Hope Rises by David Baldacci
David Baldacci has created so many heroes over his extraordinary career that it can be difficult to keep track. That’s a good thing, especially when he brings back a recent favorite like Walter Nash in the sensational Hope Rises.
Except after the events of Nash Falls, Nash has rechristened himself Dillon Hope in the, well, “hope” of getting a fresh start on life. The problem is that his new persona brings with it a host of new skills ingrained in the wake of the shattering events depicted in his debut appearance. Nash, now Hope, has learned from his old mistakes, which means he’s fully prepared to make some new ones, primarily vengeance against Victoria Steers, who upended his life in the first place. Since this is a Baldacci book, you know things are never that simple and, sure enough, Hope ends up going down new, equally violent roads ruled by even greater villains.
Hope Rises is a structural marvel, a scintillating blend of form and function from America’s greatest storyteller. The only thing more impressive than the number of Baldacci’s protagonists is how unique each one is. But the angst-riddled Dillon Hope rises above the rest for the tortured uncertainty that shadows every move he makes.
Ally Condie by The Girls Trip
Ally Condie’s The Girls Trip has one of those irresistibly original premises that often fail to live up to their promise. But that’s not the case at all in this riveting and relentless psychological thriller that adds pitch-perfect pacing to the mix.
Hope, Ash and Caro are members of an online book club who have never met in person. But they get along so fabulously in their regular review meetings, they decide to give getting together a try, meeting up at a posh resort in Eden National Park. All carry baggage other than their suitcases, so a girls-only trip seems just what all of them need. That is, until one of them disappears, leaving the other two with no shortage of suspects to weed through, including each other, in the great sprawl of the park.
That sprawl forms the perfect complement to the cramped computer screens that defined their relationship for two years. Condie offers shrewd social commentary about our disconnected society, a Global Village, to paraphrase the great Marshall McLuhan, which isn’t a village at all. That makes the beautifully framed mystery at the heart of The Girls Trip all the more enticing and makes this a must-read.
The Council by Matthew Betley
No Thrill List column would be complete without an “A” list action tale, and this month’s comes from the ever-reliable Matthew Betley. The Council doesn’t serve up a lot we haven’t seen before, but its generous and sumptuous portions make this a can’t-miss thriller.
Our hero is Miami lawyer Owen Pierce, who happens to moonlight as an assassin for the shadowy organization of the title. Pierce and his crack team are only assigned the toughest and most vital of missions, kind of like a private version of SEAL Team 6. It’s only a matter of time, of course, before something goes wrong. In this case, that’s an assignment to take down an especially heinous cartel leader. When the job goes south, though, Pierce and company find themselves abandoned, hunted by the very Council they are beholden to for running afoul of the organization’s true nefarious purposes.
Betley belongs in the same conversation as Brad Thor and Vince Flynn, with Pearce every bit the equal of Scot Harvath and Mitch Rapp. And he has outdone himself with The Council, thanks to the perfect blend of character and action that makes this the first great beach read of the season.
Hollywood Payback by Jon Lindstrom
I’m a sucker for Hollywood crime novels, which explains why Jordan Harper’s Everybody Knows was my favorite book of 2023. No mystery-thriller has come around since that holds a candle to that one, until the release of Jon Lindstrom’s terrific Hollywood Payback.
Jake Ferguson was one of those actors with a ton of potential on the cusp of stardom who never quite crossed over. Dissolving into drugs, booze and crime puts him in the all-too-real role of Folsom Prison inmate for a stretch, after which he returns to Hollywood with a commitment to stay clean and start fresh, even if it’s not in front of the camera. He’s following that path until his past catches up with him when he’s framed for a murder he didn’t commit. His only chance to avoid prison, for life this time, is to become the hero of his own story, sorting through a morass of low-lifes, pretenders, and power players to get to the truth.
A successful actor himself, Lindstrom knows first-hand of the superficial, cutthroat world he’s writing about. This is Hollywood noir of the highest level, as if Nathaniel West (The Day of the Locust) was reborn as a crime novelist. Told in splendid first-person staccato prose, Hollywood Payback finds light in the darkness of decadence through the fading glitz and glamor Jake once longed for.
Yours Always by Corinne Sullivan
Corinne Sullivan’s Yours Always mines the world of dating apps and strikes gold in this beautifully told psychological thriller.
Talia Danvers is working as an engineer for one of the big dating apps when she reunites with former lover Townsend Fuller, who left Talia for a woman he was seeing on the side. The fact that he’s the lead suspect in that woman’s disappearance doesn’t stop Talia from testing the waters. Then she starts getting strange text messages from the missing woman, forewarning her about what might be coming. Who’s really sending those messages, and is she about to become Fuller’s next victim?
Sullivan proves herself to be a master of literary sleight-of-hand, spicing Yours Always with effervescent energy that keeps us turning the pages faster and faster as the twists and surprises continue to pile up, the scathing social commentary just the icing on the cake.
Double Shadow by Andrew Luddington
Andrew Luddington adds a second book to his already speculative, seminal series with Double Shadow, following on the heels of last year’s Splinter Effect and once again featuring Rabbit Ward.
Ward is an archaeologist who can find virtually any historical artifact because he has access to a time machine that lets him go straight to the source. Interestingly enough, he’s not alone. At least two other time machines are out there, one of them used by a female counterpart named Helen, who’s in it more for the money and, in this case, history’s first ever serial killer who’s not nearly as old as he looks, since he too has amassed a ton of frequent flyer miles jetting around the past. When he targets Helen, Ward must whisk himself to ancient times to bring something back alive this time.
Luddington continues to audition to be the H. G. Wells of this generation and is doing so brilliantly. Like Wells, he gives us just enough fact to keep us believing in the fiction, penning a book that would make Michael Crichton proud, and every bit as good as the best from Doug Preston and James Rollins.
Payback by Elizabeth Rose Quinn
Elizabeth Rose Quinn serves up the most original mystery of the year so far in Payback, largely because of the setting and unique set of characters.
That setting is a minimum security prison, and those characters are inmates. The initial victim, meanwhile, is an abusive guard who gets a big taste of his own medicine. Throw in a storm and a power failure, and we’ve got all the ingredients of the Agatha Christie classic And Then There Were None. But the real treat here is the cast of both suspects and additional victims culled from the kind of “Pay to Stay” white collar criminals who’ve gamed the system every step of the way. Let’s see how many are still alive when a new year dawns at midnight amid a killer New Year’s Eve party (pun intended!) they’re throwing.
Payback is great fun from first page to last, as Quinn displays a light touch consistent with the prevailing mystery pop culture tone in shows like Netflix’s Knives Out and Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building. Here’s hoping the surviving inmates get their sentences extended because I can’t wait for the sequel.
Liar’s Creek by Matt Goldman
Bad things afoot in bucolic, rural small towns have become quite the thing in mystery-thrillers these days, in stark contrast to gritty urban noir, where the genre was pretty much born. The thing is, we quickly learn in Matt Goldman’s Liar’s Creek, small towns can be even darker places.
Clay Hawkins learns that the hard way too, when he returns to his hometown of Riverwood, Minnesota, after a couple decades away, where his father, the former sheriff, doesn’t exactly welcome him with open arms. Then his uncle, with whom he’s on much better terms, disappears even as his twelve-year-old son proves less than enamored with small-town life, especially when it appears the whole family might be targets to keep whatever secrets Riverwood is holding from being revealed. Hawkins isn’t the type to sit back and wait for bad things to happen, which makes him the perfect hero for a town where the things that go bump in the night are flesh and blood.
Goldman’s sparse, staccato, present-tense prose is like a masterclass in minimalism and how to use language as a storytelling tool. Liar’s Creek reads like the best of John Hart, Greg Isles and Harlan Coben. A brooding, bracing tale that gives its characters no quarter or respite amid the constant tension.
