Best Thriller Books

FBI trainee Clarice Starling is sent to interview the imprisoned Dr. Hannibal Lecter — brilliant psychiatrist and cannibalistic serial killer — hoping to gain insight into a new killer called Buffalo Bill, who is making suits of human skin.

In Ford County, Mississippi, a Black father kills the two men who brutally raped his ten-year-old daughter — and the young lawyer Jake Brigance must defend him before a white jury in the Deep South.

Soviet submarine captain Marko Ramius attempts to defect to the United States with his entire crew and the USSR's most advanced nuclear submarine — and CIA analyst Jack Ryan must convince a skeptical Navy the defection is real before both superpowers open fire.

Detective Cassie Maddox is pulled back into undercover work when a murder victim is found bearing her exact face — and carrying the identity Cassie once used as an alias.

Criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller operates out of the back seat of his Lincoln Town Car, traveling between Los Angeles courthouses. When a wealthy Beverly Hills client hires him to fight a serious assault charge, Haller begins to suspect the man is guilty of something far worse — and that he has defended it before.

When the US government launches a covert military operation against Colombian drug cartels, Deputy National Security Advisor Jack Ryan uncovers a political conspiracy to disavow the soldiers involved — leaving them to die in the jungle rather than admit the mission existed.

When the Pope dies suddenly, the College of Cardinals gathers in the Sistine Chapel to elect his successor. Behind the locked doors of the Vatican, Dean of the College Cardinal Lomeli presides over a conclave of intrigue, ambition, and hidden sin — where faith and politics are indistinguishable.

A young Harvard Law graduate is recruited by a small but wealthy Memphis firm — and soon discovers it is run by the mob, the FBI wants him to spy on it, and leaving may cost him his life.

Lisbeth Salander, recovering from near-fatal wounds, faces a murder trial while Mikael Blomkvist races to expose the secret government faction that has controlled and abused her since childhood.

DC homicide detective and forensic psychologist Alex Cross is called to investigate when a brilliant, media-obsessed killer kidnaps two children from a prestigious private school — drawing Cross into the most complex and personal case of his career.

When two Supreme Court justices are assassinated in one night, law student Darby Shaw writes a speculative legal brief identifying a likely suspect — a powerful oil baron with everything to lose. The brief reaches the wrong hands, and suddenly Darby is running for her life.

Detective Mick 'Scorcher' Kennedy investigates the brutal murder of a young family in a half-built ghost estate — and discovers a connection to his own past he cannot afford to acknowledge.

Undercover detective Frank Mackey's carefully constructed life unravels when the suitcase of the girl he loved — and believed had abandoned him twenty-two years ago — is found in a derelict house on Faithful Place.

Retired FBI profiler Will Graham, who was nearly killed capturing Hannibal Lecter, is called back to help catch a serial killer called the Tooth Fairy — and must return to Lecter's cell to get inside the new killer's mind.

Detective Antoinette Conway and her partner Stephen Moran catch what looks like a routine domestic killing — but someone in the Murder Squad is pushing hard to close the case fast, and Conway can't tell who to trust.

LAPD detective Harry Bosch investigates the murder of a Vietnam veteran found dead in a drainpipe in the Hollywood Hills — and discovers a trail leading to a daring bank heist tied to the tunnels both men once crawled through in the war.

A year after a boy was murdered on the grounds of a Dublin girls' boarding school, a card appears on the school's anonymous message board: 'I know who killed him.' Detective Stephen Moran sees his chance to make the Murder Squad.

Alex Cross races to find a serial kidnapper called Casanova who keeps intelligent, accomplished women as captives in an underground harem — while simultaneously discovering that his own niece Naomi has become one of Casanova's victims.

While vacationing in London, CIA analyst Jack Ryan foils an IRA assassination attempt on the Prince of Wales and becomes the target of a vengeful splinter faction determined to kill him and his family on American soil.

In a landmark tobacco liability trial in Mississippi, a mysterious juror named Nicholas Easter appears to be manipulating the outcome from inside the jury box — while his accomplice outside works both sides of the case for an enormous payout.

Seven years after the events of The Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal Lecter is living freely in Florence under an assumed identity, pursued simultaneously by a vengeful Mason Verger — the only surviving victim — and by Clarice Starling, now an embattled FBI agent.