100 Must-Reads

I've written dismissively about NPR's list of Top 100 Thrillers. I have nothing against popularity contests, but I felt the NPR list slighted too many of the all-time masterpieces of suspense.

For that reason I was delighted to stumble across Thrillers: 100 Must Reads in (where else?) my local library. Editors David Morrell and Hank Wagner asked contemporary thriller authors — everyone from Lee Child to my friend Tess Gerritsen — to recommend their favorite stories and novels. The result is a great list that includes both many of my personal influences as well as a number of titles I haven't read yet but definitely plan on buying.

The books aren't ranked from one to one hundred but instead are organized by publication date:

 

  1. Theseus and the Minotaur (1500 B.C.)
  2. Homer's The Iliad and The Odyessey (7th Century B.C.)
  3. Beowulf (between 700 and 1000 A.D.)
  4. William Shakespeare's Macbeth (1605-1606)
  5. Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719-1722)
  6. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818)
  7. James Fennimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans (1826)
  8. Edgar Allan Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838)
  9. Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo (1845)
  10. Wilkie Collins The Woman in White (1860)
  11. Jules Verne's Mysterious Island (1874)
  12. H. Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines (1885)
  13. Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1886)
  14. Anthony Hope's The Prisoner of Zenda (1894)
  15. Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897)
  16. H.G. Wells's The War of the Worlds (1898)
  17. Rudyard Kipling's Kim (1901)
  18. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901)
  19. Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1902)
  20. Erskine Childers's The Riddle of the Sands (1903)
  21. Jack London's The Sea Wolf (1904)
  22. Baroness Emma Orczy's The Scarlet Pimpernel (1905)
  23. Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan of the Apes (1912)
  24. Marie Belloc Lowndes's The Lodger (1913)
  25. John Buchan's The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915)
  26. E. Phillips Oppenheim's The Great Impersonation (1920)
  27. Richard Connell's "The Most Dangerous Game" (1924)
  28. W. Somserset Maugham's Ashenden or The British Agent (1928)
  29. P.G. Wodehouse's Summer Lightning (1929)
  30. Edgar Wallace's King Kong (1933)
  31. Lester Dent's Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze (1933)
  32. James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934)
  33. Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca (1938)
  34. Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None (1939)
  35. Eric Ambler's A Coffin for Dimitrios (1939)
  36. Geoffrey Household's Rogue Male (1939)
  37. Helen Macinnes's Above Suspicion (1941)
  38. Cornell Woolrich's "Rear Window" (1942)
  39. Vera Caspery's Laura (1943)
  40. Kenneth Fearing's The Big Clock (1946)
  41. Graham Greene's The Third Man (1950)
  42. Patricia Highsmith's Strangers on a Train (1950)
  43. Mickey Spillane's One Lonely Night (1951)
  44. Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me (1952)
  45. Ernest K. Gann's The High and the Mighty (1953)
  46. Jack Finney's Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1955)
  47. Hammond Innes's The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1956)
  48. Ian Fleming's From Russia, with Love (1957)
  49. Alistair MacLean's The Guns of Navarone (1957)
  50. Richard Condon's The Manchurian Candidate (1959)
  51. Len Deighton's The IPCRESS File (1962)
  52. Fletcher Knebel & Charles W. Bailey's Seven Days in May (1962)
  53. Lionel Davidson's The Rose of Tibet (1962)
  54. Richard Stark's The Hunter aka Point Blank (1962)
  55. John le Carre's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963)
  56. Wilbur Smith's When the Lion Feeds (1964)
  57. Evelyn Anthony's The Rendezvous (1967)
  58. Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain (1969)
  59. James Dickey's Deliverance (1970)
  60. Frederick Forsyth's The Day of the Jackal (1971)
  61. Brian Garfield's Death Wish (1972)
  62. David Morrell's First Blood (1972)
  63. Trevanian's The Eiger Sanction (1972)
  64. Charles McCarry's The Tears of Autumn (1974)
  65. Peter Benchley's Jaws (1974)
  66. William Goldman's Marathon Man (1974)
  67. James Grady's Six Days of the Condor (1974)
  68. Jack Higgins's The Eagle Has Landed (1975)
  69. Joseph Wambaugh's The Choirboys (1975)
  70. Clive Cussler's Raise the Titanic! (1976)
  71. Ira Levin's The Boys from Brazil (1976)
  72. Robin Cook's Coma (1977)
  73. Ken Follett's Eye of the Needle (1978)
  74. Ross Thomas's Chinaman's Chance (1978)
  75. John D. MacDonald's The Green Ripper (1979)
  76. Justin Scott's The Shipkiller (1979)
  77. Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Identity (1980)
  78. Eric Van Lustbader's The Ninja (1980)
  79. Thomas Harris's Red Dragon (1981)
  80. Jack Ketchum's Off Season (1981)
  81. Thomas Perry's The Butcher Boy (1982)
  82. Tom Clancy's The Hunt for Red October (1984)
  83. F. Paul Wilson's The Tomb (1984)
  84. Andrew Vachss's Flood (1985)
  85. Stephen King's Misery (1987)
  86. Nelson DeMille's The Charm School (1988)
  87. Dean Koontz's Watchers (1988)
  88. Katherine Neville's The Eight (1988)
  89. Peter Straub's Koko (1988)
  90. John Grisham's The Firm (1991)
  91. R.L. Stine's Silent Night (1991)
  92. James Patterson's Along Came a Spider (1992)
  93. Stephen Hunter's Point of Impact (1993)
  94. John Lescroat's The 13th Juror (1994)
  95. Sandra Brown's The Witness (1995)
  96. David Baldacci's Absolute Power (1996)
  97. Gayle Lynds's Masquerade (1996)
  98. Lee Child's Killing Floor (1997)
  99. Jeffrey Deaver's The Bone Collector (1997)
  100. Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code (2003)

 

Which famous contemporary author recommended which of the above books and why? You'll have to read Thrillers: 100 Must Reads to find out.