Blake Crouch is an American author known for his high-concept thrillers, usually blending sci-fi with suspense. His plots tend to be fast-paced, action-packed and incredibly tense, alongside smart exploration of concepts like artificial intelligence, surveillance, alternate realities, time travel, and genetic engineering. He's also clearly a fan of detective fiction, with his stories often featuring cops, investigators, and crimes to be solved.
A few of Crouch's stories have been adapted for the screen, like his Wayward Pines trilogy and, earlier this year, Dark Matter. The latter, starring Joel Edgerton and Jennifer Connelly, is well worth checking out. Fans of that show or sci-fi geeks looking for their next mind-bending read should give Crouch's books a try. The users of book review site Goodreads are here to help. Here are Crouch's ten best projects, ranked by user rating.
10 'Snowbound' (2010)
Rating: 3.74/5
"If you let fear take hold, if you let it own you, your life ceases to be your own." Snowbound opens with the brutal murder of a woman named Rachel Innis on a lonely stretch of highway. Suspicion immediately falls on her husband and daughter, Will and Devlin, and the pair go on the run, with seemingly no refuge available to them. However, they find hope in an FBI agent named Kalyn, who says that Rachel isn't the only one who has suffered this fate.
This premise is decent, but the execution is decidedly lackluster. The book is clearly aiming at being a smart and tense thriller, but it comes across half-backed and unengaging. Wooden dialogue and generic plot twists kill the narrative flow, while implausible developments undermine any attempt at realism. Characters frequently act without logic or do things that are out of character. To put it simply, Snowbound is a failed experiment, and far and way Crouch's weakest offering.
9 'Abandon' (2011)
Rating: 3.86/5
"Wish we could live twice, take a different path each time." A significant step up from Snowbound, this potentially supernatural tale sees Crouch playing to his strengths. It begins in 1893 when the inhabitants of a town named Abandon disappear without a trace on Christmas Day, leaving behind only their possessions. Over a century later, a group of historians, journalists, and paranormal investigators venture into the deserted town to uncover what happened. As the team digs into the past, they unravel the town’s dark secrets, realizing that history is not as dormant as they believed.
This premise quickly expands out into an action-packed adventure/thriller, replete with hidden gold, rogue soldiers, shootouts, knife attacks, treachery, misdirection, and plenty of unexpected revelations. The subject matter gets pretty dark and brutal here, so Abandon won't appeal to all readers, but the initiated are sure to get a kick out of it. Plus, the parallel story lines in the past and present are handled well.
8 'Pines' (2012)
Rating: 3.94/5
"Nature doesn't see things through the prism of good or bad. It rewards efficiency." Pines introduces readers to the seemingly idyllic town of Wayward Pines, Idaho, where Secret Service agent Ethan Burke arrives to investigate the disappearance of two colleagues. Cut off from the outside world with no way to contact anyone, Ethan’s investigation reveals strange behavior among the townspeople and a series of chilling discoveries. He finds himself trapped in a town that’s not what it seems, with surveillance cameras everywhere and the residents behaving in a disturbingly controlled manner.
The premise is not totally original, but Crouch tells the story with style, and the narrative takes several cool and gripping turns as it rolls along. Just when the reader thinks they've figured out what's going on, Crouch adds a new element that changes everything once again. The book and its sequels were adapted into a TV series starring Matt Dillon and produced by M. Night Shyamalan, though it was short-lived.
7 'Good Behavior' (2013)
Rating: 3.91/5
"Gotta be honest—I'm not over the moon about the word 'heist.'" Good Behavior is another one of Crouch's books that was adapted into a TV series. It's a collection of three interconnected novellas about Letty Dobesh, a talented thief struggling to reclaim her life. Here, Letty is fresh out of prison and attempting to stay clean, but her criminal skills soon drag her back into dangerous jobs, from a murder-for-hire scheme to a high-stakes heist at a luxury casino.
Letty is probably Crouch's most beloved character and this book is a good introduction to her. It's tense, tightly-constructed, and a fairly quick read at 288 pages. It's a great combination of a thriller and character study, keeping the reader hooked with suspenseful set pieces while also delving into Letty's addiction and complex personality. She's tough and flawed but empathetic; a compelling antihero. Those who enjoyed the show should definitely give this book a try.
6 'Locked Doors' (2005)
Rating: 3.96/5
"People leave. They die. Their dwellings crumble. That's the storyline, the only plot there will ever be." Locked Doors is the sequel to the novel Desert Places, which introduced the character of Andrew Thomas, a suspense author who becomes the _target of an obsessed murderer. After narrowly escaping a serial killer's deadly game, Andrew has been living in hiding for seven years, trying to escape his past. However, his quiet life is shattered when bodies start turning up.
The book generally received positive reviews, with most fans praising the action and suspense, saying it doubled down on everything that made its predecessor good. Everything is to the max here, in the best way. The plot wastes no time in getting going, and the scenes just get more and more intense (without being histrionic). Perhaps the novel also benefits from being meta and drawn from Crouch's own experiences as a writer. Write what you know, as they say.
5 'The Last Town' (2018)
Rating: 4.10/5
"I wish we lived in a world where actions were measured by the intentions behind them." The Last Town is the third and final entry in the Wayward Pines trilogy. Following the shocking revelations of the previous books, Ethan is now the sheriff of Wayward Pines, facing the terrifying truth about the town’s origins and its purpose. As the residents come to grips with their reality, the barriers protecting Wayward Pines begin to fall, and horrifying creatures threaten to overrun the town.
What follows is a desperate fight for survival and an explosive finale, answering long-simmering questions and upping the ante at every turn. The result is an enjoyable mix of a detective story, a small town melodrama, and high-concept sci-fi. Crouch channels Twin Peaks here, but makes it his own. Some of the sci-fi ideas could have been explored in more depth, but The Last Town still works as a rip-roaring thriller.
4 'Summer Frost' (2019)
Rating: 4.10/5
"Consciousness is a horror show." With this novella, Crouch takes on topical issues of artificial intelligence and virtual reality. The main character is Riley, a video game developer, who becomes obsessed with an AI game character, Maxine, eventually believing her to be sentient. What starts as a professional curiosity evolves into a personal mission, with Riley pushing technological and ethical boundaries to understand and develop Max's consciousness.
Summer Frost is a very human sci-fi story, packing an emotional punch. It's got strong Black Mirror vibes, with a dose of Spike Jonze's AI love story Her. The real-world parallels are also striking, like the way that Riley's obsession with her digital creation causes the rest of her life to suffer. The story engages with many genuine questions around AI. Will sophisticated AIs be treated as machines or as people? What will be the nature of their experience? Will they be less or more important than one's flesh-and-blood loved ones? Humanity may be grappling with such problems sooner than we think.
3 'Dark Matter' (2016)
Rating: 4.14/5
"It's terrifying when you consider that every thought we have, every choice we could possibly make, branches off into a new world." Dark Matter is probably Crouch's most famous work, if not his highest-rated one on Goodreads. It's a mind-bending thriller about Jason Dessen, a college physics professor living a quiet life in Chicago. One night, Jason is abducted and injected with a mysterious substance, waking up in a reality where his life is entirely different. In this alternate world, he is a celebrated scientist who has achieved a groundbreaking discovery in quantum mechanics.
From here, Jason embarks on a dangerous journey across multiple realities, facing versions of himself who are willing to kill to protect their own lives. The resulting story is a smart genre piece that plays nicely on quantum mechanics. Where Summer Frost is about artificial intelligence, Dark Matter is about the nature of reality itself. Human choice is also a key theme, as well as the resounding consequences of one's actions. Sci-fi fans need to give this one a try.
2 'Wayward' (2013)
Rating: 4.15/5
"For every perfect little town, there's something ugly underneath." The second Wayward Pines book picks up where the first left off, with Ethan trying to figure out how to move forward with his newfound knowledge. While the residents go about their daily lives, Ethan knows that their peaceful existence is a façade hiding a dark secret. Behind it all is the town's founder, David Pilcher, who conducts sinister experiments in secret.
With this one, Crouch slows down the pace but keeps the suspense high. The characterization is solid, with most of the main characters coming across as complex, with competing motivations and fleshed out backstories. Plot-wise, it essentially becomes a murder mystery with a few sci-fi tropes thrown in. Wayward is more fun than the first book because the audience at least has a clearer sense of what's going on, as well as the stakes. It's also probably the most well-rounded installment of the three.
1 'Recursion' (2019)
Rating: 4.17/5
"Life with a cheat code isn't life." Crouch's highest-rated book on Goodreads is this fun and gripping riff on time travel. It revolves around Barry Sutton, a New York City detective investigating a phenomenon known as False Memory Syndrome, where people are haunted by memories of lives they never lived. His search leads him to Helena, a scientist with links to a reality-warping technology.
From here, the book morphs into a fusion of big-brain ideas and thriller elements. Timelines blur and sinister forces try to take the protagonists down. Here, Crouch looks at time from fresh angles (though perhaps not the most plausible ones). Nevertheless, his story raises intriguing questions, and is bound to scratch that sci-fi itch. Most impressively, it strikes a good balance between thoughtful and entertaining. For this reason, Recursion and Dark Matter alone place him among the front rank of the genre's authors currently working. It'll be great to see what mind-bending tales he comes up with next.
