by Charlie Donlea
At the heart of every great thriller is an unforgettable climax. This pinnacle moment in a thriller is what defines the genre. It’s where the action takes place, where the reveal is laid bare, and where the twist is sprung on us. But there is an art to creating the climax. If it’s dumped too abruptly upon the reader, even if it checks all the right boxes, it can be a let down—like waking up to discover it’s Christmas morning without having enjoyed the holiday season that preceded it. Sure, it’s fun to open the presents, but without the lead up to the big day, something’s missing. Before the best reveals, in front of the most stunning twists, and ahead of the greatest unveilings of a killer’s identity, is a staircase. Climbing it is where the real fun happens, because it is with each successive step up this staircase where readers find the suspense in a thriller.
When I wrote the draft of Summit Lake, my debut novel, I began with a brutal murder in the first chapter, then jumped back a year in the next. Throughout the rest of the book, I followed the victim through her life leading up to its violent end, strategically dropping clues along the way as to who killed her and why. Then in one quick chapter at the end, I revealed everything in a few quick pages—what she was hiding, who killed her, the twist, the shock, the reveal, the getaway and the aftermath. I confidently turned my novel over to my editor and awaited his notes.
My editor’s comment: “You turned the staircase into a stoop.”
I went back to work. Under my editor’s watchful eye, I revised the novel so the big reveal unfolds over a few well-paced chapters that create an elaborate staircase to catapult the reader into the final, climactic scene. And with each subsequent novel I’ve written, my editor has continued to remind me that with thrillers, just like life, it’s about the journey, not the destination.
Here are five of my all-time favorite thrillers that produce chest-tightening suspense by leading us up some impressive staircases.
Mystic River by Dennis Lehane
Staircase level: Precipitous
We could all learn a lot about suspense from reading Dennis Lehane. But if you want to experience suspense while being rattled to your core, then read Mystic River. The story or three childhood friends from a blue collar town is both atmospheric and chilling. The men have each followed different paths since a disturbing event took place when they were all friends growing up in the streets of Boston. It is on one of those streets that a car pulls up while they are playing ball and one of the boys is lured into the backseat. There is no more frightening scene than when the boy looks at his friends through the rear window as the car pulls away, supposedly to drive the boy home at his father’s request.
The friends are reunited twenty-five years later when one of their daughters is murdered. Now a cop, a crook, and a survivor, these three men fight their demons and their doubts—about each other, and themselves—to find the killer.
Defending Jacob by William Landay
Staircase level: Steep
Defending Jacob tells the story of an Assistant District Attorney whose son, Jacob, is accused of murder after a classmate is stabbed to death. Of course, no parent can believe their child capable of such a crime. Jacob is odd and quirky, socially inept and reserved, but he’s not a killer. Soon, though, evidence to the contrary emerges, and Jacob’s father finds himself hiding a knife he discovers in his son’s bedroom. When the town begins to turn on Jacob, and his mother’s faith is tested, the family escapes to the Caribbean to get away from the media attention and attempt to rebuild their trust in each other.
The events that take place in Jamaica start the reader up the staircase, and the disturbing truths we learn bring this story to a book-throwing, gotta-take-a-break point. But the narrative beckons us to continue, and so we do, racing up the stairs but stumbling, too, because we can’t believe what we’re reading.
The Firm by John Grisham
Staircase level: Vertical
I pick up The Firm every so often to remind myself how to write great suspense. But despite my scholarly intentions, every time I open the book I’m transformed into a rabid thriller fan, ripping through the pages despite knowing exactly how they’ll end.
The premise provides all the lumber to build a sturdy staircase: A shady Memphis law firm routinely flies its attorneys to Grand Cayman for long weekends, putting them up in the firm’s twin beachside condos and allowing the overworked lawyers some R&R. In reality, the firm is sending its best and brightest to the tropics to launder mob money. But when the FBI recruits the firm’s newest attorney, he has a tough choice to make: Help the Feds take the firm down, or go down with it.
The most desperate scenes come when an unlikely ally of Mitch McDeer, and an even unlikelier accomplice, head to the Caymans to steal documents from under the nose of a sedated member of the firm, racing back and forth between the twin condos in the dead of night to make copies of the incriminating evidence before he wakes. In the meantime, a private jet filled with bad guys is deployed from Memphis to stop them.
Room by Emma Donoghue
Staircase level: Perpendicular
The story of a woman held for seven years in the backyard shed of her captor, Room will both capture your heart while simultaneously attempting to arrest it. As this woman works to raise her son in the small confines of the shed where he was conceived, born, and has learned everything he knows about life, she worries that the walls of her shed will not be able to contain her son’s interest much longer. And she fears that her son’s growing curiosity will lead her capture to take control of the situation.
As she works to find a way out of her situation, we learn of all her failed attempts to escape in the past and the consequences that followed. Will this next plan finally work? Maybe. This time, she has an accomplice.
Red Dragon by Thomas Harris
Staircase level: Treacherous
Thomas Harris takes readers inside the mind of his villains better than any thriller author out there. In Red Dragon, the prequel to The Silence of the Lambs, the reader learns the distorted, inner workings of the mind of The Tooth Fairy, a psychopath who kills for the fun of it. His victims are entire families, and he’s already slaughtered two of them by the time the FBI starts their hunt for him.
The FBI agent who pieces together the method by which The Tooth Fairy chooses his families is fascinating. But the love affair between The Tooth Fairy and a blind woman he falls for is where the tension lies. Our villain works to prevent his lover from discovering who he really is, which can be accomplished only one of two ways—either stop killing, or kill again.
Some choose darkness.
Others are chosen by it.
Forensic reconstructionist Rory Moore sheds light on cold-case homicides by piecing together crime scene details others fail to see. Cleaning out her late father’s law office after his burial, she receives a call that plunges her into a decades-old case . . .
In the summer of 1979, five Chicago women went missing. The predator, nicknamed The Thief, left no bodies or clues behind—until police received a package from a mysterious woman named Angela Mitchell, whose unorthodox investigations appeared to unmask the killer. Then Angela disappeared without a trace. Forty years later, The Thief is about to be paroled for Angela’s murder. But the cryptic file Rory finds in her father’s law office suggests there is more to the case.
Making one startling discovery after another, Rory becomes helplessly entangled in the enigma of Angela Mitchell and what happened to her. As she continues to dig, even Rory can’t be prepared for the full, terrifying truth that is emerging.
Jet Set to France