I’ve always loved romantic suspense. Done well, it offers the joys of a thriller wrapped around a love story that complements rather than distracts from the danger. Linda Howard, for instance, made her name with books like Dream Man and Mr. Perfect that still stand for many as benchmarks for a sexy blend of romance and menace. Anne Stuart has her own devotees (and I am one)—her Ice series in particular carved out a space for the unapologetically ruthless hero, who is also sexy as hell. Pamela Clare’s I-Team novels has investigative journalists whose professional risks tangle with their romantic lives. Carolyn Crane’s Disillusionists trilogy–phenomenal!–offers sexy leads mired in terrifying situtions. I find her books unforgettable.
The genre has many greats. Karen Rose has built a vast empire of interlinked novels, each more elaborate than the last. Nora Roberts, especially in her standalone thrillers, has written much of the best selling romantic suspense of the last two decades. Jayne Ann Krentz, under her many pen names, sub-genre hops in really interesting ways. And Suzanne Brockmann deserves mention, not only for her Navy SEAL heroes but for the way her Troubleshooters series helped define the modern military romantic suspense subgenre and, in many ways ahead of the curve, portrayed gays as normal and heroic.
And yet, if you look at the field today, it doesn’t feel as dominant as it once was. Romantasy and dark contemporary romance seem to have captured the market’s attention, while romantic suspense, at least in its traditional form, is harder to find. The books are still there but they don’t dominate bestseller lists the way they once did. Which makes me wonder: Are romance readers still seeking romantic suspense? And if so, who are they reading?
Who is your favorite romantic suspense author? Is it Howard, Stuart, Clare, Crane, or one of the others mentioned here? Or is it someone else? What books do you return to when you want both your pulse and your heart to race?
I came to romance reading in the early 2000s, and didn’t start reading RS until a few years after that, so I haven’t read any of the authors you mention – apart from Karen Rose, who I was singularly unimpressed by.
I’m surprised you haven’t mentioned Rachel Grant and Toni Anderson who are, for my money, the best writers of m/f RS around right now. Rachel Grant’s Flashpoint series is one of the best in the genre IMO.
The biggest problem I find in a lot of RS is that because it focuses on one couple per book, the romances are often underdeveloped. I used to read a lot of Mary Burton, Melinda Leigh and Laura Griffin, all billed as RS, but which have become, over time, mostly “S” with little “R”, so in general I look for RS series that either have one overarching plotline featuring the same couple (Cordelia Kingsbridge’s Seven of Spades, Xanthe Walter’s Dark Water) or a series where each book has a separate plotline but where the romance develops across several books – Valor & Doyle (Nicky James), Hazard and Somerset and others (Gregory Ashe), Death and the Devil (L.J. Hayward) Criminal Intentions (Cole McCade) – and lots and lots more (I have a long list!)
In m/m, RS is thriving, but it tends to favour same-couple series rather than one-off RS books (although there are good one-offs out there – Nicky James has written several). I’m not trying to pit one against the other, but I can’t help wondering if the shift away from the “romantic” side of romantic suspense among many of the m/f authors is part of the reason for the seeming decline in its popularity.
I agree with you that Grant and Anderson are some of the best suspense authors these days.
My personal tastes differ from yours, as I prefer standalone books instead of series. It could be that started reading romantic suspense in the 1990s and I have read and enjoyed the authors Dabney mentions.
What I’d like to see is the sales numbers. Does it really sell less now that in the past? It was the genre that sold more books not so long ago, if I remember WRA statistics correctly. It certainly is not the most talked-about romantic genre. But it wasn’t when it was the biggest seller either.
It’s not that I prefer series over standalones as a rule, it’s just that so much of the romantic suspense I’ve enjoyed over the years has been in same-couple series where I’ve found the relationship angle is so much better developed because it’s given more space.. It’s harder and harder to find true standalones in any romance subgenre.
I am almost the opposite. I am over series in romance. I dislike cliff hangers and I am not patient enough to wait years to see if true love wins. I can’t think of a single series that follows a couples’ love over several books that I like. I even bitched about how long it too for JAL to finally give us Lyon and Olivia’s story and I adore the Pennyroyal Green series!
For most of the history of romance novels–and this is true for much of genre fiction in general–a good author CAN tell an in-depth romance in a single tome just as a great mystery writer can solve a crime in a single book.
I’m also very wary now because so many series are taking years to finish. And while I get, as Patrick Rothfuss claims, that authors don’t owe their readers conclusions to the story, I do think if I buy a book that says it is a trilogy and the author takes years–or never–to finish important storylines, I will be very irked.
So, for me, I want the love stories and the crimes to be resolved in each book. Overall themes are fine but they can’t be the main storylines.
I like Grant and Anderson but they aren’t my faves. I think I like more morally ambiguous leads than they usually offer but, honestly, I don’t read either any more.
I’m wary of series for similar reasons, but I’ve been lucky and haven’t been disappopinted by too many open-ended ones – the exception being Cole McCade’s Criminal Intentions series, which was left unfinished because of health issues and because he was, from what I understand, subjected to some pretty terrible online bullying. (He has publicly stated he intends to finish it although not when!)
And the thing is that in the Valor & Doyle books, the couple was together officially by the end of book 3 – but still had a lot of stuff to work through so while the relationship was definitely going somewhere, you didn’t have that whole will they/won’t they thing hanging over your head all the time you were reading. Same with Greg Ashe – Hazard and Somers were together by the end of book 4 in their first series, but they had a lot to work through – none of it was manufactured angst or contrived conflict, it all arose naturally from who they were and how their pasts had shaped their lives. I’m happy to wait for the couple to get together in series like those because I trust the authors.
The JAL series you mention is very different because you weren’t reading that couples’ story in all the other books (just getting hints), whereas in the ones I’m talking about, the couples are front and centre throughout and you get to see their relationships growing beyond the HEA.
And yes, I’d agree that a good author can tell a good romance in a single volume, BUT many RS authors neglect the romance for the sake of the plot. Even my two go-tos for m/f RS – Grant and Anderson – don’t always get the balance right, but they manage it more than most.
It’s funny–I find too little romance in both their works for me.
There are many other suspense writers, all older, that I think got it right. And I really like the recent Juliana Keyes too.
I get, as Patrick Rothfuss claims, that authors don’t owe their readers conclusions to the story,
Honestly, I disagree. A series is a social contract – you write a group of books, rather than one story, and I pay for all of those books. If an author doesn’t complete a series and then tries to sell me something new – whether it’s a new book, merchandise, or whatever else they’ve dreamt up- I don’t buy it. This is why I often wait till a series is concluded before I purchase/borrow the books. I don’t have time to waste on some story that will never be finished.
I give a free pass to authors whose books did not sell well enough for the publisher to honor the contract. That’s not their fault.
Oh, just because I get it doesn’t mean I agree. I should have said that while Rothfuss has a point, I think he has behaved poorly to his legion of readers. He also irritates me because he won’t just say, “I’m never going to write the book.” I feel he is still trading on the expectation that he will. He has changed, interestingly, the way the first two books are described on Amazon. They used to say …. out of three and now they say ….. out of two. He is to me fairly egregious.
I do read, usually for AAR, releases that start a series and I find myself unhappy that many take far too long to write the next book. But, there are unfinished series I love–the Alex Stern series, the Book of Dust series, for example–that I am willing to wait for.
Not just a social contract, either! If an author signed a contract with a publisher for a trilogy and then failed to deliver a trilogy, isn’t that legally breach of contract? DAW paid Rothfuss a lot of money for four books he never wrote; it seems like they’d have sued him in any other industry.
I have wondered about that. I don’t know what that first contract looked like. But, sure, if he promised and was paid for four books, he’s in breach.
I’ve seen people say either that the contracts were written in a way that DAW had no recourse or DAW was in such bad shape financially (which some people blame Rothfuss for, although that seems like a stretch?) that they couldn’t afford to sue him. It’s wild to me that they got literally nothing out of him for that second contract at all.
And it seems like he’s not been especially nice about it.
This is the most polite and yet accurate thing anyone has ever said about the man.
I’m not a writer myself, but being married to one (who wrote a decalogy!), I deeply understand the challenge of meeting readers’ expectations. I also recall reading a recent discussion here at AAR about the balance between quantity and quality in writing today. It’s easy to imagine many authors feeling overwhelmed by deadlines and reader demands*, which can lead to extended writing breaks or even their disappearance from the scene.
(* and their own expectations, as writers)
That said, nowadays I don’t mind shorter series or those that shift focus to different main characters while relegating previous protagonists to secondary roles. What makes me wary, however, are those sprawling long-term sagas. Take George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, for example — I gave up after the fourth book, which already felt dragged out and tough to navigate with its many subplots and viewpoints.
I also tend to shy away from starting lengthy series once most of the books are already published. For instance, I enjoyed Karin Slaughter’s Grant County series but stopped following her novels afterward and can’t picture myself diving into all the Will Trent books. However, her upcoming series North Falls is likely one I’ll follow, since I really liked the first book We Are All Guilty Here. It didn’t feel like I was in a cliffhanger, but I’m curious about what is going to happen next.
That said I’m eagerly waiting for the next instalment of Mages of the Wheel and I’ll be pissed off if that fails. It’s the same pain as waiting for the next The Gilded Age or Vigil seasons.
Oh — and I’m reading Darius from Grace Burrowes. Who knows if I’ll end up reading the next ones on The Lonely Lords series… a pentadecalogy! (Yikes!!!)
I loved the early Will Trent books but feel she’s run out of steam there.
Writing a loooog series takes a toll. I’m not surprised. Also re: Will Trent, I got a bit bored with the tv show lately. Not sure I’ll be back to it.
I don’t watch the show. I loved up to book ten.
I thought the middle of season 3 was a step down from Will Trent’s glory days but the show regained the peak for the last third of the season.
I think I read 10 or 11 of those and enjoyed them for the most part (you’ll be able to find my reviews via Power Search.) There are a few DIKs in the set and a good number of solid Bs.
Ha, where did you think I got the idea to read Darius and maybe some others in the series? 😉 I normally agree with your reviews, but I’m not at all into m/m, so I’m not following your guidance as often lately. 🙁
Heh – I’m flattered 🙂 I have never been into m/f contemporaries (the only author whose books I looked forward to was Lucy Parker, and I did like a couple of Olivia Dade’s, too) – so even when I did read m/f, I stuck mostly to HR and RS, which hasn’t changed. If I could find any of the kind of HR I like I’d review it – and I do look, but come away from most of the blurbs shaking my head; so much of it is wallpaper now. KJ Charles is my go-to for HR these days.
It’s been ages since I’ve picked up a newly published historical romance—my database tells me the last recent ones I rated were from 2021: Lorraine Heath’s The Duchess Hunt and Lisa Kleypas’ Devil in Disguise. I suspect I was pushed away from HR mainly by saturation. It’s that recurring sense of reading the same plot echoing over and over.
Truth be told, it’s been some time since I properly read a HR, though I recently finished Ethan: Lord of Scandals (a solid B) and am now well into Darius: Lord of Pleasures, which I’m genuinely enjoying. Both were reviewed by you at AAR, of course. I do appreciate Burrowes’ style, despite having only read a handful of her books before.
It appears I’m approaching a similar saturation point with contemporary romance, regardless of pairing (I read both m/f and f/f).
In my ongoing search for something different in romance, I’ve ventured more into fantasy romance (I flat out refuse to use the cringeworthy term “romantasy”)—a relatively new genre for me. I have little patience for the YA variants, which unfortunately narrows my options, but offer me older protagonists and some inventive world-building and I’m all in. I recently very much enjoyed Priestess by Kara Voorhees Reynolds (older female lead, charming storyline focusing on female friendship, though the writing wasn’t flawless). Even more, I thoroughly loved the first of the Mages of the Wheel series by J.D. Evans (Reign & Ruin), which blends magic with a sumptuous pseudo-Ottoman world. Interestingly, both nearly scratch the HR itch in their own way, given their “historical” backgrounds.
My favourite author is, hands-down, Sandra Brown. It’s the only writer whose books I still buy in hardcover as soon as they are published
Apart from her, I’ve loved Tal Bauer‘s thrillers in recent years.
And I think Rachel Grant and Toni Anderson are some of the best you can enjoy nowadays.
I hope that, when people get tired of romantasy —and sooner or later is going to happen, as every other fashion in romanceland in the forty years I’ve been reading this genre—, romantic suspense could very well be the next best thing.
Several authors have tried in these years to write a little in this new-for-them genre, Nalini Singh, Sarina Bowen, Alyssa Cole and —I understand— that the next Sherry Thomas book, The Librarians, is going to be a thriller (not a historical mystery).
I remember several authors that started writing something different and then turned to romantic suspense, and they don’t look backwards. Julie Garwood or Christina Dodd are the names that come to my mind.
The only thing that makes me doubt is that Romantic suspense is not easy to write, it looks quite more difficult than an NA or a sports romance, small-town or any of the thousands of irrelevant contemporaries written in dual POV that are published today. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy reading them but I forget even the names of the characters as soon as I read the last page. Romantic suspense is different, it has to have a mystery, twists and turns, red herrings, action, a certain rhythmn, it requieres narrative techniques that are not within everyone’s reach.
BTW – I have read books written by the authors you mention and I’m so happy to see Carolyn Crane‘s name among them. I loved The Associates and I am so sorry that she is not writing suspense anymore I could cry.
I’ve read and reviewed the Sherry Thomas. It’s a contemporary mystery, but I wouldn’t call it a thriller.
Let me start by thanking Caz Owens for her reviews here at AAR. She brought me to Toni Anderson and Rachel Grant, who are my absolute go-to authors in the Romance Suspense genre. 🙂
For me, Toni Anderson is a master of consistency in her writing. I genuinely admire and look forward to that in each of her books. Although I didn’t LOVE all she wrote, with her I’m pretty sure of a well-crafted plot that grips me to the end, with characters that are incredibly easy to like and connect with. This is a huge plus for me, since I find it difficult to invest in stories where I dislike or can’t respect the main characters — which probably explains my disinterest in shows like “Succession” (my son tried to convince me to watch it, but each time I tried, it was a total failure). I think that her recent novels have become even stronger than her earlier work; her storytelling seems sharper. For me, her top novels are “Cold Fury,” “Cold Wicked Lies,” and “Cold Truth”, all deserving DIK status; “Cold Fear,” “A Cold Dark Place,” “Cold Cruel Kiss,” and “Cold as Ice” sit in the B+ range.
Rachel Grant’s archaeological background caught my attention, particularly since I am also an archaeologist. I enjoyed some of her Evidence series because of this connection. But, honestly, I prefer her Flashpoint series, which offers a refreshing international perspective rather than the usual USA-centric settings. That broader scope is much more appealing to me. While I feel some of Grant’s plots might be a bit less tightly crafted than Anderson’s, her strength lies in the passion between characters — the romantic chemistry is quite well-done and very compelling. I loved “Don’t Look Back,” “Firestorm,” and “Catalyst” (DIK, A reads for me) and would consider “Trust Me,” “Incriminating Evidence,” “Covert Evidence,” and “Tinderbox” a B+. Now that she’s living in Japan (her husband is there on a job assignment, I think) I’m quite curious if she’ll bring some of that scenery into her future novels.
As a side note, I’ve tried other authors as Pamela Clare but her style didn’t quite click with me — super alpha male leads just aren’t my thing. Meanwhile, I’m still looking to explore Rebecca Zanetti and, more recently, Sarina Bowen.
Looking forward to hearing more recommendations, especially novels with international backgrounds that aren’t just about the US.
Thank you very much! I’m glad you enjoy those authors as much as I do 🙂 Your comment about alpha male leads strikes a chord, because that’s something I dislike, too – I’ve reviewed a number of other RS authors either in print or audio, and remember pointing out at least once that the whole caveman/“me Tarzan, you Jane” alpha hero actually makes me laugh rather than want to jump him!!
Dolly has reviewed and enjoyed Rebecca Zanetti’s latest Laurel Snow series, and I reviewed her recent Deep Ops. series in audio – I put most of the stories solidly in the B range, and if you do audio, the narration is very good.
Strange thing: I went to check Toni Anderson on Amazon and turns out I already own A Cold Dark Place (bought in 2016) but I don’t remember reading it! Hoopla has an audiobook, so I’ll be reading/listening in tandem.
Except for Toni Anderson, I have not read any of the authors mentioned here. Toni Anderson is an okay author for me mainly because I find the suspense part of her novels pretty weak filled with too many plot holes.
It may seem odd, but my romance suspense favorite novels were written almost hundred years ago—Dorothy L Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey series. There are many books in this detective series but the romance part begins with the introduction Harriet Vine, Wimsey’s love interest, in Strong Poison and culminates after several novels in marriage in Gaudy Night and honeymoon in Busman’s Honeymoon. And the series ends with Busman’s Honeymoon. Wimsey comes out as a total dolt initially but by the end matures nicely. I read these novels about four years ago and they did not seem dated. Wimsey has a full back story and ages in real time and every story is grounded historically. It is, of course, very British, set in England between the two wars. I grew up in India reading lots of British novels, immersed in cricket culture, studied British history extensively and so I was greatly entertained by the moving back and forth between London and Oxford, academic semi-pretentiousness (Wimsey makes the last and final marriage proposal in Latin and is accepted in Latin LOL), cricket games won and lost on the hallowed grounds of Oxford. If you like this kind of this, this series is for you.
I’ve recently been rereading some of the Lord Peter Wimsey books. I agree they are some of the best plotted suspense novels I’ve ever read. Have His Carcase is such a great mystery and Gaudy Night is a masterpiece, imo. Other British authors I’ve enjoyed are Margary Allingham (Campion), P.D. James (mainly the Dalgliesh series although I loved Children of Men), and Martha Grimes (Richard Jury).
Gaudy Night is a masterpiece. Among the Golden Age women crime writers, I also like Ngaio Marsh Roderick Alleyn mystery series—Artists in Crime is a romance suspense in which Alleyn meets his love interest Agatha Troy.
Hi Indira, you might like Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisey Dobbs series. They are set between the wars in England and Maisie ages in real time, with various family and love affairs that are B plots but so poignant. The first one is a slog – a lot of backstory, and info dump but once that’s done, they gallop along. Read them in order to get the full inter-war experience.
I have not read any in Maisey adobes series. I am putting it on my TBR list. Thanks for the suggestion.
*Dobbs*
Whenever I hear church bells ringing, I think of The Nine Tailors. Death by bell-ringing. Who would have thought! Almost as bizarre as the MidsomerMurders episode with death by a wheel of cheddar cheese!! 😉
I read a short story one time that did a variation on that and killed the victim by locking him up with violently clashing colors. 🙂
Sounds like a bad acid trip!
Some of my old favorites are Sandra Brown (Envy is still one of my favorite RS books), Linda Howard, and Nora Roberts. I also like Laura Griffin who wrote the Tracers series. I like her science based plots. I can go back to many of their earlier books and still enjoy them. I’ve read many other m/f authors, but I found they haven’t stood the test of time as well. I’ve read Rachel Grant and enjoyed her books. I’ve had mixed results with Toni Anderson, some I like and some I don’t so I rarely read her anymore. Many of the authors I used to read have dropped the romance down to an afterthought (like Brown’s recent books) and feel more like suspense with a sex scene thrown in.
I like m/m books and I like well done series, whether they are a single couple or multiple. And right now, they are putting out some of the best books balancing romance and suspense. Some of my favorite authors are Nicky James, C.S. Poe, KJ Charles (historical), Charlie Adhara (adds urban fantasy in) and Allie Therin (w/ magic). I’ve also liked Kaje Harper and Layla Reyne.
Mary Stewart and Victoria Holt’s books will always hold a special place in my heart. I will buy anything Nora Roberts and Jayne Ann Krentz write under their many pseudonyms. I also love Delores Fossen, Nicole Helm, Debra Webb, Julie Miller and B J Daniels, who write for the Harlequin Intrigue line.
I liked Stewart and Hold as a teenager, but I doubt they hold up.
Actually, I reread This Rough Magic (Stewart) a few years ago and thought it was great!
Definitely Krentz (JAK / AQ / JC). RS is a sub-genre that I usually avoid, but most of JAK’s books are lighter suspense and also still include a decent amount of the humor that was one of the things that drew me to reading romances 3 decades ago.
JAK/AQ/JC books are some of my favorites. I feel like lately they are leaning more towards suspense and lighter on romance but I still enjoy them. I also like to reread Julie Garwood and Julie James FBI books. I see Sandra Brown has a new one coming in March.
Yes, Julie James is great! Whatever happened to her, did she stop writing?
Pretty much. She talked several years ago about a new book but it’s never materialized. She has also talked about writing screenplays but I don’t see any credits so I’m not sure what happened there.
I, too, enjoyed the authors mentioned in the past, and, sadly, haven’t really found a good replacement for them (I know Sandra Brown continues to publish, but I haven’t enjoyed her work since Mean Streak). I liked a couple of ‘Evidence’ books by Rachel Grant, maybe I’ll give her other series a chance.
Do try the Flashpoint series. It’s a really great one, especially book 2 and 3 (both reading or listening to audiobook.)
Second this – the audiobooks are fabulous.
Thank you! Amazon had the audiobook for the first book on sale for $1.99 if you bought the ebook, so I bit the bullet 🙂
Yay! That audiobook was my introduction to Greg Tremblay, who is a fantastic voice actor. He narrates a lot of m/m romance, and I ended up glomming LOADS of his audiobooks afterwards, and discovering a lot of new authors and stories along the way.
Nice. As I listen to more audio, I, too, started to collect favorites: Jacob Morgan, Teddy Hamilton, Troy Duran, Bridget & Jack Bordeau, Samantha Brentmoor, to name a few. Also a few from Graphic Audio’s adaptations.
Rachel Grant has a heroine in my Pantheon of Heroines, Freja Lange, and book 1 is also on my reread list but I wouldn’t actually characterize her Flashpoint series as romantic suspense, action romance to me. Unfortunately her actual romantic suspense series, Evidence, doesn’t do much for me.
Freya really is phenomenal—a brilliant lead, completely agree.
I see where you’re coming from regarding the Evidence series; plenty of the instalments didn’t quite hit the mark for me either. That said, have you given the latest in the Evidence: Under Fire series a try? The opening (Into the Storm) didn’t do much for me, but I found Trust Me (book 2) genuinely enjoyable—and Don’t Look Back (book 3), even more so.
I have not and will certainly do so now. Thanks.
I just started book 1 and saw what the hero previously did to the heroine… Nope! I can’t forgive that even if she eventually does. On to book two.
I think Into the Storm is the weakest of the three. I listened to and reviewed all three for AudioGals, so the reviews should all be searchable here now.
3.5 stars for book 2 from me… considering how many romances I have DNFed in the past few months that should probably be doubled.
I love Rachel Grant books. Which book has Freya Lange?
She’s a secondary character in the first two book, but is one of the leads in the third, Firestorm.
I’m seeing that as Savvy and Cal
Yep. Freya is known as Savannah for Reasons 🙂
I loved Mary Stewart in my youth, and on rereading her I think she stands up pretty well. Susanna Kearsley, whom I also enjoy, seems similar to me. But I don’t read much romantic suspense any more partly because I don’t like serial killers, who seem far too common these days.
Jayne Ann Krentz and Elizabeth Peters, with their various pen names, are great comfort reads. I recall a time when, after a horrendous 60-hour week at work, a colleague and I staggered home. Monday we discovered that I had gone home to reread Crocodile on the Sandbank, and she had gone home to reread Stitches in Time.
For me, Linda Howard is the queen of romantic suspense. Almost all of her stories deliver both romance and suspense. Some feel a little dated, but even then, I enjoy the writing. In my opinion, she’s one of the most consistent writers in the genre.
Nora Roberts has some bangers as well, though I think there’s more variance in story quality and tone. Some have a cozy mystery feel vibe or even the feel of a Nancy Myers movie, and others have more of an edge; I prefer the latter, like The Witness.
I like Laura Griffin, but hers are more mystery with a bland romance between generally nice people who are somewhat generic.
I have liked a few of Toni Anderson’s, but after a few the mystery started feeling predictable.
I like some Sandra Brown books, and a few of Karen Robards (Shattered, for instance) have been quite good, but she can be an uneven writer.
And Katee Robert only wrote a few romantic suspense books but I remember liking them.
I’ve also read a few mysteries which, if not quite romantic suspenses, had romantic elements I enjoyed. The Five Decembers by James Kestrel was pretty great and weirdly romantic. And while not romantic per se, Alice Vega mysteries by Louisa Luna had a hint of romance too.
I think Karin Slaughter is a fabulous writer in the general mystery genre and some of her Will Trent stories have romance in them. But there’s just way too much sexual assault in basically all of them, so I stopped reading them.
LInda Howard’s books are often great. My favorite heroes are morally ambiguous alpha males and she and Anne Stuart do them really well in many of their romantic suspense novels.
You’ve listed mainly all the ones I would have (LH, NR, SB, KR, etc.)
I would also add Brenda Joyce to this list. I feel like her stuff fits in with these authors and can sometimes be very spooky!
Which of her suspense ones is the best? I only know her for her old school bodice rippers.
I wish Elizabeth Lowell was still writing. The Donovan books, in particular, were great (Amber Beach, etc.).
I was traveling when you posted this, Dabney, but I’ve gotta chime in because romantic suspense is my jam. I’ve read and written reviews in the genre for 15 years, and it never gets old to me. I’ve got three basic eras of RS authors that are my go-to’s – I noted my favorites for each author. The formative group is Linda Howard (All the Queen’s Men), Susan Andersen (Obsessed), Amy J. Fetzer (Perfect Weapon), Catherine Coulter (Impulse), and Chery Adair (Hide and Seek).
The midterms are Shannon McKenna (Hot Night), Katee Robert (The Surviving Girls), Rebecca Zanetti (the Sin brothers), Cyntha Eden (Into the Night), Laura Griffin (Desperate Girls), Rachel Grant (Tinderbox), and Toni Anderson (Edge of Survival).
The newer group includes Sherilee Gray (Shattered King), Adriana Anders (Whiteout). Some of these authors, like Gray, Anders and Robert have gone on to other genres, but their romantic suspense titles are all great.