I love a great crime thriller, especially one that’s raw and visceral and frightening. Over the years, I’ve read or watched hundreds of them, and while most have long since faded from memory, there are a few that linger in the dark corners of my mind, stories with images so haunting that they still make me shudder—stories like Thomas Harriss’s The Silence of the Lambs, James Patterson’s Kiss the Girls, and the movie Seven.
But what’s the difference between an unforgettable crime thriller and the sort of thriller that retreats into the remote fissures of your brain, never to be pondered again? What are the key ingredients that make some thrillers impossible to forget?
While crime thrillers come in many different varieties, the great ones generally share at least five essential elements.
Element 1: A Diabolical Villain
First and foremost, a great crime thriller demands a diabolical villain, someone who is cunning and creative, a murderous savant who’s always a step ahead of the authorities. A truly diabolical villain not only commits heinous crimes in shocking new ways, but also possesses a deeply unsettling presence. Scenes with the villain often feature haunting imagery or creepy snippets of dialogue that remain with us long after the story closes.
In The Silence of the Lambs, Dr. Hannibal Lecter is an esteemed psychiatrist serving nine consecutive life sentences for serial murder and cannibalism. Although Dr. Lecter is a blood-thirsty psychopath, he’s also a charismatic intellectual whose psychoanalysis of FBI trainee Clarice Starling is chilling, brilliant, and sadistically amusing. Clarice is sent to interview Lecter to help gather intelligence on another serial killer nicknamed Buffalo Bill, who kidnaps, starves, and skins overweight women. His goal is to make a wearable woman suit out of their flesh so that he can experience life as a woman.
In Kiss the Girls, two killers working on opposite coasts target beautiful and gifted young women. In North Carolina, a man calling himself Casanova painstakingly collects a harem of exceptional young women to mold into his lovers, but anyone who doesn’t follow his rules pays the ultimate price. Meanwhile, in L.A., the Gentleman Caller savagely murders and dismembers his victims, taking pleasure in carrying out the ultimate power trip. Despite the geographical distance, the two killers share a deadly connection, collaborating, competing, and confounding the authorities at every turn.
In Seven, a man known as John Doe plans a series of murders corresponding to the seven deadly sins. Each murder is more heinous than the last, and following gluttony, greed, and sloth, John Doe holds a man at gunpoint and forces him to rape a prostitute while wearing a strap-on fitted with a knife. This fourth sin represents lust, and just when you think John Doe’s imagination couldn’t get any more depraved, he finds a way to top it in the shocking finale.
Element 2: A Flawed, But Likable, Protagonist
I often find myself lured into a story by the promise of a compelling plot only to be disappointed by one-dimensional characters that resemble cardboard cutouts instead of real people. For a story to resonate with an audience, a great plot must be paired with a flawed but likable protagonist, someone we can relate to, someone whose hopes, fears, or follies remind us of ourselves or someone we know. Once we develop empathy for the protagonist, we become vested in the story and share in the character’s trials and tribulations, which makes the ultimate battle with the villain that much more intense.
In The Silence of the Lambs, Clarice Starling is a young FBI trainee whose boss initially uses her as a pawn to gain Lecter’s trust. She’s a woman in a male-dominated profession, trying to overcome her past as a lonely and frightened orphan and prove that she has what it takes to make it in the FBI. We all like to root for an underdog, and it’s precisely because Clarice is flawed and likable that we want her to succeed.
In Kiss the Girls, Alex Cross is a detective and psychologist who travels out of his jurisdiction to locate his missing niece. He’s a devoted father who bears the emotional scars of his late wife’s murder and does his best to balance the demands of his job with being present for his family.
In Seven, a mild-mannered veteran detective (Somerset) is teamed up with a younger and more volatile detective (Mills) who recently moved to the city with his wife, Tracy. Somerset is six days from retirement and wants nothing more than to hang up his badge and leave the ugliness of the city behind. Mills, on the other hand, moved to the city to see more action as a homicide detective. At first, the two don’t get along, but after Tracy invites Somerset to dinner, the detectives begin to build a camaraderie that continues to blossom as Doe’s victims pile up.
Element 3: Raising the Stakes
Most crime thrillers do a solid job of thrusting their protagonist into precarious situations, but a great crime thriller takes this to another level by raising the stakes for the characters we’ve come to love. Raising the stakes can take many forms, but generally results in magnifying the consequences of failure.
In The Silence of the Lambs, the stakes are raised when Clarice learns that her real purpose in being sent to Dr. Lecter is to gather intelligence on Buffalo Bill and help prevent more women from dying. Throughout the story, Harris raises the stakes several more times, including when Lecter gets personal with his psychoanalysis of Clarice’s childhood trauma and when more women vanish at the hands of Buffalo Bill.
In Kiss the Girls, Detective Cross’s niece goes missing and the stakes are immediately raised when he suspects she was abducted by the serial killer, Casanova. He soon finds himself thrust into the middle of the serial killer investigation, and suddenly it’s more than just his niece’s life that hangs in the balance. That alone promises enough thrills to carry the story, but Patterson ups the ante by introducing a second serial killer at work on the west coast (the Gentleman Caller), who is conspiring with Casanova to harm as many young women as possible.
In Seven, the stakes are raised with the discovery of each murder and the knowledge that the killer won’t stop until he’s completed the cycle for all seven deadly sins.
Element 4: A Ticking Clock
When mixed in the right proportions, the first three elements should have us on the edge of our seats by the midpoint of the story. That’s an ideal time for the storyteller to ratchet up the tension even further by adding the element of a ticking clock. Suddenly, it’s no longer enough to follow the clues wherever they may lead. Now, the case must be solved by a specified time or something worse will happen. Not only are we on the edge of our seats, but now our hearts are racing because time is running out.
In The Silence of the Lambs, the ticking clock commences when a US senator’s daughter is kidnapped and the FBI believes they only have three days to find her before Buffalo Bill kills her to harvest her skin.
In Kiss the Girls, the urgency of the ticking clock isn’t explicitly measured in hours or days, but is instead implicit in Detective Cross’s own niece being one of Casanova’s victims. By making the case personal for Cross, Patterson cranks up the tension because every second that passes reduces the odds of finding his niece alive.
In Seven, the clock begins ticking when the detectives realize that John Doe plans to commit a murder for each of the seven deadly sins, and the race is on to stop him.
Element 5: A Shocking Twist (Beware of Spoilers!)
Not only does a great crime thriller incorporate all the forgoing elements, but it also has a shocking twist, something horrible, profound, and completely unexpected. Something that makes it truly unforgettable.
The shocking twist in The Silence of the Lambs isn’t about the identity of Buffalo Bill, but rather the unexpected and horrific way in which Lecter escapes from the insane asylum. In this unforgettable scene, Lecter kills his guards and uses one of their hacked off faces as a mask to trick paramedics into rushing him to the hospital.
In Kiss the Girls, Detective Cross determines the whereabouts of Casanova’s lair, but is ambushed by not one, but two serial killers. Cross manages to kill the Gentleman Caller, but Casanova slips away before he can be identified. The shocking twist comes when Detective Cross discovers the body of an FBI agent near the home of a woman who escaped Casanova’s lair. As Cross rushes to her aid, Casanova is revealed to be one of the local detectives working the investigation.
Seven concludes with a series of twists, each of which builds upon the next for one of the darkest finales of any crime thriller. The first twist occurs when John Doe turns himself in, covered in blood, and confesses to murder. He promises to take detectives Somerset and Mills to the final two murder victims in exchange for not pleading insanity when the case goes to trial. As they arrive at a remote desert location, a delivery van approaches and the driver presents them with a box. As Somerset opens the box and peers inside, John Doe tells Detective Mills that he was envious of the detective’s relationship with his wife. Doe says he visited the detective’s home and tried to play husband. “It didn’t work out,” he says. “So I took a souvenir—her pretty head.” Mills doesn’t want to believe that Tracy was Doe’s representation of envy, but when Somerset doesn’t deny it, Mills fatally shoots John Doe, thus committing wrath—the last of the seven deadly sins—and finishing Doe’s work for him.
So there you have it—the five essential elements of a great crime thriller. The next time you read or watch a great thriller, see how many of the elements you can spot.
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