37 results for "Thriller"

The house of love and death

Klavan, Andrew
When four members of a wealthy household are killed in their suburban Chicago mansion, shock reverberates around the quiet community. The only witness is a small child, and with the obvious culprit soon behind bars, it seems like an open-and-shut case. Enter Cameron Winter. Winter -- a spy turned English professor -- has a unique knack for solving complicated crimes. Despite the lead detective blocking his involvement, Winter discovers this seemingly safe suburban paradise is concealing something dark, something that people want to keep hidden -- and he will do anything to bring the truth to light.
Head of Zeus 2024-05-09 337 pages

Babylon

Reza, Yasmina
Elisabeth is a woman whose curiosity and passion far exceed the borders of her quiet middle-class life. She befriends a neighbor, organizes a small dinner party. And then, quite suddenly, finds herself embarked with him on an adventure that is one part vaudeville and one part high tragedy. A quiet novel of manners turns into a police procedural thriller. Her motivations for risking everything she has are never transparent. In a world where matters of life and death are nearly always transported to a clinical setting, whether it be a hospital or a courtroom, here each character must confront them unassisted.
Seven Stories Press 2019 202 pages

Kill and be killed

Begley, Louis
"Master stylist Begley continues the story of Jack Dana, the former Marine Corps officer turned novelist whose quest to avenge his murdered uncle takes a new, more dangerous turn. The man who brutally murdered Uncle Harry is dead. In an effort to recover from the confrontation and collect himself, Jack takes refuge on Torcello, a small island in the Venetian lagoon, to return to his writing career. Even more urgently, he wants to win back Kerry, the beautiful lawyer who rejected him after the bloody episode with Harry's assassin. But events beyond Jack's control intervene: Kerry loses her life in circumstances that contradict everything Jack thinks he knew about her. Soon death begins to stalk Jack himself. It is impossible not to recognize in its drumbeat the machinations of Abner Brown, the man who orchestrated Harry's demise. Jack fights back, driven by cold rage and determination to complete his revenge. At his side is Kerry's best friend, the glamorous and enigmatic Heidi Krohn. Their quest will force Jack to plumb the abyss of depravity into which Kerry had sunk and face one of his fellow Marines who has embarked on a violent feud of his own. Reprising memorable characters from Killer, Come Hither and introducing dangerous new ones, Begley concludes Jack's harrowing vendetta with one last shocking twist"--
Nan A. Talese/Doubleday 2016 269 pages

Identity crisis

Elton, Ben
"Why are we all so hostile? So quick to take offence? Truly we are living in the age of outrage. A series of apparently random murders draws amiable, old-school Detective Mick Matlock into a world of sex, politics, reality TV and a bewildering kaleidoscope of opposing identity groups. Lost in a blizzard of hashtags, his already complex investigation is further impeded by the fact that he simply doesn't 'get' a single thing about anything anymore. Meanwhile, each day another public figure confesses to having 'misspoken' and prostrates themselves before the judgement of Twitter. Begging for forgiveness, assuring the public 'that is not who I am'. But if nobody is who they are anymore - then who the f**k are we? Ben Elton returns with a blistering comic satire of the world as it fractures around us. Get ready for a roller-coaster thriller, where nothing - and no one - is off limits."--Provided by publisher.
Bantam Press 2019 377 pages

The theory of death

Kellerman, Faye
The twenty-third book in the hugely popular Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus series from New York Times bestselling author Faye Kellerman It has been almost a year since Greenbury's last murder. Detective Peter Decker has enjoyed the slower pace of his new job with the upstate police department. Then he receives a phone call from his captain. A male body has been found in the local woods. It appears to be a suicide - single shot to the head, gun by his side - but until the coroner makes the final determination, Decker and his partner Tyler McAdams must treat the scene as a suspicious crime. Identifying the body takes Decker and McAdams into the indecipherable upper echelons of mathematics at Kneed Loft College - a sphere of scheming academics, hidden cyphers and most dangerous of all, a realm of underworld crime where even the most conscientious students can become cold and calculating. It will take all of Decker's wits and McAdams's brains to penetrate enigmatic formulas and codes to solve a dark, twisted tale created by depraved masterminds.
Harper 2016-02 409 pages

Walking shadows

Kellerman, Faye
Greenbury, New York. The brutally beaten body of a young man is discovered in the woods adjacent to an empty vacation home. Brady Neil had no criminal record, few friends, worked full-time, and attended community college. When Brady was a baby, his father, Brandon Gratz, was convicted of robbing and killing the owners of a local jewelry store. Decker begins to suspect that the son's murder may be connected to the father's sins. When one of Brady Neil's friend goes missing, Decker and his temporary new partner, Hamilton PD cop Lenora Baccus, discover a bloodbath. With the help of the Greenbury detectives, Decker is determined to see justice done. -- adapted from jacket.
William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 2018-08-28 367 pages

Compulsion

Ablow, Keith R.
Burdened by his own psychological scars, forensic psychiatrist Dr Frank Clevenger has endured the most extreme twists of the human mind. Then he receives a disturbing call from Nantucket’s chief of police. The five-month-old daughter of prominent billionaire Darwin Bishop has been found murdered in her crib. The obvious suspect is Darwin’s adopted sociopathic son, Billy. But even Clevenger can’t fathom the motive behind the troubled boy’s murder of an infant. What is Billy really running from? Does Darwin’s stunning wife Julia know? If she does, she isn’t talking. Neither is Bishop’s other son who’s harbouring terrible secrets of his own. Falling for Julia is Clevenger's first mistake. Investigating the Bishops' twisted emotional landscape is his second. As his own demons rise to the surface, he must play the ultimate mind game to catch the killer – and make it out alive... 'Fascinating' New York Times 'A first-rate thriller' Washington Post ' Compulsion is compulsive reading' Harlan Coben
Pan 2006 364 pages

Your day in the barrel

Furst, Alan
"Roger Levy, the protagonist of Alan Furst's fast-moving and funny suspense novel, is an enterprising young man in business for himself. In fact, his is a kind of modern American success story, although it just happens that his business is dealing dope around the various colleges and universities in Pennsylvania. So when he is stopped, his van searched and his "merchandise" discovered by the Pennsylvania police, he has no choice but to appear to cooperate when offered his freedom in exchange for complicity in an apparent CIA murder scheme. Back home in New York the chase is on, and it is only with the help of his lawyer, his street sense and a lot of his own hard-earned cash that Levy is finally able to identify and evade the enemy, uncover the unlikely source of the plot and come away with enough capital to fulfill his own version of the American dream--to retire and live above his own Chinese restaurant, its kitchen available to him twenty-four hours a day. Set in the last days of the sixties, Your Day in the Barrel is at once a fond spoof of the suspense genre and a fiercely contemporary thriller told in the truly original voice of a young writer making his highly auspicious debut." -- Book jacket flap.
Atheneum 1976 180 pages

Greed

Jelinek, Elfriede
Kurt Janisch is an ambitious, but frustrated country policeman. Things are not going right in his life - at least not fast enough. But a country policeman gets talking to a lot of people in the line of duty - particularly women. Lonely, middle-aged women, women with a bit of property perhaps...Matters go from bad to worse: for Kurt Janisch, for the women who fall for him. Someone sees too much, knows too much. Soon there's a body in a lake and a murderer to be caught. A thriller set amid the mountains and small towns of southern Austria, "Greed" is Elfriede Jelinek's most accessible novel since "The Piano Teacher". But, as always, Jelinek gives the reader a lot more to think about: the ecological costs of affluence, the inescapable burden and inadequacy of our everyday words, the exploitative nature of relations between men and women, the impossibility of life without relationships. A meditative reflection on ageing, "Greed" is another chapter in Jelinek's chronicling of her love/hate relationship with Austria.
Serpent's Tail 2006 340 pages

Innocence: or, murder on Steep Street

Kovály, Heda
"This rediscovered gem of Czech literature, a crime novel by renowned Holocaust memoirist Heda Margolius Kovaly, depicts a chilling moment in history, redolent with the stifling atmosphere of political and personal oppression of the early days of Socialist Czechoslovakia. In 1985, Czech Holocaust memoirist, literary translator, and political exile Heda Margolius Kovaly turned her pen to fiction. Inspired by the stories of Raymond Chandler, Kovaly knit her own terrifying experiences in early 1950s Socialist Prague -- her husband's imprisonment and wrongful execution, her own persecution at his disgrace -- into a gorgeous psychological thriller-cum-detective novel. Set in and around a cinema where a murder was recently committed, Innocence follows the unfolding of the investigation while telling the stories of the women who work there as ushers, each of whom is forced to support herself in difficult circumstances. As the novel brings this group alive, it tells their various life stories that have brought them to this job, the secrets they share with one another, and the secrets they keep. When the detective trying to solve the first murder is found slain by the cinema, all of their secrets come into the light. A smart, evocative, and deeply stirring literary crime novel with international appeal"--
Soho Crime 2015 234 pages

In the country of the blind

Arkin, Matthew
"A dead body is a lousy way to end a first date." So begins In the Country of the Blind, a modern noir tale that takes readers into the world of former attorney-turned building superintendent Zach Brandis. When Zach abandoned his promising legal career, it confused everyone, including himself. Now, with no apparent purpose in life, he has time enough on his hands to get into some very hot water. When Zach takes Cynthia Hull to dinner, murder and a confrontation with the cops are the last things on his mind. But when he walks her home, he finds himself face to face with New York's finest, who are investigating the suspicious death of the actress's roommate and friend, Alex Penworth. Maybe it's because Cynthia is beautiful and vulnerable, or maybe it's just because the cops rub him the wrong way, but Zach steps in to shield her from their persistent questions. In the days following, Zach finds himself increasingly tied up in knots over the case, and what starts as simple curiosity may end up putting the former attorney in grave danger. Captivated by the puzzle of Alex's death, Zach begins to play with the pieces. When Cynthia's apartment is ransacked shortly the murder, it becomes clear that Alex was hiding something, something of value to someone. Looking into Alex's mysterious activities in the weeks before his death, more questions begin to emerge: Why was Alex fired from his bartending job? Why is a beautiful undercover narc hanging around the bar where Alex worked, and trying to keep Zach away? Why do the cops seem uninterested in the inconsistencies in Alex's autopsy report? As Zach puts the pieces in place, a picture of the victim begins to emerge: Alex, another lost soul, plagued by his past and the demons of the cult he escaped - a man who, like Zach, abandoned a promising career to struggle as a going-nowhere actor/bartender. Driven by his feeling of kinship with the victim, can Zach discover what ultimately led to Alex's death, and still get himself out of harm's way before it's too late? A dark and witty tale in the vein of John Sandford and Lawrence Block, In the Country of the Blind is a true page-turner, suspenseful from beginning to end. This character-driven thriller will have readers on the edge of their seats, driven, like Zach, to uncover the secrets behind the gruesome murder.
Hawkshaw Books 2013 307 pages

No way out

Kessler, David
When TV talkshow host Elias Claymore is accused of raping a 19-year-old girl he turns to his friend Alex Sadaka to defend him. But Alex has a fight on his hands, for Claymore - a former Black Power activist - is anything but squeaky clean and this time even the DNA evidence is stacked against him. Forced to share the defence with a lawyer from Claymore's insurance firm, Alex must battle his way through jury tampering, conflicts of interest and vicious hate mail to uncover the truth. With Claymore a vulnerable target in prison and the prosecution scenting blood, Alex knows that time is running out. Could it be that this time there is No Way Out?
Avon 2010 520 pages

Fear itself

Greenburg, Dan
Why would a nurse's aide terrified of heights hurl herself from a twentieth story rooftop in Queens? Why would an attractive librarian with a water phobia be found naked and floating facedown in the Astoria Park swimming pool? How did the scantily clad body of a young bookstore clerk with a horror of snakes end up inside a Central Park Zoo cage with a two-hundred-pound python? NYPD Detective Max Segal, strung out from a devastating divorce, is determined to find the killer before more women die. A sadistic ex-con who masquerades as a shrink is seducing phobic women into psychic hell and literally scaring them to death. When Max Segal picks up the killer's trail, Max's new girlfriend is chosen to become victim number four. Like Love Kills and Exes , Dan Greenburg's previous bestselling thrillers, Fear Itself is a terrifyingly realistic, darkly humorous, startlingly sexy, street-tough page-turner with a surprising climax.
Thomas & Mercer 2013 385 pages