You Need to Read This Thriller Gone Girl’s Author Released In 2024

Although Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn hasn’t written a new novel since that bestseller was released 13 years ago, she did publish a psychological thriller with a wild twist in 2024. Gillian Flynn’s writing career has seen her pen a trio of novels, 2006’s Sharp Objects, 2009’s Dark Places, and 2012’s Gone Girl, alongside 2016’s novella The Grownup.

Flynn has not published a new novel since Gone Girl was released to wide acclaim in 2012, gaining a new lease of life two years later when it was adapted to film by David Fincher. Although Gone Girl’s film ending is a little different from the source novel, both maintain a blend of psychological unease and campy thrills.

Flynn’s writing walks a tightrope between potentially goofy Southern Gothic and more realistic, grounded drama, resulting in an authorial voice that feels entirely unique. Centering on imperfect female protagonists with dark histories, her novels all utilize unreliable narrators and tricky narrative construction to maintain their central mysteries.

Araminta Hall’s One of the Good Guys Comes From Gillian Flynn Books

The Gone Girl Author Published This British Thriller

Although Flynn hasn’t written a new book since The Grownup was published as a standalone novella in 2016, she has been busy publishing other writers under her imprint, Gillian Flynn Books. An imprint of Zando, Gillian Flynn Books recently published Stacy Horn’s nonfiction book The Killing Fields of East New York and Danie Shokoohi’s supernatural thriller Glass Girls.

The most recent addition to Flynn’s output is 2024’s One of the Good Guys, written by British author Araminta Hall. In a conversation with Hall released on Zando’s YouTube channel, Flynn raved that the thriller is “Definitely going to be one of those books where people who are reading with their friends or spouses are going to go ‘Have you gotten to the part yet?…’”

Araminta Hall’s first novel, Everything and Nothing, was released in 2011, and she has since penned four more books before One of the Good Guys. Although her earlier psychological thriller Our Kind of Cruelty played with some of the same themes as One of the Good Guys, the 2024 novel that Flynn published is the closest Hall has come to emulating the Gone Girl author.

One of the Good Guys initially follows Cole, a recent divorcee who leaves his London home behind to seek refuge in the wilderness.

Set on the desolate, lonely coast of Britain, One of the Good Guys initially follows Cole, a recent divorcee who leaves his London home behind to seek refuge in the wilderness. Working as a park ranger, he meets a quirky artist who helps him open up about the problems lurking beneath the surface of his seemingly perfect marriage.

Like Gone Girl, One of the Good Guys upends expectations with a perspective shift midway through the novel’s story that changes everything. Unlike Flynn’s classic bestseller, however, Hall’s book doesn’t limit itself to only two narrators. Readers are made privy to Cole’s version of events, then filled in on his former partner’s side of the story, and then there’s a third switch.

The final third of One of the Good Guys is told in a collage of epistolary sources, culling from podcast transcripts, news articles, and even reviews to explain the rest of the story. To say what these reviews cover would be to give the game away, but suffice to say, it is a twist that few readers will guess.

One of the Good Guys Has An Even Wilder Twist Than Gone Girl

The Thriller Takes A Truly Shocking Left Turn In Its Ending

Although Gone Girl’s twist does take on the media in Flynn’s skewering of Nancy Grace-alike TV host Ellen Abbott, the bulk of the book focuses more on the internal worlds of its protagonists, Nick and Amy. In contrast, the final third of One of the Good Guys delves deep into the toxic miasma of social media and traditional media alike.

Gone Girl is available to stream on Disney+.

Without giving anything away, the big twist at the end of One of the Good Guys is even wilder than Gone Girl’s central revelation, and it arrives a lot later in the brisk book’s storyline. Opinions will be split on whether this twist works, as a glance at the novel’s Goodreads reviews proves.

Hall’s story may have missed out on 10/10 thriller status thanks to this final twist, but it is hard to imagine a version of the novel that doesn’t hinge on this huge revelation. Without it, Cole’s story would be a progressively more predictable one, whereas the addition of this big shock undeniably throws readers for a loop.

Why Gillian Flynn Hasn’t Written A New Book Since Gone Girl

Flynn Has Focused On Television Writing And Her Publishing Imprint

The mixed reception of Hall’s novel could be viewed as one of the reasons that Flynn herself hasn’t published a new novel in over a decade. Gone Girl was her biggest success so far, and any follow-up is sure to come burdened with major expectations from readers and critics alike.

However, this isn’t quite the full picture. Flynn has been consistently busy since Gone Girl’s 2012 release, and not just with Gillian Flynn Books. Flynn wrote the screenplay for Gone Girl in 2014, and later went on to co-write director Steve McQueen’s 2018 thriller Widows. She scripted the same year’s Sharp Objects adaptation for HBO, as well as Prime Video’s underrated 2020 series Utopia.

Outside these creative projects, Flynn has also contributed non-fiction essays to Elle, The New Yorker, Time, and The New York Times. She also wrote a story for a comic book anthology in 2025. More recently, Flynn began working on Tim Burton’s upcoming remake of Attack of the 50 Foot Woman.

She is also busy writing a limited series adaptation of Dark Places. Thus, it is not a surprise that the author of Gone Girl is too busy to release another novel, considering her full slate.

Source: YouTube