The Rise In Popularity of Mystery Novels in Today's Pop Culture & BookTok Era (Part 1)

And what that means for thrillers

Mysteries and thrillers.

Thrillers and mysteries.

Often, the two are linked together as one, even by bookstores, and in a lot of ways, that makes sense.

A lot of mysteries have thrilling plots and moments throughout, and many thrillers find themselves wrapped around a mystery.

More times than not, it’s actually difficult to differentiate between the two, especially when you start adding in sub-categories of each genre. Like: “psychological suspense” or “crime.” Sometimes, we’ll call a book a “psychological thriller” or even a “crime thriller,” but not always.

As an example, if I tossed out a name like, let’s say, C.J. Box, would you say that he writes mysteries or thrillers? His Joe Pickett series typically falls under the “thriller” category, yet, at their heart, all his books are mysteries. Joe is always looking for something or someone or trying to solve a crime, right? But those books are . . . thrillers?

What if I told you that, in the publishing world, when it comes to mysteries and thrillers, one of those categories is soaring to great heights . . . while the other is struggling to maintain its place in the market?

Look, at the end of the day, I don’t think most readers care whether a book is called a mystery or a thriller, and therefore, this conversation was never a good fit for The Real Book Spy flagship site. But now that Substack has given me a space to touch on other topics, let’s get into this—and along the way, I’ll offer some book recommendations as I break things down.

(Note: A version of this article may appear on TheRealBookSpy.com at a later date.)