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Showing posts with label thrillers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label thrillers. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 24, 2017

The Fifth Petal by Brunonia Barry

The Fifth Petal is is a mystery and high-stakes thriller yet the author, Brunonia Barry, ingeniously combines this with the historical details of the 1692 Salem witchcraft trials.

Here's a historical detail that Barry drops that ties the past with a current suspect, Rose:


"With the exception of Sarah Good, who was thirty-nine, the women  executed on July 19, 1692, were much older, ranging in age from fifty-seven to seventy-one. Some were homeless or nuisances to the community: indebt, outspoken, or otherwise troublesome. It made him think of Rose."


Rose is homeless, deranged, and is now accused of a crime that he does not think she committed. No wonder Rafferty draws the parallel.


Sunday, May 29, 2016

I Let You Go by Clare Mackintosh

People in crisis mode are interesting. Jenna, the protagonist of this debut novel, is definitely in trouble. She has just lost her five-year-old son in a hit-in-run accident. In response, Jenna attempts to restart her life by moving to a remote village in Wales.


Two detectives, Ray and Kate, are slipping in a maelstrom of their own making. Both want to find the hit-and-run-driver who killed Jenna's child, even if they solve the crime off the books. Though each are seeing other people, they are increasingly drawn to each other.

Kate remind Ray of his old self, the kind that cared more about getting the bad guy than getting promoted. Meanwhile, in remote Penfach, Wales, Jenna and Patrick, a local veterinarian, fall in love. 

Jenna's life seems to be improving until she finds a strange message in the sandy beach near her cottage.

Not to give anything away, but Part 2 of the novel is completely startling. In a rush, readers are given a new point-of-view and a new version of events. 

Jenna's sad history unfolds revealing a different picture of the accident. Ian's cruel manipulation of Jenna and her quiet aquiescence is painful to watch.  

A thriller of first rate quality ensues as Jenna struggles to free herself from Ian's cruelty.

Random House has sent me an advance reader's copy in exchange for an honest review.




Sunday, April 12, 2015

Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith

Horrifying on multiple levels, Child 44 is a standout thriller.

In the so-called perfect Stalinist state, crime doesn't exist. To admit that it exists is almost an act of treason. 

So when a member of the MGB claims that his child Arkady has been murdered, Leo Demidov is told to quiet the family. He does this and more, even threatening eye-witnesses. 

He never examines the body of Arkady as the family asks. None of this is unusual. MGB do not normally detect violent crime. That task belongs to a much lower class, the militia. 

Soon, however, new circumstances come to light. Leo Demidov's communist beliefs are shaken to the core when he sees an innocent man tortured. 

He also learns that wife, Raisa, is a stranger. She married him because she feared turning his marriage proposal down. 

He was an agent of the state and she was keen on surviving. Years ago she had watched the Soviets destroy her town and all of her relatives, including her parents, for political purposes.

In Stalinist Russia, agents could be promoted one afternoon and denounced the next. When someone denounces Leo and Raisa, they barely escape with their lives. Demoted to a mill town, Leo and Raisa must start life anew.


Leo is demoted to the lowest rank in the militia, the agency responsible for handling violent crime. Recently, two children have been murdered in the woods near the railroad tracks and there may be more. 

Smith has set up the perfect conundrum for his hero to face. A disgraced MGB officer can do little to investigate the murders without risking his life. Leo Demidov must decide if  justice is more important than survival.


Plenty of riveting twists and turns, betrayals, repressed memories, mind games, and nail-biting escapes make this a first-rate thriller. Unsurprisingly, this novel has been turned into a 2015 feature film. 


Tom Rob Smith followed Child 44 with two other novels, The Secret Speech and Agent 6.

Saturday, April 5, 2014

Review of Lost Girls of Rome by Donato Carrisi


Don't miss Donato Carrisi's novel, Lost Girls of Rome.

 Forensic photographer Sandra Vega is still coping with her husband's accidental death. There’s something real and recognizable in Sandra’s grief. Sometimes she forgets he is dead and says, ‘I have to tell David.’

David's bags are in the storeroom at Headquarters. Vega found them too painful to look at. After she gets a call from an Interpol agent, however, she becomes alarmed.


Martyrdom of St Matthew Source: Wikipedia
Searching through his bags, at last, she finds his diary, a two-way radio, and photographs on his favorite camera, a Leica. The camera has photographs of the construction site (where David died) a detail from a Caravaggio painting, and a picture of a man with a scar on his temple. 

Vega finds more items at the construction site, including a recording device, which convinces her that her beloved David was murdered.

Did the man with the scar murder her husband?

The scar is the result of a gunshot wound to the head and it has left the mysterious man, Marcus, with amnesia. Clemente, head of a secret investigative unit, wants him to solve a case, the disappearance of architecture student Lara.  (continued)

Thursday, February 13, 2014

Into the Blood by Lisa Unger

Lisa Unger returns to The Hollows, a fictional town near New York City, for her latest thriller, In the Blood. Emotionally-fragile Lana Granger, a college student, narrates the story.

Since its first person and since she's emotionally scarred by a crime she witnessed, readers might expect the narrator to be largely unreliable. They would be right.

Lana has told so many lies to herself and others, she cannot even recognize the truth anymore.

A mentor suggests she take a job since her trust fund is drying up. A babysitting job pits Lana against a troubled eleven-year-old boy who seems to know a lot about the disappearance of Lana's friend, Beck.

Lana and Luke play a dangerous game, a scavenger hunt, that breaks Lana's façade and puts her and everything she holds dear in peril.

The novel moves a break-neck speed; it can be read as a stand-alone novel or as part of Unger's The Hollows series. In The Blood was an Indie Next pick.

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