As this is posted, it’s 47 years since the partial meltdown of one of the nuclear reactors on Three Mile Island in the US state of Pennsylvania. It was a sobering time, and a lot hung in the balance. Fortunately, the reactor was built with enough redundant safety features that there was no permanent harm. But things did hang in the balance that day. While it’s not pleasant to deal with that tension and worry in real life, it can add to a crime novel or thriller. The higher the stakes, the more the suspense a story has.

For instance, in Agatha Christie’s short story The Kidnapped Prime Minister, Hercule Poirot is visited by the Leader of the House of Commons and a member of the War Cabinet. They tell Poirot that Prime Minister David MacAdam was on his way to Paris to deliver a crucial speech when he was abducted. The clouds of World War II are gathering, and MacAdams’ speech was intended to ‘rally the troops.’ There are serious consequences if MacAdams doesn’t give his talk, and the proverbial clock is ticking. Much hangs in the balance, and Poirot is given only one day to find the prime minister and make sure that he gets safely to Paris. In this case, the suspense comes from the fact that so much is at stake, and Poirot has very little time to accomplish the mission.

As B.C. Colman’s A Line Too Far begins, Chinese commandos quietly invade the northern part of Australia and hold thousands of Australian military members hostage. The Chinese government wants to annex that part of Australia because of its rich supply of natural resources. With that goal in mind, China presents Australian Prime Minister Gary ‘Gazza’ Stone with an ultimatum: Australia must yield its northern half to China, or China will begin a full-scale invasion of Australia. As you can imagine, everything hangs in the balance: Australian sovereignty, the geopolitical balance, and the risk for everyone of an all-out war, among other things. Stone has to work fast and effectively if this crisis is to be averted. Much of the tension in the novel comes as everyone grasps just how easily things could go very, very wrong.

Eleanor Catton’s Birnam Wood is the story of a New Zealand activist collective called Birnam Wood. Its members’ strategy is to find unoccupied parcels of land and plant gardens. The group uses the produce to eat and to fund themselves. When the group’s co-founder, Mira Bunting, scouts out a new bit of land, she’s caught by tech billionaire Robert Lemoine, who’s recently bought the land. After hearing Mira’s explanation for her presence, Lemoine agrees to let the group use the land. But Lemoine has a secret: he wants to mine the land for rare minerals, a process that will be ecologically devastating. Former Birnam Wood member Tony Gallo doesn’t trust Lemoine, so he starts to do his own sleuthing. When he discovers Lemoine’s plan, a cat-and-mouse game between the two develops. It’s a razor’s edge situation, as the saying goes, especially considering that ecological and other risks involved, and that adds a great deal to the tension in the story.

Stephen Ross’ The Bride Must be Stopped! Introduces Thornton Thacker, a high school student and sort of private investigator. One day, he and a friend discover a mortally injured man. The man holds up a piece of paper with some hieroglyphics on it, and says ‘The bride must be stopped!’ just before he dies. It turns out that the dead man was a newspaper reporter called Albert Park, who was following up on strange story. Thacker, his friend, Thacker’s sister Fenella, and their friend Rosa, join forces to find out the truth. As it turns out, the truth is a lot deadlier, and has more potential consequences, than the young people could have imagined. As the story goes on, the stakes get higher.

That’s also true of Cat Connor’s work. The protagonist of one of her series, Ellie Iverson, is an FBI agent, who moves up through the ranks as the series goes on. She and her team are faced with more than one potentially devastating situation where everything hangs in the balance, and things could go either way. In Vaporbyte, for instance, a botched kidnapping gives Ellie and her team information on a potentially catastrophic international plot. Now, the team must follow up on those leads and stop the threat if possible. But there’ve already been some deaths, and more will follow if the team doesn’t succeed. The situation is a razor’s edge, and no-one is sure just which way things will go.

And that’s the thing about those situations. There’s a lot at stake, the tension is high, and everything hangs in the balance. It’s a frightening state to be in in real life, but in crime fiction and thrillers, that sort of suspense can add to the story.

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from AC/DC’s Razor’s Edge.