Tired of the July heat? These thrillers, expertly curated by Jon Land, are guaranteed to run a chill down your spine despite the season.
David Baldacci switches gears to magnificent results in One Good Deed (Grand Central), fashioning a period piece which makes for a great historical thriller.
That period is the aftermath of World War II, and our hero is the veteran Aloysius Archer. He had just been in prison due to an alcohol-rich temper and what we’d call PTSD today. After being paroled, he settles in the small town of Poca City. He swiftly ends up in issues anything but small, finding himself embroiled in a steamy crime noir. The atmosphere reminded me of the John Ball classic In the Heat of the Night.
All the hallmarks we’ve come to expect from Baldacci are present here. He adds a layer of slowly simmering suspense and splendid prose also reminiscent of James Lee Burke’s Holland novels, Greg Iles, and the late great Pat Conroy. Terrific reading entertainment with a literary bent.
Before Lee Child gave us Jack Reacher, Stephen Hunter introduced his Marine sniper extraordinaire Bob Lee Swagger in the thriller classic Point of Impact. Like a fine wine, Swagger aged well as the series continued with the latest entry, Game of Snipers (Putnam), easily the best in some time.
That’s because Hunter takes Swagger back to his roots in a highly relatable and accessible tale of an ever-grieving mother. She seeks out the grizzled vet’s help in tracking down the sniper who killed her son, a fellow Marine. 
Not surprisingly, the twist-laden trail Swagger embarks on is typically rich in conspiracy, betrayal and, this time, an international cast of good and bad guys, as well as some who flux between the two.
The action scenes are pure magic, painted with effortless ease in perfectly cadenced prose on blood-soaked tapestries. You just can’t keep a good man down, or an old one in this case. Swagger may be well beyond retirement age, but he’s never been better and neither has Hunter. A tour de force in all respects.
Mark Greaney departs from his Gray Man series to begin anew alongside Marine Lieutenant Colonel Hunter Ripley Rawlings. Red Metal (Berkley) reads like Tom Clancy or W.E.B. Griffin at their level best, which is obviously saying a lot.
This classic military action-thriller imagines a Russian strike against Europe, an increasingly plausible notion these days. How, then, will the United States respond to such an overt act of provocation? The answer evokes the same kind of internecine conflicts that arose prior to America’s entry into World War II and in the days of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The fictional suspense is every bit the equal as the book rises to a Fail-Safe level of nail-biting with World War III a seeming inevitability.
All of Greaney’s considerable talents are on display here, honed to an even sharper edge by Rawlings’ battlefield expertise. This is the modern-day equivalent of Red Storm Rising and not to be missed by those who like their pages gun metal strong.
John Gilstsrap’s terrific Total Mayhem (Pinnacle) deals with a different kind of war on the home front. ISIS launches an all-out attack on the United States in the form of mercenaries culled from our own former special operation forces.
It’s a good thing Gilstrap’s stalwart hero Jonathan Graves is on the job when the homeland comes under fire. Graves and his team realize the initial series of attacks are only the tip of the iceberg. Something far more catastrophic and dire is in the offing certain to lead to the death of millions.
This is a ticking-clock thriller par excellence, Gilstrap having raised the stakes about as high as they can go. The kind of book beaches were invented for.
Caz Frear has fashioned her second terrific crime thriller featuring London’s Detective Constable Cat Kinsella in Stone Cold Heart (Harper). A sumptuously unsettling mystery, it lives up to all the hype it’s received.
On the heels of Sweet Little Lies, Kinsella once again faces problems galore. Immediately, her relationship is contemptuous with her new/old boss at the London Metro Police, Kate Steele. That is until Steele herself is embroiled in a murder investigation, leading to an unlikely alliance and a terrific cat-and-mouse game with the ultimate killer.
This is the kind of mystery Agatha Christie would have penned these days. Kinsella is the best female detective from across the pond since Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennison of the brilliant Prime Suspect series.
You’ve got to hand it to Jo Nesbo. Every time you think he’s gone as far as he can with Oslo police detective Harry Hole, he takes things up a notch. His latest, Knife (Knopf), is no exception.
Poor Harry. As the book opens, he’s lost his girlfriend, found the bottle again and been sentenced to career purgatory in the dreaded cold case division. When a serial killer he put away years before is freed, Harry is powerless to pick up the man’s trail again. Then he wakes from a drunken stupor to find he may have taken justice into his own bloody hands, or something even worse.
The book ably overcomes any translation issues, leaving Nesbo on equal footing with Michael Connelly, with Hole on the same level as Harry Bosch. This is crime noir at its absolute best—edgy, dark and showcasing one of the finest detective characters in modern fiction.
Riley Sager’s blistering and bracing Lock Every Door (Dutton) reads like a combination of two Ira Levin bestsellers, Sliver and Rosemary’s Baby. Urban paranoia reigns and apartment buildings seem to have a life of their own.
That’s the kind of high praise Sager’s latest demands, thanks to the hapless Jules Larsen. Jules is at wit’s end over a series of failures, disappointments, and a painful past. She gets the opportunity to hide out in yet another Manhattan residential high-rise housing dark secrets and mysterious occupants. The claustrophobic setting proves the perfect complement to Jules’ tortured soul, even before she realizes the building’s strange rules belie a sinister culture that threatens to snare her in its deadly web.
You’ll be tempted to lock every one of your own doors as you flip the pages.
David Bell’s Layover (Berkley) is the kind of book Alfred Hitchcock would have loved to adapt if he were alive today. The plot springs off a random, (apparently) coincidental meeting.
Who knew that retrieving someone’s lost cell phone could change a man’s life forever? Joshua Fields certainly didn’t, but that’s exactly what happens at Atlanta’s bustling Hartsfield International Airport, thanks to a chance encounter with the ultimate femme fatale. Not being able to leave things as they are, Fields embarks on a descent into a dark netherworld of lies and deceptions from which he will emerge a totally different man–if he emerges at all.
Layover wondrously combines Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train with his masterpiece Vertigo, a tale of dark meanings and motives that mines the dark depravity lying at the pit of the human soul. And, interestingly enough, the perfect book to have handy for your next airport layover.
Which of these books are you interested in picking up? Tell us in the comments below!
