The Best Books of 2020: Thrillers!

More so than in any previous year, in 2020 I noticed the very pronounced escapist elements in the thriller sub-genre - and appreciated it very much. Despite the cutting-edge technology the books so regularly invoke, despite the guidebook-detailed real-world locations where the steel-jawed heroes slurp alcohol and fight drug lords, despite the ripped-from-the-headlines nature of the plots, thriller fiction in 2020 seemed even more dramatically mythological than ever - with one incredibly, blaringly blatant exception, which we’ll get to. These were the best of the year’s crop:

10 The Rabbit Hunter by Lars Kepler (translated from the Swedish by Neil Smith) (Knopf)

This latest Joona Linna adventure is every bit as unabashedly adrenaline-fueled as all the earlier books in the series, and like so many of those earlier books, this one concentrates on the dark deeds of a well-drawn serial killer.

9 The Familiar Dark by Amy Engel (Dutton)

This stark story of a mother hunting for justice for the death of her daughter is totally convincing, particularly in the surprisingly subtle ways Amy Engel peels back the many layers of her main character as the tension of the plot steadily ratchets up.

8 One Minute Out by Mark Greaney (Berkley Books)

It would hardly be a Best Thriller list without a Gray Man novel by Mark Greaney - this one pitting Greaney’s deadly assassin against the powers behind a human trafficking ring and showing all the author’s talent for sharp dialogue and gripping action sequences.

7 Devolution by Max Brooks (Del Rey)

This latest book from the author of World War Z tells the story of a deadly confrontation between a beleaguered human population on the foothills of Mount Rainier and a population of ferocious semi-human sasquatch creatures, and just as in his bestselling previous book, Brooks brings delicious conviction to every detail.

6 The Empty Bed by Nina Sadowsky (Ballantine)

This complicated tale of a man staggering under both the disappearance of his wife and the suspicion that naturally falls on him for the disappearance confidently won me over, particularly the character of Catherine, the mastermind behind the illicit witness protection program called the Burial Society.

5 Into the Fire by Gregg Hurwitz (Minotaur Books)

These Orphan X novels by the terrific Gregg Hurwitz feature yet another freelance assassin, Evan Smoak, the Nowhere Man, who in these pages faces a steadily-expanding labyrinth of bad guys, each worse than the ones he’s just defeated. 

4 Hide Away by Jason Pinter (Thomas & Mercer)

Jason Pinter is a thriller-writer who can do no wrong, and this book’s introduction of dedicated single mother-slash-skilled vigilante Rachel Marin is a further demonstration of this, grabbing the reader immediately with action and tension but also with wonderfully-fleshed characters.

3 House on Fire by Joseph Finder (Dutton)

This latest thriller starring PI Nick Heller pits our dogged hero against the byzantine evils of Big Pharma, and in the process of developing his multilayered plot, Joseph Finder keeps the reader turning the pages and excels as always in fleshing out his secondary characters.

2 A Beautiful Crime by Christopher Bollen (Harper)

Bollen’s wonderfully atmospheric novel about a young American couple going to Venice and gradually becoming suborned by moral compromises that eventually blossom into full-blown evil is such a wonderfully subtle job that you can often forget that the whole thing is an excitingly constructed thrill-ride.

1 The End of October by Lawrence Wright (Knopf)

The single greatest imaginable exception to my renewed appreciation for the escapist came in this, the best thriller of the year: Lawrence Wright’s incredibly prescient adventure novel about a novel coronavirus devastating the world. Reading this darkly fascinating book, flinching at every mention of “quarantine,” is an entirely, almost paranormally absorbing experience.