The Crossroads by C.J. Box
C.J. Box changes things up to spectacular results in his latest Joe Pickett extravaganza, The Crossroads. Or, should I say, Marybeth Pickett extravaganza.
Marybeth, series aficionados know, is Joe’s loyal, stiff-spined wife. And, this time out, she takes center stage, along with the couple’s daughters, when an ambush puts America’s favorite game warden in the hospital in critical condition. While Joe fights for his life, mother and daughters fight to find out who put a bullet in his head. Three sordid families fill out the usual suspects, one for each daughter, but Joe’s made more than his share of enemies over the years. The result is a top-of-the-line mystery on top of an even better character study as those who’ve hovered mostly in the background for twenty-plus books take center stage.
Ian Fleming took a similar risk with his ninth James Bond novel The Spy Who Loved Me, featuring a female narrator instead of Bond himself, for the first and only time with mixed results. Not the case here. The Crossroads is a stunning success of form and function painted on an entirely different tapestry than the great wide open we’re used to. Instead, the canvas shifts inward, effectively claustrophobic as the Pickett family members realize they too are prisoners of their own fates.
Bloodlust by Sandra Brown
Speaking of writers stretching their wings, Sandra Brown does just that in Bloodlust with gusto and aplomb, her latest etched across a noirish tableau featuring characters forever mired in moral quicksand.
The man guiding us through the darkness is Detective Mitch Haskell whose wife was murdered by a pair of killers who take their work very seriously indeed. Mitch is understandably obsessed with either bringing the killers to justice, or dispensing his own, a psychological quagmire that brings him to the office of sympathetic therapist Dylan Reede who’s experienced her own share of tragedy. Misery does indeed love company, which leaves both doctor and patient straddling an uneasy line between ethics and justice, as the two find themselves with more in common than they initially realized.
Brown spreads just enough light to make her foray into society’s dark underbelly, along with the crass nobility championed by the likes of Elmore Leonard and brought to life on the screen by Quentin Tarantino, a resounding success. Bloodlust is a blistering and bracing tale as emotionally resonant as it is relentlessly riveting. Brown has never been better and this might be her best book yet, which is really saying something.
The Devil’s Bible by Steve Berry
In The Devil’s Bible we get reacquainted with not one, but two old friends. Author Steve Berry and his stalwart series hero Cotton Malone, who’s back after a one-book hiatus to smashing results, both literally and figuratively.
This time out the master of historical McGuffins serves up a manuscript that lends the book its title. What secrets does the ancient tome hold and why is everyone after it? No one is better suited to answer those questions than Malone, who specializes in sorting through such a mysterious morass. He’s joined again by Cassiopeia Vitt in blazing an international trail of deception and duplicitousness that reads like a blend of Alistair McClean for action and the great Helen MacNnnis for intrigue.
The Devil’s Bible marks the twentieth series entry for Berry and Malone and both have never been better. Berry’s consistency is exceeded only by his storytelling mastery where the pieces always fit where they’re supposed to. He’s a true maestro of words, waving a well-worn baton to fashion another masterpiece of suspense that beats Dan Brown six ways to Sunday.
Red Empire by Jonathan Maberry
Speaking of word maestros, look no further than Jonathan Maberry when it comes to serving up distinct melodies with smashing crescendos. Fresh off another seminal effort in his Necro Tec series, Maberry is back with the latest Rogue Team entry, Red Empire.
That, of course, means we get to welcome Joe Ledger and team back to the page, in this case on the trail of a bubonic plague variant that gives a whole new meaning to the term Black Death in its potential to devastate the world. Joe’s old enemy the Red Empire appears to be behind the plot rooted in its continued desire to see the world burn. Good thing he and Rogue Team are there to put out the fire, even as Joe finds himself on a separate trail in pursuit of the polar opposite of the bioengineered black death that may hold the only means to stop it.
Maberry has proven himself a whiz at both sci-fi dominated books as well as thrillers with sci-fi elements. The latter is the case here, as the action takes center stage in a ticking clock tale with the fate of the world hanging in the balance. Red Empire, bleeds spectacular pulp reading entertainment from the first page to last, transfused by Joe’s pitch-perfect, first-person narrative voice. Terrific in all respects.
The Survivor by Andrew Reid
I got hooked on Andrew Reid’s smashing debut The Survivor from the first page and didn’t stop reading until I flipped the last one. And I went in skeptical, since I thought John Godey has already written the definitive subway thriller in The Taking of Pelham One Two Three. Alas, I was wrong.
Ben Cross has a new job and a new life in New York City. He’s also keeping some secrets tucked away behind a door he thought only he had the key to. But that’s only part of his problems when he finds himself out of a job almost before he actually started it. You think that’s bad? Wait until Ben receives the kind of text message that makes him long for analogue days of old, as he heads home on the subway. One person is dead and a fellow passenger follows right around the train’s first stop. Somebody, it seems, already has a new job for Ben, one owed to those secrets he’s been keeping.
Alfred Hitchcock called his films like Rope, Lifeboat and Rear Window chamber pictures because they boasted pretty much a single setting. These days, we’re more apt to call “The Survivor” “Die Hard” on a subway or, how about simply the best pure thriller of the year so far. Reid has hit a home run in his first trip to the plate with the promise of grand slams in his future.
A Place to Die For by A.M. Strong and Sonya Sargent
Not since Ira Levin brought us inside the Bramford in his classic Rosemary’s Baby has an apartment building held the kind of foreboding menace waiting for us in A.M. Strong and Sonya Sargent’s A Place to Die For, a title we should take quite literally.
The setting moves from New York to Boston and the equally gothic Glendale, a co-op this time. Young, soon-to-be married Jordan and Sam can’t believe their luck when the building board approves their application, which places this squarely in the “Be careful what you wish for” sub-genres of thrillers. Spending long hours alone in her new digs, a la Rosemary, Jordan begins to suspect something is definitely awry. From a mysteriously empty first floor apartment to the haunting cries of a baby coming from somewhere, she fears either she’s either suffering from a severe case of the claustrophobic crazies, or something much worse is afoot. And I’m not giving anything away when I tell you the latter turns out to be the case.
A Place to Die For is a creep-fest extraordinaire as Jordan embarks on a desperate quest to save both her sanity and life, potentially at the expense of her engagement. Maybe the Glendale is pure evil, like the Overlook Hotel from The Shining. Or maybe the building board is committed to an entirely different agenda than simply getting reelected. A fantastic foray into psychological horror.
The Dark Time by Nick Petrie
Lee Child’s brilliant Jack Reacher series has shown us the only thing that beats the avenging angel hero is the guardian angel hero. Showing up in one place after another to set things right for innocents besieged definitely defines Reacher, but he’s got nothing on Nick Petrie’s Peter Ash besides size. And the reasons why are clearly on display in The Dark Time.
At the behest of his girlfriend June Cassidy, Ash heads to the Pacific Northwest to make sure no harm comes to intrepid investigative journalist Katelyn Thorsen. Since she’s tracking a story about the rise of white nationalists and their ultimate intentions, that promises to be no easy task. These aren’t the most forgiving sorts, especially when someone like Katelyn comes nosing around their business. Ash, hardly a stranger to violence himself, definitely has his work cut out for him.
Watching him go about his business in brutal, no-holds barred fashion is flat-out great fun. Kind of like keeping a countdown of how many bad guys Charles Bronson takes down in his Death Wish movies. Or rooting for Jack Reacher to do the same in the Prime Video show that bears his name. Ash is a character worthy of following that example. His time, you might say, has come and it’s not dark at all. The Dark Time is a sumptuously scintillating mind snack that will leave you hungry for more.
