Tag:

Thrillers

Review

Most Likely to Murder

by Dodie Ownes

This engaging young-adult mystery follows best friends Rick and Martina, social outcasts at Meadowvale High who are known for staging elaborate pranks. Their lives take a deadly turn when the school yearbook is hacked, replacing traditional superlatives like “Most Likely to Succeed” with terrifying death predictions, such as “Homecoming’s Cutest Corpses.” This perceived cruel joke quickly becomes a nightmare when students and staff start dying in the exact ways described. As the primary suspects due to their history of practical jokes, Rick and Martina must find the real killer before they become the next victims on the list. McBride’s snarky dialogue rings true to teen talk, and emerging romances add a little spark and normality to the out-of-control happenings at school. A group chat shared by the high-school seniors who fear they are targeted adds a chorus effect, and grown-ups prove completely useless when it comes to finding the murderer—and oh, what a reveal that is. Don’t miss the acknowledgement, in which McBride reveals where she got the story idea!

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Review

Darkrooms

by Willy Williams

Book of the Week 12.15.25
The disappearance of nine-year-old Roisin O’Halloran on the night of the summer solstice in 1999 has haunted two emotionally damaged women for 20 years. Deedee, Roisin’s grieving older sister, has joined the Gardai in her small Irish town of Bannakilduff so she can more easily investigate what happened after Roisin vanished into the mysterious Hanging Woods. Although she’s engaged to Sean, scion of the prominent Branagh family, DeeDee is barely holding it together, drinking too much and having a casual fling with a fellow officer. Caitlin Doherty, Roisin’s childhood friend and the last person to see her alive, is also living a chaotic life, surviving as a petty thief in London and trying to escape painful memories. But the death of her estranged mother forces her to return to her hometown and her dark past. As Caitlin and DeeDee warily circle each other, they gradually uncover secrets that expose long-buried shocking crimes. Winner of the UEA/Little Brown Crime Prize, Hannigan has written a twisty, atmospheric debut that captures the claustrophobic small-mindedness of a community willing to close ranks against the innocent to protect the guilty.

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Review

The Library After Dark

by Brian Kenney

Daedalus is, of course, the famous Athenian inventor, sculpture, and craftsman, as well as the father of Icarus. So it’s quite appropriate to name a grand research library after him. The library depicted here is a bit of mash up, with references to many literary genres and many libraries, including New York Public’s vast research library at 42 second street and the infamously creepy Mütter Museum and Historical Medical Library in Philadelphia. Enter Aria, who rather relishes creepiness, and whose life is looking up these days. She’s moved to New York, has been hired to work as a bookseller, and even found her own micro-apartment. And then Aria’s boyfriend invites her to join him on Valentine’s Day for an after-hours tour of the Daedalus. What fun! Until the Library’s automatic door-entry closes shut, sealing their little tour group down in the lower decks. With time to reminisce until being saved, all the terrifying stories about the Daedalus start to tumble out. And then the inevitable happens: there’s a murder in their little group. And suddenly it would seem that no one is getting out alive. Campy, gothic-y, and a tad humorous, The Library After Dark takes the traditional closed-room novel, twists it inside out, then offers readers something quite different to enjoy

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Review

Whisper Creek

by Jeff Ayers

A family struggling to keep its farm afloat, while dealing with a greedy corporation that will do anything to evict them from the land, is only the tip of the iceberg in Brennan’s thriller. Ellen McKenna tries to keep everything going after the death of her husband, but it’s tough. Her children help, but they have their own struggles. The neighbors have all sold their properties or sections of them, but Ellen still refuses to sell. With a storm on the way that could cause catastrophic flooding, one of her kids walks into a situation with a neighbor that escalates into a threat more dangerous than the forecasted weather. As the storm hits and the roads close, any hope of rescue is out; Ellen and her family must find a way to survive the possible loss of the farm, if they are not killed first. Brennan has crafted a terrific thriller that escalates the tension as the various elements collide. Whisper Creek is a place every suspense fan should visit, just make sure to check the weather forecast first.

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Review

Edge

by Henrietta Thornton

It gets personal for the Chicago PD when an officer’s family member is the latest victim of a lethal new street drug called Edge. Running the case is Harriet, or Harri, Foster, who’s the best kind of police procedural lead: a tough but kind cop with simmering issues. She’s struggling to move on from the death of her son from gun violence and reluctantly getting the help that everyone but her thinks she needs when this perplexing, dangerous case blows up her chance of recovery. We also meet two forces at loggerheads in the community: the Gamon family that has a tight hold on the neighborhood’s drug trade and resulting downstream crime, and pastor Clevon Pope and his wife, Faith, who are trying to be a bright spot in the chaos. Readers will eagerly follow Harri (I put aside almost all of Thanksgiving reading this) as she puts her smarts and grit to work, and will relish the nailbiting ending to this engrossing psychological thriller.

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Review

Grave Pursuit

by Henrietta Thornton

This 12th in the “Rachel Ryder” series has shades of Silence of the Lambs to it, in that a serial killer becomes obsessed with an investigator and involves her in a macabre game. Rachel Ryder has left her Chicago police career and is now a detective in Hamby, Georgia, PD, honoring a promise she made to her murdered husband. Hanging out at a barbecue with colleagues, she’s summoned to work to find that it’s because of a frightening gift: someone has couriered a photo to her at work, one showing a woman lying on a hotel bed with her throat slashed. All Rachel has are questions. Is this just AI? Or could someone she previously arrested be after her? Is it something to do with her husband’s death? Adding to the puzzle is that the mysterious sender is making allusions to a chess game, with Rachel one of the pieces. The tension ramps up till the last pages—especially during a mass-casualty event that’s described in terrifying detail—until a twist delivers the shocking conclusion. There’s no need to read the previous books in the series to enjoy this one, but you’ll want to go back and binge-read them anyway.

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Review

The Amateur

by Brian Kenney

Even as a long time fan of Chris Bohjalian, whose work ranges from historical suspense to contemporary crime fiction to literary tales (and plenty else in between), I wasn’t prepared for the intensity of this story, the power of the narration, and the sheer brilliance of the book’s design. It’s 1978, and 18-year-old Mira Winston is a golf prodigy in a small, tony, Westchester town—it’s very Larchmont. Everyone, even Mira, expects that her life has been planned out for her, from Yale in a year to the LPGA after college graduation. Until a blazing-hot August morning when Mira is practicing at the local country club and drives a ball straight through the net at 150 miles per hour, slamming it into the head of high-school junior Kenny Foster, killing him immediately. A horrible accident? Yes, a horrible accident: somehow, there was a hole in the net, which allowed the ball easy passage. But as the story slowly unfolds in the months to come, and as Mira awaits trial, people’s opinion of the golfer starts to shift. Did you know Mira was having an affair with a man three decades her senior? And that Kenny’s younger sisters were consumed by grief? And that Mira has a history of recklessness, although it may be constructed? Slowly, Mira is flipped in public opinion from teen in trouble to woman in despair. But what keeps this book so honest, direct, and yes, at times, humorous is the first person voice of Mira, taking readers to another era we are unlikely to ever forget.

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Review

Death and Other Occupational Hazards

by Dodie Ownes

Death has gone on vacation here and there, but after she hears about a sabbatical while on a trip across the River Styx, the Boss agrees to her request for a break. Her sister Life gives her the chance to live in human form so she can understand humans better. Now Delara, working as a paralegal at a second-rate law firm in London, is shaken when she discovers an Unplanned Death caused by vampire fish—after all, it’s her department, and the Boss will not be happy if he finds out. She left the temp in charge—is that the problem? Of course, Life is all over Delara, asking how her creations could be snuffed out without regard for the Plan. The days of simply putting folks on the Boat could be over if she cannot find out how this aberration has occurred. No longer in a black sack and carrying a scythe, Delara is hot to get to the bottom of the issue when charming parasitologist Marco enters the investigation. Debut-author Dapunt fills this rollicking story with sideways glances at the afterlife, the underworld, and the Human Communications Director (HCD, aka Jesus). Beyond the central murder mystery, the novel explores themes of life and death, love and relationships, the meaning of existence, and human emotions. Satirical, funny, and packed with wry observations on how humans approach death, and life.

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Review

Three Hitmen and a Baby

by Jeff Ayers

A missing brother, the Russian mob, a sick child, and a kill-order all add up to just another typical day in Hart’s latest thriller. The members of Assassins Anonymous all want to put their killing days behind them. Valencia leaves her toddler in the capable hands of Mark, Astrid, and Booker so she can try to find her brother. When the little girl gets a high fever, Astrid and Booker take her to the emergency room, triggering red flags at the hospital when they can’t answer simple questions such as, “What’s the girl’s last name?” The police get involved, and the protagonists find themselves running, avoiding every camera they can. While they are regretting not just giving the girl Tylenol, Mark visits a Russian mob boss, who demands that he either kill Astrid or they will kill a woman he used to love and her son. The boy doesn’t know that Mark is his father, and his former girlfriend has not seen or spoken to Mark since his attempt at recovery. Hart has crafted a solid action thriller with humor and emotion, and as the pages fly, the intensity increases. At three books in, with all of them terrific, give this one a shot.

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Review

We Were Never Friends

by Dodie Ownes

A group of sorority sisters gets together to celebrate queen bee Roxy’s son’s engagement to Celeste, the daughter of her Theta Mu sister Beth—or at least that’s what the event appears to be on the surface. But there is something odd about the estate, recently renovated by Roxy’s husband, Ryan, that reminds them all of the tragedy that happened many years ago during spring break, when their sorority sister Sunny was found dead in the pool at the Desert Inn. Nothing about these “sisters” is what it seems, and all have their own stories about the night that Sunny died. Rouda packs a lot of drama into the slow unraveling of the characters—the successful doctor, the Beltway not-really-grieving widow, the scholarship girl, the victim, the drug dealer—until the real crime comes into view. Including a ghost seems like cheating, but the woman in a green gown who looks just like Sunny cannot be an apparition, can she? Mean Girls has nothing on We Were Never Friends.

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