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6 Must-Read Thrillers for Fans of Jack Reacher
If you love Lee Child's Jack Reacher, these six blood-pumping thrillers deliver the same high-stakes action, grit, and unstoppable heroes.
If you’ve read any of my previous Little Stack articles, you’ll know I’m mostly known as a fantasy writer, but that doesn’t mean I’m a stranger to thrills and spills. I try to evoke that edge-of-your-seat, adrenaline pumping flavour that thrillers pull off with seemingly little effort at all.
But, trust me, those thrills are hard-earned.
In general, the genre of thriller is known as a mash-up of various, over-lapping styles like crime, horror, action, and detective fiction. On top of these, thrillers excel in bringing feelings like suspense, excitement, surprise, anticipation and anxiety to the fore.
Thrillers like to keep readers (and watchers, the genre thriller is well-suited to TV and film as Alfred Hitchcock and his flurry of thrillers from Rear Window, High Anxiety to Psycho and The Birds will attest) on the edge-of-their-seats as the plot builds from twist and set-piece to a satisfying climax where all the pieces of the plot come together. Until that point, the writer will use various tools to keep the reader on their toes: there are cover-ups, red-herrings, plot-twists, character deaths, unreliable narrators and cliffhangers aplenty to keep that tension high.
If you’ve read any of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher books, you’ll be familiar with all these tropes. If you haven’t, consider your crash-course in thrillers complete!
And, guess what, regardless of if you’ve read any Jack Reacher or not, here are six recommendations in a similar vein to Lee Child’s (and Amazon Prime’s) ever-popular thriller series…
Have you ever read a thriller set in Scotland’s Shetland Islands? No? Now is the perfect time to do so…
Winner of the 2007 Duncan Lawrie Dagger Award, Raven Black brings equal helpings of suspense, mystery, and thrills.
It’s New Year’s Eve, and the lonely outcast Magnus Tait, stays home while others celebrate, waiting for visitors who never come. The next morning, the body of a murdered teenage girl is discovered nearby, and suspicion falls on Magnus. Inspector Jimmy Perez enters an investigative maze that leads deeper into the past of the Shetland Islands than anyone wants to go.
Taking the crime thriller into the remote, storm-ridden and secretive Shetland Islands is a genius move and, if you enjoy Raven Black, there are eight books in the Shetland series already released, with more to come.
Into the Dark is the gripping crime thriller from Fiona Cummins about revenge, greed, ambition and the true cost of friendship.
One late autumn morning, Piper’s best friend arrives at Seawings to discover an eerie scene – the radio is playing, phones are charging on the worktop, the cars are in the garage. But the house is deserted.
In fifteen-year-old Riva Holden’s bedroom, scrawled across the mirror in blood, are three words:
"Make. Them. Stop."
Fast-paced and refreshingly modern, Into The Dark is difficult to put down and begs you to read just one more chapter until late into the night. Complex, inventive and twisted, Into The Dark was shortlisted for the Theakston Old Peculiar Crime Novel of 2023.
Essential reading.
A must for Jack Reacher fans looking for something that largely scratches the same itch.
War hero John Puller is known to be the top investigator in the US Army’s CID. So when a family with military connections is brutally murdered in a remote area of West Virginia, Puller is called to investigate, and soon suspects the case has wider implications.
While it goes without saying that the above is eerily similar to Jack Reacher, Zero Day is still a worthy read, going in different directions to Reacher while also giving fans of Lee Child’s most famous creation exactly what they want.
With four books in the series, there’s plenty to dive into if Zero Day leaves you wanting more John Puller.
As with many thrillers, it all starts with a disappearance… though this one occurred forty-years before this particular story starts.
After decades searching for his vanished, and extremely wealthy niece, comes to nothing, an obsessive uncle turns to crusader journalist Mikael Blomkvist, aided by the mysterious Lisbeth Salander in an attempt to finally solve the unsolvable. The pair are soon sucked into a deep well of astonishing corruption and dangerous intrigue.
Riveting and grungy, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and its sequels are a thoroughly Scandinavian and modern take on the thriller genre. The books are excellent, and there are two sets of film adaptations to enjoy, too.
A classic, and a title often attributed with kick-starting the thriller genre in book form.
Yes, it is from 1846 and yes, the tome is a whopping 1276 pages (!!) but The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas is an excellent thriller and an essential read.
Imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit, Edmond Dantes hatches a plot of revenge against the men responsible for his plight. What follows is an epic tale of retribution and suffering, bringing with it a raft of thrills and spills.
Based on true events, The Count of Monte Cristo has proved a popular tale for almost two-hundred-years. If you haven’t read it yet, do so immediately and discover the reasons for its ever-enduring appeal.
A standalone detective thriller, Missing Pieces tells the story through two protagonists: victim Rebekah Murphy and detective Frank Travis. Both are working to solve the same mystery, but both hold information the other desperately needs.
A skilled writer, Weaver keeps the tension high while the plot twists and turns. The characterizations are deep, and the conclusion satisfying. Atmospheric, Missing Pieces is the definition of a page-turner.
And if you enjoy Missing Pieces, you’ll find plenty to love in Tim Weaver’s long-running David Raker series.
More Little Stacks of Thriller & Suspense
Heart-Pounding Thrillers with a Mother's Love at the Core
In these edge-of-your-seat thrillers, you’ll find mothers fueled by love and tested by unimaginable fear proving nothing ever compares to mom.
Springtime Suspense: Must-Read Crime Novels for the Season
From cozy mysteries to chilling thrillers, these suspenseful springtime reads deserve a spot on your TBR this season.
6 Fierce, Fearless, Feminist Thrillers
Dark, suspenseful and impossible to put down. This stack of feminist thrillers is packed with tension, and feature women who take back control.