Many people read thrillers to escape where they are. It makes sense. When you have two hours to kill while waiting for a connecting flight, nothing passes the time like getting into a domestic thriller and finding out a long-disappeared character isn’t really dead.
Yet despite their escapist quality, thrillers are just as popular in airports as they are in more pleasant settings. Say, a beach. You wouldn’t think so. We escape to the beach; shouldn’t we read about softer things?
Yet for many of us, a good thriller—even a dark, murdery one—is part of the enjoyment, fitting in our maximum-pleasure routine somewhere between laying out the towel and popping a cool drink. Maybe it’s like any sharp flavor: surrounded by too much cream, and we need a little crunch.
In that way, there are few better ways to pass one’s time in the sun than with a thriller: spy, legal, domestic, crime, it doesn’t really matter. Some people refer to these as guilty pleasures. But when you’re surrounded by good weather and plenty of distractions, there’s no reason that your favorite experience can’t still come bound in paper.
Here are some candidates that won’t make you feel guilty for reading them, no matter where that may be.
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Laura Lippman, Sunburn
Laura Lippman’s sharp, literary style is a complete antidote to guilty-pleasure reading, and the title alone will remind you to mind your umbrella’s position. Although there are plenty of intriguing secrets and turns of plot, Lippman also infuses a strange fantasy quality to the book: what if you were to throw the vacation aside and maybe live and work in this place all summer long?
By the end of the book, you feel like you’ve been there for months.
Sally Hepworth, The Family Next Door
I’m a sucker for all things domestic thriller. The grounded settings feel both accessible and relatable enough to get immediately sucked in. That’s important in a beach read, especially as you deal with distractions like gulls eyeing your sandwiches.
Sally Hepworth turns an Australian cul-de-sac community into one such vortex here, including a rich cast of characters who are constantly adding layers to the mysteries.
Jess Lourey, The Quarry Girls
Maybe there’s nothing in Minnesota like salt ocean air, but Jess Lourey paints such a vivid picture of a hot, sticky, mysterious summer that reading this on a beach will still become something of a vivid scratch ‘n’ sniff experience. Her prose is endlessly engaging; the only problem is that the perfect pacing may make your time on the beach fly by.
Ruth Ware, One Perfect Couple
Reality TV, a remote tropical island, a fledgling relationship, cut off from the mainland: heck yes, this is a beach read, and even a modern twist on Lord of the Flies. If you’re a fan of locked room mysteries and don’t usually need a massive, “it was the sea monsters all along” kind of twist, this one is a no-brainer choice.
Megan Miranda, The Last House Guest
A beach is a strange emulsifier of socioeconomic classes—some arrive by walking a few steps down their porch, others via parking lot. Miranda mines that theme to its fullest in this tale of a Maine vacation community, exploring themes like privilege and loyalty with a fully lived-in setting that will remind you of returning to your favorite haunts. A classic “this place isn’t all it seems” tale.
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