thrillern.

1889 Pall Mall Gaz. 1 July 6/1 It is always painful to see clever actors..wasting their energies on a worthless play... It is seldom that we are treated to a more bald and empty production than this invertebrate ‘thriller’.

1896 Pall Mall Mag. Nov. 380 Fullblown detectives..the sort you read of in the thrillers!

1934 C. Lambert Music Ho! v. 301 The opera Wozzek is on paper a soberly planned symphony, but in performance a ‘thriller’ of the most theatrical order.

1950 Sport 24 Mar. 3/2 That was in 1946 when the ‘Bishops’ were beaten 3–2 by Barnet in a Stamford Bridge thriller.

1968 M. Richler in R. Weaver Canad. Short Stories 2nd Ser. 186 ‘My mother made me promise that one day I would make a picture in Israel.’ ‘Did she specify a sexy thriller?’

1976 New Yorker 16 Feb. 54/3 The thriller of the afternoon occurred when Redundancy came up in the last stride to beat Summertime Promise by a nose in the Columbiana Handicap.

1925 J. M. Robertson Mr. Shaw & ‘The Maid’ ix. 85 Villains there are in plenty, though those shaped by the thriller-writers are apt to be improbable.

1983 Listener 20 Jan. 23/3 The pseudonymous A. J. Quinnell belongs to the generation of good thriller-writers who specialised in South-East Asia.

1958 Times Lit. Suppl. 17 Jan. 33/2 It is a fair guess that thriller-writing led to his first interest in the precious stones which are the lure for so many crimes of real life.

1922 John o' London's Weekly 4 Jan. 18/2 The first three-quarters of the play were so good anyway, simply on the level of off-beat thrillerdom.

1957 Times Lit. Suppl. 28 June 395/1 When, in the 1930s, one of his best novels, La Condition Humaine, was translated under the thrillerish title of Storm in Shanghai, many young people must have opened it in the hope that they were going to read a thriller.