The best thrillers to keep you awake at night and your heart racing

Connolly weaves taut crime thrillers that I have great trouble putting down once I start reading. Charlie Parker and the rest of the regular cast are beautifully rich characters I care about, which explains the 19 books in this series on my shelf. What sets Connolly apart is an undercurrent of supernatural evil that arcs through these crime stories. In The Black Angel, the shroud that conceals what the reader likely sensed in the early novels is pulled back a little to reveal an underworld of darkness beneath the stories. Charlie Parker is the detective you want on the case when there is more than just a crime and The Black Angel is a milestone in the series.

Dirk Pitt’s career at the National Underwater Marine Agency—as well as the collection of classic cars and artifacts in his airplane hangar—chronicle daring adventures involving modern crises linked to lost pieces of history. In Raise the Titanic, tons of a rare ore smuggled out of Tsarist Siberia lies at the bottom of the Atlantic in the doomed Titanic’s hull. Decades after the sinking, the lost ore is now critical to an impenetrable American missile defense system. To succeed, Pit and his NUMA crew must evade Russian forces searching for the ore to thwart the American plans, locate the Titanic’s final resting place beneath miles of frigid ocean and somehow recover the cargo and bring it to the surface. I read this book as a teenager and it certainly influenced me as writer, it is that good.

While not technically a fast-paced thriller, The Master Executioner is the compelling story of a young Civil War veteran who evolves into a methodical, professional hangman in the old West. After completing a carpentry apprenticeship, Oscar Stone goes west to seek his fortunes in the frontier. Finding construction work scarce, he accepts a commission to build the gallows for a hanging and his career plans find a new trajectory. Stone is as exacting as a hangman as he was a carpentry, from the quality of the rope to the length of the drop he strives to provide the condemned a quick and painless death. Estleman’s prose is exceptional, his dialog crisp, and his storytelling lean and well-paced. The pages of The Master Executioner fly.

Steve Berry has built a successful writing career mining interesting nuggets from history and asking a simple what-if question that sends his imagination racing. The seventh Cotton Malone thriller opens with the failed attempt to assassinate President Danny Daniels. Berry links this attempt with the successful, but seemingly unrelated presidential assassinations in 1865, 1881, 1901, and 1963. The historical gold nugget at the heart of The Jefferson Key is a clause in the United States Constitution, contained in Article 1, Section 8. Malone races across the U.S. to break a cipher created by Thomas Jefferson, unravel a mystery concocted by Andrew Jackson, and unearth a document drafted by the Founding Fathers in order to stop the secret society of American pirates.

Hannibal Lecter. That alone is enough to recommend this brilliant Thomas Harris novel. Red Dragon serves as the literary debut of the iconic psychiatrist/gourmand serial killer. This tense, psychological thriller places FBI profiler Will Graham between the imprisoned but still dangerous Lecter and the titular character who slays entire families under the light of a full moon. The novel opens with Graham on leave and recovering from physical and psychological injuries sustained in Lecter’s capture when the urgency of catching this new killer presses him reluctantly back into service. Graham’s effort to aid the hunt of the Dragon from the shadows is thwarted when Lecter aims the killer at Graham and his family. Wicked fun.