As a guy who loves mysteries, thrillers, and horror, my favorite types of books are the ones that crisscross genres, mixing classic thriller stories with supernatural elements that, in my mind, elevate the novel to a whole new level of delicious mayhem.
I enjoy those slipstream / cross-genre books so much that when I wrote my debut novel, A Child Alone with Strangers, I specifically wanted to create a book that mashed together all my favorite genres into one gonzo opus.
To that end, I thought it would be fun to share ten of my favorite novels that meld supernatural horror with awesome mysteries and breakneck thrillers.
Ready? Buckled in? Good. Let’s do it.
Ronald Malfi, Come With Me
Malfi might just be the king of crossing between classic thrillers and supernatural horror. Come with Me is a perfect example, in which a man is searching for his wife and the plot twists in ways readers won’t see coming. Also check out Bone White, Floating Staircase… hell, just read them all.
Lauren Beukes, Broken Monsters
Beukes is another writer who is masterful at blending the thriller genre with supernatural forces. Her novel, The Shining Girls, could easily be the pick here, but Broken Monsters is so totally batshit I decided on that being the headliner.
Alex North, The Whisper Man
The Whisper Man is one of those mystery/thrillers that relies on the supernatural as misdirection in such a way that it ratchets up the suspense and broadens the possibilities of what’s really going on behind a multi-generational series of grisly murders. Killers whisper at windows, imaginary friends play psychological havoc, and there might just be a ghost or two. A knockout classic that perfectly blurs the line between reality and the imaginary.
Riley Sager, Home Before Dark
Sager is another modern master of blending classic horror tropes with plot-driven mysteries. In Home Before Dark, he tosses haunted houses into the thriller blender to create a unique tale that keeps the reader guessing at what’s real and what’s from realms beyond our normal, every-day experience. Much like Malfi, you could throw multiple titles by Sager into this spot, but Dark is the one that leans the heaviest on supernatural elements playing into a classic murder mystery.
Laird Barron, Worse Angels
Barron’s Coleridge trilogy (Blood Standard, Black Mountain, Worse Angels) begins as a somewhat traditional crime thriller episodic, with an ex-mafia enforcer looking to restart his life as a civilian. But by the third book Barron has infused his storylines with monsters and mayhem to such an extent that the lines between traditional thriller and straight-up horror are properly demolished. A wonderful trilogy of novels by a generational master of the macabre.
Paul Tremblay, A Head Full of Ghosts
Released almost a decade ago, Tremblay’s debut horror novel (he’d published two crime novels previously) became an instant classic of the genre and single-handedly rejuvenated the concept of “ambiguous horror”, leaving it up to the reader to decide what’s supernatural and what’s simply a very dark, twisted reality. One could argue this is straight horror, but in my mind it’s much more of a family drama wrapped within a mystery that keeps the reader guessing as to where the darkness in the story truly lies.
Sarah Pinborough, Behind Her Eyes
What happens when you combine the fast-paced structure of Gone Girl with a spirit-swapping supernatural horror story? You get Behind Her Eyes, a major leap for Pinborough who went fully mainstream with her body-swapping tale of murder and betrayal.
C.J. Tudor, The Burning Girls
Tudor is probably best known for her smash debut novel, The Chalk Man, and an argument could be made that her first novel also played at the fringes of supernatural events while solving a decades-old murder mystery. But it’s her novel The Burning Girls that goes full ghost, including strange visions and a small town that could very well be haunted. A thriller that expands deftly into horror without losing its way.
Stephen King, End of Watch
Obviously, King is known almost exclusively as a horror writer, but with his Mr. Mercedes trilogy he showed that he can write a crime thriller with the best of them. It wasn’t until the third book of that series, however, that King could no longer restrain himself and allowed his villains to breakthrough into some serious paranormal territory. Psychic abilities? Body swapping? Check. Check. Hey, he got two-thirds of the way through the trilogy before letting the supernatural slip into the plot. Not too shabby.
J. Todd Scott, The Flock
Crime writer J. Todd Scott (The Chris Cherry trilogy, Lost River) entered new territory with his novel, The Flock, which incorporates bizarre elements involving mystic cults, the apocalypse, and borderline paranormal elements surrounding the weather and the unusual deaths of thousands of birds to create an intriguing, multi-layered thriller. Readers will be kept on their toes as they wade through action-packed chase sequences, epistolary clues in the form of coroner reports and news articles, and (quite possibly) the end of the world, all wrapped-up together in this taut, electrifying genre-mashup.
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