EXILES an Australian Crime Novel Of Buried Secrets and Murder

Exiles by Jane Harper is set in the wine country of South Australia, where a close-knit community still deals with the oppressive aftermaths of a local woman's disappearance and a man's hit-and-run death.

Federal Police agent Aaron Falk is on a personal visit to see old friends in the small town of Marralee. But he is slowly drawn into the past mysteries that yet cast a pall over the whole town.

A year earlier, young mother Kim Gillespie vanished without a trace from a fairground, her infant daughter left abandoned in a parked stroller. Five years before that, local accountant Dean Tozer was run down by a driver who was never found.

As Falk becomes more involved with the tight circle of family and friends connected to both Kim and Tozer, he begins to sense false notes that warn him someone among them may be a sociopathic killer.

Exiles is not a fast paced thriller. It is a character-driven, psychological crime novel that builds slowly toward harsh revelations. An engrossing and thoughtful mystery read.

STORM WARNING an Entertaining New Wyoming Crime Thriller

Wyoming state game warden Joe Pickett returns in Storm Warning, a new crime thriller from author C.J. Box. The popular series is set against a rugged Western landscape as Joe Pickett finds himself involved in often dangerous criminal situations.

Joe is on the track of elk antler poachers in the snowy Bighorn range when he stumbles on the dead body of a Chinese University of Wyoming professor. The death looks like violent foul play. When Joe reports it, he runs into an unexpected cover-up by the state governor and the local Sherrif.

As usual, Joe won't back off, but he soon finds himself up against some fake federal agents and a dangerous armed ring of sovereign separatists planning a major coup event. At the same time, a massive snowstorm is descending on the local region.

Storm Warning is a fast-reading crime thriller that longtime fans of the Joe Pickett series will devour eagerly. Highly recommended.

Stormy Mystery Swirls in Jane Harper's THE SURVIVORS

Set in the beach village of Evelyn Bay on the Australian island of Tasmania, The Survivors by Jane Harper is a tangled murder mystery that twists between the past and the present. 

The novel is narrated through the main character of Kieran Elliott, a local resident whose life is haunted by a tragic family incident from when he was a teenager. When the body of a young woman is recently found on the beach one morning, it sets off a police investigation that dredges up dark memories from Kieran's past.

Twelve years earlier, a massive storm hit the village, resulting in the boating death of Kieran's older brother, Finn. A young girl named Gabby Birch also disappeared in the same storm and no trace of her was ever found.

Now, in the present day, links begin to emerge between the body on the beach and the earlier case of Gabby Birch. As new facts come to light, Kieran is forced to question all his previous assumptions about the day of the great storm and what really happened then. The current murder case brings him to new suspicions about local residents. Someone he thought he knew may be a killer.

The Survivors is a brooding mystery that uncoils piece by piece as each new layer of false truth is peeled away. The novel is an addictive read that fans of author Jane Harper should enjoy.

 

V2 by Robert Harris a Superb Wartime Thriller

Set in 1944 in the later days of World War Two, V2  by Robert Harris chronicles the destructive attacks on London by the V2 rocket program of Nazi Germany. Launched from secret bases in occupied Holland, the V2 rockets flew over the English Channel carrying heavy explosive warheads that would wreck havoc daily on the British capital city. 

The novel follows the stories of two main characters. Rudi Graf is a top German engineer involved in the V2 launches, even as he has to hide his growing disgust with the the brutal Nazi political regime. Kay Caton-Walsh is an intelligence officer with an elite RAF unit, whose job is to locate the V2 launch bases so Allied planes can bomb them.

V2 is an outstanding wartime thriller, written and researched in superb fashion. The opening chapters describing the launch and flight of a V2 rocket until its impact in London are quite thrilling. 

This novel is most highly recommended. For those who haven't read this author before, Robert Harris has written a number of gripping political and historic thrillers including The Ghostwriter, Munich, Fatherland, and Enigma. 

ONE BY ONE a Chilling Murder Mystery

 One By One by Ruth Ware is a gripping murder puzzle with the classic Agatha Christie set-up of a group of clashing characters trapped together in an isolated setting, and one of them is a killer.

The setting is a vacation chalet high up in the snowy French Alps. Eight team members from a popular social media app company are at the chalet for a retreat. Tensions flare over a surprise offer to sell the company's app property. Some people there will make a lot of money from the offer. Some will instead just lose their jobs.

When a sudden avalanche slams into the chalet, everyone is trapped inside, cut off from outside help. Then the deaths begin to occur, one by one.

The plot unfolds in alternating first person chapters as seen from the viewpoints of two main characters: Erin, a hostess employed at the chalet, and Liz, a low level personal assistant with the company. As the two women narrate their thoughts, pieces of the murder puzzle slowly come together.

Careful readers may begin to pick up tell-tale clues and spot the killer before the he/she is unmasked. One complaint with the plot is the withholding of key information by the author, and some readers may feel misled on that account.

Nonetheless, One By One is an addictive read with a nail biting climax and Ruth Ware fans should be well entertained by the book.

Author John LeCarre R.I.P

 British author John Le Carre passed away recently. He is widely recognized for moving the Spy Novel genre from the escapist thrills of Ian Fleming's James Bond into the gray, gritty realities of actual intelligence work.

Le Carre's characters often operated in uneasy situations of moral compromise where the lines of right and wrong were blurred in the name of expedience and national interest. The psychological pressures on LeCarre's spies took their toll over time, corrupting some into personal crisis, others into political betrayal of country.

These are the best of Le Carre's Cold War novels:

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold  (1963)

Tinker, Tailor, Solder, Spy  (1974) - The uncovering of a Soviet mole inside British intelligence.

Smiley's People  (1979) - The defection of a top Soviet spymaster.

The Post-Cold War novels dealt with issues such as arms trading and the threat of Islamic terrorism:

The Night Manager  (1993)

A Most Wanted Man  (2009) - Vicious rivalry among American, British, and German spy agencies for possession of an Islamic defector. An overt example of the latent Anti-American streak that ran through Le Carre's fiction.

A Reporter Tracks a Killer in FAIR WARNING

 Author Michael Connelly brings back crime reporter Jack McEvoy in a new thriller, Fair Warning. McEvoy appeared previously in the best selling novels The Poet and The Scarecrow, where his reporting helped hunt down diabolical serial killers. 

Jack lost his prior newspaper job and is now reporting for a small investigative website magazine called Fair Warning. But when a woman he knew briefly is murdered by an unknown killer, it leads Jack to look into her death. He uncovers a pattern of similar murders of other female victims, all having their necks broken in an identical manner. McEvoy reaches the chilling answer that a serial predator is at work.

The killer is called The Shrike. Jack finds the link between the scattered victims. All of them had sent their DNA samples to an ancestry analysis service. The Shrike used that same service to find his next targets.

The LAPD is also investigating and they don't want McEvoy interfering in the case. But the police don't know about the serial killer pattern yet. Jack is way ahead of the cops and he wants to be the first to publish a story on The Shrike. But the killer is already watching what McEvoy is doing.

Fair Warning is another addictive read from Michael Connelly. The novel follows the methodical work of a crime reporter as it builds toward a wrenching final reckoning for Jack McEvoy.

 

A Hurricane and Murder in CAMINO WINDS

John Grisham returns to the setting of his previous crime novel, Camino Island, in an entertaining new mystery, Camino Winds.

The main character from the first book is back again--- Bruce Cable, the owner of Bay Books, a popular literary hangout on the resort island off the Florida coast. Bruce is enjoying the pleasant tropical life he leads amidst a circle of local writers, when the sudden forecast of a dangerous hurricane headed for the island changes everything.

Panic ensues as the island undergoes emergency evacuation. Bruce Cable is one of a handful of locals who stay behind to ride out the storm. The arrival of Hurricane Leo is quite exciting as the savage winds smash across Camino Island.

Cable survives the storm, with heavy damage to his bookstore. As the locals emerge to survey the destruction, Bruce notices that one friend, writer Nelson Kerr, is missing. When they look for him, Kerr is found dead at his condo. But the storm didn't kill him. Someone else on the island did.

From there, the novel settles into a search for who killed Kerr, and why. Clues point to a new crime novel that Kerr had just finished about criminal abuse at a large chain of nursing homes. But the novel may have been an expose of crimes happening at a real company, and a book that someone powerful didn't want to see published.

Camino Winds is a pleasantly readable mystery that moves along at a leisurely pace. For fans of the author, it's another satisfying entry to add to the John Grisham shelf. 

MASKED PREY a New John Sanford Crime Thriller

U.S. Marshal Lucas Davenport is back in Masked Prey, a new crime thriller in the popular series by author John Sandford.

A sinister website appears on the internet. Created by an unknown party, the site shows photos of children of prominent political leaders in various normal daily scenes. Posted along with the photos are an array of extremist articles advocating violent political opposition to the U.S. government. A threat to take some kind of action against the kids in the photos is clearly implied.

The website looks dangerous. Concerned senators bring in Lucas Davenport to investigate who is behind the site. Lucas has personal experience with website programming. Working with the FBI, he begins by looking into already established militant political groups. He runs into some angry, surly misfits, but nobody who seems to fit the suspect he's looking for.

Lucas worries he's after the hardest prey to catch --- a ruthless, lone wolf type with no ties to any militant group. Then the worst happens. A kid gets shot and killed by a hidden sniper. Lucas and his team get a lead and race onto the trail of the shooter.

Masked Prey opens slowly, with much material on the threat of dangerous internet websites. It takes a while for the plot to get moving, but the action soon speeds up to finish in the trademark breakneck style of author John Sanford.

LONG RANGE a New Wyoming Crime Thriller for Summer Reading

Wyoming state game warden Joe Pickett returns in Long Range, a new crime thriller from C.J. Box. The popular series is set against a rugged Western landscape as Joe Pickett finds himself involved in often dangerous criminal situations.

An unknown sniper tries to shoot a local judge through the window of his dining room. The rifle shot comes from what seems like an impossible distance, a wooded hillside over a mile away. The shooter uses a high-tech weapon with a computerized sighting system. The trajectory is perfect, finding the window target exactly, but when the judge bends just before the bullet arrives, it strikes his wife instead, grievously wounding her.

Joe Pickett joins the local authorities in the search for the unknown marksman. The arrogant new sheriff doesn't want Joe's help, so Joe follows his own leads. But the trail twists toward hidden motives and surprising suspects in the small town that Pickett would never have believed could be involved in trying to kill a judge. As Joe and a posse close in on the killer in a dangerous mountain hunt, the shooter is already sighting in on Joe himself.

Long Range  is another entertaining offering from author C.J. Box. The this one makes a perfect beach book that readers will gulp down with their iced teas.

Crime and Suspense Classics - The Essential Reading List

Coronavirus Reprint - This list was previously published by this Blog. If you can get hold of any of these titles, they make for great reading during the current virus shutdown.

Here's a list of classic novels that are essential reads in the Crime and Suspense genres. The list is roughly chronological, ranging from the 1930s to the current time. Note that the list does not include traditional Mystery novels, which is a separate genre.

The Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammett. Where the terse, hardboiled style all began.

The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler

Double Indemnity - James M. Cain. The classic Noir doomed crime plan.

The Getaway - Jim Thompson. The crime novel as a descent into Hell.

The Manchurian Candidate - Richard Condon. The paranoid conspiracy thriller and a monstrous maternal figure.

Psycho - Robert Bloch.

The Deep Blue Goodbye - John D. MacDonald

The Friends of Eddie Coyle - George V. Higgins. Gritty crime story told in pitch perfect street dialogue. Elmore Leonard learned from this author.

Death Wish - Brian Garfield. Unban crime problems and the novel of revenge.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy - John LeCarre. The perfect Cold War spy novel.

The Ipcress File - Len Deighton. The spy novel retold with working class cynicism.

Marathon Man - William Goldman. That shudder-grating torture scene in a dental chair.

Miami Blues - Charles Willeford. An under-appreciated gem of a crime author.

Killshot - Elmore Leonard.

The Black Dahlia - James Ellroy. Frantic, pitch black, and borderline insane, as only Ellroy can write.

Silence of the Lambs - Thomas Harris. The best serial killer novel ever written.

Heaven's Prisoners - James Lee Burke

Mystic River - Dennis Lehane.

No Country For Old Men - Cormac McCarthy. Noir fatalism in the new West.

City of Bones -  Michael Connelly. The police procedural at its best.

The Leopard - Jo Nesbo. Obsession, Nordic style.

Thriller Novel Classics - The Essential Reading List

Coronavirus Reprint - This list was previously published by this Blog. If you can get your hands on any of these classic titles, they make for great reading during the current virus shutdown.

Here's a list of classic novels that are essential reads in the Suspense Thriller genre. The list is generally chronological beginning with the modern day thriller advent in the 1960s. The Thriller genre is here defined as page-turner novels with strong action and suspense plot elements.

Fail Safe by Eugene Burdick - Nuclear War thriller envisioned, as a technical system failure brings the US and USSR to the brink of catastrophe.

Seven Days in May by Fletcher Knebel -  Political crisis thriller as the Joint Chiefs plot a coup to take over the American government.

Goldfinger by Ian Fleming - Best of the James Bond spy thriller series.

Ice Station Zebra by Alistair MacLean

Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth - Assassination thriller plot played out against an international canvas.

The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton - Biological contamination crisis at a secret Nevada desert scientific facility.

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three by John Godey - the Big Heist thriller set beneath the streets of New York City.

Black Sunday by Thomas Harris - Terrorist plot to hijack a blimp and pilot it into Super Bowl stadium crowd.

Marathon Man by William Goldman - Best ever interrogation scene shudderingly enacted in a dentist's chair.

The Boys From Brazil by Ira Levin -  Nazi Conspiracy thriller with a new, chilling science fiction angle.

Jaws by Peter Benchley - Natural Environment thriller at a seacoast resort town menaced by a Great White shark.

The Towering Inferno by Richard Martin Stern - Disaster thriller scenario as an unstoppable fire rages inside a giant skyscraper.

The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum

The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy -  Military thriller plays out as a Soviet nuclear sub crew attempts to defect to U.S.

Firefox by Craig Thomas -  Techno/Military mission as a U.S. agent tries to steal a high tech Soviet fighter plane and fly it out of Russia.

The Firm by John Grisham - Legal thriller sees a young lawyer join a law firm with secret organized crime connections.

True Crime by Andrew Klavan - Race against time thriller as a reporter tries to halt a wrongful execution.

The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown - Follows chain of historical puzzle clues to revelation of a sensational religious secret.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson - Swedish government conspiracy thriller with a hacker/punk female lead character.

Matt Scudder Short Stories Now Collected Together

Matt Scudder is the New York detective created by Lawrence Block. Scudder appears in a long series of novels that follow him from his time as an NYPD cop to his later work as an unlicensed private investigator. The early novels see Scudder descend into serious alcoholism before joining AA and trying to stay permanently sober.

The Night and the Music includes all of the Scudder short stories collected together for the first time. Standout stories are "Out the Window" and "A Candle for the Bag Lady." All of the pieces are written in lean, hard boiled prose and narrated in the familiar dry cynical voice of Matt Scudder.

This is a great story collection for previous Lawrence Block fans and a nice introduction for new Matt Scudder readers.

John Le Carre Gets Political in AGENT RUNNING

Agent Running in the Field is the latest novel by John Le Carre, the renown master of the international espionage novel. This new book is a smaller scale picture of a backwater British spy sub-agency called The Haven that deals with minor intelligence nuisances.

The story is narrated by Nat, a veteran agent network runner now close to being put out to pasture by his agency. Nat's cynical voice allows John Le Carre to show his own dry wit with much inside baseball description of the mundane daily workings of The Haven. The actual plot of the novel is very thin, with Nat reconnecting with a former agent asset, who has urgent new information about a Russian undercover operation inside Britain. A surprising revelation puts Nat under suspicion at his own agency.

Unfortunately, the novel goes off the track as author Le Carre uses the story to vent his own strident political biases against Brexit, the Tory Party, and the American Trump administration. Le Carre has often shown open anti-American disdain in previous novels (see A Most Wanted Man ) and he continues that nasty streak here.

 Agent Running in the Field  is almost a droll satire of spy agencies, but the novel is mainly a diversion for die-hard John Le Carre fans who share his leftist politics.

THE NIGHT FIRE a New Crime Novel From Michael Connelly

The Night Fire by Michael Connelly is a new Crime novel in the popular series that features former LAPD Detective Harry Bosch. Bosch is retired now, but still works some cases on his own time. He's drawn into a new mystery when his former LAPD mentor dies and leaves behind the file on a murder cold case for Bosch alone to look into.

Once again, Bosch crosses paths with LAPD Detective Renee Ballard, who is working the open case of a homeless man set on fire one night and murdered by someone unkown. As Bosch pursues his case and Ballard works hers, connections between the two murders begin to show up. What emerges is the pattern of a much larger conspiracy and the existence of a single ruthless professional killer at the center of the unsolved deaths.

The hunt for the killer leads Bosch and Ballard into a deadly confrontation that neither of them saw coming.

The Night Fire is a solid police procedural that moves back and forth between the two main characters of Harry Bosch and Renee Ballard created by Michael Connelly, one of the best crime authors writing today.

BLOODY GENIUS a Tangled New Crime Tale by John Sandford

Bloody Genius by John Sandford is the latest offbeat crime novel in the series that features Minnesota State Police detective Virgil Flowers. Virgil is a laid back rural type, who sometimes pulls his boat behind his truck on the way to crime scenes, in case he gets time to do some fishing.

His latest case is strictly an urban affair in the Twin Cities. A university professor is sneaking into the library at night when he is unexpectedly attacked by someone and murdered. Virgil Flowers is left with a handful of puzzling questions. Why was the professor hiding there at night at the library in the first place? Who would want to kill him? Did it have anything to do with his lucrative scientific research? Or was it the result of a bitter academic feud with another professor?

The novel follows Flowers through a tangled trail of false leads, red herring clues, and multiple possible suspects. It takes Virgil a while to realize that someone is leading him on a chase of planted distractions away from the actual murderer.

Bloody Genius is filled with a few too many plot twists and minor characters to follow and the eventual uncovering of an unlikely culprit with an equally unlikely motive for the murder. This one isn't John Sandford's best effort, but the novel is entertaining with a running stream of quirky humor and the laconic character of Virgil Flowers himself.

Ruth Ware's new Suspense Novel Is a Sinister Enigma

The Turn of a Key is the latest novel by popular Psychological Suspense author Ruth Ware. This new offering is an ambiguous one. The novel has jarring narration and plot twists which may leave many readers uncertain, depending on how they interpret the final pages.

The opening story setup is promising. Rowan Caine takes what seems a cushy, high paying job as a family nanny in a remote manor house in the Scottish Highlands. But troubles for Rowan begin almost immediately. The parents must leave on a work assignment in Europe. The three small children left with Rowan are an unruly handful. Then there's the house itself, which seems to have a sinister presence about it.

There are faint echoes of the Henry James classic The Turn of the Screw. The children whisper vaguely about ghosts somewhere. The novel works overtime to build Gothic creepiness, from phantom footsteps in the night to an ominous locked door.

The structure of the novel has the story narrated by Rowan in letters to an attorney as she is being held in jail after a death in the house. But the plot takes a wrenching turn in the last third when vital new information is suddenly given to the reader that has been withheld from the beginning. Talk about an unreliable narrator! Things turn even more upside down at the conclusion when more new revelations make the reader question the validity of the entire prior narrative.

The Turn of a Key is a psychological enigma which offers one direct answer at the end. But is it the right answer?

THE BITTEROOTS a Rugged Montana Crime Thriller

The Bitterroots by C.J. Box is the author's fourth Western-set crime novel to feature investigator Cassie Dewell, who appeared previously in The Highway and Badlands and Paradise Valley. Cassie is mid-thirties, not very tall, and somewhat overweight. But she's a sharp investigator and a good shot when she has to be. This combination makes her character both realistic and appealing.

Cassie is a former sheriff's detective in Montana and North Dakota, but she left law enforcement after bad experiences in two departments. She's now a private investigator based in Bozeman, Montana. A local attorney has a defendant in a sexual assault case and hires Cassie to dig into the background of the charges.

Cassie travels to the isolated town of Horston, where the alleged assault took place, set below the rugged Bitterroot Range in western Montana. Once there, she runs into early trouble. A powerful local ranching family wants her to quit poking into the rape charges and leave town. But Cassie finds some details of the case don't add up. As she keeps digging, she ends up arrested in the local jail. Then it gets even more dangerous for her.

 The Bitterroots is a western crime novel as tough edged as its rugged setting. Author C.J. Box has another compelling read in the Cassie Dewell series.

KNIFE by Jo Nesbo a New Norwegian Crime Thriller

Knife by Norwegian author Jo Nesbo is the latest crime novel in the series that features obsessive Oslo police detective Harry Hole (pronounced Hoo-leh). Harry is a police legend for his past hunting down of fiendish serial killers, portrayed in previous Nesbo novels such as The Snowman and The Leopard.

A new case is devastating for Harry when someone personally close to him is brutally murdered. At first, it appears that a recently released convict Harry arrested a decade earlier is behind the murder in revenge against Hole. But then new suspects emerge with their own twisted motivations. Even though Harry is suspended from working on the murder case because of his connection with the victim, he is driven to pursue the killer on his own.

Knife is a heavy read at 450 pages that sometimes bogs down in too much involvement with Harry's own complex psychological obsessions. That said, Jo Nesbo fans will enjoy seeing iconic character Harry Hole on the case again.

Thomas Harris is Back With Ruthless Crime Thriller CARI MORA

Thomas Harris is famous for thrillers like Black Sunday, Silence of the Lambs, and Hannibal. He's back with a long awaited new one in the taut crime tale Cari Mora.

Set in Miami Beach, the novel follows a ruthless hunt for an elusive treasure. A vacant house once owned by drug kingpin Pablo Escobar is rumored to have a thirty million dollar gold hoard stashed secretly somewhere inside it. Two competing criminal gangs want that gold and will take whatever brutal means necessary to get to it.

Cari Mora is a Nicaraguan immigrant who works as caretaker for the empty house. She was a former captive soldier of the guerilla army in her native country and she is well trained in violent tactics. When the vicious thugs make their plans to take control of the house, they don't reckon with the implacable factor of Cari Mora becoming involved.

Cari Mora is a colorful, swiftly moving story filled with visceral violence and sudden deaths. It's a welcome return by Thomas Harris that makes for some entertaining summer reading.