Pendergast: The Beginning by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
Imagine meeting Sherlock Holmes as a young man starting out on his career. That’s the magic of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child’s masterful Pendergast: The Beginning, in which we meet the brilliant, seminal FBI agent when he first joins the Bureau.
The exceptional nature of this origin story/prequel lies in watching Pendergast at his most raw, impulsive and unrestrained. The qualities that help define his genius in the twenty mystery-thrillers depicting him as an older, more seasoned agent are on full display. So are his jaded and sometimes broken aspects, as evidenced by his getting suspended from the Bureau before even flashing his badge. Not that he cares, because a serial killer at large in Mississippi has captured his fancy. And Pendergast heads there with his reluctant senior partner in tow. The resulting investigation turns out to be a foray into Southern noir, kind of Flannery O’Connor gone to hell, as the rookie FBI agent destined to become a legend finds himself up against a bayou version of Hannibal Lecter.
At its best, which is pretty much all the time, Pendergast: The Beginning reminded me of the fantastic first season of HBO’s True Detective. The third-person narrative crackles with an old-school ambience reminiscent of classic detective tales and series of the past. Pitch perfect storytelling wrapped up in a blood-soaked bow.
Cold Zero by Brad Thor and Ward Larsen
Speaking of great storytelling, Brad Thor teams up with Ward Larsen for Cold Zero, what we can hope will be the first in a series that beautifully blends both writers’ strengths into a seamless and savory thriller you won’t want to miss.
Larsen puts his fighter and commercial pilot background to great use, in combination with Thor’s typically relentless pacing, when a Boeing 777 vanishes from radar over the North Pole. But that’s just the setup. The real story is about what’s on board besides passengers and their baggage, specifically a device that can tilt the balance of world power in favor of whoever possesses it. It’s no Spoiler Alert to suggest the crash may have been the result of sabotage, meaning there’s no shortage of villains coming after CIA agent Kerri Sheridan and Larson’s doppelganger in former fighter pilot Brett Sharpe. Not only do our heroes have to survive the frozen wilderness, they also have to keep what they recovered from the wreckage from falling into enemy hands.
At heart, Cold Zero reads like an aircraft version of the Clive Cussler classic Raise the Titanic which also featured a secret Hitchockian MacGuffin on board. The debut for this duet is the very definition of a one-sitting read. A sizzling, scintillating page-turner.
Jigsaw by Jonathan Kellerman
Jonathan Kellerman has written forty books featuring child psychologist Alex Delaware and his police partner Milo Sturgis over forty years. But he’s showing no signs of slowing down, as evidenced by his forty-first effort, Jigsaw.
This time out, Delaware and Sturgis find disturbing links between a pair of murders that, it turns out, Sturgis has a personal stake in. This aptly titled tale follows our stalwart team as they try to fit all the pieces together, the puzzle becoming more dangerous and deadly with each one that falls into place. Nothing’s more fun in a crime thriller than sorting through the morass of two random cases, especially murder, that are intrinsically connected. Unlike too many mysteries, Delaware and Sturgis are always a step ahead of us, potentially at their own peril.
Coming in lean and mean at only 256 pages, Jigsaw is a throwback to Los Angeles-based crime noir novels by the likes of Raymond Chandler, James Ellroy, and Ross Macdonald, though Kellerman’s prose is smooth as opposed to staccato. He’s at his very best here, making his latest a must-read for mystery fans.
Blade by Wendy Walker
Wendy Walker’s Blade is one of those rare, perfectly timed releases that’s also a great read and terrific mystery. And the perfect timing lies in the fact that its February publication date coincides with the start of the 2026 Winter Olympics.
The hero of Blade, you see, just happens to be a former Olympics-hopeful figure skater forced to abandon her dream. Good things Ana Robbins found another in protecting the rights of minors in her sterlingly successful law practice. Then the past comes calling when the coach who nearly got to the Olympic medal podium is murdered and Ana ends up defending the accused female skater who was her a whole bunch of years ago. The book then becomes a quest not only for justice for her client, but also the terrible truths buried in Ana’s own past.
“The past isn’t dead,” William Faulkner. “It’s not even past.” Walker would seem to agree, having fashioned a wondrously structured tale in which the lines between the past and the present become blurred to the point of becoming almost unrecognizable. The blistering and bracing Blade, double meaning and all, resonates on an emotional level conjured by the likes of Lisa Scottoline, Harlan Coben, and James Lee Burke, the kind of tale that makes us think as well as feel. Extraordinary in all respects.
Good Intentions by Marisa Walz
This column’s psychological thriller of choice is Marisa Walz’s Good Intentions, a masterwork of storytelling that keeps us guessing the whole way.
Cady makes her living as an event planner for the uber rich where weddings can cost a cool million. Hers didn’t cost nearly that much but she’s married to her first love and has more work, thanks to the social circles in which she moves, than she can handle. Things couldn’t be better until a tragic accident claims the life of her identical twin sister Dana. In the emergency room, moments after suffering that tragedy, Cady meets a total stranger who just suffered her own with the death of her child. Something drives her to help the woman. Whether it’s a distraction, search for purpose, or something else, Cady ends up opening a Pandora’s box of trouble that ends up landing too close to home.
The first-person prose cackles with the same cadence in which Cady thinks and reacts, lending perfect perspective to a version of events we want to fully believe but aren’t sure we can. Identical twin stories are nothing new (Thomas Tryon’s The Other being my personal favorite), but the focus here is the mystery and obsession that unfolds in the aftermath of Dana’s death, even as Cady’s life frays at the seams.
Adrift by Will Dean
Adrift by Will Dean is a tough book to classify. It’s part family-dynamic thriller in the spirit of Defending Jacob from William Landay but there’s also an undercurrent of rippling madness that reminded me of Paul Theroux’s The Mosquito Coast. The good news is that it manages to strike this balance of styles and tropes exceedingly well.
Writers Peggy and Drew have just moved with their fourteen-year-old son to a canal boat, of all things, off the English coast. Turns out their unique and kind of Bohemian lifestyle masks a deep and furtive unsettledness. The couple’s son Samson boasts the perfect name for the bullied teen that he is. And Drew’s rugged machismo is a mask for the deep insecurities that surface when Peggy’s career zooms past his. Drew reacts by moving the family’s house boat further and further away from shore, but not from himself, turning the family adrift in a storm of descension and tragedy that would make Joseph Conrad proud.
Call Adrift this column’s family-in crisis tale and it’s a humdinger at that, Eugene O’Neill’s A Long Day’s Journey into Night set against a thriller milieu. The multiple shifting viewpoints lend a cinematic sense to an intensely impassioned story set against the backdrop of a family’s ultimate unraveling.
