Thrilling novel set in WW1 LONDON
Ten Great Thrillers set in NEW YORK
14th September 2026
Ten great thrillers set in New York.
New York City serves as the ultimate backdrop for pulse-pounding thrillers, transforming its iconic architecture into characters of their own. From the claustrophobic shadows of towering skyscrapers and crowded subway tunnels to the echoing silence of Central Park at midnight, the metropolis breeds relentless suspense. Detectives race against ticking clocks through neon-lit streets, while wealthy elites hide dark secrets behind brownstone facades. The constant, thrumming energy of the city heightens every moment of danger, making isolation amid millions uniquely terrifying. Ultimately, these gripping stories prove that beneath the gleaming surface, the concrete jungle always conceals lethal predators.
The Doorman by Chris Pavone
Chicky Diaz is everyone’s favourite doorman at the Bohemia, New York City’s world-famous home of celebrities, financiers, and the cultural elite.
In the basement staff room, the life-and-death stakes of daily life are hardly news to the primarily Black and Latino hospitality. So, when the NYPD fatally shoots an unarmed Black man and the streets swell with both protestors and counter protestors, the staff’s concerns are less about the building or its residents and more about their survival – and what justice will look like.
As tensions escalate, Chicky mans the line between the turbulence outside and the oblivious residents living within. But Chicky has his own problems, the kind that have led him to carry a gun on tonight’s shift for the first time in thirty years.
Because tonight, someone is going to die.
A piercing portrait of the way we live now that is also a finely-honed thriller of ticking-clock suspense, The Doorman is about class and privilege in a city poised to boil over, and the ever-starker divisions testing everything New York City likes to believe about itself.
Believe Me by J P Delaney
Claire Wright likes to play other people.
A British drama student, in New York without a green card, Claire takes the only job she can get: working for a firm of divorce lawyers, posing as an easy pick-up in hotel bars to entrap straying husbands.
When one of her targets becomes the subject of a murder investigation, the police ask Claire to use her acting skills to help lure their suspect into a confession. But right from the start, she has doubts about the part she’s being asked to play. Is Patrick Fogler really a killer . . . Or the only decent husband she’s ever met? And is there more to this set-up than she’s being told?
And that’s when Claire realises she’s playing the deadliest role of her life . . .
Clean Hands by Patrick Hoffman
Corporate lawyer Elizabeth Carlyle is under pressure. Her prestigious New York law firm is working on a high-stakes case, defending a prominent bank accused of fraud. When Elizabeth gets the news that one of her junior associates has lost his phone – and the secret documents that were on it – she needs help. Badly.
Enter ex-CIA officer Valencia Walker, a high-priced fixer who gets called in when wealthy people, corporations and governments need their problems solved discreetly. But things get complicated when the missing phone is retrieved: somebody has already copied the documents and blackmail is underway.
Mysterious leaks to the press and an unlikely suicide further complicate the situation. With billions of dollars on the line, Elizabeth and Valencia must outmanoeuvre their tormentors, all the while keeping their hands clean.
From the corporate boardrooms of Manhattan to the city’s gritty outer boroughs, a sharply drawn cast of characters – including dirty lawyers, black-market traders and Russian criminals – take part in this breakneck tour through New York. Authentic, tense and impossible to put down, Clean Hands shows a talented crime writer hitting his stride.
Conviction by Julia Dahl
Journalist Rebekah Roberts works at New York City’s sleaziest tabloid, but dreams of bigger things. When she receives a letter from a convicted murderer claiming his innocence, she sees both a story she can’t ignore and, possibly, a chance.
Twenty-two years earlier, just after the Crown Heights riots exploded between the black and Jewish neighbourhoods in Brooklyn, DeShawn Perkins was convicted of the brutal murder of his adoptive family. Rebekah’s search for the truth is obscured by the decades that have elapsed: almost no one wants to talk about that grim, violent time in New York City?not even Saul Katz, a former NYPD cop and once her inside source.
A searing exploration of the tensions between New York’s closed communities, Conviction is a novel about the power – and cost – of loyalty and denial.
Terminal City by Linda Fairstein
When the body of a young woman is found in a suite at one of the most prestigious hotels in Manhattan, Assistant DA Alex Cooper and Detectives Mike Chapman and Mercer Wallace find themselves hunting for an elusive killer whose only signature is carving a carefully drawn symbol, which bears a striking resemblance to train tracks, into his victims’ bodies. When a second body with the same bloody symbol is discovered in a deserted alleyway next to the Grand Central Terminal building, Alex and Mike must contend with the station’s expansive underground tunnels and century-old dark secrets to find a killer who appears to be cutting a deadly path straight to the heart of the city . . . International bestselling author Linda Fairstein returns with a breathless, explosive thriller exploring the dark side of New York City, as only she can.
Bronx Bound by John Roche
The year is 1988 and reporter Matt Brady of The Bronx Ledger is trying hard to get out of both his native borough and the dead-end job he’s stuck in, writing for a weekly newspaper. When he’s sent to cover what he thinks will be just another fatal shooting in the murder-plagued city, he’s as surprised as the detectives on the scene to find out he knows the corpse: Danny McDuff, an enigmatic local legend turned career criminal. Desperately looking for a story that will be his ticket out and help him break free from the clutches of his family, friends, and neighborhood ties, Matt reaches out to the people he grew up with—many of whom chose the path of either cop or criminal—forever bound by their shared pasts. As Matt digs beyond what the police are telling him about the murder, he discovers that what seemed like the story that could finally get him out of the Bronx only sucks him in deeper and deeper…until his own life is on the line.
Bull Street by David Lender
When he’s recruited by Walker & Company, the most distinguished investment bank on Wall Street, starry-eyed MBA Richard Blum can’t believe his luck. Sadly, his fantasy world comes to a crashing end when he learns that some crooks have a taste for Gucci loafers and Saville Row suits. CEO Jack Grass and Mickey Steinberg, head of Mergers and Acquisitions, are running an insider trading ring right under his nose. Even worse, to keep the Feds off their trail, they made sure Richard appeared to be a key player. Richard approaches Harold Milner, the firm’s leading client who’s sorry he ever got dragged into this mire, and suggests they join forces to clear their names. Together with Kathy Cella, Richard’s new love and savvy colleague, they work out a way to put the SEC and Feds on the scent of the real scam artists. Is there time to execute the plan before they’re tossed into jail? Or will they be found out and murdered? As the plot intensifies, readers who enjoy suspense thrillers with gritty dialogue and whirlwind action will find this unique tour de force impossible to put down.
Elevator Pitch by Linwood Barclay
It begins on a Monday, when four people board an elevator in Manhattan. Each presses the button for their floor, but the elevator climbs, non-stop, to the top where it pauses for a few seconds, before dropping.
Right to the bottom of the shaft.
It appears to be a horrific, random tragedy. But then, on Tuesday, it happens again. And when Wednesday brings yet another catastrophe, New York, one of the most vertical cities in the world is plunged into chaos.
Clearly, this is anything but random. This is a cold, calculated bid to terrorize the city. And it’s working. But what do these deadly acts of sabotage have to do with the fingerless body found on the High Line?
It will be a race against time for detectives Jerry Borque and Lois Delgado to find the answers before a deadly Friday night showdown.
Final Girls by Riley Sager
FIRST THERE WERE THREE
The media calls them the Final Girls – Quincy, Sam, Lisa – the infamous group that no one wants to be part of. The sole survivors of three separate killing sprees, they are linked by their shared trauma.
THEN THERE WERE TWO
But when Lisa dies in mysterious circumstances and Sam shows up unannounced on her doorstep, Quincy must admit that she doesn’t really know anything about the other Final Girls. Can she trust them? Or…
CAN THERE ONLY EVER BE ONE?
All Quincy knows is one thing: she is next.
Manhattan Down by Michael Cordy
THE CITY THAT NEVER SLEEPS JUST SAID GOODNIGHT.
On the anniversary eve of the 9/11 terror attack, New York swelters under a heat dome of record temperatures. Even the global leaders assembled at the UN HQ are forced to admit that the climate crisis has reached boiling point and the world’s time is running out.
That same day, at precisely 5:25 p.m., everyone on Manhattan Island – every man, woman and child, including all the world leaders at the UN – falls unconscious. Everyone that is, except for Samantha Rossi, a single mother reeling from devastating personal news and Nick Lockwood, a wounded NYPD detective who wakes from a coma just as the City That Never Sleeps falls into one.
Rossi’s first concern is her daughter. Lockwood’s is his city. As night draws in, they must work together to unravel the mystery of what has happened and why. Each must decide how far they will go and what lines they will cross to save what matters most to them.
Enjoy our selection of thrillers set in New York!
Tony for the TripFiction Team
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