Dead Fall by Brad Thor
Perennial #1 bestselling author Brad Thor excels at picking future global hotspots. In Dead Fall, though, he blazes new ground on what is now old territory, specifically Ukraine.
The war is raging and Thor (somewhat) fictionalizes a slice of it, specifically the fate of small, forgotten villages that have no men left to protect them because they’re all out fighting. In that context, marauding Russian soldiers serve as contemporary stand-ins for the brutal Nazis they seem to be emulating — here, as well as in real life. But when American aid workers are killed, former Navy SEAL Scot Harvath takes up the challenge of tracking down the culprits and ends up waging his own personal, Rambo-like war.
Dead Fall feels smaller in scale but grander in its storytelling scope than past series entries. It’s not only Thor at his best, but Thor testing his own, and Harvath’s, boundaries. Refreshing for any novel, but especially a thriller. This is heady stuff, brilliantly conceived and wondrously realized.
Prom Mom by Laura Lippman
Laura Lippman’s latest Prom Mom is one of those slice-of-life stories that provide a true test of a character’s mettle.
The title springs from the moniker given Amber Glass for supposedly killing her baby the night of her senior prom years ago. Putting the true facts aside, the story/legend was that it happened after her bad-boy boyfriend, Joe Simpson, dumped her. When Amber ends up returning home for the second chance she’s long sought, she’s sworn off Simpson who’s now a successful but shady real estate tycoon. That is, until they reunite and Amber finds old love is hard to shake, even when the Hitchcockian tale siphons off a Patricia Highsmith brand of darkness.
It would be too trite to call Prom Mom a morality tale, especially when it’s a terrific character study that presents the flawed Amber, warts and all. We like her because we see ourselves in her foibles and obsessions, learning the hard way that a person’s nature is what it is. Great storytelling that is not to be missed.
The Bitter Past by Bruce Borgos
Bruce Borgos breathes new life into a tired trope with The Bitter Past.
I speak specifically of the taciturn sheriff of a small town who stands alone against evil. In this case that small town is Lincoln County, Nevada and evil comes in the form of the murderer of an FBI agent whose retirement comes to a brutal end. Sheriff Porter Beck’s investigation leads him to a Soviet KGB agent and, of all places, the Manhattan Project. From that point, what first appeared to be a typical Walt Longmire-type tale quickly morphs into an edge-of-your-seat thriller where the pile of secrets is exceeded only by the pile of bodies.
Speaking of old tropes, nothing works better than a hero punching up against all-powerful forces he has no business messing with. But Beck is up to the job and so is Borgos in crafting a wholly satisfying thriller that entertains on every page in spinning a taut, superbly structured tale.
A Stolen Child by Sarah Stewart Taylor
Sarah Stewart Taylor is back with another splendid atmospheric mystery, featuring her fish-out-of-water heroin Maggie D’Arcy, in A Stolen Child.
I say fish-out-of-water because Maggie, a former Long Island homicide detective, is now practicing her tradecraft in Dublin as a “Garda” instead. But the latest case she’s investigating sounds straight out of the Hamptons. An Irish reality TV star has been murdered and her toddler daughter is missing. Suspecting a connection between the two, Maggie finds herself looking beyond what the cameras captured of Jade Elliot’s life and unearths the kind of sordid truths too much for even a tabloid TV show.
This is great mystery writing, packing all the more of a punch thanks to Maggie’s continuing struggles mastering another country’s procedures and norms. A Stolen Child establishes Taylor as a major force to be reckoned with, ready and able to assume the throne currently held by the likes of Lisa Gardner and Lisa Scottoline.
The Long Way Back by Nicole Bart
Nicole Bart’s The Long Way Back is so cutting edge you just may cut yourself while flipping the pages.
That’s because this social media-focused psychological thriller presents the darkest side of a part of our lives we can’t escape no matter how hard we try. In this case, high school senior Eva and her mom Charlie must deal with their life being upended when a scandalous picture of Eva goes viral, turning her, and by connection Charlie, into social media superstars. Then Eva goes missing and Charlie finds herself the prime suspect in a case followed moment by moment by the likes of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
For Charlie the only thing worse than her daughter’s disappearance might be that she didn’t really know her in the first place, a reality at the heart of this seminal thriller that viscerally explores the dangers of what many already consider to be a scourge on society. A tough topic presented to prescient perfection.
Second Shot by Cindy Dees
Former spy-turned-author Cindy Dees has fashioned a dandy of a spy thriller in Second Shot.
This series debut stands out from the get-go, thanks to its hero. Helen Warwick isn’t your typical genre assassin. To begin with, she’s a woman and on top of that she’s 53 years old, neither of which you see very often. Her first adventure rises above the field not for her typically grudging return to service at the bequest of her former employers, but because she finds herself in a war between dueling serial killers. When one of them sets their sights on her, Helen gets to practice her deadly skills anew, her reluctant embrace of that quickly morphing into accepting the person she’s been hiding in the closet with her winter coats.
Second Shot is as daring in its approach as it is flawless in its execution (no pun intended!). Helen is like the retired gunfighter forced to don her guns one last time, only to leave them strapped on once the smoke has cleared. Not to be missed.
Broadway Butterfly by Sara Divello
Speaking of original, Sara Divello has penned a historical mystery extraordinaire in Broadway Butterfly, made all the more incredible by the fact that it’s actually a true story.
The story follows the murder of Broadway real-life femme fatale Dot King in 1923. Though the primary setting might be the Great White Way, fictionalized newspaper reporter Julie Harpman battles those who want to bury the truth, as well as gender bias, in what becomes a valiant quest to find King’s killer. As Divello’s stand-in, Harpman follows a sordid trail that winds its way far beyond the glitz and glamour of Broadway in the 1920’s, unearthing not just a murder but also a conspiracy of epic proportions that stretches to the highest corridors of power.
Reminiscent of E. L. Doctorow’s Ragtime in all the right ways, Broadway Butterfly is peppered with real-life denizens from this era, conjured either from Divello’s investigation, imagination or some combination of the two. It doesn’t matter, since the story is so riveting and relentless in its sharp focus and period-perfect touches. Divello has penned a blisteringly original, instant classic.
Retribution by Wendy Whitman
Last, but certainly not least, Wendy Whitman follows up her great crime thriller Premonition with the equally great Retribution, which picks up pretty much where its prequel leaves off.
That’s unusual for this sub-genre, because it means the book is more continuation than sequel. The “Deer Killer” is once again terrorizing the Connecticut countryside with characters both old and new teaming up to stop him in what amounts to a who’s who of mystery tropes, like the rumpled private investigator and jaded cop worn down by it all. The Deer Killer himself reads like a cross between Hannibal Lecter and John Doe from the film Se7en, in that his approach to his craft is intensely personal. That means to catch him, you have to understand him, which comes with its own costs as Will Graham famously learned in Thomas Harris’ seismic quake of a book Red Dragon.
Whitman isn’t quite that polished but, then, what writer is? And in Retribution she has penned a tale that’s equal parts crack procedural and terrifying descent into hellish evil. A book best read in a single setting with the lights on and curtains drawn.
