8 Unforgettable Thrillers with Beach Settings

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“Whistle!” my friend Mel told me as we pushed our way down the overgrown trail to the beach, surfboards under our arms.

“What?” I asked, confused.

“To let the snakes know you’re coming,” she said. “So they have time to crawl away.”

Unsure if she was joking, I added my unsteady whistle to her piercing one.

Minutes later, we were in the ocean, sitting on our surfboards with the blood-warm water lapping around our waists. Before either of us could catch a wave, a jet ski zoomed towards us.

“Get out of the water!” the rider shouted. “There’s a shark in your area.”

The shark, we later learnt, had attacked a surfer at a nearby beach and the coast guard were following it down the coast. 

This was one of my first surf trips in Australia. It didn’t put me off surfing but it certainly opened my eyes to the risks.

Other dangers of the beaches here include powerful rip currents, large swell, storms and cyclones, jellyfish and countless more deadly creatures. All in all, a remote Australian beach seemed like the perfect setting for my latest thriller The Swell! 

I will never tire of books set on beaches and here are some of my favourites!

Alex Garland’s debut The Beach is the ultimate beach read! I read it years ago as a backpacker in France. When I reread it recently, I loved it all over again. Young movie-obsessed Richard is backpacking in Bangkok when he gets handed a map to a secret beach. Along with a French couple he has recently befriended, he follows the map to a tiny island with an idyllic beach. A multi-cultural, oddball group of young people have claimed the beach as their own and formed a community. Cracks soon appear in this apparent paradise. The climax is unexpected yet somehow inevitable, as all the best climaxes are.  

The Hunted by Roz Nay is pitched as The Beach meets The Woman in Cabin Ten. There are major echoes of The Beach – I love that one of the characters in the story is reading it! – but it also feels totally fresh with an African beach setting and a twisty thriller storyline. Stevie and her boyfriend head to a beautiful secluded island off the coast of Tanzania, where the boyfriend has landed a job as a diver. On the way, they meet a gorgeous British couple at a backpacking hostel. The chance friendship leads to an obsession that has deadly consequences. The novel shows how even on the other side of the world, we can’t escape from our pasts and might make you think twice about befriending strangers on holiday.

Jane Harper set her fourth novel, The Survivors in a rugged coastal community on the small Australian island of Tasmania, saying the beauty and brutality of the Tasmanian coast was the ideal setting for a story. The beach in this story is a cold and inhospitable place. It has sea caves accessible only at low tide and sinister statues on the cliff above in memorial of a ship lost at sea. The novel begins as a body is discovered on the sand, bringing back echoes of a tragedy years earlier. Harper sets up a terrifying scene, gathering a small group of characters, making each of them seem as suspicious as possible, then sending them diving in the treacherous cold waters to see a shipwreck. A memorable and vividly described mystery.

The Honeymoon by Tina Seskis has an exotic Maldives setting and a jaw-dropping twist partway through that had me flipping the pages back and forth to see how the author had pulled the rug on me so completely! Newly-wed Jenna wakes up in her luxury resort to discover her husband is missing, and her dream honeymoon turns into a nightmare. The lush jungle seems to cave in on her as she slowly becomes mad with dread. The novel has an ending you will never see coming!

The Castaways by Lucy Clarke is set on a remote desert island in the South Pacific. A plane has crashed, stranding a handful of strangers at the mercy of the elements – and each other. As the days pass, the darkness of each of the characters oozes out of them as they fight for survival. Meanwhile, the sister of one of the missing passengers tries in vain to discover what happened to the plane and if anyone onboard is still alive. This is one of the most compelling mysteries I’ve read and is currently being made for TV! Lucy Clarke writes from a beach hut in Cornwall, so it’s not surprising that all her novels have strong ocean themes. Her thriller One of The Girls is the tale of female friends on a hen weekend on a sundrenched Greek island; The Blue, set on board a yacht is a major international TV series.

How to Kill Your Best Friend by Lexie Elliott is about a group of friends who have known each other from college swim team. When Lissa drowns, her friends gather to honour her life at the luxury island resort she owned with her husband. Slowly the friends begin to question why Lissa died, when she was the strongest swimmer amongst them – and what made her do a night swim in dangerous water? Many of the scenes take place in the ocean and I loved all the detail of swimmers’ bodies and techniques.  

Hell Bay by Kate Rhodes is the first of a series set on a tiny windswept island off the south coast of England. The body of a young girl is found on the beach and it’s clear her death is no accident. The attacker must still be on the island as no boats have been able to leave during the recent two-day storm. Detective Ben Kitto questions the island’s suspicious and often non-too-friendly bunch of inhabitants, with crash of waves and bawl of Arctic terns in the background. I could feel the sea spray on my cheeks in this atmospheric ‘locked island’ mystery.

Sara Och’s debut thriller The Resort, out in February 2024, has major vibes of The Beach. It’s a vacation thriller with a cast of troubled young characters with secrets, set on Koh Tang, Thailand’s famous party island. The main character Cass, a diving instructor, leads a group of students out into the tropical water for their first dive, but disaster strikes. On this beautiful remote island, a killer is lurking in the shadows. 

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