That was the question that the team at The New York Times’s Book Review posed to hundreds of writers of every kind of crime fiction, from legal thrillers to spy novels to cozy mysteries, as well as librarians, editors, critics and bookstagrammers. We counted up all those votes and came up with a list of the 50 best thrillers of the 21st century, available here.

In this episode, the host Gilbert Cruz is joined by Tina Jordan, the editor of the Book Review, and Sarah Lyall, a longtime columnist who writes the Book Review’s monthly thrillers column, to revisit the books that changed the genre, discuss overlooked favorites and recommend the thrillers that everyone should read next.

Books discussed on this episode:

“Cat Among the Pigeons,” by Agatha Christie

“Rebecca,” by Daphne du Maurier

“The Turn of the Screw,” by Henry James

“The Firm,” by John Grisham

“A Time to Kill,” by John Grisham

“The Client,” by John Grisham

“The Pelican Brief,” by John Grisham

“Presumed Innocent,” by Scott Turow

“And Then There Were None,” by Agatha Christie

“Murder on the Orient Express,” by Agatha Christie

“Peril at End House,” by Agatha Christie

“Crooked House,” by Agatha Christie

“Time and Again,” by Jack Finney

“Gone Girl,” by Gillian Flynn

“Sharp Objects,” by Gillian Flynn

“The Likeness,” by Tana French

“In the Woods,” by Tana French

“Broken Harbor,” by Tana French

“Mystic River,” by Dennis Lehane

“All the Sinners Bleed,” by S. A. Cosby

“Defending Jacob,” by William Landay

“We Need to Talk About Kevin,” by Lionel Shriver

“The Push,” by Ashley Audrain

“The God of the Woods,” by Liz Moore

“The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” by Stieg Larsson

“No Country for Old Men,” by Cormac McCarthy

“Slow Horses,” by Mick Herron

“Shutter Island,” by Dennis Lehane

“The Constant Gardener,” by John le Carré

“The Secret History,” by Donna Tartt

“My Sister, the Serial Killer,” by Oyinkan Braithwaite

“Butter,” by Asako Yuzuki

“Case Histories,” by Kate Atkinson

“Life After Life,” by Kate Atkinson

“Our Noble Selves,” by Kate Atkinson

“The Expats,” by Chris Pavone

“The Anomaly,” by Hervé Le Tellier

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It’s a passing line, but it captures the tension at the heart of this magnificent book: Here is a story of two men, each profoundly isolated, trying to figure out how to exist in a small, claustrophobic world.

The traveler heading home and dreading it is Cal, a young gay man who has recently graduated from college in Edinburgh and has been floundering ever since. At the start of the novel, he is summoned back to the small village where he grew up to care for his sick grandmother. He obliges, but he’s not happy about the move — a rakish dreamer, Cal doesn’t fit into the provincial life of his village. His chief antagonist is his father, John. Traditional, religious and stoic, John hates Cal’s flamboyance and inertia, and he’s determined to mold Cal into an upstanding citizen of this tiny community. But John is hiding secrets of his own that, if they were to get out, could upend his life.

Bouncing between John’s and Cal’s stories, “John of John” asks: What does it mean to fit in, what’s the risk of standing out, and what’s the price of both?

On this episode of the Book Review Book Club, the host MJ Franklin discusses the book with his colleagues Leah Greenblatt and Scott Heller.

Other books (and a movie) mentioned in this episode:

“Shuggie Bain” and “Young Mungo,” by Douglas Stuart

“What We Can Know,” by Ian McEwan

“The Banshees of Inisherin,” directed by Martin McDonagh

“The Keeper,” by Tana French

“A Natural,” by Ross Raisin

“The Spell,” by Alan Hollinghurst

“Seascraper,” by Benjamin Wood

“Whale Fall,” by Elizabeth O’Connor

“Clear,” by Carys Davies

“Wuthering Heights,” by Emily Brontë

“Persuasion,” by Jane Austen

“Washington Square,” by Henry James

“The Town of Babylon,” by Alejandro Varela

“Memorial,” by Bryan Washington

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

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