You’ll Be Sorry by Lisa Gardner
Lisa Gardner goes gothic with her latest, You’ll Be Sorry, to spectacularly chilling results.
For newlyweds Theo and Raquel Collins, happily-ever-after has already been ruled out, thanks to a tragedy that sends them to bucolic New Hampshire in search of escape, a fresh start, and tranquility in a palatial home nestled in the White Mountains. Unfortunately, the majestic view belies their new residence’s sordid past marked by murder, which rears its ugly head again when a skeleton is discovered buried on the property. The local police chief and lifelong resident Amanda Grady grew up in the shadow of the sprawling structure and fears the discovery might be a harbinger for more murders, now that whatever evil lurks within has been “reawakened.”
You’ll Be Sorry isn’t a spook fest necessarily, so much as shivery psychological thriller of rare depth and aplomb that probes the dark side of small-town Americana in all its foibles. Not since Stephen King’s classic The Shining has malevolence reared its ugly head in the brick and mortar around it more effectively, as we come to wonder whether the Collins’ new home itself is responsible for the eerie presence that has resurfaced. Gothic overtones aside, this is storytelling of the highest order.
The Unknown by Riley Sager
Riley Sager sets his latest stunner of a tale, The Unknown, in neighboring Vermont, only the supernatural elements are on more prominent display front and center.
Surrounded by a tranquil lake, the island of New Avalon is the very embodiment of New England charm and tradition. At least, that’s what the cast that’s come to research a film based on a century-old unsolved murder mystery is told. The cast includes typically struggling actress Marin Keane for whom the film represents her big break. That is, if she manages to survive the supernatural forces that have returned after their long slumber. Before you can say “Boo!”, things begin to go bump in the night, roiling the cast which finds itself stranded on the island, setting the stage for the unseen evil to claim a new spate of victims with Marin ably filling the horror trope role of Final Girl.
The Unknown is a gothic ghost story with all the trimmings. A kind of Henry James’ A Turn of the Screw meets the Agatha Christie classic And Then There Were None for our tech-obsessed culture. Sager is always good but he surpasses even himself here in fashioning a tale where the secrets of the past spill blood at every turn. Brilliant in every respect.
Read BookTrib’s full review here.
The Shadow Friends by Tess Gerritsen
The monsters in Tess Gerritsen’s superb The Shadow Friends, the third in her Martini Club series, are all human but equally menacing.
The focus this time out, at least at the outset, falls on lead Maggie Bird’s friend Ingrid Slocum, when a global affairs conference comes to the town of Purity, Maine where Maggie and company have tried futilely to settle into retirement from the spy game. The murder of a Russian defector in the midst of the conference throws Ingrid into a tailspin, thanks to strong echoes of a past assignment gone wrong. Then she disappears, forcing Maggie to set down her stem glass and return to the deadly game she swore off yet again to confront foes she knows all too well.
The notion of a cabal of former CIA elites setting up their own private retirement community is pure gold, especially since the members of the Martini Club are never able to retire. The Shadow Friends is a brilliant addition to the series that confronts us with how hard people try to run from their natures, only to have them inevitably catch up. Certain to be devoured by all hardcore thriller fans and not to be missed.
Read BookTrib’s full review here.
The Oxford Guide to Scandal and Lies by Kate Westbury
Kate Westbury whisks us back to the Cold War era of the 1950’s, championed by the likes of John le Carré and Len Deighton, in The Oxford Guide to Scandal and Lies, a sumptuous old-school, cerebral spy tale.
The title is appropriate, given the setting is Oxford University of 1951. That’s where we first meet our dual protagonists, students Ginerva Bishop and Sidney Braithwaite. Ginerva’s trying to escape her mother’s shadow while Sidney just wants to escape period from the trauma of war. Fortunately, or unfortunately, for them, they’ve drawn the attention of MI5, the British version of the CIA. It seems there’s a high-level Soviet spy imbedded in the Oxford community and the spy agency needs that spy’s pipeline closed. The fun lies not only in watching Ginerva and Sidney smoke out the culprit, but also in their unique, at times tempestuous, relationship, proving that sometimes oil and water do mix.
I can’t remember the last time I read a Cold War thriller with this level of sophistication and pitch perfect plotting. Just don’t go into it expecting a Brad Thor, Brad Taylor or Vince Flynn action clone or James Bond wannabe. The Oxford Guide to Scandal and Lies stitches its own vibrant tapestry with rich strands tightly woven into a magnificent mosaic.
Beyond Honor by K.B. Brodsky
Which brings me to Beyond Honor, K.B. Brodsky’s brilliant debut which does reflect the action-reliant sensibilities of the two Brads and Vince Flynn (Don Bentley these days), but with plenty of cerebral angst added for good measure.
In many ways, covert ops specialist Kevin Rhoads is the typical burnt-out, jaded contemporary gunfighter, the kind of man, in other words, you don’t want to piss off. And that’s exactly what happens when Rhoads is enlisted on a dangerous extraction mission in Siberia to rescue an American operative linked to a massive conspiracy stateside at the hands of the Russian government. Suffice it to say that’s just Rhoads’ first stop on a winding, global quest that may be finally help him to his tortured past to rest.
Actually, K.B. Brodsky, is Bill and Karen Brodsky, a husband and wife writing team. And with Beyond Honor the couple wields a surprisingly deft hand in crafting a stellar exploration of one man’s journey into his own personal, Joseph Conrad-esque heart of darkness. The best international thriller I’ve read this year.
Brimstone Hollow by Archer Sullivan
Rural crime noir has become quite the thing these days, culling its sense of dread from dreary skies and dormant smokestacks. Archer Sullivan’s Brimstone Hollow makes for a superb entry in this growing subgenre, set in the hills and foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.
Once again, private detective Annie Gore is our guide through the drabness. Born and raised in the area, Annie couldn’t resist returning to her roots after a stellar career as an Air Force special investigator. Home, it turns out, hasn’t changed much at all, as she takes on a case involving a snake-handling preacher who perished from a fatal attack by his slithery ward. All seems cut and dried, until Annie’s digging reveals long-kept secrets in the insular community to be at the root of the murder, secrets that tear opens wounds left by her own past.
The first person, present tense, staccato prose is the perfect complement for the raffish denizens of the world Annie knows all too well, just as Sullivan does as a ninth generation Appalachian who’s become a kind of backwoods Don Winslow. That helps make Brimstone Hollow simmer to a slow boil in spectacular fashion, even as Annie shows signs of overheating herself.
Three Hitmen and a Baby by Rob Hart
Rob Hart once again channels his inner Donald Westlake in Three Hitmen and a Baby, striking the perfect tone in his latest thriller to feature Assassins Anonymous.
The members of the recovery group meet weekly in an attempt to purge themselves of the demons left by their murderous pasts. But that never seems to be enough to keep those pasts from resurfacing, which happens again here when three members of the group volunteer to watch a fourth’s baby while she attends to pressing personal matters. What could go wrong? Plenty, as it turns out, leaving the intrepid trio to balance caring for a feverish infant at the same time the former lives they can’t escape heat up.
In lesser hands, Three Hitmen and a Baby may have lost itself in the levity of its parodic premise. But Hart has a seasoned and sure grip that makes his latest a riveting and relentless, full-bore thriller even as it explores the notions of meaning, family, and belonging. There’s been a lot of attention lately being paid to declining rates of American readership. The remedy for that is more books as fun as this one.
For Services Rendered by Will Thomas
Historical thrillers aren’t for everyone, but if you’re an aficionado of them, look no further than Will Thomas’ For Services Rendered, set in 1896 London, for your next great read.
Series stalwart Cyrus Barker learns his foremost adversary Sebastian Nightwine, like Moriarty to Sherlock Holmes, is back, the reports of his death having been greatly exaggerated. And he’s targeting Barker and everyone close to him. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Barker and his private detective partner Thomas Llewellyn find themselves embroiled in Chinese politics when they’re retained to find an escaped dissident against a cavalcade of resistance from both British and Chinese officials who can’t allow what he knows to get out.
Thomas is remarkable in his ability to conjure late-Victorian England in period perfect form. Not since David Morrell’s brilliant Thomas De Quincey trilogy has a thriller writer shown such a mastery of a long-gone culture and society. He is every bit the equal of Ken Follett in that respect and For Services Rendered is a masterpiece of form and function.
