who are some big name thriller writers.

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huxley

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i'd like to start reading more thrillers, so who are the big names of thrillers. or just which are good. as i understand it a thriller is a story that could happen in this time, not out side our world but with people and stories that resemble our world.
 
I'd recommend the books by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child - both their co-writing efforts, and their solo ventures.

I'd also recommend James Rollins.
 
Haven't read any recent thriller writers but Robert Ludlum has proven to be always good down the years, if you can put up with his Nazi hangup :) For instance, I thought the "Bourne Identity" was great when I read it. But that was a long time ago and I happen to love amnesia stories. Incidentally, it is nothing like that lukewarm movie they made with Matt Damon :)
 
Barry Eisler is great with his John Rain books. John Rain is a great character and the writer has a talent for painting a picture of the cities Rain are in.


About Bourne Identity i read it only a week ago and recomend it higly its a brilliant book that is so much more complex than the movie,better spy stuff,great action. Story is totaly diffrent from the movie.
 
Again, it depends on what your own definition of a thriller is, as it's a pretty broad field, ranging from the grittier hard-boiled detective stories to spy stories to supernatural thrillers to medical thrillers to science fiction. Ian Fleming's James Bond books were published with the rubric (on the cover of several editions for years) "A New James Bond Thriller" ... and the books (much more than the films) fit that description well, in most cases.

At any rate, wiki has a pretty succinct summation, with a nice set of sub-categories and some good suggestions:

Thriller (genre) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
The early James Patterson thrillers with character Alex Cross
Greg Iles - I just started reading this author, but I really like him
Jeffrey Deaver - similar to Patterson, but slightly better in my opinion
Jack Du Brul - similar to Clive Cussler, both thrilling
Tess Gerristsen - medical and my fav thriller author
Kathy Reichs - has tv series bones based on her books
David Baldacci - political type thrillers
Nevada Barr - US national park ranger mystery/thriller
 
I would agree with Jeffrey Deaver, really good stuff.
Harlen Coben writes pretty good stand alones, but they can become a bit obvious once you've read a few of his. His series with Myron Bolitar was great, but now he's knocking out a lot of books he's lost a little something for me. Worth checking out Tell No One though-I thought that was great.:)
 
I hear Jeff Lindsey is pretty good with his Dexter movies.

If you have seen the amazing tv show, you can only imagine what the books are like ;)
 
I second Harlan Coben. I like both his Bolitar series (Fade Away has been my favourite, it won him an Edgar, I think) and stand alones.

I also enjoy quite a few Michael Connelly's mystery thrillers, especially The Poet (about a serial killer who likes to quote Edgar Poe) and Void Moon. Being an ex crime reporter of L.A.Times Connelly's writing is original and sophisticated.
 
Allegra, Fade Away is a keeper on my book case!:D
Lisa Gardner is quite good, a guilty pleasure read, but she has good reoccuring plot lines that I like, and female leads too.
 
Ooh Allegra cool to see another Connelly fan :) I love his books specially about Harry Bosch.
 
thanks guys. i just wanted to say i don't know a lot of the thriller writers but i'm a big fan of james patterson.

and i like micheal crichton's work. the other day i just finished litsening to "sphere" on an audio book.
 
Well, if you like Crichton, then you'll definately like Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child's co-writing efforts. They're like Crichton, but with much better characterization.

I find with Crichton's work that I really don't develop much in the way of feelings for his characters - to the point where I don't give a flip what happens to any of them. Those dinosaurs could have chowed down on the lot of them in Jurassic Park and The Lost World and I wouldn't have cared.

Crichton's research may be a little more thorough when it comes to the "science" behind his novels, but I feel the better characterization and what I think is a better sense of adventure make for better reading on Preston and Child's part.

And James Rollins books are very much similar to Preston and Child's.

Oh, and I just finished a book called "The Swarm", by a German writer named Frank Schatzing. It's a little on the the long side, but quite fascinating. You'll learn a lot about the ocean reading it.
 
Try some of the classic writers as well, huxley - John Le Carre and Len Deighton wrote some cracking Cold War stuff.
 
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