Would You Rather? Thriller Edition

Let’s play a quick game of Would You Rather? — Thriller Edition. Here are your choices:

1. Would you rather read a thriller about a missing person or a suspicious death?

Both are irresistible in different ways. Take the missing person scenario. Are they alive? Hiding? Taken? Running from something? So many possibilities…

I explored this theme in ‘The Second Captive’, and I’ll probably write another novel covering this topic. A suspicious death, on the other hand, brings its own dark satisfaction: who doesn’t love a good whodunnit novel?

2. Would you rather have an unreliable narrator or a character with a hidden past?

The unreliable narrator keeps us questioning the story itself. I examined this theme in ‘Heart of Bone’. Greer Maddox is a damaged woman, grieving the death of her son – can we rely on everything she tells us?

A hidden past, however, keeps us watching for cracks in someone’s carefully polished surface. I had fun exploring this in my novel ‘Guilty Innocence’. In that book, Mark is concealing a dark secret, one that will of course be revealed, creating havoc in his life. His fault for volunteering to be a character! 

3. Would you rather read a slow-burn thriller or one that starts with a shocking event?

I love a thriller in which the tension builds slowly but inexorably, keeping the reader hooked.  There’s also something compelling about a book that opens with chaos and keeps the conflict high. Which works better probably depends on the plot. Some stories suit a slow burn; others work best with high-octane thrills.

4. Would you rather have a glamorous setting or an ordinary place that feels unsafe?

I mentioned this in last week’s post. A luxury hotel, remote island, or grand old house can be hugely atmospheric. But there’s also something gripping about a normal street, a family kitchen, or a familiar walk home that feels wrong. Maybe it’s because ordinary places usually offer fewer places to hide.

5. Would you rather guess the twist early or be completely blind-sided?

Me? I prefer to be taken by surprise. I get that readers derive pleasure in spotting tiny clues and thinking, ‘Aha, I know what’s going on here’. But there’s also huge satisfaction in being wrong-footed by a twist that fits perfectly yet was hiding in plain sight all along.

Now it’s your turn:

Which would you choose in each case — and which question was the hardest?