Gripping Narrative Quotes

I define a thriller as a big-stakes, multiple-viewpoint novel involving suspense, action, and mystery, in which the reader doesn't know everything but usually knows more than any single character.

Six Seconds is a great read. Echoing Ludlum and Forsythe, author Mofina has penned a big, solid international thriller that grabs your gut -- and your heart -- in the opening scenes and never lets go.

It's a rare book that wins the battle against drooping eyelids.

Absolutely breathtaking, nail-biting, and edge-of-your-seat. Michael Koryta is a master at maintaining suspense and a hell of a good writer. THOSE WHO WISH ME DEAD is one of the best chase-and-escape novels you’ll read this year-or any other year. The pace never lets up.

Bangkok 8 is one of the most startling and provocative mysteries that I've read in years. The characters are marvelously unique, the setting is intoxicating and the plot unwinds in dark illusory strands, reminiscent of Gorky Park. Once I started, I didn't want to put it down.

Chevy Stevens is in top form. ALWAYS WATCHING is a tense and twisty exploration of dark memories, hidden pasts, and a place that seems like heaven but might be hell. This is a deep and exciting novel, as unsettling as it is gripping.

A HUMAN ELEMENT is an elegant and haunting first novel. Unrelenting, devious but full of heart. Highly recommended.

A stunner…reminds me of Tom Clancy at his finest.

Good story' means something worth telling that the world wants to hear. Finding this is your lonely task...But the love of a good story, of terrific characters and a world driven by your passion, courage, and creative gifts is still not enough. Your goal must be a good story well told.

The wildest ride in modern crime novel exoticum. A novel so steeped in milieu that it feels as if you've blasted to mars in the grip of a demon who won't let you go. Read this book, savor the language-it's the last-and the most compelling word in thrillers.

The Following and Hannibal are really well made, but the tone is very consistently dark.

If a film or any piece of work doesn't entertain, it fails - and that is using the word entertain literally, meaning it holds you there and you become absorbed by it so that you don't walk away and get bored and so on.

This is what noir is, what it can be when it stops playing nice--blunt force drama stripped down to the bone, then made to dance across the page.

A haunting, harrowing punch to the heart, Among the Missing is flat-out brilliant. About the secrets we keep, the lives we are desperate to live, and the chances we miss, it's a psychological dazzler. Truly, one of my favorite books of this year-or any year.

[Season 4 of Sherlock Holmes will be] myopically dark. You're talking about the end of the universe darkness. You can't see in front of you and would walk into everything dark.

It is deeply moving, powerful, and disturbing. A film that must be seen.

Beautiful and fresh, Girl Saves Boy is full of the absolute truth-life is complicated. I could not put it down.

No Time For Goodbye is a deliciously smart thriller, full of surprises and perfect pacing. I'm jealous I didn't write it.

I have not seen a film as powerful, surreal, and frightening in at least a decade unprecedented in the history of cinema.

The best book of the year, Grobel's writing is quite marvelous. The Hustons reads vividly, just like one of John Huston's great films.

What I love about the thriller form is that it makes you write a story. You can't get lost in your own genius, which is a dangerous place for writers. You don't want to ever get complacent. If a book starts going too well, I usually know there's a problem. I need to struggle. I need that self-doubt. I need to think it's not the best thing ever.

John Grisham is one of the greatest storytellers of all time.

I want to write books that keep people up at night, where they cry through the first forty pages and keep reading anyway.

There aren't too many people out there who can start one of my books and not finish it. I don't think too many writers can say that.