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Best Thrillers of 2020, According to The Guardian
Guardian critics pick the most gripping mysteries and thrillers of the year.
Published on March 23, 2021
Your House Will Pay: A Novel
Steph Cha“Crime fiction continues to provide an excellent tool for shining a light on social issues, with racial tension and cultural burdens explored to great effect in ‘Your House Will Pay,’ Steph Cha’s novel of violence, revenge and redemption,” writes Wilson. Two teenage strangers in Los Angeles deal with the destructive fallout from racial injustice years after a shocking shooting bound their Black and Korean American families’ fates together.
When No One Is Watching: A Thriller
Alyssa ColeKnown and loved for her historical romances starring diverse characters, Alyssa Cole turns her talents to mystery in this propulsive psychological thriller. As her neighborhood rapidly gentrifies, a Brooklyn native makes a deadly discovery: her neighbors’ disappearances are due to something way more sinister than rising rents.
Leave the World Behind: A Novel
Rumaan AlamA simple premise belies the provocative racial themes that unfold in this slow burn thriller nominated for the National Book Award in Fiction. A white Brooklyn family rents a luxurious house in the Hamptons for a weeklong getaway, but they’re barely settled in when there’s a late-night knock at the door. It’s an older Black couple claiming to be the owners who rented the house out, but they’re back due to a severe power outage in the city. With no internet or cell phone access in this remote area, it’s difficult to verify what’s really going on. The tension keeps ratcheting up until the pulse-pounding end. Netflix has already scooped up the movie rights with Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington to star.
Blacktop Wasteland: A Novel
S. A. CosbyBuckle up and brace yourself for a thrilling ride with this cinematic page-turner. Beauregard “Bug” Montage put his former life as the best getaway driver on the East Coast behind him. But his new life as a loving father and small business owner is starting to unravel, so when his criminal past reappears to lure him back for “one last job,” he thinks it might be the answer to his financial woes. “Blacktop Wasteland” is shaping up to be a modern classic.
Broken
Don WinslowThis thrilling collection of six novellas from “The Cartel” author Don Winslow is packed full of cops, drug dealers, high- and low-level robbers, and all the shady underworld characters you’ve come to love from Winslow. Lauding “The Last Ride” as “the most powerful novella of the six,” Wilson calls it “the story of a Trump-supporting border patrol agent who undergoes a change of heart and vows to reunite a forcibly separated mother and child.”
Summer of Reckoning
Marion Brunet“Dysfunctional families are a key theme in quite a few of this year’s standout psychological thrillers, including … Marion Brunet’s award-winning ‘Summer of Reckoning,’ which takes place in a Provence that holidaymakers never see, where poverty, boredom and casual racism are the norm,” writes Wilson.
The Last Protector
Andrew Taylor“It’s been a good year for historical crime fiction, with another strong outing for Andrew Taylor’s Restoration sleuths James Marwood and Cat Lovett in ‘The Last Protector,’” according to Wilson, who raves in her review for The Guardian: “With expert storytelling, memorable characters, emotional depth and some nice touches of humour, this is well up to Taylor’s usual high standard.”
The Devil and the Dark Water
Stuart TurtonAfter winning the Costa Award for “The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle,” author Stuart Turton’s second historical mystery novel wowed its way onto The Guardian’s “Best crime and thrillers of 2020” list. According to Wilson, “‘The Devil and the Dark Water,’ a fiendish maritime mystery, involves a lot of secrets and a great deal of swash and buckle.”
Sources
- Best crime and thrillers of 2020
- 2020, The Guardian