26 of Our Favorite Thriller Books That Were Turned Into Movies

Jason Matthews's Red Sparrow is here to remind you that not all thrillers are about unhappy marriages. Some of them are about kick-butt Russian spies pulling off complex operations that will leave you breathless. The first book in the author's trilogy was adapted into a 2018 film starring Jennifer Lawrence, but somehow the deadly agent Dominika Egorova is even more fun on the page.

Ben Affleck is clearly a fan of the thriller genre. Not only did he star in Gone Girl, but he also directed the 2007 adaptation of Dennis Lehane's crime thriller Gone Baby Gone. The chilling novel follows private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro as they delve into the corrupt and broken Boston neighborhood of Dorchester to find a missing little girl.

Darcey Bell's captivating A Simple Favor became a 2018 movie starring Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively. However, the book dials the creepy factor way up as mommy blogger Stephanie picks up her best friend's son from school as a favor only to find herself in the middle of a mystery when her friend goes missing. It's not long before Stephanie's best friend Emily's body is found, and everything she thinks she knows about their friendship begins to unravel.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is the first book in Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy, and Hollywood can't seem to get enough of hacker Lisbeth Salander. The books have been adapted multiple times, but nothing can quite match the power of reading Lisbeth's revenge-filled tale for yourself. Alongside journalist Mikael Blomkvist, Lisbeth delves deep into a corrupt world as she seeks her own personal brand of justice.

The master of suspense himself, Alfred Hitchcock, adapted Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca in 1940, and all these years later, the story is still a thrilling, Gothic masterpiece. In the book, a young bride recounts the story of her time spent in her husband's manor home, Manderley. While there, she contends with a maid who seems to be obsessed with Rebecca, her husband's first wife, and what could be the ghostly presence of her predecessor lingering in the halls — or is something more sinister than a ghost haunting her?

Director David Fincher brought Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl to the big screen in a 2014 movie starring Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike, but before the movie, we were already obsessed with the twisty novel. The book focuses on the seemingly happily married couple of Amy and Nick Dunne, but when Amy goes missing, it quickly becomes clear that their marriage is a complete mess. With Amy missing, all eyes are on Nick as he struggles to prove that he has nothing to do with his wife's disappearance.

The Silence of the Lambs is a downright iconic film, and that's all the more reason to show Thomas Harris's unsettling thriller some love. FBI trainee Clarice Starling's relationship with Hannibal Lecter is unnerving from start to finish, but what really keeps us turning the pages is the knowledge that without the help of this dangerous man, she may not be able to stop the serial killer Buffalo Bill from taking more lives.

Joyce Maynard's 1992 domestic thriller To Die For became an underrated movie starring Nicole Kidman in 1995. Suzanne Maretto is the '90s answer to a femme fatale. The weather reporter longs for nothing more than to escape her boring suburban life, but rather than simply leave her husband, she concocts a dark plan to convince her 16-year-old lover to murder him instead.

If anyone knows their way around the thriller genre, it's James Patterson. In Along Came a Spider, he introduces his famed psychologist and detective Alex Cross as he faces off against Gary Soneji, a criminal mastermind seeking to pull off the crime of the century. (If you want more of Alex, there are 25 more books featuring the detective.) The high-stakes story was adapted into a 2001 blockbuster starring Morgan Freeman.

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins is a Hitchcockian thriller about a woman named Rachel who sees too much on her commute to work one day. The taut mystery keeps readers guessing as to just how reliable Rachel is right up until the end, and once you finish the book, you can see Emily Blunt bring the intriguing character to life in the 2016 film.

Austin Wright's Tony & Susan became Nocturnal Animals when it hit the big screen as a film starring Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhaal. The twisty story gives us two thrillers for the price of one as bored, suburban housewife Susan loses herself in her ex-husband's dark manuscript about a family's Summer vacation going violently awry. Soon, the mystery Susan is enjoying on the page begins to creep into her real life in unexpected ways.

Lehane's thrillers are so good that Hollywood just can't stop adapting them. Shutter Island is a particularly twisted tale of a US Marshal and his partner who are on the hunt for a missing murderer at Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Add in a storm that keeps them stranded on the secluded island and you have the makings of not only a great book, but also an enthralling film starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men became an Oscar-nominated film in 2007, but it was already a beautiful, nerve-racking novel. Set on the Mexico-Texas border, the book hinges on the decision of one man to keep a large sum of money he discovers in a dead man's truck. This one choice puts him on the radar of a deadly killer and an aging sheriff who is becoming increasingly disillusioned with the world.

Laura by Vera Caspary is an old-school thriller that's perhaps best known for being turned into a 1944 classic noir film starring Gene Tierney. However, the book is just as enticing as the movie as it weaves the tale of the Laura, a beautiful woman who no one can resist, and the detective who is slowly becoming obsessed with her as he attempts to solve her murder.

It's impossible to talk about thrillers without including as least one of Agatha Christie's famous mystery novels. Murder on the Orient Express is a perfect introduction to her work, not only because the book was recently adapted once again in 2017 with an all-star cast, but also because it's such a terrific story. Hercule Poirot finds himself trying to unravel a murder aboard a train where everyone is a suspect, and trust us, this page-turner will keep you guessing throughout.

Don Winslow's Savages is thrilling, for sure, but it's also a read with serious style. It was adapted into a little-seen 2012 film starring Blake Lively, but even though the movie is under the radar, that's no reason not to dive into this story of three young Californian lovers whose marijuana business attracts the wrong kind of attention of a Mexican drug cartel.

Stephen King's books tend to be more horror than thriller, but Misery is proof that the author can ratchet up the tension with nary a ghost or possessed car in sight. The 1990 movie earned Kathy Bates an Oscar for playing unhinged superfan Annie Wilkes, who holds her favorite author hostage in hopes of forcing him to twist his story to fit her fantasies, and the book is every bit as anxiety-inducing as the film.

Inspired by the real-life murder, The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy sends two cops spiraling down a dangerous rabbit hole in 1940s Hollywood as they investigate the murder of a young movie star. The novel's psychological twists led to a 2006 movie starring Scarlett Johansson, but it's hard to match the novel's unflinching dive into the underbelly of Los Angeles.

The 2017 movie starring Michael Fassbender never quite lives up to the dark game of cat and mouse that Jo Nesbo creates in The Snowman. The book is part of the author's series of novels featuring Inspector Harry Hole, but this one stands out thanks to a serial killer who uses the snowy landscape to hide his horrendous crimes in plain sight.

All of Dashiell Hammett's detective novels are great thrillers, but The Thin Man is special because it's so different from the madcap noir film that it inspired. The book's married crime-solving duo of Nick and Nora Charles are witty on screen and off, but the novel doesn't shy away from the darkness of the mystery they find themselves embroiled in.

Yes, Gillian Flynn's Dark Places was turned into a movie — a 2015 movie starring Charlize Theron, to be exact — but it didn't make much of a splash at the box office. That's fine, though, because the novel remains just as addictive as Gone Girl. The story follows a woman named Libby who revisits her tragic past as a survivor of "The Satan Sacrifice of Kinnakee, Kansas" in order to make money off a group of true-crime fans. Unfortunately, revisiting her past also puts her on the radar of the killer who murdered her family.

Harlan Coben's Tell No One inspired a gripping French film released in 2006, and that should come as no surprise since it's such a compelling read. The book follows a man who is still mourning his wife eight years after her death. Then one day he receives a message on his computer that can only be from her, and he finds himself wondering if it's possible that his wife isn't dead after all.

The 1999 movie starring Matt Damon is beloved, but Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley deserves major props for being such an incredible novel, too. Tom Ripley is the ultimate con man, and as he becomes more and more obsessed with the life of the young playboy he's meant to be fetching from Italy, his twisted plan begins to take shape for the reader.

Released in 2018, the movie adaptation of The Little Stranger is a certified hidden gem. However, reading Sarah Waters's book first is a good plan since it is such a masterful addition to the Gothic thriller genre. In postwar England, a young doctor is called to the crumbling manor of a family of virtual shut-ins who are convinced that they're being haunted, and the longer the doctor stays with them, the more he comes to realize that there is more going on with the family than he ever could have imagined.

Hitchcock's Psycho is such a masterpiece that it has come to overshadow Robert Bloch's book. But even if you think you know Norman Bates's story, the novel is well worth a read thanks to Bloch's unique writing style and the timeless nature of the deeply unsettling story of the strange motel owner.

True YA thrillers are far and few between, but Lois Duncan's I Know What You Did Last Summer, published in 1973, remains a gold standard. The book about four teens who make a pact not to tell anyone about the person they accidentally hit late one Summer night was adapted into a campy slasher movie starring Jennifer Love Hewitt and Sarah Michelle Gellar in 1997.