Mystery | BookTrib.

“The Hierophant Card:” Tarot Reader Plays the Hand She Is Dealt

Truth to tell — I was about to embark on my first cozy mystery. You know, that subgenre of crime fiction in which sex and violence are downplayed or treated lightly, and the crime occurs in a small, intimate community. The detectives are almost always amateurs and are frequently women.…

Jim AlkonMay 19, 2020

Thrillers

Checkmate! “Enemy Queen” Has This Lawyer and Professor in an Unlikely Mess

The two protagonists in Robert Steven Goldstein’s Enemy Queen (SparkPress) are reminiscent of those intelligent and respected pairs in entertainment who bumble their way through dubious decisions and actions. One can only imagine Enemy Queen was as much fun for Goldstein to write as it is for readers to read.…

Jim AlkonMay 12, 2020

Thrillers

“Danger in Plain Sight:” This Unlikely Duo Makes a Formidable Team

As former bartender and smuggler Cash Logan tells it, a scorpion meets a frog on the bank of a stream and asks the frog to carry him across. The frog asks how does he know the scorpion won’t sting him. The scorpion explains that if he stings the frog, he…

Jim AlkonMay 5, 2020

Thrillers

TV Newswoman Pursues Elusive Serial Killer in “The Last Scoop”

Curiosity is the hallmark of any journalist – especially those old-school news hounds working major city metros, where sources are sacred and scoops are the Holy Grail. “Sometimes that curiosity takes you places you wouldn’t normally go,” says Clare Carlson, news director of a major New York TV station who…

Jim AlkonMay 5, 2020

Thrillers

Moral Dilemmas in Search for the Truth About Missing Co-Eds in “The Secrets They Left Behind”

There are periods in life when five years pass like a wave. One day you’re thirty-eight, the next you’re forty-three, and nothing much seems to have changed. The span between age eighteen and twenty-three is not one of those periods. Time has a way of changing speeds. That half-decade, in…

Casey BarrettMay 1, 2020

Thrillers

Assassin’s Mobile Hit List Has Just Been Compromised in “Die Next”

It seems as if phones are mobile catalogs of our entire lives. They contain our banking information, the names and addresses of our friends and family and pictures of everything from our lovable furry animals to screenshots of that recipe we saw on Pinterest. If given access to yours, what…

Chelsea CicconeApril 14, 2020

Thrillers

Detective Emerges From Retirement When Murder Comes to “Diver’s Paradise”

Former detective Roscoe “R” Conklin lives on Bonaire, a tropical island in the southern Caribbean. Now the owner of the YellowRock hotel resort, Conklin’s closest contact with law enforcement should be his police officer girlfriend, Arabella, but after his former partner, Bill Ryberg, and his wife Marybeth are found murdered…

Chelsea CicconeApril 8, 2020

Thrillers

Mystery, Menace and Motherhood in “The Familiar Dark”

Amy Engel’s The Familiar Dark (Dutton) begins in the darkness, in the final moments of the life of Junie Taggert, a twelve-year-old girl murdered alongside her best friend, Izzy, and laid to rest in an abandoned playground. Junie’s single mother, Eve, receives the devastating news from her brother Cal, a…

Nikki ErlickApril 1, 2020

Thrillers

6 Thrillers to Binge While Social Distancing from the World

Harlan Coben’s blistering and bracing The Boy from the Woods (Grand Central) is a hybrid mystery-thriller featuring a unique blend of concepts and themes. Starkly original, in fact. Our hero is Wilde, who as a boy was (almost) quite literally raised by wolves — at least, in the same wild…

Jon LandMarch 27, 2020

Thrillers

“A Child Lost” in 1930s Chicago Grips Professional Sleuthing Family

Michelle Cox's Henrietta and Inspector Howard series is a delightful mix of historical fiction and intrigue with a bit of saucy lovemaking tossed in. In A Child Lost (She Writes Press), the fifth book, she adds spooky. Right away, we get swept into the story. We meet little Anna, the…

Sherri DaleyMarch 23, 2020

Thrillers

Peter Swanson’s Latest Thriller Rediscovers the “Eight Perfect Murders” in Mystery Fiction

Oh, the guilt of the books we haven’t read. The classics, the bestsellers, the touchstones of a genre … and then there’s that ever-increasing stack of newer releases that you’ll get to, one of these days. You’ll love these books, or at least admire them, but great ones will forever…

Casey BarrettMarch 3, 2020

Book Club Network Thrillers

Labyrinth of Lies, Secrets and Apprehension in “The Other Mrs.”

“There’s something off about the house,” begins Mary Kubica’s spine-chilling The Other Mrs. (Park Row Books). Maybe there’s something off about the novel, too, because it’s unnervingly difficult to put down. Kubica’s meticulous writing draws the reader into a labyrinth of lies, secrets and apprehension, with a more than a…

Judy MorenoFebruary 18, 2020

Thrillers

“The Heartless” Delivers a Police Thriller with Deeper Surprises

If you come to The Heartless (Oceanview) expecting a solid, fast-moving police thriller, you’ll be satisfied. But you’ll also discover much more. David Putnam’s seventh novel about the world of Los Angeles County officer Bruno Johnson involves a hunt for escaped convicts through the meanest streets of Los Angeles. The…

Dennis HetzelFebruary 12, 2020

Thrillers

Haunted Heroine Rushes “Toward the Light” in Debut Thriller

There’s nothing quite like discovering a new, exotic city through the pages of a thriller. Through fast-paced fiction, the sights and sounds and smells of a place come through in technicolor. A city feels so much more, well, thrilling. It beats any guidebook. Bonnar Spring’s beautifully executed first novel Toward…

Casey BarrettJanuary 16, 2020

Thrillers

ITW Spotlight: Corruption, Class and Dangerous Obsession in “Dreamland”

Nancy Bilyeau had always wanted to write a historical novel set in New York City — but she’d already started carving out a niche for herself in the Tudor era. Her first novel, The Crown, became a number-one bestseller on Amazon and launched a brilliant trilogy that continued to garner…

Dawn IusJanuary 16, 2020

Thrillers

Murder Amid the Terrors of Solovetsky in “The Body Outside the Kremlin”

While the little over 400 pages in James L. May’s The Body Outside the Kremlin (Delphinium Books) may not look intimidating, there’s so much there: the isolated emptiness, the cold, the beauty and the violence. It’s a weighty murder mystery that slowly unfolds, in competition with its setting. It takes…

Sherri DaleyJanuary 14, 2020

“The Hierophant Card:” Tarot Reader Plays the Hand She Is Dealt

Checkmate! “Enemy Queen” Has This Lawyer and Professor in an Unlikely Mess

“Danger in Plain Sight:” This Unlikely Duo Makes a Formidable Team

TV Newswoman Pursues Elusive Serial Killer in “The Last Scoop”

Moral Dilemmas in Search for the Truth About Missing Co-Eds in “The Secrets They Left Behind”

Assassin’s Mobile Hit List Has Just Been Compromised in “Die Next”

Detective Emerges From Retirement When Murder Comes to “Diver’s Paradise”

Mystery, Menace and Motherhood in “The Familiar Dark”

6 Thrillers to Binge While Social Distancing from the World

“A Child Lost” in 1930s Chicago Grips Professional Sleuthing Family

Peter Swanson’s Latest Thriller Rediscovers the “Eight Perfect Murders” in Mystery Fiction

Labyrinth of Lies, Secrets and Apprehension in “The Other Mrs.”

“The Heartless” Delivers a Police Thriller with Deeper Surprises

Haunted Heroine Rushes “Toward the Light” in Debut Thriller

ITW Spotlight: Corruption, Class and Dangerous Obsession in “Dreamland”

Murder Amid the Terrors of Solovetsky in “The Body Outside the Kremlin”

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