Thriller Research

Thriller is a genre of literature, film, and television that uses suspense, tension, and excitement as the main elements. The primary subgenre is psychological thrillers. After the assassination of President Kennedy, political thriller and paranoid thriller films became very popular. The brightest examples of thrillers are the Hitchcock’s movies. The cover-up of important information from the viewer and fight/chase scenes are common methods in all of the thriller subgenres, although each subgenre has its own characteristics and methods

A Thriller contains certain characteristics. The pace must be quick, there has to be a lot of action, and there should be suspense and plot twists aplenty. Thrillers should have the reader on the edge of their seat, wondering if the good guy can get one over the bad guy and save the world (even though it's extremely rare for the bad guy to win, in your classic Thriller).

Sources http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thriller_(genre) http://www.illiterarty.com/genre-thriller