32 English thriller writers

Rachel Abbott is a British author of psychological thrillers. A self-publisher, her first seven novels have combined to sell over three million copies, and have all been bestsellers on Amazon's Kindle store. In 2015, she was named the 14th bestselling author over the last five years on Amazon's Kindle in the UK.

Mark Philip David Billingham is an English novelist, actor, television screenwriter and comedian whose series of "Tom Thorne" crime novels are best-sellers in that genre.

Nick Brownlee is a British journalist and crime thriller writer.

Louise Burfitt-Dons, is a British novelist, humanitarian, and former Conservative candidate.

Leslie Charteris, was a British-Chinese author of adventure fiction, as well as a screenwriter. He was best known for his many books chronicling the adventures of his charming hero Simon Templar, alias "The Saint".

Charlie Charters is a former rugby union official and sports marketing executive turned thriller writer whose debut book Bolt Action was published by Hodder & Stoughton in 2010. Charters was raised in Fiji where his mother was making a documentary film and met his father, a tobacco farmer. He is the son-in-law of well-known Fijian businesswoman and deposed Member of Parliament Mere Samisoni. He and his wife Vanessa divide their time between a house near Barton-le-Willows, North Yorkshire, and Suva, Fiji.

James Dover Grant, primarily known by his pen name Lee Child, is a British author who writes thriller novels, and is best known for his Jack Reacher novel series. The books follow the adventures of a former American military policeman, Jack Reacher, who wanders the United States. His first novel, Killing Floor (1997), won both the Anthony Award and the Barry Award for Best First Novel.

Roger Jon Ellory is an English thriller writer.

Ian Lancaster Fleming was a British writer, journalist and naval intelligence officer who is best known for his James Bond series of spy novels. Fleming came from a wealthy family connected to the merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co., and his father was the Member of Parliament for Henley from 1910 until his death on the Western Front in 1917. Educated at Eton, Sandhurst and, briefly, the universities of Munich and Geneva, Fleming moved through several jobs before he started writing.

Frederick McCarthy Forsyth is an English novelist, journalist, former spy, and occasional political commentator. He is best known for thrillers such as The Day of the Jackal, The Odessa File, The Fourth Protocol, The Dogs of War, The Devil's Alternative, The Fist of God, Icon, The Veteran, Avenger, The Afghan, The Cobra and The Kill List.

Jonathan Saul Freedland is a British journalist, who writes a weekly column for The Guardian. He presents BBC Radio 4's contemporary history series The Long View. Freedland also writes thrillers, mainly under the pseudonym Sam Bourne.

Nicci French is the pseudonym of English husband-and-wife team Nicci Gerrard and Sean French, who write psychological thrillers together.

John Edmund Gardner was an English spy and thriller novelist, best known for his James Bond continuation novels, but also for his series of Boysie Oakes books and three continuation novels containing Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional villain, Professor Moriarty.

Nicci French is the pseudonym of English husband-and-wife team Nicci Gerrard and Sean French, who write psychological thrillers together.

James John Herbert, OBE was an English horror writer. A full-time writer, he also designed his own book covers and publicity. His books have sold 54 million copies worldwide, and have been translated into 34 languages, including Chinese and Russian.

Sarah Hilary is a UK crime novelist and former bookseller. Her debut, Someone Else's Skin, won the 2015 Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award. Hilary was born in Cheshire before moving to the South East to study for a First Class Honours Degree in the History of Ideas. She won the Fish Criminally Short Histories Prize in 2008 for her story, Fall River, August 1892. In 2012, she was awarded the Cheshire Prize for Literature.

Peter J. James is a British writer of crime fiction. He was born in Brighton, the son of Cornelia James, the former glovemaker to Queen Elizabeth II.

David Kessler is an English author of mystery novels and thrillers. The plots of his novels often involve people falsely accused of crimes, legal battles, DNA, computer hacking and police investigations and are characterised by multiple plot twists and last-minute surprises. With the exception of A Fool for a Client, his early novels were set in Britain. His new series of books is set in the Bay Area of California and centres on a series of recurring characters including the lawyer Alex Sedaka and his paralegal Juanita Cortez. His latest series, published under the pseudonym "Adam Palmer", introduces the character of Daniel Klein, an expert on ancient Semitic languages.

David John Moore Cornwell, better known by his pen name John le Carré, is a British author of espionage novels. During the 1950s and 1960s, he worked for both the Security Service (MI5) and the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). His third novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963), became an international best-seller and remains one of his best-known works. Following the success of this novel, he left MI6 to become a full-time author. His books include The Looking Glass War (1965), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1974), Smiley's People (1979), The Little Drummer Girl (1983), The Night Manager (1993), The Tailor of Panama (1996), The Constant Gardener (2001), A Most Wanted Man (2008) and Our Kind of Traitor (2010), all of which have been adapted for film or television.

William Tufnell Le Queux was an Anglo-French journalist and writer. He was also a diplomat, a traveller, a flying buff who officiated at the first British air meeting at Doncaster in 1909, and a wireless pioneer who broadcast music from his own station long before radio was generally available; his claims regarding his own abilities and exploits, however, were usually exaggerated. His best-known works are the anti-French and anti-Russian invasion fantasy The Great War in England in 1897 (1894) and the anti-German invasion fantasy The Invasion of 1910 (1906), the latter becoming a bestseller.

James Leasor was a prolific British author, who wrote historical books and thrillers. A number of Leasor's works were made into films, including his 1978 book, Boarding Party, about an incident from the Second World War that until that time was secret, which was turned into The Sea Wolves (1980) starring Gregory Peck, Roger Moore and David Niven.

Stephen Leather is a British thriller author whose works are published by Hodder & Stoughton. He has written for television shows such as London's Burning, The Knock, and the BBC's Murder in Mind series. He is one of the top selling Amazon Kindle authors, the second bestselling UK author worldwide on Kindle in 2011.

Gavin Tudor Lyall was an English author of espionage thrillers.

Herman Cyril McNeile, MC, commonly known as Cyril McNeile and publishing under the name H. C. McNeile or the pseudonym Sapper, was a British soldier and author. Drawing on his experiences in the trenches during the First World War, he started writing short stories and getting them published in the Daily Mail. As serving officers in the British Army were not permitted to publish under their own names, he was given the pen name "Sapper" by Lord Northcliffe, the owner of the Daily Mail; the nickname was based on that of his corps, the Royal Engineers.

Paul Mendelson is a British Crime fiction novelist and Contract Bridge and Poker author.

John Muriel, also known as "John St. Clair Muriel", was a British countryman, novelist, and biographer from a middle-class East Anglian background who wrote as "Simon Dewes" and "John Lindsey".

Edward Phillips Oppenheim was an English novelist, a prolific writer of best-selling genre fiction, featuring glamorous characters, international intrigue and fast action. Notably easy to read, they were viewed as popular entertainments. He was featured on the cover of Time magazine in 1927.

Arthur Henry Ward, better known as Sax Rohmer, was a prolific English novelist. He is best remembered for his series of novels featuring the master criminal Dr. Fu Manchu.

Dominic Selwood is an English historian, journalist, author and barrister. He has written several works of history, historical fiction and historical thrillers, most notably The Sword of Moses. His background is in medieval history.

Tim Weaver is an English writer primarily known for his crime thrillers featuring missing persons investigator David Raker.

Dennis Yeats Wheatley was an English writer whose prolific output of thrillers and occult novels made him one of the world's best-selling authors from the 1930s through the 1960s. His Gregory Sallust series was one of the main inspirations for Ian Fleming's James Bond stories.