What Makes a Thriller Thrilling?

Jun 19

*Disclaimer: This blog post will contain spoilers for several thriller books. If you do not want to be spoiled, please come back to this post after reading them! The following books that will be mentioned and discussed are:

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides
The Fury by Alex Michaelides
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
Before I Go to Sleep by S. J. Watson
The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum
Behind Closed Doors by B.A. Paris
The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John le Carré
The Sixth Sense by Peter Lerangis

Let’s talk about thrillers and what they are. I absolutely love them because they are powerful in their own way compared to books of other genres: they can mess with our minds, psychologically manipulate our thoughts and decisions, and frighten us with our fears. If they are written particularly well, they often leave us freaked out, unsettled, yet chasing an oddly satisfying adrenaline rush. But what exactly about them makes them thrilling?

The types of thrillers

I personally think the kind of thrill you seek and experience in thrillers heavily depends on the type of thriller you read; these fall under different sub-genres.

Psychological thrillers

My favourite type of thriller is psychological because they trap us inside the mind, whether ours, the victims’ or the perpetrators’. For example, in The Silent Patient, the entire narrative is told through the point of view of Theo Faber, the psychotherapist of Alicia Berenson, who, we later discover has a lot more going on than we realise. Alicia Berenson herself also refuses to speak after hurting her husband one evening, forcing us to question her silence, trauma, Theo’s obsession with her, and the underlying truth about what happened that night.

Suspense thrillers

Suspense thrillers are another type of thriller I love; dread and tension are stretched across narratives until they snap with an ultimate revelation. In The Fury by Alex Michaelides, suspicion spreads over time among friends trapped on a Greek island when a body is found and gunshots are heard. All the characters have individual motives, too, which heighten the distrust between each other, and our distrust of them.

Historical thrillers

Historical thrillers often tie danger to the past. Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code uses religious history, architecture and secret societies to drive its mystery, with every clue linked to centuries‑old secrets. These are typically represented and portrayed through symbolism and art, requiring the main characters and us to decipher various codes, puzzles and anagrams to figure out the hidden truth.

Spy thrillers

Spy thrillers always involve some kind of global stake. In The Bourne Identity, our protagonist, Jason Bourne, has amnesia that makes him suspicious of every person who supports him. As he tries to rediscover his identity and who he is, he also needs to figure out what the bigger threat is. Espionage is often like chess; betrayal and double agents are prevalent.

Action & Adventure thrillers

Action and adventure thrillers prioritise intense action and momentum. The best example I can think of is Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels, which deliver relentless pacing. The format of each book is the same–Reacher enters a location, danger somehow finds him, and he spends the rest of the book trying to survive. His survival often depends on quick thinking and physical skill. There is a TV show adaptation with Alan Ritchson too; you can visually witness and experience how the momentum of each event in Killing Floor, Bad Luck and Trouble and Persuader are translated onto the television screen.

Pacing

Pacing, I would say, is the heart of thrillers; thrillers cannot exist without it. If done well, a thriller can give us that feeling of being on the ‘edge of our seats’ and leave a long-lasting, shocking impact on its readers.

For example, in Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn contrasts and equally alternates between the present and the past, the situation Nick and we are confronted with in the present day, and Nick and Amy’s placid marriage life in the past through Amy’s diary entries. The tension starts gradually, only displayed through the present-day narrative, before it continues building and is reinforced with Amy’s narrative from the past, manipulating Nick as the murderer and using the “cool girl” persona to receive support from the public.

Another way to think about pacing is a rollercoaster. We need to experience both the dread and the shocking revelations, just like the foreboding climb to the apex before dropping, or slowing down before experiencing sharp accelerations and turns. The speed often determines whether the ride will be a fun one or not.

Time pressure

I love a good time pressure in thrillers as they create a sense of urgency for the main characters to solve something or prevent something from happening in time.

In The Bourne Identity, Bourne races against assassins and government agents to stop a conspiracy from coming to fruition as he re-discovers his identity. The Da Vinci Code uses time as a countdown; Robert Langdon must correctly solve the clues and puzzles he encounters to avoid being caught by his enemies. Other examples, like Before I Go to Sleep, utilises time pressure as a psychological element. Our main character’s countdown is her own memory, so she needs to figure out the truth before it resets every day.

As every moment or event occurs in thrillers, the risk of disaster and dire consequences for our protagonists increases. Time pressure is what drives this presence in thrillers.

Fear and antagonists

If pacing is at the heart of thrillers, then fear is what fuels it. There is always a weakness, limitation or vulnerability our protagonists have, and the antagonists know how to exploit them.

In domestic thrillers such as The Housemaid by Freida McFadden and Behind Closed Doors by B.A. Paris, the husbands manipulate their wives’ fear of confinement and loss of their closest family members by keeping them submissively imprisoned within the walls of their homes and relationships. Amy in Gone Girl uses the fear of humiliation and betrayal to build a narrative that ruins Nick’s reputation.

Antagonists in thrillers can be terrifying because they threaten everything about the protagonists in these books: their humanity, identity, sanity, and status. It’s especially frightening when they are someone close; they know their partners, friends or family members well enough to weaponise their fears.

Unreliable narrators and characters

This is probably my favourite trope in thrillers; these characters destabilise us as readers, throw us off, and make it hard for us to figure out what is real and who is telling the truth. They also indirectly make us active participants within the narrative too, having to piece together clues and the truth from fragmented lies and deception.

Nick and Amy Dunne’s narratives in Gone Girl completely juxtapose one another. Their accounts of their relationship force us to question everything we know about them as a couple, their actions, and thus themselves as individual characters. In supernatural thrillers like The Sixth Sense by Lerangis

For example, in Gone Girl, Nick and Amy’s competing accounts force us to question everything about their relationship, their actions, and thus themselves as characters. In Before I Go to Sleep, Christine’s memory loss creates unreliability—she can’t trust her own mind, and her husband’s reassurances may be lies. Even in supernatural-based thrillers like The Sixth Sense by Peter Lerangis, unreliability originates from perception itself; everyone misinterprets reality until the twist occurs.

Unreliable narrators and characters make thriller storylines all the more complicated yet exhilarating to experience because we can’t trust them.

Motives

Motives, especially those of unreliable characters, play an important part in driving the suspense and allowing the storyline to progress.

For example, in The Silent Patient, Alicia’s motive is the opposite of Theo’s, which, when the shocking revelation is finally revealed, reframes the overarching narrative, forcing us to reassess our loyalties and shift our sympathies to other characters.

Spy thrillers like Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John le Carré contain motives that thrive on ideology; the characters constantly question where their loyalties lie: is it to the ideology of the country they serve or the ideology of their own beliefs?

The motives of characters are powerful, and understanding the “why” and where they come from is often the final piece of the puzzle to figuring out the truth behind a crime.

Red herrings

Red herrings are another favourite of mine; they are used to misdirect readers to come to the wrong conclusions about a crime.

All the characters involved in The Fury are actors or part of the acting industry in one way or another, meaning their dialogue and actions are performative acts to cover up their potentiality of being the perpetrators of the dead body they initially find on the Greek island, Aura. Each character is evidently flawed, and they shift their suspicion amongst each other, causing us to chase false assumptions and leads.

Red herrings can be in the form of objects as well. Amy’s diary in Gone Girl is a red herring, which deliberately steers us toward the conclusion that Nick murdered his wife when she was still alive all along and seeking revenge. Amy’s “truth” in her diary entries is fabricated so she is presented as the victim, all the while painting Nick as the villain and the reason why she was “murdered”.

Red herrings exist to mislead, complicating the narrative and how we reach our conclusion of a crime.

Alibis

Alibis often scaffold the initial suspicion of characters in thrillers, and their fragility is what makes them so compelling.

These can be in the form of physical devices with fake digital footprints, such as phone records, GPS data or social media posts to build a character’s false whereabouts at the time a crime has been committed. This can be shown in The Da Vinci Code when Robert Langdon tinkers or removes his GPS location to buy himself some time when solving confusing puzzles or in Gone Girl where Nick’s movements are scrutinised against surveillance footage and his actions are investigated through the comments being made about him in the media.

In Before I Go to Sleep, Christine’s memory serves as a broken alibi because it resets daily. She has trouble remembering what she has done or the places she has been to previously, which often means she has to rely on her husband’s “truth” and version of events as her alibi.

Alibis can even be as simple as a word of mouth, but usually with no proof to back it up, and thus the most suspicious. They appear in almost all thrillers until something or someone proves they are fake.

Overall, alibis are the first impressions of the suspects we are introduced to. Watching a character’s alibi collapse under pressure is thrilling because it forces them to improvise, confess, or double down, revealing their true motives and intentions.

Plot twists

A good plot twist is both shocking and inevitable in ways that are possible but unexpected.

For Gone Girl, Amy is actually alive, and this revelation reframes the entire narrative of the book, with the clues littered and scattered all along.

The ending of The Silent Patient is completely surprising because it recontextualises how we perceive Theo’s therapy sessions and him as a character. Major, major spoiler alert, but we discover later on in the book that Theo’s storyline happens after the events that occur in Alicia’s diary entries. Theo himself was responsible for what Alicia did to her husband, which was why Alicia remained silent the entire time she was at her psychiatric facility. She already knew Theo and immediately recognised him when he became her psychotherapist.

I remember having a hard time believing The Silent Patient’s ending after discovering this revelation; it made me want to flip back and see how the clues were planted in the first place. It’s plot twists like these which deepen my respect for the authors who write for the thriller genre—it’s crazy what and how people can come up with this stuff!

In conclusion, it takes many tropes to build a thriller and clever writing to land the perfect “Oh my gosh!” moment. I hope this blog post gives you a better idea of what to look out for the next time you read a thriller and helps you figure out why you loved one so much. Make sure to also check out my podcast episode on this topic at the ‘So…Who Did It’ podcast, where you can listen to it on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, or simply click play below ↓

Charlotte .