The Best Books of 2024: Thrillers
The Best Books of 2024: Thrillers
The reliably mindless nature of most thriller novels was a boon for most of 2024, and their general rejection of moral relativity (to say nothing of their narrative coherence) was consistently refreshing. The self-publishing world is downright awash in thrillers, as is the mainstream book world, so there were plenty to choose from this time around. These were the best of them:
10 The Chaos Agent by Mark Greaney (Berkley) – Sure-fire bets don't get much more sure in the thriller world than Greaney's series starring Court Gentry, the “Gray Man” ex-CIA operative and all-purpose he-man superhero. This latest “Gray Man” novel is nominally about the bad guys developing a super-AI, but the real story is, as always, just how cool Gentry (and his lover Zoya) are.
9 Safe Enough by Lee Child (Mysterious Press) – Child is of course known for his Jack Reacher novels, but in this short story collection he gets to try some new things while sticking to his tried-and-true register and avoidance of the aforementioned moral relativity. And while that's refreshing, it's also fascinating to watch Child's strengths shifting around in these twenty stories.
8 Zero Option by W.E.B. Griffin (Putnam) – This is the latest installment in the “Men at War” series being written under Griffin's name continues to make this the best of the many books being written under this long-dead author's franchise, this one set around skullduggery connected with the Big Three conference in Tehran in 1943.
7 Code of Arms by Jack Slater – This latest adventure of Slater's omni-competent he-man agent-guy Gideon Ryker has it all: amnesia, brutality, ruthless supervillains, and even … the French Foreign Legion, once a staple of this kind of story. Slater writes it all with terrific playful fervor.
6 The Sicilian Inheritance by Joe Piazza (Dutton) – Some of the thrillers I read this year had more meat on the bone, more writerly substance, than is strictly necessary for a thriller to work, and this one by Joe Piazza is one of those, the story of how an unexpected inheritance draws an unsuspecting (but winningly capable) woman a web of intrigue and murder.
5 Shadow Game by Vin Strong – This is the first installment in the adventures Strong's main character, he-man superhero Agent Ryan Cage, whose sterling negotiation skills are needed when terrorists commandeer a crowded subway car in a plot that's just begging to be a Hollywood movie – and that certainly raises the hopes for a second volume.
4 Night Sweats by Beau Savage (Grim Heart Publishing) – Another of the smarter items on the list this time around is this story of a woman named Barbara who's spending some much-needed time at a remote lake house cabin when a terrified woman comes running out of the woods, pursued by trouble and forcing Barbara to find depths inside herself she never knew she had.
3 The Heiress by Rachel Hawkins (St. Martin's) – The most unconventional choice on the list this time around, this the story of a man who's at long last managed to escape the long-reaching reach of his powerful foster mother when the old lady dies and he's drawn back to the storied family house and the many mysterious details of the old lady's life – details that of course extend into the present day.
2 An Honorable Assassin by Steve Hamilton (Blackstone Publishing) – The last of our he-man superhero main characters on the list this time, ex-con and ad hoc assassin Nick Mason, is here maniacally obsessed with hunting and killing a fiendish target nicknamed “The Crocodile” while stopping at no obstacle, including an equally-obsessed Interpol agent.
1 Arctdotus by L. J. Vitanza – Not all thrillers feature either he-man superheroes or clever human villains, and this is certainly true for this, the best thriller of the year: here, a fairly ordinary Wyoming game warden finds himself pitted against not some run of the mill drug dealer but an enormous bloodthirsty marauding monstrous beast in the woods, a gigantic flat-faced killer that hasn't been seen in millions of years. This is the second book in Vitanza's “Predation” series, and both have been the very essence of a thrilling guilty pleasure.