The best and most technically accurate thrillers

With The Hunt For Red October, unknown insurance salesman Tom Clancy single-handedly invented a genre—the “techno-thriller”. 

This has come to mean a thriller where the author has done everything they could to make sure even the tiniest details in their book were technically accurate—and nobody did it with a bigger splash than Clancy. The CIA read the book and immediately started searching for whoever had released the information in it, which they thought was still classified. 

THFRO was passed all around Washington D.C., and eventually even President Reagan publicly praised it. But beyond all the technically correct tech around Navy vessels in general and submarines in particular, THFRO is a darn good story, a thriller about a defecting Soviet submarine during the height of the Cold War. 

It showed people a novel could be both entertaining and exactingly accurate.

What Tom Clancy did for submarines with The Hunt For Red October, Stephen Hunter did with rifles and long-range shooting in Point of Impact, which was made into the movie Shooter with Mark Wahlberg in addition to a cable TV show of the same name. 

Hunter had already proven himself a talented thriller writer when he penned Point of Impact, but the excellent plot (a famous Vietnam sniper framed for an assassination by a shadowy conspiracy) combined with never-before-seen firearms technical detail that enhanced rather than bogged down the story made this novel a huge success and catapulted Hunter to the A-list.  

As a child of the eighties I grew up in the Cold War, where the Soviet Union was the enemy…but most Americans didn’t know anything about it. 

Gorky Park peeled back the curtain on the day-to-day lives of a few not-so-average Russians. The hugely successful novel features Moscow policeman Arkady Renko investigating a murder that has international repercussions. This novel opened a window into a foreign world that few people in the West had ever seen—in addition to being very smartly written. 

Even today this novel is fascinating, and it spawned half a dozen more sequels starring Renko.

This novel, released in 1994, was one of The New York Times’ Notable Books of the Year, but these days, unfortunately few people have heard of it. 

A thriller about a terrorist holding the entire American air traffic control system hostage, this novel stood out because of how accurate all the details of the U.S. ATC were—details Gruenfeld had become aware of while pursuing a pilot’s license. 

Rush Limbaugh, an avid fan of aviation, raved about the book on his #1 rated radio show, and that’s where I heard about it.

Having worked as a police officer, process server, and private investigator, I find most books featuring characters with those occupations unrealistic and not entertaining. 

Michael Connelly spent time working for the L.A. Times as a crime reporter, so he knows reporters, cops, and lawyers.  He’s seen greater success with his Harry Bosch series, but The Lincoln Lawyer was the debut novel featuring defense attorney Mickey Haller, and it’s great. 

Not only does the plot keep you guessing, but the realistic grit of the Los Angeles courts gives this book an authenticity you rarely find.