In Conspiracy Thrillers, protagonists often find themselves inadvertently tugging on a small thread that unravels a vast tapestry of lies and deception, reaching even to the highest echelons. The most compelling conspiracy novels are those that blur the line between fiction and reality, leaving readers in an unsettling state of doubt. An exemplary illustration is Dashiell Hammett's 1924 short story 'Nightmare Town,' where an Arizona town becomes a part of an insurance-fraud scheme, gradually uncovered by the protagonist detective. Contemporary conspiracy thrillers often take the form of spy novels, exemplified by authors like Frederick Forsyth and Nelson DeMille. Dan Brown's Langdon Novels, known for their popularity, also fit within the realm of conspiracy thrillers.
Barry Eisler
All the Devils
Livia Lone Novel, Book 3
2019
Ten years ago, the daughter of Homeland Security Investigations agent B.D. Little vanished into thin air. So did seven other girls?the crimes all bearing the same signature characteristics. Now the disappearances have begun again.
Check Price on AmazonCarlos Ruiz Zafon
The Shadow of the Wind
The Cemetry of Forgotten - Book 1
2018 (First published: 2004)
Barcelona, 1945 - just after the war, a great world city is nursing its wounds, and a boy named Daniel awakes on his eleventh birthday to find that he can no longer remember his mother’s face. To console his only child, Daniel’s widowed father, an antiquarian book dealer, initiates him into the secret of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, where he discovers a puzzling secret.
Check Price on AmazonCarlos Ruiz Zafon
The Angel's Game
The Cemetry of Forgotten - Book 2
2010 (First published: 2008)
In this powerful, labyrinthian thriller, David Martín is a pulp fiction writer struggling to stay afloat. Holed up in an abandoned mansion in the heart of Barcelona, he furiously taps out story after story, becoming increasingly frustrated. Thus, when he is approached by a mysterious publisher offering a book deal that seems almost too good to be real, David leaps at the chance.
Check Price on AmazonCarlos Ruiz Zafon
The Prisoner of Heaven
The Cemetry of Forgotten - Book 3
2013 (First published: 2011)
Barcelona, 1957. It is Christmas, and Daniel Sempere and his wife, Bea, have much to celebrate. They have a beautiful new baby son named Julián, and their close friend de Torres is about to be wed. But their joy is eclipsed when a mysterious stranger visits the Sempere bookshop and threatens to divulge a terrible secret that has been buried for two decades in the city's dark past.
Check Price on AmazonCarlos Ruiz Zafon
The Labyrinth of Spirits
The Cemetry of Forgotten - Book 4
2019 (First published: 2016)
Beautiful and enigmatic Alicia Gris, with the help of the Sempere family, uncovers one of the most shocking conspiracies in all Spanish history. Nine-year-old Alicia lost her parents during the Spanish Civil War when the Nacionales (the fascists) savagely bombed Barcelona in 1938. Twenty years later, she still carries the emotional and physical scars of that violent and terrifying time.
Check Price on AmazonCormac McCarthy
The Passenger
The Passenger - Book 1
2022 (First published: 2022)
It is three in the morning when Bobby Western zips the jacket of his wet suit and plunges from the Coast Guard tender into darkness. His dive light illuminates the sunken jet, nine bodies still buckled in their seats, hair floating, eyes devoid of speculation. Missing from the crash site are the pilot’s flight bag, the plane’s black box, and the tenth passenger.
Check Price on AmazonDan Brown
Angels & Demons
Book 1 of Robert Langdon Novels
2006 (First published: 2000)
CERN director Maximilian Kohler discovers one of the facility's top physicists, Leonardo Vetra, murdered, his chest branded with an ambigram of the word "Illuminati." They have surfaced to carry out the final phase of its vendetta against its most hated enemy—the Catholic Church.
Check Price on AmazonDan Brown
The Da Vinci Code
Book 2 of Robert Langdon Novels
2009 (First published: 2003)
The elderly curator of the Louvre has been murdered inside the museum, his body covered in baffling symbols. The novel explores an alternative religious history, in which the Merovingian kings of France were descended from the bloodline of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene.
Check Price on AmazonDavid Baldacci
The 6:20 Man
2022 (First published: 2022)
Every day without fail, Travis Devine puts on a cheap suit, grabs his faux-leather briefcase, and boards the 6:20 commuter train to Manhattan, where he works as an entry-level analyst at the city's most prestigious investment firm. Then one morning Devine's tedious routine is shattered by an anonymous email: She is dead. Sara Ewes, Devine's coworker and former girlfriend, has been found hanging in a storage room of his office building.
Check Price on AmazonDavid Baldacci
Walk the Wire
Amos Decker Series - Book 6
2020 (First published: 2020)
A lone hunter discovers the remains of a woman in North Dakota’s Badlands. She appears to have had a post-mortem performed on her reminiscent of those only seen on TV shows – but this time, there was no slab, morgue or camera in sight. FBI investigator, Amos Decker and his colleague, Alex Jamison, are summoned to seek answers.
Check Price on AmazonFrederick Forsyth
The Deceiver
1992 (First published: 1991)
Sam McCready serves Britain as Chief of Deception & Disinformationfor the British Secret Intelligence Service. He's competent, dedicated, in his prime. Why then this push to get him out? The options are painful -- early retirement or an administrative backwater. Who wants him out, and why? And what happens if he refuses to go quietly? It's a wild card, confrontational, risky.
Check Price on AmazonFrederick Forsyth
The Day of the Jackal
2007 (First published: 1971)
The Jackal: A tall, blond Englishman with opaque, gray eyes. A killer at the top of his profession. A man unknown to any secret service in the world. An assassin with a contract to kill one of the world's most heavily guarded man. And as the minutes count down to the final act of execution, it seems that there is no power on earth that can stop the Jackal.
Check Price on AmazonJess Lourey
Bloodline
2021
In a tale inspired by real events, pregnant journalist Joan Harken is cautiously excited to follow her fiancé back to his Minnesota hometown. After spending a childhood on the move and chasing the screams and swirls of news-rich city life, she’s eager to settle down. Lilydale’s motto, “Come Home Forever,” couldn’t be more inviting. And yet, something is off in the picture-perfect village.
Check Price on AmazonJess Lourey
The Quarry Girls
2022
Minnesota, 1977. For the teens of one close-knit community, summer means late-night swimming parties at the quarry, the county fair, and venturing into the tunnels beneath the city. But for two best friends, it’s not all fun and games.Heather and Brenda have a secret. They’ve decided to never tell a soul. But then their friend disappears?the second girl to vanish in a week.
Check Price on AmazonLee Child
Tripwire
Jack Reacher - Book 3
2012 (First published: 1999)
Ex military policeman Jack Reacher is enjoying the lazy anonymity of Key West when a stranger shows up asking for him. He’s got a lot of questions. Reacher does too, especially after the guy turns up dead. The answers lead Reacher on a cold trail back to New York, to the tenuous confidence of an alluring woman, and the dangerous corners of his own past.
Check Price on AmazonLee Child
Bad Luck and Trouble
Jack Reacher - Book 11
2011 (First published: 2007)
From a helicopter high above the empty California desert, a man is sent free-falling into the night. In Chicago, a woman learns that an elite team of ex–army investigators is being hunted down one by one. And on the streets of Portland, Jack Reacher - soldier, cop, hero - is pulled out of his wandering life by a code that few other people could understand.
Check Price on AmazonLee Child
No Plan B
Jack Reacher - Book 27
2022 (First published: 2022)
A woman dies under the wheels of a moving bus. The death is ruled a suicide. But Jack Reacher saw what really happened: A man in a gray hoodie and jeans, moving stealthily, pushed the victim to her demise—before swiftly grabbing the dead woman’s purse and strolling away. When another homicide is ruled an accident, Reacher knows this is no coincidence. With a killer on the loose, Reacher has no time to waste to track down those responsible.
Check Price on AmazonMichael C. Grumley
The Last Monument
Book 1 of Monument Series
2020
Outside Denver, Colorado, Joe Rickards stands over a small aircraft wreckage, studying burnt remains still smoldering in a field of freshly fallen snow...an investigator for the NTSB, working to identify the cause of the accident. But nothing adds up.
Check Price on AmazonMichael C. Grumley
The Desert of Glass
Book 2 of Monument Series
2021
Half a century ago, an aberration was spotted by one of our earliest satellites, and summarily dismissed as a hardware malfunction. But it was no aberration. And no malfunction. It was an accidental glimpse of something extraordinary, and very old.
Check Price on AmazonMichael Connelly
The Dark Hours
Renée Ballard & Harry Bosch Novel - Book 4
2022 (First published: 2021)
There’s chaos in Hollywood at the end of the New Year’s Eve. Working her graveyard shift, LAPD detective Renée Ballard waits out the traditional rain of lead as hundreds of revelers shoot their guns into the air. Only minutes after midnight, Ballard is called to a scene where a auto shop owner has been fatally hit by a bullet in the middle of a street party. Ballard quickly concludes that the deadly bullet could not have fallen from the sky.
Check Price on AmazonNelson DeMille
Night Fall
John Corey - Book 3
2015 (First published: 2004)
On a Long Island beach at dusk, Bob Mitchell and JanetWhitney conduct their illicit love affair in front of a video camera. Suddenly a terrible explosion lights up the sky. Five years later, the crash of Flight 800 has been attributed to a mechanical mal-function. But John Corey and Kate Mayfield, both members of the Elite Anti-terrorist Task Force, suspect a cover-up at the highest levels.
Check Price on AmazonNelson DeMille
The Maze
John Corey - Book 8
2022
On the verge of retirement, John Corey is sitting on a porch, lazily looking out across the ocean, scanning the horizon for his enemies, calculating escape routes, drinking a beer for breakfast. But then trouble does appear, and Corey can’t ignore it. A series of bodies has been found along a beach close to his home and he can no longer deny that a serial killer is on the loose.
Check Price on AmazonPeter Hoeg
Smilla's Sense of Snow
1994
One snowy day in Copenhagen, six-year-old Isaiah falls to his death from a city rooftop. The police pronounce it an accident. But Isaiah's neighbour, Smilla, a half-Inuit, suspects murder. She embarks on a dangerous quest to find the truth, wandering on the ice floes of Greenland in pursuit of the killers.
Check Price on Amazon