The Times When Mystery-Thrillers Surprised Me
Who knew they could do that
I am sure that all of us have, at some point or another, come across the genre of “Mystery Thrillers”. Mystery Thrillers are everywhere. And why shouldn’t they be? They offer excitement and intrigue with their cryptic characters and suspenseful plots. As Hercule Poirot would say, a good mystery thriller gives us an excuse to use our “little grey cells” to piece together the clues and get to the bottom of the riddle. The quest for answers and resolutions keeps us glued to the pages (or screen). Mystery thrillers have it all — the mind-bending plot twists, the dubious characters, the unforeseen reveals and the utter chaos before everything is put back in order.
But before I go any further and gush more about this genre, I think I need to slow down and explain what I think “Mystery Thrillers” are. In my opinion, for a story to be called a mystery thriller, there should be one (or many) mystery(ies) at the center of the story and journey towards the resolution of said mystery(ies) must be thrilling. It is honestly that simple.
I have been reading mystery thrillers for a really long time now. One of the first author that I got hooked on was Agatha Christie — the Queen of Crime. Then I read some Sidney Sheldon, Dan Brown, Paula Hawkins, and Gillian Flynn. And slowly but surely I realized that I was in love with the genre.
As I read more and more from the genre, I realized that I could accurately predict what is going to happen next in the story. Now, being able to predict the next plot twist or even the end game is not necessarily a bad thing. At times the discovery that my predictions were true in itself was quite thrilling and adventurous. Unfortunately, this was not always the case. There have been times when the mystery thrillers have failed me — either the mystery was not mysterious enough or there was no thrill during the entire course of the story.
Nonetheless, this post is not about those disheartening sob stories where I could not appreciate a mystery thriller. Instead, in this post, I share four mystery thrillers that absolutely amazed me.
Wrong Place, Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister
Wrong Place, Wrong Time is a story of a mother who witnesses her son murdering someone. After the event, the narrative follows the mother as she navigates through all the chaos to find out what caused her son to become a murderer.
Multiple things stood out to me while reading this story. The first was the narrative style. The narration had a sci-fi twist which was quite refreshing. I would not be going into the details because I do not wish to spoil the fun for anyone.
The second amazing thing (actually, this could have been the first, but let’s roll with it), for me was that it got me hooked pretty quickly. This might not be a very big thing, but in all honesty, I was not very enthusiastic about this book in the first place. I had read another book by the author — Anything You Do Say — and I despised it. I even wrote an article articulating what soured the taste of the book for me. So, when I realized that I am not only not appalled by this new story but I am actually enjoying it, I was pleasantly surprised.
And finally, I really enjoyed the way everything was concluded. It provided context to everything that has happened in the story and that in itself was enough for me to tie (almost) all loose ends.
Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson
Truly Devious is the first book in a series of Young Adult (YA) mystery thrillers following a true crime enthusiast — Stevie Bell — who joins the ever-famous Ellingham Academy. The academy has a dark history of unsolved mysteries and Stevie is determined to solve them. However, once she is at the academy, she becomes involved in solving not only the mysteries of the past but the mysteries of present as well.
This was my first YA mystery thriller and I was quite impressed by the level of character building. I am not saying that YA thrillers do not have good character development. It is just that I was not expecting it, especially when the story was narrated in dual timelines — one in the past when the Ellingham Academy was established and one in the present when Stevie joins the Academy. The dual timelines were another aspect of the story that felt amazing.
There are multiple mysteries packed in the 400 pages of this story. When I reached the end, I found that only a handful of the mysteries are resolved and even then not entirely. The urge to pick the next book in the series was huge. This shows the degree of intrigue created by the story.
I did anticipate and predict a few things, but it did not dampen the thrill of the actual revelations. I thoroughly enjoyed this story and the next two in the series — The Vanishing Stair and The Hand on The Wall, which not only gave me the satisfaction of reading three amazing mystery-thrillers but also of the resolution of a great mystery.
A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson
Another YA mystery-thriller in the list. A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder is the first in a three-part story. The story starts when a high school girl — Pippa Fitz-Amboi, aka Pip — decides to research a closed murder case that shook her town five years ago for her high school project. As Pip continues her research, she comes across information that were ignored and secrets that were buried. The story then follows Pip as she interviews various individuals and raises some alarms along the way.
The story is beautifully narrated and extensively uses mixed-media — messages, reports and interview logs — to provide a holistic picture to the reader. The use of mixed-media lays emphasis on the point that all of it happened in the past and the main character has almost nothing new to work with.
The thing that stood out most to me was how easily the story drew me in. I had absolutely no difficulty picking this book again and again. Instead, it very difficult to put this book down. Part of the charm of this book was how effortless it was to read the book. The narration was quite fast paced and there were hardly any boring moment. I was constantly at edge, looking for clues that could help me solve the puzzle.
The thing that I value the most while reading a story is being able to connect to the characters and understand their motivations. Despite being fast-paced, this story gave me enough time to understand the characters and I grew to care for them.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is the first book in the Millennium Trilogy. The story was originally written in Swedish and it’s original title was “Men Who Hate Women”. The story starts when the head of one of most wealthiest Swedish families contacts an investigative journalist, Mikael Blomkvist, to figure out what happened to his niece who disappeared almost 40 years ago. On his way to uncover the mystery, Mikael crosses paths with a pierced and tattooed young girl, Lisbeth Salander, who helps him gather evidence in his quest.
The first thing that I liked about this story was that even though the title comes under the umbrella of titles with “the girl, the woman and the wife”, there were no unhinged and unreliable narrators in this book. The narration was in third person and the girl in question was not the sole perspective in the story.
Before I read this book, I had read multiple mystery thrillers where the main character was a girl, or a woman, or a wife and in almost all the cases had a certain sense of unreliability. In the first few books, I welcomed the unreliability. However, it became too much quite soon. As expected, I discovered that I am not the only one who has noticed this pattern. Netflix even came up with an amazing spoof — The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window.
Now that I think about it, this mini-series can also be added to this list here. It showed the whole trope of unreliable female main characters in a very satirical manner along with an underlying mysterious plot, which to my surprise, had a compelling resolution. But I digress and should now get back to my book.
Even with the original title of “Men Who Hate Women”, the story had very strong female characters. They had their own agendas and they held their grounds. They were not created and introduced to further the plot for their male counterparts.
I would not call this a fast-paced thriller, where something happens every other page. As Mikael Blomkvist is an investigative journalist, he spent his time meticulously researching every aspect of the mystery, and hence, the story took its own time to develop. Nonetheless, my eyes did not droop even for a single second while reading this story. There were multiple layers to the narrative as the characters were dealing with more than one crisis at any given moment in time. This not only added depth to the story but also made the characters more dynamic.
I really enjoyed all of these aforementioned stories. Part of my enjoyment also stems from the fact that I was a bit reluctant to pick these up. Truly Devious and A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder were quite popular (and they still are), and I was not sure if they were actually any good or they were just hyped. Even though The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo was written way before the trope of “the girl, the woman and the wife” became mainstream, I still had my apprehensions. And as I have already stated, my doubts for Wrong Place, Wrong Time were purely based on my past encounter with the author.
Even with all these doubts and apprehensions, I decided to take a leap and experience these stories. As you can probably guess from my post, I do not regret my decision. These stories turned out not only to have a good and intriguing mystery at their core but also a set of strong and relatable characters.
