Strap in for tastes of history, spies, and horror for this month! Expert thriller writer and regular columnist for BookTrib, Jon Land presents his top selections from the genre for July.
Timely thrillers are nothing new for Brad Thor. But in the scintillating Spymaster (Atria) he ups the ante considerably with a tale that’s scarily prescient. Series hero former Navy SEAL Scot Harvath finds himself on a different kind of battlefield when a wave of diplomatic assassinations strikes the globe. The carefully orchestrated plot, of course, has far more fiendish ends than murder in mind. And it’s left to Harvath and company to thwart a World War I conflagration of events leading, this time, to nuclear war. Long a master of action and pacing, Thor continues channeling the likes of John le Carre in crafting a thinking man’s thriller packed with as much brains as brawn, making Spymaster a must-read for summer.
William Martin solidifies his claim as king of the historical thriller in the glittering Bound for Gold (Forge), spiriting us back in time to the days of the California Gold Rush. Boston Yankees James Spencer and Michael Flynn embark on a journey for riches that morphs into a nineteenth century version of The Treasure of Sierra Madre. Flashing to the present, it’s left to Peter Fallon to uncover the truth behind their adventures, a truth somehow connected to a mythical lost river of gold that may not be so mythical after all. Martin displays a deft hand in mastering both timelines and the result is an expansive tale drawn on a bold and bright canvas. Bound for Gold is bound for greatness.
Thriller Award winner Riley Sager’s The Last Time I Lied (Dutton) might just be the perfect summer book, in large part because it’s set, well, at summer camp; specifically, one where murder turns out to be one of the listed activities. Noted artist Emma Davis returns to her childhood haunts of the newly reopened Camp Nightingale where her three best friends vanished as campers years before. That tragedy helped fuel Emma’s rising acclaim as an artist, but her one unfinished landscape remains the truth behind those disappearances. Passing through the gate’s long shuttered gates provides the opportunity to complete that tapestry, Emma hardly expecting her brush to be soaked in blood both old and new. The Last Time I Lied is a stunning triumph of form and function, a book equal parts Donna Tart’s The Secret History and Harlan Coben or Lisa Gardner at their level best. Trust me, I’m telling the truth.
David Bell is back with the stunningly effective Somebody’s Daughter (Berkley), a noirish tale culled from the suburban nightmare world of Lisa Gardner and Harlan Coben as well. Once again, gothic overtones are firmly on display, this time from the moment Michael Frazier’s ex-wife shows upon his doorstep lugging baggage in the form of the dual revelation that he fathered a daughter who has now disappeared. What follows is a kind of thriller version of Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night, as Michael embarks down a road marred by both shattering truths and dubious revelations. Staged on a remarkably sparse stage that belies its emotionally wrought nature, Somebody’s Daughter is reading entertainment of the highest order.
Family dynamics are also firmly on display in Dan Fesperman’s Safe Houses (Knopf), a tale that ably blends issues both big and small. We open in the height of Cold War Berlin with the CIA’s Helen Abell working a mission fraught with risk. Cut to the present where Abell and her husband are both murdered, leaving their daughter Anna Shoat to sort through the morass, both past and present, that involves her estranged brother and family secrets yanked from the shadows. The safe houses of the title become as much metaphor as plot point, and wondrously interconnected at that. The result is a bracing and blistering work that rivals the best of Nelson DeMille with a touch of Jeffrey Archer tossed in for good measure. Superbly crafted and written.
Texas Ranger Sonny Hawke rides a Dodge truck instead of a horse, but you wouldn’t know that from how he handles a particularly nasty blend of Mexican smugglers in Reavis Worthan’s Hawke’s War (Kensington). This elegant thriller that reads like a modern-day western conjures memories of gunfighters of lore, a tradition Hawke proudly holds up while riding the ranges of the Big Bend National Park in Texas. The stalwart Ranger finds himself the victim of a trap, outnumbered and outgunned in classic fashion, as he’s left to rely on his wits as well as his bullets. Good thing he’s a crack shot, just like Wortham who hits the bulls-eye dead center in this tale worthy of both Louis L’Amour and James Lee Burke. One of the best thrillers I’ve read this year, featuring emotional landscapes as sprawling as the physical ones.
Given the title, I first took Deborah Vadas Levison’s The Crate (Wild Blue Press) for a horror story. Turned out I was both wrong . . . and right. That’s because the Holocaust forms the backdrop for this ambitious and bracing true tale about survivors—Levison’s parents—seeking respite from their tortured past by settling in an idyllic lakeside home. They find anything but that in the contents of a mysterious crate, leading them down the road to murder and mayhem. Their obsession with solving the crime lies in vanquishing the demons they couldn’t defeat by slaying others they can. Drawn directly from her family’s own Holocaust experience and what followed, Levison has crafted an emotionally wrenching and riveting tale that bleeds heartfelt emotion on every page.
All of these titles are available for purchase now. We had the pleasure of interviewing Riley Sager on his new novel, The Last Time I Lied. If you want to read more about this novel and his creative process behind it, check out the BookTrib article! We also featured Deborah Vadas Levison on her novel, The Crate, be sure to check out our article on that as well.
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