The 15 Best Thriller Novels of the 1970s
Cold War spies, small-town horrors and twisted conspiracies collide in this lineup of page-turners that defined a paranoid decade. Which one still hits hardest?
1The Day of the Jackal
Frederick Forsyth's 1971 classic about a professional assassin hired to kill Charles de Gaulle.
1000pts
2Carrie
Stephen King's 1974 debut novel about a bullied teenager whose telekinetic powers erupt in catastrophe.
704pts
3The Odessa File
Forsyth's 1972 thriller following a German journalist hunting a network of former SS officers.
652pts
4The Stepford Wives
Ira Levin's chilling 1972 satire about suburban husbands and the eerily perfect wives they create.
587pts
5Jaws
Peter Benchley's 1974 novel about a great white shark terrorizing a small resort town.
503pts
6The Eiger Sanction
Trevanian's 1972 thriller following an art-collecting assassin sent on a deadly mountaineering mission.
391pts
7The Eagle Has Landed
Jack Higgins's 1975 World War II thriller imagining a Nazi plot to kidnap Winston Churchill.
235pts
8Coma
Robin Cook's 1977 medical thriller exposing a sinister conspiracy inside a Boston hospital.
235pts
9Six Days of the Condor
James Grady's 1974 espionage thriller about a CIA analyst on the run after his colleagues are murdered.
235pts
10The Dogs of War
Forsyth's 1974 thriller following mercenaries hired to overthrow an African dictatorship.
1pts
11Salem's Lot
Stephen King's 1975 horror-thriller about a small Maine town slowly overrun by vampires.
1pts
12Black Sunday
Thomas Harris's 1975 debut thriller about a terrorist plot to attack the Super Bowl from a blimp.
1pts
13The Boys from Brazil
Ira Levin's 1976 thriller about a Nazi hunter uncovering a horrifying plot to clone Adolf Hitler.
1pts
14The Holcroft Covenant
Robert Ludlum's 1978 thriller centered on a hidden Nazi fortune and a deadly inheritance.
1pts
15Marathon Man
William Goldman's 1974 thriller pitting a graduate student against a sadistic Nazi war criminal.
1pts
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