Suspense literature has always been the highlight in the field of world popular literature, and has always been favored by readers.In a broad sense, any event or thing stated in a work is full of suspense, or cannot see the truth clearly, or involves strange unknowns, or is contrary to people's common sense, which makes readers doubt, puzzle, fear and curiosity. Works that are eager to understand the psychological changes of the truth can be classified as suspense works.It includes horror, thriller, supernatural, thriller, detective reasoning, science fiction, conspiracy espionage and other literary genres.

Aside from ancient monsters, bloody legends or legends, suspense works in the modern sense were produced around the end of the 18th century to the beginning of the 19th century, and their sources were "Gothic legend" novels in Britain and Germany.The vast majority of them are set in medieval castles and tell a story of mystery or horror.Some famous writers at that time were all influenced by it, such as Merimee, Zola, Maupassant, Dickens, etc. Some of their works clearly bear this influence.Gothic sagas paved the way for true suspense literature, especially horror-thriller literature.

As the original form of suspense literature, thriller novels first appeared in Germany, but achieved success in Britain and the United States.In the 19th century, a group of masters of thriller novels emerged in Britain, and even some masters of classical literature joined them, such as Dickens, Scott, Thomas Hardy, H.G. Wells and so on.The early works often combined horror and supernatural, describing an unknown supernatural phenomenon, thus producing a terrifying effect.Wilkie Collins's A Traveler's Horror Strange Bed Story is the earliest representative of pure thriller novels purely through the description of psychological fear.

American literature is closely related to European literature, and it is also a prolific place for suspenseful works.Following Washington Irving's supernatural novel "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow", the most famous writers of thriller novels in the nineteenth century appeared, namely Hawthorne and Poe, especially the latter, who can be described as the epitome of thriller novels. The master, with novel, mysterious and treacherous writing style, makes readers frightened and unable to put it down.Then, in 1869, the Irish novelist Le Fanu led the "ghost novel" that used atmosphere and ambiguity to create horror with his article "Green Tea", which did not decline until the 1920s.Machen and Blackwood created the "mystery novel" against the backdrop of the vogue for occult orders at the time.Influenced by them, Lovecraft in the United States created a series of "cosmic horror novels" in the 1920s and 1930s, with the theme of unknown things threatening the earth.Horror novels were in the limelight for a while, and although the popularity dropped in the middle, they gave way to mystery novels, but in the 1960s, American society was full of death and violence at all levels; young people used counterculture to escape reality, and mysticism made a comeback.With Robert Bullock's, Bradbury's "What Comes From the Road", Isla Lewin's "Son of the Devil" opened the prelude to modern horror fiction. In the first half of the 1970s, Stephen King appeared on the stage and became the "king of horror novels in the world" in the new century.

The short story "The Murder in the Rue Mauger" created by Edgar Allan Poe in 1841 injected new blood into the suspense literature - reasoning (detective) novel.More than a hundred years have passed, and detective mystery novels have become the hegemony in suspense literature, and excellent works emerge in endlessly, including both long novels and short masterpieces.Allan Poe established the basic writing framework of mystery novels, and then Conan Doyle perfected the form of mystery novels.And the three giants of the golden age of mystery novels: Agatha Christie, John Dickson Carr, and Ellery Quinn pushed the classical mystery novels to the extreme peak.In the 20th century, with the horror novels becoming cold, more and more suspense writers turned to fantasy novels and mystery novels, and detective novels of different styles appeared, such as British Freeman’s scientific detectives, American hard-core detectives (named for Dashiell Hammett's "The Maltese Falcon", Raymond Chandler's "Philip Marlowe" series and other amazing works), Japan's "deformation school" and "social school" and other genres The emergence of novels has greatly enriched the creative form of mystery novels, and also expanded its creative connotation and social significance.

To sum up, the creation of suspense literature has a long history and rich connotations.The number and style of his works are various, but the essence is to use words to weave a psychological world of tension, doubt, curiosity and fear for readers.Therefore, an excellent suspenseful literary work does not depend on any scary material, but on how the writer uses the layout of the text and the transformation of the narrative to lead readers into a suspenseful and tense atmosphere, to understand the true connotation of the work, This puts higher demands on the author's literary accomplishment and ability to use words, and this is also the weakness of domestic suspense creation.

The pace of life in today's society is getting faster and faster, and people don't have the time and energy to read long works.Therefore, in the limited space, this book selects as many excellent works in the history of suspense literature as possible to present to you: there are not only early Gothic legends, but also classic works of contemporary horror masters, roughly divided into thrilling, ghosts, supernatural, and fantasy. , reasoning, wits, murder, and psychology, and strive to fully reflect the overview and level of suspense novels. It is worth mentioning that all the works selected in this book are full translations, abandoning the usual form of adaptation in current suspense works, trying to maintain the style of the original works, so that readers can understand what a truly excellent suspense work is, and truly experience the master of suspense. writing style and language magic.

Admittedly, it is unrealistic to collect all the essence of suspense novels in the world in one book, and some suspense classics are all medium-length, so it is a pity that they were not selected.