RAG Demo

Tag: Thriller

  • Sacred Games

    Sartaj Singh is a divorced, middle-aged Sikh inspector in the Mumbai police, good at his job but going nowhere. An anonymous call leads him to a bunker-like house where the notorious gang lord Ganesh Gaitonde has holed up, and the confrontation leaves Sartaj with a set of questions that pull him into an investigation spanning intelligence agencies, gurus and terror networks.

    Alternating chapters are Gaitonde's own story, narrated in a swaggering voice as he rises from a petty smuggler to a criminal empire builder with links to politicians and Bollywood. Interludes, called Insets, step away to tell unrelated lives across the subcontinent, from Partition refugees to a Kashmiri agent.

    At around 900 pages, Vikram Chandra's novel is crime fiction on an epic scale, saturated with Bombay slang and the texture of the city's police stations, slums and film sets. It was adapted as India's first Netflix original series in 2018. Its sheer length is part of the experience.

    Book details

    AuthorVikram Chandra
    First published2006
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreThriller
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)900
    SettingMumbai, with episodes across India and abroad, 1940s to early 2000s

    Themes

    • Organised crime
    • Police corruption
    • Religious extremism
    • Masculinity
    • The city

    Who should read it

    Readers who love sprawling crime epics and want an inside view of Mumbai's underworld.

  • The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

    Financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist has just lost a libel case against a corrupt industrialist and faces a prison sentence. Henrik Vanger, the elderly patriarch of a powerful Swedish business dynasty, offers him an unusual job: to discover what happened to his grand-niece Harriet, who vanished from the family's island estate at Hedeby in 1966. Henrik is convinced a relative murdered her.

    Blomkvist's investigation draws him into the Vangers' bitter feuds and past Nazi sympathies. He eventually recruits Lisbeth Salander, a tattooed, socially withdrawn researcher and expert hacker who has suffered abuse at the hands of the state guardianship system. Together they uncover a pattern of violence far wider than one disappearance.

    Larsson, a journalist who campaigned against far-right extremism, died before the book appeared, and it became a worldwide sensation that fuelled the Nordic noir boom. The original Swedish title translates as Men Who Hate Women, signalling its focus on violence against women. Salander became one of contemporary fiction's most recognisable characters, and the book won Scandinavia's Glass Key award.

    Book details

    AuthorStieg Larsson
    First published2005
    Original languageSwedish
    Translated byReg Keeland
    GenreThriller
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)465
    SettingStockholm and the fictional island of Hedeby, northern Sweden, early 2000s
    AwardsGlass Key Award 2006

    Themes

    • Violence against women
    • Corporate corruption
    • Family secrets
    • Justice
    • Investigative journalism

    Who should read it

    Thriller readers who like dark, intricate mysteries and unforgettable antiheroes.

  • Gone Girl

    Nick and Amy Dunne were once a glamorous New York couple, both writers, until the recession cost them their jobs and they moved to Nick's small hometown of North Carthage, Missouri, to care for his ailing mother. On the morning of their fifth anniversary, Amy disappears, leaving signs of a struggle in their living room.

    The story alternates between Nick's account of the investigation and entries from Amy's diary charting their courtship and marriage. Police and media attention soon turn on Nick, whose awkward behaviour and evasions make him look guilty. As each narrator reveals more, the reader is forced to keep revising what they believe about both of them and about the marriage itself.

    Flynn's novel is a sharp dissection of marriage, media frenzy and the roles people perform for each other, including the much-quoted idea of the effortlessly agreeable 'cool girl'. Its unreliable narration made it a publishing phenomenon and a model for a wave of domestic thrillers. David Fincher's 2014 film, with a screenplay by Flynn, was a major success.

    Book details

    AuthorGillian Flynn
    First published2012
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreThriller
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)422
    SettingNorth Carthage, Missouri, and New York City, around 2012

    Themes

    • Marriage
    • Deception
    • Media sensationalism
    • Identity performance
    • Gender roles

    Who should read it

    Readers who enjoy dark psychological suspense and unreliable narrators.

  • The Da Vinci Code

    Late one night, the elderly curator of the Louvre is murdered inside the museum, leaving behind a bizarre arrangement of his own body and a string of coded clues. Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor of religious symbology who happens to be in Paris, is summoned by the French police, who quietly regard him as their chief suspect.

    Sophie Neveu, a police cryptologist and the curator's estranged granddaughter, helps Langdon escape, and the two follow a trail of puzzles hidden in the works of Leonardo da Vinci. Pursued by a determined police captain and a fanatical monk serving a secretive Catholic organisation, they turn to an eccentric British historian, Sir Leigh Teabing, as the search widens to London and Scotland.

    Brown's formula of short chapters, cliffhangers, art history and conspiracy theories about the Holy Grail and early Christianity made the book one of the best-selling novels of the century. Historians and churches criticised its claims, which only fed public fascination. It inspired tourist trails around its locations and a 2006 film starring Tom Hanks.

    Book details

    AuthorDan Brown
    First published2003
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreThriller
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)454
    SettingParis, London and Scotland over about a day, early 2000s

    Themes

    • Secret societies
    • Religion and history
    • Codes and symbols
    • Conspiracy
    • Art

    Who should read it

    Readers who want a fast, puzzle-packed thriller full of art and conspiracy lore.

  • The Silence of the Lambs

    A serial killer nicknamed Buffalo Bill is abducting and murdering young women across the American Midwest. Jack Crawford, head of the FBI's Behavioral Science unit, sends Clarice Starling, a promising trainee at Quantico, to interview Dr Hannibal Lecter, a brilliant psychiatrist held in a Baltimore asylum for a series of grotesque murders.

    Lecter agrees to help, but only in exchange for personal details of Clarice's own past, including a painful memory from her childhood in Montana. Their tense exchanges form the heart of the novel. When a senator's daughter is kidnapped, the clock begins to run, and Clarice must navigate FBI politics, the asylum's self-serving director and Lecter's games to find the killer.

    Harris combines procedural detail drawn from real FBI profiling methods with gothic menace and genuine psychological depth. Clarice is a determined, intelligent heroine in a male-dominated world. The novel won the Bram Stoker Award, and Jonathan Demme's 1991 film adaptation swept the five major Academy Awards, making Lecter a pop-culture icon.

    Book details

    AuthorThomas Harris
    First published1988
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreThriller
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)338
    SettingQuantico, Baltimore, Memphis and the American Midwest, 1980s
    AwardsBram Stoker Award for Best Novel 1988

    Themes

    • Evil and intellect
    • Women in male institutions
    • Trauma
    • Identity
    • Manipulation

    Who should read it

    Fans of dark crime fiction who want the definitive serial-killer thriller.

  • The Godfather

    Vito Corleone, a Sicilian immigrant, has built the most powerful of New York's five Mafia families through loyalty, favours and calculated violence. At his daughter's lavish wedding in 1945, he grants requests from those who seek his help. His youngest son Michael, a decorated Marine who has kept away from the family business, attends with his American girlfriend Kay Adams.

    When the Don refuses to support a rival's move into narcotics, an attempt on his life plunges the families into war. The hot-headed eldest son Sonny takes charge, adopted son and lawyer Tom Hagen advises, and Michael finds himself pulled in. A period in Sicily and the brutal logic of power gradually transform him, while the book also follows figures such as the singer Johnny Fontane in Hollywood.

    Puzo presents the Mafia as a parallel society with its own codes of honour, family and justice, a portrait that shaped how the world imagines organised crime. The novel was a massive bestseller and became the basis of Francis Ford Coppola's 1972 film, co-written with Puzo, often ranked among the greatest films ever made.

    Book details

    AuthorMario Puzo
    First published1969
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreThriller
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)448
    SettingNew York City, Las Vegas, Hollywood and Sicily, 1945-1955

    Themes

    • Family loyalty
    • Power
    • Corruption
    • Immigrant experience
    • Violence

    Who should read it

    Readers who want a gripping crime saga about family, honour and the price of power.