Choke Point by Brad Thor
Choke Point, featuring our old friend Scot Harvath, continues Brad Thor’s run of wondrously conceived thrillers carried out to near perfection.
This time out, we’re treated to another catastrophic crisis playing out on the world stage, as well as behind the curtain. The setting is Bangkok where Harvath is dispatched after a series of bombings targeting Americans living there. That’s plenty for a book like this to cut its teeth on in itself, but Harvath uncovers that the root of the attacks lies in the nastiest of geo-politics and the battle for global hegemony being waged by China. Harvath, thankfully, is just as comfortable playing the role of subtle political performer as he is dispensing brute force, and he gets ample opportunity to display both here.
Several books back, Thor departed cookie-cutter type tales in favor of the broadly ambitious style that defines his books today. He has become a thinking man’s thriller writer, without sacrificing pacing or suspense. This new approach suits Harvath particularly well, allowing him to go rogue as an assignment which helps make Choke Point a spy thriller extraordinaire that is not to be missed.
Ironwood by Michael Connelly
Michael Connelly is one of a handful of “franchise” authors with the Midas touch, since any book he touches with his talent turns to gold. That’s on keep display in Ironwood, an exceptional mystery-thriller in all respects, even though neither Mickey Haller nor Harry Bosch is anywhere to be found.
But the stalwart Renee Ballard is, teaming for the second time with Detective Sergeant “Stil” Stilwell (after Nightshade) in the bucolic setting of Catalina Island which belies a seedy underbelly. This time that underbelly reveals itself in a drug drop gone wrong, when a surveillance operation dissolves into a gun fight on a mountaintop airstrip. Stilwell ends up on leave, which doesn’t stop him from continuing his investigation, which brings him to Los Angeles county and Renee Ballard, who’s working a cold case that’s intrinsically connected. The search for truth, not surprisingly, runs both of them afoul of powerful crime lords as well as their own superiors.
Connelly is the undisputed master of the contemporary police procedural, peppering Ironwood with political as well as personal foibles. And it’s fascinating to watch Ballard’s interactions with a lesser known character, after joining forces with Harry so many times. The result is pitch-perfect storytelling, with echoes of No Country for Old Men. Following down the same path as Connelly’s better-known series, his Catalina-based books may end up leaving bigger tracks, as his brand continues to flourish.
Restless Bones by Gillian French
Forensic fingerprint analyst Shaw Connelly has a new case to help solve in Gillian French’s relentless and riveting Restless Bones.
It’s bad enough Shaw and her family are still reeling from the arrest of her sister’s killer. But when she uncovers a link between her latest case and that same killer, it’s all Shaw can do to avoid looking for a new job. Anders Jensen plays mind games the way the rest of us play cards or Monopoly. The problem is he’ll only help the police find the other victims he’s claimed, if his communication is directly through Shaw. Before you can say Silence of the Lambs, we find ourselves following the kind of cat-and-mouse game that would make Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling proud.
With Restless Bones, French stakes her claim to the hallowed ground of Lisa Scottoline, Lisa Gardner and Karen Slaughter. She draws Shaw with exquisitely detailed brush strokes that leave all the flaws and lines exposed. The better for us to remain restless through a rapid read of this scintillating psychological thriller.
The Break-Up Retreat by Camilla Sten
Camilla Sten follows up The Bachelorette Party, appropriately enough, with The Break-Up Retreat, which is every bit as solid.
Imagine a cure, at least a treatment, for the trauma that follows a difficult break-up. Journalist Isobel Anderssen is imagining just that when she checks into Sweden’s Himlafall Clinic. Of course, she’s not expecting the place to be like the Hotel California, where you may never be able to leave. Turns out several would-be guests have never been heard from again and Isobel might well be next, once her investigation turns up the terrible truths behind the clinic’s promise to patients.
At its core, The Break-Up Retreat is a splendid exploration of the extent people will go to escape their pain. Sten’s quasi-medical thriller has echoes of Robin Cook and the late great Michael Palmer. But it’s bold and bracing enough to stitch its own name into the literary tapestry.
The Midas Touch by Gary Grossman
I’ve always enjoyed Gary Grossman’s work, even before he joined forces with the creators of the National Treasure franchise to pen The Midas Touch to fashion reading entertainment gold.
What if led really can be turned into gold? That’s the premise that launches the book, while only hinting at the stakes involved. Our hero is Brady Donovan, culled from the CIA’s cryptology department and thrust into the maelstrom in place of the tired, professional operative who normally gets that job. His new assignment whisks Donovan across the globe, coming more and more to grips with the potential of an international oligarchical army achieving global hegemony. Know anybody who’d like to see Elon Musk running the world? That’s pretty much what Donovan is tasked with stopping.
The Midas Touch is as much fun as any of the National Treasure films, though Brady Donovan is more likely to be played by a rumpled character actor than Nicolas Cage. And Grossman and company forgo the films’ light touch in favor of the kind of pacing and plotting that would make the likes of James Rollins, Steve Berry and Doug Preston proud. The perfect summer read.
A Novel Crime by Deborah Levison
Okay, I admit it. I love books about writers, because they’re normally portrayed as so flawed and broken that I feel better about myself. Deborah Levison’s assuredly nuanced A Novel Crime is the latest entry in this sub-genre and a definite cut above (no pun intended!) the rest.
Despite a series of harsh setbacks, both personal and professional, Marcy Jo Codburn isn’t about to give up her dream of waking up one morning to find herself a successful writer. Growing increasing desperate, Marcy seizes an opportunity to blackmail a bestselling author into co-writing a book with her. What follows, from dealing with the challenges of creation to the pratfalls of publishing, becomes a zesty mind snack for those of us familiar with the minutia. It’s only natural to enjoy seeing others wallowing in the same misery, right? But that only begins to hint at the wild turn of events the book takes, almost as if the its real co-author was Carl Hiaasen.
A Novel Crime reminded me of a lighter take on the world of literary doppelgangers than Stephen King’s brilliant The Dark Half and not quite as brilliant Secret Window, Secret Garden. And here’s the best thing: you don’t have to be a writer to appreciate its tonal brilliance and pacing fit for a day at the beach.
The Wild Truth by Carine McCandless
Once in a while, I like to close the Thrill List with mention of a little-known gem or book I somehow missed when it first appeared. The latter is the case this month with Carine McCandless’ The Wild Truth, a kind of companion piece to Jon Krakauer’s “Into the Wild,” and just as beautifully crafted.
Carine, some know, is the younger sister of Christopher McCandless, the young adventurer and free spirit whose exploits and ultimately tragic journey Krakauer covers in seminally brilliant fashion, leaving only one question unanswered: What drove this modern day mix of Huck Finn and Holden Caulfield to abandon society and steer down a road that ultimately led to his death? Carine answers that question in exquisitely painful fashion, bringing her family’s skeletons from the closet into the light. Tolstoy opens Anna Karenina with the classic line “Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” and the unhappiness that defined the McCandless household is what ultimately drove Chris into the wild.
Carine bears her soul in fashioning this raw, unflinching, uncompromising treatise on the destruction our own loved ones can wreak on our lives. It’s a story where the book’s lone hero barely appears, having had the courage to disassociate himself from the whole mess and the culture of the 1980’s that helped spawn it. The Wild Truth is neither prequel nor sequel, but somewhere in between. It seeks not to glorify Chris’s almost mythic frontier ethos, culled from the birth of American literature itself, but to help us understand it. His was surely a cautionary tale, but the yellow lights started flashing long before he headed up Alaska’s Stampede Trail to meet his fate.
