visceral owing to the nature of the historical crime, it’s arguably the author’s first mature novel, proved to be his breakout book, and pre-dates the rather alliterative, staccato prose style he would adopt not long after.

Post-war Los Angeles is seedily, disturbingly rendered in surreal and gothic relief, while Ellroy also masterfully portrays many of the haunted LAPD detectives who actually worked the case.

This novel sparked my lifetime obsession regarding Mexican Revolutionary Francisco “Pancho” Villa and the U.S. Army’s eventual pursuit of Villa deep into Mexico following his presumed attack on Columbus, New Mexico.

In some ways evoking aspects of Hemingway’s A Farewell To Arms, this is a blood and thunder coming-of-age novel set against a wartime backdrop and narrated by a young (and future silent movie cowboy star) Tom Mix, who on a romantic whim, decides to cross the border and fight with Villa to overthrow Mexico’s despotic president.

I believe I reread this novel perhaps six times within a year of its 1982 release. Irving also knows something about effectively mixing fact and fiction as the convicted (and incarcerated) author of the notoriously fake Autobiography of Howard Hughes.

Victorian serial killer Jack the Ripper and fictional detective Sherlock Holmes have squared off countless times on screen and in various novels to varying degrees of success, but for me, this is the best story pitting the still unidentified serial killer against the most famous of fictional detectives.

Steeped in an immersive Victorian atmosphere and detail that drew me in, Hanna also effectively breathes life into several historical figures associated with the notorious case while remaining faithful to Arthur Conan Doyle's overall spirit.

In my opinion, Hanna’s version of Holmes subtly suggests inspiration was drawn from the late great Jeremy Brett, arguably the finest screen Holmes, while also giving Dr. Watson his intellectual due.

Pulp magazines were the forerunners of comic books, and two of the greatest pulp characters, Doc Savage and the Shadow, inspired Superman and Batman, essentially kickstarting the superhero industry. I grew up and cut my future fiction writer’s teeth on paperback Doc Savage and Shadow pulp reprints—the primary authors behind these respective pulp heroes.

Lester Dent and Walter B. Gibson clash and eventually join forces to combat a Depression-era menace that could only spring from classic pulps in Malmont’s brilliant meta novel. L. Ron Hubbard and H.P. Lovecraft also make the scene creepily in this intoxicating brew tailor-made for pulp fiction and 20th-century noir-fiction lovers.