Cutthroat Corporate Culture, Literally: Five Mysteries and Thrillers Set in the Workplace

Corporate culture can be cutthroat—metaphorically and literally. Mysteries and thrillers that portray the working world as a place of lies, secrets, double crosses, and murder might be exaggerating for entertainment purposes, but they fit the zeitgeist of our time where statistically the average worker in America now feels overworked, underpaid, and stressed out.

According to the American Psychology Association’s 2023 Work in America Survey, seventy-seven percent of workers reported experiencing work-related stress in the last month. Another study by Moodle showed that sixty-six percent of American employees have experienced some sort of burnout in 2025.

That means any office, however mundane, could be a growing pressure cooker of discontent and quietly seething animosities. It’s not hard to imagine the right establishment could be one passive aggressive email or 9 a.m. unscheduled meeting away from a major explosion.

My latest mystery, In Deadly Company, is partially set in a modern workplace. It follows the story of Nicole Underwood, the assistant of nepo baby CEO, Xander Chambers. In addition to making her do everything from walking his dogs to getting his drycleaning, Xander charges Nicole with organizing his blowout birthday celebration.

But when the party ends in murder and Nicole is one of the few survivors, everyone wonders if she was the one who orchestrated all the chaos. More than a year later, Nicole works to clear her name by consulting on a Hollywood film about that bloody birthday weekend. But a series of flashbacks from different points of view of those who attended the party show that the question of Nicole’s guilt or innocence is…complicated.

In addition to being a darkly comedic “whodunit,” In Deadly Company tackles themes of power and privilege, what it really takes to “survive” the modern working world, and the lengths some are willing to go to prove that they’re a “good employee.” Here are a few other mysteries and thrillers that explore similar themes and are set in the corporate world.

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Emma Rosenblum, Very Bad Company

You can tell from one of the opening scenes where the protagonist, Caitlin Levy, is on a turbulence-filled flight to Miami for her new employer’s company retreat, that the reader is in for a bumpy ride.

In the midst of team-building exercises, sex, drugs, and partying, one of the tech company’s executives goes missing, and the employees have to pretend that everything is fine. Just fine—despite rumors about the executive’s fate and the future of the company hanging in the balance.

The novel shines a light on the absurdity of tech corporate culture and narcissistic personalities that can inhabit it.

Amina Akhtar, #FashionVictim

Imagine The Devil Wears Prada but if Andy decided to kill whoever got in her way to prove herself to Miranda Priestly, and you have the thriller, #FashionVictim.

Anya St. Clair lives and dies for fashion, and her dream is to move up the editorial ladder at La Vie, one of the top NYC style magazines.Only one thing stands in her way, fellow editor Sarah Elizabeth Taft—someone Anya both admires and envies. Unfortunately for Sarah, competition can be deadly.

#FashionVictim is a fun, campy novel that plays on the cattiness of the fashion world for laughs and mayhem.

Zakiya Dalila Harris, The Other Black Girl

From office pet to threat—many black women experience this phenomenon in the working world, and Harris explores it in detail in her slow-burn, twisty novel, The Other Black Girl. The publishing world isn’t perfect, but editorial assistant Nella Rogers knows her place in it.

That is until Hazel, another black assistant, shows up in the office. Soon their budding friendship takes on a more sinister turn when Nella starts getting mysterious notes telling her to leave the company. She suspects Hazel, the new office pet, may be the one trying to get rid of her.

Is Nella being paranoid, or is there an even bigger threat Nella needs to worry about? We find out the answers as the story unfolds.

Jakob Kerr, Dead Money

In Dead Money, we return to the tech world and all its big personalities and intrigue. After the CEO of a buzzy tech startup is murdered, leaving behind “dead money” in his will, lawyer and fixer Mackenzie Clyde is hired by one of the start-up’s investors to do what she does best—solve the problem so business can proceed.

Some would interpret that as figuring out who murdered the CEO, but Mackenzie has different ideas. This novel gives new meaning to what it’s like to be in a “cutthroat business.” If you like your novels both wry and dark, this is the one for you.

Chandler Baker, Whisper Network

Who wouldn’t want to see a misogynistic executive who regularly sexually harasses female employees be held accountable?

Unfortunately, the fallout isn’t quite as the characters Sloane, Ardie, Grace, and Rosalita expected in the mystery, Whisper Network. The quest for justice will lead to a criminal investigation, the unearthing of long buried secrets, and a reckoning for them all.

Thematically, the novel explores male privilege and insidiousness of sexual harassment in the workplace when complaints go ignored and perpetrators are protected.

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