The Daily - What Makes a Killer Thriller?

Episode Date: August 16, 2026

The New York Times Book Review recently released its list of the 50 best thrillers of the 21st century. To put it together, the team asked almost 300 authors and other experts to vote for the best heart-thumping, page-turning, white knuckle reads published since 2000. In this episode of “The Sunday Daily,” Natalie Kitroeff talks with the Times thrillers columnist, Sarah Lyall, about how the list came together. Then, Natalie speaks with one of the greatest thriller writers of this century — with four books featured on the list — the author Tana French. On Today’s Episode: Sarah Lyall writes a monthly thrillers column for The New York Times. Tana French is the author of many best-selling books, including “In the Woods,” “The Searcher,” “The Likeness” and “The Witch Elm.” Background Reading: The 50 Best Thrillers of the 21st Century Photo credit: Naila Ruechel Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hi, everyone. It's Natalie. If you're not yet a time subscriber, we have some news for you. You can enjoy full access to the Times without a paywall for 30 days. All you have to do is download the app to get your first month completely free. And if you're already a time subscriber, you rock. Thank you. Okay, on to today's show. From the New York Times, I'm Natalie Kittrow-F. This is the Daily on Sunday. It's the middle of August, and that can mean only one thing. Across the country, people are popping open their beach chairs, digging their umbrellas into the sand, and settling in to their favorite books. And of all the literary genres to bring with you on vacation, for me and millions of Americans, there's one that stands above the rest. And that is the thriller. Thrillers dominate bestseller lists. They get adapted into hit movies.

They don't let you put them down. And so this month, our colleagues at the book review released their list of the 50 best thrillers of the century. Today, I speak with our in-house expert on the thriller genre, reporter Sarah Lyle, and also the great author, Tana French, who has four books on this list. It's Sunday, August 16th.

Sarah, you are our resident expert on thrillers here at the New York Times. You have a monthly column on the genre for our book section, and I think of you as my personal encyclopedia because this is my favorite kind of book. Always has been. Always will be. I actually have a group of friends at the times that feels the same, and we've done this thing where we deputize one person to write to you and ask for your personal recommendations for must reads. We will read anything you say. You are our leader. So welcome to the Sunday Daily. Okay, that's a huge responsibility, but I will do my best. It's great to be here. Thank you. Okay, I want to get to this massive and fascinating list that you all just put together of the best thrillers of the century. But before we do, can you please just give me a baseline? What defines a thriller in your mind? Well, I think, as you say, it's a pretty personal understanding. There's no real definition of a thriller.

But I would say at the heart, it has to have a lot of suspense. It has to have a plot that moves you along. You have to be dying to find out what happened. And what about the mystery element? Is that a necessity? Well, mystery is a very broad term. And in some sense, sort of any book that you really love, there's some sort of thriller mystery element in it.

I mean, is Charlotte going to be able to save Wilbur, for example? That's a great mystery. From Charlotte's Web? From Charlotte's Webb, yeah. Fair enough. Okay, so what's your origin story with the genre? Like, how'd you get into it? So I think, like a lot of neglected children of the 1970s and early 80s,

I was left alone in houses with random books that people would leave there. And I have to say, though, I did probably start with Nancy Drew. Like, a lot of people, you know, there's so many of those books. It's where I learned a lot of vocabulary words. I learned what secluded means. For years, I thought that deceased meant dying of some awful disease. Like, I didn't realize it was just dying. Sure.

And then I graduated to Agatha Christie's, which often seemed to be in a lot of these houses. And it was some time before my mom told me you didn't pronounce Agatha Agatha. And then when I was probably in fifth or sixth grade, there was this book called The Silver Crown by Robert C. O'Brien, a great children's writer. And my friend Michelle had one copy of it, and we were in the back of her parent's station wagon driving from Cape Cod to New York at night after some weekend with a flashlight. And we were both, like, desperate to find out what happened. And we'd each read a chapter and then unwillingly handed over to the other person. I read like three times as quickly as she did, and I'm like, hurry up. And we were eating chocolate chip cookies.

And it was so incredible. Yeah, it's a visceral experience. It's a visceral experience. You're literally ravenous for the book. You're eating it. Well, it's eating you. And, you know, with some of them, like I remember when I first read Presumed Innocent, because I was at work. I was trying to read it on my lap so my boss wouldn't see that I wasn't working and I was reading.

I tried to read it in the taxi on the way home at night. And I stayed up, I think, all night, all night, because I wanted so much to find out what happened. Yeah, there's something that when you're really... into these books, which is the whole point of them. They grip you. They don't let you go. It feels almost like you're having this like illicit relationship with this thing, you know? You're hiding it. It's taking over you. Well, it's also, it makes the rest of the world seem very pale. And then you sort of finish a little bit shaky, a little bit tired, sort of like you were on some kind of drug and no one else understands. And you try to tell them why you loved it. And they're like,

be quiet, don't give it away. Right. And they probably won't love it as much as you do. And then that's very disappointing. So let's talk about the 50 best, this list. The Times puts out a lot of lists like this, and this is the one for me where I knew that I was just going to keep it bookmarked on my computer and go back to it again and again and again. So my question is, how do you go about ranking the top 50 thrillers in the last 26 years? Well, what we at the Times book review did was send out a lot of ballots to a really wide range of writers of different sorts of thrillers, you know, police procedurals, psychological thrillers, science fiction writers, book influencers, editors, publishers. And we invited each of them to list their top ten and came up with our list based on that. And the only prompt was they had to be written in this new century, so nothing before two, And we didn't define thriller, so people were able to put what they wanted on the list, which is why some of the books on our list, people, just as we were talking about with Charlotte's Webb, for example, they wouldn't be in the thriller section of the bookstore or the library, but they have incredible thriller elements in them. Let's talk about the book, about which there was the most consensus, which is the number one book on the list, Gone Girl, this massively popular psychological thriller. by Gileon Flynn came out a little more than 10 years ago. It was made into this big movie with Ben Affleck.

Were you surprised? I don't know. It was so interesting. So if you look on our website, you can also find the ballots that a bunch of famous authors gave us. Every single list, with the exception maybe one or two, had Dawn Girl on it. And I'm not surprised that people loved it. The suspense is unbelievable. It has one of the most delicious sets of unreliable narrators. ever used in a book. So it's about a woman who disappears, this guy's wife. And she narrates parts of it,

he narrates parts of it, and parts of it are narrated by her journal. All three of those things are unreliable. You can't trust any of them. There's an amazing moment in one of the early chapters where the husband is being interrogated by the cops about the sudden disappearance of his wife, and he is telling us what happened and what he said. And at the end of the chapter, he says something like it was the fifth lie I had told the police, and I was only just beginning. Oh, God. And you're like, which of these things was a lie? Oh, my God. Okay. And what are the other books on this list that seem like natural fits that made it, that everyone agreed on?

Well, I think we're talking about books that were bestsellers that sort of hit the national conversation. And many of them, if not all the ones in that category, were made into movies or TV shows. So that sort of enhanced their visibility. So we'd say the girl with a dragon tattoo by Stig Larson coming in at number four. Slow Horses by Mick Herron, Apple TV series. Love it. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins, The Da Vinci Code, Big Little Lies.

You know, there's a whole bunch of them that everybody would have heard the titles and possibly seen the TV show, movie, etc. Any big surprises? Are there books on this list that you just want? wouldn't have been able to predict going in? There are quite a few books on this list that wouldn't be considered a traditional classic or even defined as a thriller. And I was struck that enough people voted for these non-thriller thrillers that they made

it to the list. And for example, the sympathizer, which won the Pulitzer Prize a few years back, which is a incredible novel about a spy, but also about the experience of Vietnamese people. in the United States. I mean, it's high literature, but it has a great mystery in it. Room by Emma Donahue, which is a book about essentially a child who's been raised in captivity. And it's, again, incredible book about a family and maternal love, et cetera. And so you wouldn't really think of it as a thriller. That's on the list as well. Another one that I was really happy to see on the list, although slightly surprised

because it's not a traditional thriller is the goldfinch by Donna Tart, which starts in a thrillery way, an explosion at a museum, a missing painting, and then in real tart fashion, turns into something much bigger than the sum of its parts.

But most people, if you just mentioned that book, would say literature. They wouldn't say thriller, so it's very exciting to see it on here. Speaking of great literature, I've always felt just the smallest amount of I don't know, sheepish about the fact that this is my favorite genre, thrillers, mysteries.

I think because when people think of these books, they tend to think of airport paperbacks, of pulp. I think there are people who see them as formulaic. Murder happens, police procedural begins, payoff comes with everything being solved at the end. But looking at this list, you see that there's just this really wide variety within the genre itself. These kinds of books can be incredibly literary and well written. Well, first of all, you shouldn't be embarrassed about any book you read. It's so great to read. People should read more. Okay. No taken.

And, of course, the thriller genre is so expansive. It can be police procedural. It can be science fiction. It can be psychological thriller. And the best ones are the ones that marry, you know, those thriller-ish elements with, like, beautiful writing. Okay. So can you give us some examples of books on this list that do this? that for you, that are that perfect marriage of literature and plot? There's a bunch of them, and it's really exciting to see them there. And the first I'd mention

is Case Histories by Kate Atkinson. All-timer. All-timer. Again, it's not a conventional thriller, really, although it's sort of billed as a detective novel. And it's nominally about a guy called Jackson Brody, who's a former cop. And he's called on to try to solve three or four, I think it is. impossible cold cases that all involve heartbreak with children dying and people's relatives dying, and how he goes about it, how she plunges you inside to these different stories, but also into the story of him. One more that I was so happy to see on here was The Plot by Gene Hemp Corollett, which is a super clever mystery that works on so many different levels, including the title, which does double service.

It's about a professor of literature at some awful junior college who's now a unsuccessful writer who steals someone else's plot and produces a book based on it. But that's not really what it's about necessarily. It's about multiple thefts of different sorts of things, and it's great. But by far my favorite on this list and someone who I was very happy to see has four books on the list is Tana French, the great Irish author. The goat. Some of us call her the greatest of all time. Yes.

So Tana French has four books on the list in the woods at number three, Broken Harbor at number 20, the Witch Elm at number 33, and the likeness at number 34. All amazing. All amazing. And the first one she ever wrote, which is number three, is in the woods,

which many people feel is the best. I remember reading that when I was a London correspondent and just being mesmer. by the several mysteries flowing through it, by the writing, by the characters, by the stuff that she revealed along the way, by the police investigation. Oh, my goodness, what a book. And what's your sense, Sarah, of the broad appeal of Tana French? Why is it that so many people agree about just how good she is? I thought she was sort of my little special secret. it. So I was gratified and happy to see how broad the consensus is that she's so great. And I honestly,

I think it goes back to what we were talking about before of what makes the absolute best thriller, which is not just the plot at all. It combines incredible plot pacing with beautiful writing, characterization, the sense of the people, their psychology, their relationships, and like all great literature, are truths about being human. Okay, you've talked to Tana French many times. What would you ask her if you were, you know, in the position of interviewing her for the Sunday Daily? I want to know what she's writing next.

That's all I really care about. Why hasn't it been published yet? When can we read it? Could you write a little faster, please? Yeah. Without compromising your quality. All right. Well, Sarah, thank you so much. It's been wonderful having you here.

This is really fun. Thank you. After the break, I talked to Tana French. We'll be right back. Tana French, welcome to the Sunday Daily. Thank you so much for having me on. This is extremely cool. So just to put my cards on the table, I have read every word that you've written. So for me, when the Times list of the 50, best thrillers of the century came out, it was not surprising that you had four books on there. I am so over the moon about that. It's the coolest thing. You've developed, I'm sure you know,

quite a cult-like following. I learned in preparing for this interview that it's not just me. There's a whole online community of people who feel this deep emptiness after finishing one of your books and who also pre-order you as soon as humanly possible. When you, are writing. Who do you think you are writing for? And what do you think that person wants out of one of your books? I can't think in those terms because I figure that readers are so varied, so diverse, that if I start thinking in those terms, I'm just going to get confused, start overthinking, and nothing will ever come out right. So I'm thinking always in terms of the book, the characters, the story, what is right for those. Whoever's reading my books has a certain amount in common with me in what they

like to read, what they like to think about, what they're interested in. So I have to just take on trust that if I write this book, as well as I'm humanly capable of, and try to do justice to the characters, the story, the themes, then that will strike some chord with the readers. That's the only way I can do it. Meaning, if you're enjoying yourself writing it, if you're having fun, if it's gripping you, you assume that will be the effect for others. Yeah, and if it's striking that chord where you know were you reading something and it just feels right? You're going, yes, that is the right note for the character, the plot is coming together, right? That just feels, it's got that true note. If I'm feeling that, then hopefully the people who like my books will feel that way too. How did you

come to this work in the first place? Kind of accidentally. Like, I wrote a lot when I was a kid. That was definitely one of my plans, but I sidetracked off into acting. But, you know, acting. The gigs never line up neatly unless you're a Judy Dent or somebody, which I definitely was not. And I had some time off between two shows. And I've always loved archaeology. I've always been fascinated. So I went, right, I'm going to get myself a few weeks' work on an archaeological dig. Very cool, by the way. It really was. It was so much fun. But one day, there was a wood near the dig, and I was looking at it going, that would be a really cool place for kids to play. And instead of stopping there, like a normal person, I did the mystery writer thing of always looking for the mystery in everything, which is, I think,

one of the marks of a mystery writer. And I went, well, what if three kids ran in there to play and only one ever came out? And he had no memory of what had happened to the other two. And then what if he grew up to be a detective? And a case drew him back to that wood. And he's there knowing that the solution to the mystery is in his mind, but he can't find it. And I realized that, I mean, I really wanted to know what would happen. And no one else was going to write it for me.

So I hadn't tried to write a book before. So I figured I probably couldn't, but I could write a scene and then another scene and suddenly I had a chapter. And suddenly I realized I was taking this really, really seriously and turning down acting work for it, which is a big deal. And here we all are, like 20 years later. That's obviously the premise of In the Woods, your first book, which was number three on this list. How did the novel grow from that original kernel of an idea? I know you're saying, You put scene after scene after scene together. But walk me through your process. Did you know what was going to happen at the end? How did you get there? It was messy. I've got to say, it still is.

My process is still really, really messy. But that was the first time I'd ever written a book, so it was much messier. I had no idea. I had a really strong sense of the setting and of the character. This guy who was really damaged at that crucial point in his life, you know, you're 12.

you're just forming who you are. And there was this huge crack through his life and his perception of himself and his relationship with his own mind. And so this guy who is now 20 years later who's a grown-up, but that crack is still running through everything he does. I had a really strong sense of him and of this place and this basic premise. And from there I was winging it. I was figuring out who he was, how he would relate to the case,

how he would relate to, you know, the other character, Cassie, his partner and best friend came up fairly quickly. So what would their relationship be like? And what would this sort of dark fault line through him do to everything from the investigation, to the friendship, to the way he engaged with this old case surfacing? I figured it out as I went. Is that your normal process? Is that how you've continued to write these books? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Like I don't usually know who done it when I go into writing a book. And I'm, no, but I'm really, I'm envious of the authors who do. I know writers who have every chapter outlined before they start.

And the joy of that is, you know there's a book in there. And I don't. I'm diving in. The swimming pool could be empty. I could just hit my head on the bottom and go, oh, oh, oh, there was no book there. But I think it has pluses and minuses. The minus being, there's an awful lot of rewriting. When you're halfway through chapter seven and you go, oh, my God, this person did that.

And you have to go back and rewrite to strengthen that out. and put it in its correct place. But on the other hand, there's a sense of excitement that I get when I'm writing, and something's a discovery, and something's new, and I'm getting to know the characters as I go. So I'm hoping that the plus side of this way of writing is that some of that communicates itself to the reader. No, I mean, it definitely does, but there is so much risk in it.

I wonder if there's any time where you've done this, and you've kind of been like, I don't actually know if I'm going to be able to do it this time. There was only one time there, I mean, there's always a point about two-thirds of the way through the book where you're like, yeah, this doesn't work, this sucks, all of this sucks, I'm going to go back to being a broke actor living in a garret. But only once when I was writing the trespasser, and it was very early on, I was about 2,000 words in. And I went, I don't feel like this is going much of anywhere. And I went for a long walk with my husband, who was very good at the structural stuff. And he went, well, what are the bits of this that you actually really, really want to write about? How much of this do you really want. And I paired it back to about two or three elements and went, you know what, actually the rest? No, it is those two or three elements. He went, okay, keep those start over. And he was right, and I did. But I was lucky that it was very early on. I wasn't like three quarters of the way through and went, oh, yeah, there's no ending. I'm going to have to start over. I'm honestly amazed at the idea that you kind of approach these books like a detective yourself

trying to figure out what happens. How do you make sure that you're, you're, you're you're not following a storyline down a rabbit hole. Like, how do you stay focused if you're figuring it out as it happens? I think this is one of the reasons I write mystery because it's quite good at keeping you on track. Because it comes with a framework. It comes with A kills B, C finds out who did it. And you can play with that. You can, you know, undermine that, play with it, turn it around inside out.

But that's the basic framework. And so it has a shape. It has a natural ending, a mystery book does. And I think that's why I write mystery and what keeps me on track, because you can't just wander off on someone's entire life story. Anything you're writing has to feed not just into the character, not just into the themes, but also into that story drive towards the moment when there's some form of closure. And I think that's my main way of keeping myself on track. Do you ever feel hemmed in by that basic convention A, kills B, C finds out? I mean, I understand you're saying there's a way in which it's freeing.

It allows you to kind of explore these characters expansively and stay on track. But I wonder if it creates these expectations from readers that may feel limiting at times. Not really for two reasons, one of which is maybe better than the other. The better one is there's so much variation within that, because the real question in most mysteries, I don't think it is whodunit. That's not the big question. The big question is, what impact does this have on the characters? What does it mean for the society in which it happens? How are they going to deal with this revelation? How will they process it? Will it change them? Will it change their world or them as individuals? So who done it is the smallest question? I think at most in most thrillers. And the other reason is that, I mean, as in The Woods shows, sometimes I just go, yeah, no, that's not the big question. And so there's not going to be an answer.

I've only done it that once, but I don't think that was the big question. In In the Woods, will this character be able to move past that damage, which is answered. Yes, we should say for people who may not have read this book, and this is not, I don't think, a spoiler, but you burst onto the scene with this debut that essentially set up this crazy premise, which you laid out, three kids disappear into the woods, one emerges. And then the whole book proceeds, and it's not really about figuring out what happened at that moment.

It's about a different crime, and it remains unsolved. I'm sure you still get many, many questions from people who ask you whether you're ever going to tell us. Yeah, and no. don't think I am going to come back to that because I think the big questions of that book were answered. And I didn't think about it at the time. So should I? But I couldn't really do that without being very false to the character, without turning him at the last minute in the book into somebody different. And that felt cheap and cheesy and I wasn't going to do that. So I just went, okay, some people will be justifiably really annoyed with this ending because it does not

fit the conventions that they went in expecting, and they are going to feel cheated, and that's fair enough. But there will be other readers who would feel equally cheated if I turned the character into someone else for the sake of having a clean answer. So I'm just going to go with what I think is the right ending for the book, and keep my fingers crossed. Okay, not to harp on it, but do you in your heart of hearts know what happened? Yeah, I've got a pretty clear idea. Okay, all right, We'll leave it at that. I'm one of those readers that was fully satisfied. We're going to take a quick break, and when we come back, I want to talk about your approach to these great characters that you write. We'll be right back.

I want to talk about your approach to your characters. A lot of thriller writers have written series of books that are centered around one character. James Patterson has Alex Cross. Lee Child has Jack Reacher. Your Dublin Murder Squad books center on different characters who are all. connected, but they have different stories, different tics, different quirks, and different damage, honestly. They're often deeply flawed narrators, sometimes with memory problems. And the result in that series is that you don't, as a reader, have this stable, all-knowing authority, soothingly solving a crime. You have a rotating cast of people searching alongside you who you may or may not

trust all the time. Why did you take that approach? I thought about it a lot when I finished in the woods and was thinking, oh my God, somebody might someday want a second book. I should probably think about that. I love those series that you talk about. You know, P.D. James has Adam Dalgleash. And I love series like that where you follow one detective through kind of the different cases and the ups and downs of his or her life. But the thing is, that's not what I was interested in writing. Because I was interested in writing about a case that hits a detective right on the, their most vulnerable point and that changes them as a person that makes them confront the things that are most difficult and most crucial within their own mind. And there's a limit to how many cases you can one person can have that are huge turning points in their own life. So I was like, I can either keep dumping the same poor guy with massive turning points, in which case he is going to be locked up in a straight jacket by book three. Or I can shift from detective to detective picking up each one at the moment when they have that case that's a turning point that will affect

the way the rest of their whole life plays out. So I decided to do that and kind of chain link the books together. So somebody might be a minor character in book three and then the narrator in book four. But you're picking them up at the point where something massive, a crossroads, case has hit that. You know, what happens as you're reading these things is that you find yourself about as interested in understanding or knowing or figuring out the detective as you do about finding out the answer to the mystery, the crime, the killer. Oh, good. Great. Good. It sounds like that's the point. It is. Yeah, it really is. I mean, for me, that is the big mystery is people and how they work and how they move through life when things get complicated, when

things are difficult. I think that's what mystery does really well. Because on that framework of, you know, who killed this person, you've got so many questions right there asking to be explored about people's minds. You know, how does someone get from being a normal human being to being a murderer? What takes them there? What affects this have on the people who investigate, the people who are all around it, the people who are suspects. These are huge things about, like, the depths of the human psyche, what dark places create a murder, both in society and the dark places of the individual. I think those are fascinating and much more interesting than the easily answered black and white question of who did this. I like the questions that will never be

fully answered, but mystery gives us a way to at least explore them. Tana, something I feel reading you, I think a lot of people do, is that you have this way of not just thoroughly exploring people, human beings, but thoroughly exploring places, particular moments in history with all the political and social forces that bear down on them. In Broken Harbor, that crime, the mystery there, it's entirely shaped by the setting of Ireland reeling from the financial crisis. And I'm wondering, is that part of how you develop the ideas for your stories? Do they grow out of that specific times and geographical places? It's not usually on purpose. I just, I think that this genre is kind of uniquely suited to doing that. Because when you're dealing with a murder, which, you know, mystery often does,

you're dealing with huge stuff with the, you know, But murder is different in every time and place. It happens everywhere, but it happens for different reasons in different times and places. You will not have a murder over ownership of a piece of land among a nomadic tribe. It's just that's not a priority to them. But you would have it in rural Ireland and have had many times. So the minute you have a murder, you're into exploring what are the priorities for this society? What are the things that are so crucial and so highly emotionally child?

that someone will kill over them? Or what are the fears that are so intense, you know, that someone will kill because of this fear? And those are shaped by the society. So you start writing, you know, you're going to be there. You're going to be diving into that, whether you intend to or not. And I think that's where I land. You're drawn like a magnet to those moments of maximum tension because, precisely because they're the kinds of things people would kill over. Yeah, and they're shaped. You're talking about society. When you say somebody killed for this in a murder,

you are saying something about that time and place, whether you intended to or not. That honestly unlocked for me. Part of the reason why your work is so compelling because it sounds like you see mystery everywhere. You see mystery in who people are. You see mystery in the things that happen in these small towns that are cut off

from the kind of big cities. And you kind of invite people to think of their world as full of these mysteries that they could be engaging with, solving or helping to bring light to. I love that. I would love that because I think one of the things that makes us human is that we love mysteries. Like, animals aren't the same way.

Like, you know, you've got a cat or whatever. The cat will check something out. Is it a box that I can sit in? Can I eat it? Should I be scared of it? No, okay, fine, I'm not interested anymore. But humans will always, we're not just interested in the solution to the mystery. It's not just the answer to the question that fascinates us. It's the mystery itself. It's the fact that there is something out there that's a huge question mark and that needs exploring and that the process of exploring it is fascinating,

the fact that we could go on exploring and find layers of answers and never get to the core answer. We're fascinated by that. Tana, people often talk about your work as kind of writing the border between literary and genre fiction. I wonder what you think about that. What space do you locate your work in? See, I don't believe in that border anyway. I don't think there is a border. Yeah, and I think, I mean, if you look at that list, that wonderful list of the 50 Best Thrillers,

it kind of shatters the idea that there is such a border. thing as a thriller. Because the books on that are so different. You've got, you know, you've got the Da Vinci Code, you've got, you know, Mystic River is on there, you have the goldfinch, you have room. There is no world in which those books are all the same kind of book. Part of what you're saying is it's not just that you don't believe in the border. It sounds like readers don't really see that border either. I want to talk about this list, the 50 Best Thrillers of the Century. The that the Times just put out. You're talking a little bit about this. What did you think of it? What were your impressions when you saw it? That was my first impression, is that for a list of the 50

best thrillers, it makes it pretty clear that there is no definition of a thriller. Because you look at these, and while I can see why each of them is on the list, I think it's really hard to go, to say with any conviction that they all belong in the same category. And these are, wonderful books, but they approach the concept of the thriller so differently. You know, Room, and Madonna Hughes' Room, doesn't seem to me to be particularly shaped in any way by the conventions that we would consider to hold for a thriller or a mystery. And the same for, you know, the Goldfinch. It plays with a whole heist idea, but it doesn't seem to in any way be shaped by the conventions. It just uses them to have fun with as sort of lovely little icings. So I think

these, this would be, that was the first thing I thought of when I saw this list, more than a list of 50 best thrillers. It's a list of 50 great fun ways to engage with the concept that there is such a thing as a thriller. And, okay, I have to ask, the way that this was constructed, these ballots were sent out and the Times didn't tell anybody, you know, these are the parameters for what a thriller is. So really, it is a reflection of what people think of when they think of thrillers. And I want to know what you think people did when they went to think of it. Was it a feeling they tried to conjure and then pick the books that most match that feeling of kind of tension, suspense, catharsis? All I can say is I,

I got nine books into my ballot and then forgot to send it in so I can only say what I did. When I was trying to write them out, I'm an idiot. When I was trying to write them out, I can only say what I did, which was I went for my 10 favorite books that I could, by any stretch of the imagination, claim worth further. Okay, I have to ask, can we hear the lost ballot? What are the books that you would put on this list if you could, if we now gave you the time to. submitted. I can't remember because I kept finding ones and going, crap, that wasn't 21st century, was it? But I know a Mr. River and Gone Girl, which ended up being the top two, they were in fact on there, Winter's Bone was in there. The Yiddish police men's union, I know it was in there, but I can't

remember whether it turned out to be too early or not. I love that book. I love that book. That is an absolute beauty of a book. Incredible. Yeah. I love that one. What did you love about that book? What about it, you know, or any of the books? But what reaches your upper echelon? Well, that one in particular, it has everything. Like, it is a noir and it just dives joyfully into all of the noir tropes. He writes so beautifully. My God, the things he does with language, just about any sentence, you could go to somebody, listen to this, listen to this, how beautiful this is. His characterization is incredible. He can give you one sentence and just slice straight to the heart of the character and he can turn on a dime between being so funny and being so moving and being so

dark. And the plot just keeps you going the whole way. So I think it was that. It was, this just hits all my favorite things in a book and it revels in the genre without ever being constrained by it. Okay, do you have recommendations for our listeners? They can be thrillers or not. They don't have to be in the 21st century, but things that you would tell people to drop everything and read right now. Okay, if I start jabbering, do stop me because there are so many books. Okay, I won't. Most recently, Northwoods by Daniel Mason, which is so hard to describe because it is the story of a piece of land in New England over 400 years through, you know, diaries, by Daniel Mason. which is so hard to describe because it is the story of a piece of land in New England over 400 years through, you know, diaries, ballads, narratives, letters, whatever you want. It's amazing. It's enchanted. Lonesome Dove. It's an incredible book.

It's the story of a bunch of guys in the 1870s taking a cattle drive from Texas to Montana. And it is a slow start, but it's wonderful for character, for atmosphere, for everything. The secret history, I love it. Some people, I know it's love it or hated, but I adore it. It's love it over here, yeah. Oh, God, the characterization, the writing. I would read anything she wrote. And that big reveal scene, the house could have burned down around me during the big reveal scene,

and I would not have noticed it the first time I read that book. Okay, I must ask you something that our thrillers columnist, Sarah Lyle, insisted I ask and that honestly I think millions of people want to know, which is what are you up to next and when can we pre-order it? It's a little bit weird. It's a little different. I have never written about COVID, if you notice. The searcher was handed in just before COVID started. So the hunter and the keeper were written during COVID. But I never mentioned there's no COVID in Articelty. These people are not dealing with COVID. I'm not dealing with it, forget it. And people kept asking me, are you going to write about this? I was like, no, I don't even want to do it. Never mind, write about it. But now, at this distance, I have ended up writing about it. And this book is set on a road in a suburb of a small Irish city or town where just as the lockdown hits, a woman and her two small daughters arrive on the road. And over the course of the lockdown, the different people in the road realized, that she may not be who she says she is. Oh my God. She may be here for a purpose,

and that purpose may have effects on the entire balance of this little kind of tight-knit road. Wow. When can I pre-order it? Most important question. I should touch wood all going well, and it is going well.

It's fun to write. Be handing it in next step. Okay. Well, I don't totally know what I'm going to do until then. Tana, thank you so much. for coming on the show. I really appreciate it. Listen, thank you so much for having me. This was joy. On Friday, the Times released the list of the 100 best thrillers of the century chosen by you,

our readers, and nine of Tana's ten books were on that list. Well done, guys. Today's episode was produced by Luke Vanderplug, with help from Alex Barron and Tina Antalini, and production assistants from Dahlia Hadad. It was edited by Wendy Dore and engineered by Rowan Nemistow. It includes music by Dan Powell and Marion Lazzano. That's it for the Sunday Daily. I'm Natalie Ketroweth. See you tomorrow.