Tag:

Thrillers

Review

The Lightning Rod

by Henrietta Thornton

Meltzer, Brad. The Lightning Rod (A Zig and Nola Novel #2). March 2022. 432p. William Morrow.
The intriguing setting here is life around Dover Air Force Base’s mortuary, where fallen soldiers are prepared for burial. In the opening title in this series, Escape Artist, Dover mortician “Zig” Zigarowski helped the Army’s Artist-in-Residence, Nola Brown, who was on the run. Now, Nola, a master at sabotaging the military’s plans for her, clandestinely attends a funeral at Dover, and the action revs back up. Meltzer’s thrilling plot veers from flashbacks to Nola’s dangerous childhood to glimpses inside the military’s orchestration of public knowledge about threats to our lives. Meltzer’s talent for detail makes even idle moments leap to life. While Nola waits for a computer program to load, a gust of wind rolls a beer can into a shopping cart that’s on its side; a nurse who encountered Nola has a necklace with a charm for each of her children, all boys. These mundane moments also highlight the casual viciousness that faces characters at every turn. Personalities, too, offer extreme contrasts: Zig prides himself on having done a loving job with the care of dead soldiers, while his foes care for nobody and stop at nothing to win. Fans of military thrillers should clear a weekend for this; it’s gripping.

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Review

Nine Lives

by Brian Kenney

Nine people receive an envelope in the mail that contains one piece of paper, a list, with just nine names on it, including their own. They don’t know each other, live all over the country, and, superficially at least, have nothing in common. The group includes a musician, an aspiring actor, an oncology nurse, and an FBI agent. Most pay the letter scant attention—a chance occurrence, perhaps?—and toss it aside. Then, one by one, they are murdered, often in the most extraordinary of ways. This sort of over-the-top plotting can seem completely unrealistic or completely suck you in, and in Swanson’s talented hands, it’s the latter. The author alternates the chapters among the potential victims, but does so with such deftness we never lose track of who’s who. And despite the many characters and locales, this book doesn’t have an ounce of fat on it—every fact and every detail adds to the story, propelling it forward. Unlike many suspense novels that slam into the conclusion, we discover our murderer gradually and the poignant back story emerges slowly. For fans of Jo Nesbø and Tess Gerritsen.

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Review

The Bloodless Boy

by Henrietta Thornton

“Life owns a way of disappointing most,” notes a character in Lloyd’s meticulously written and researched debut, in which murder is hot on the heels of the disappointments. One of the killings is the goriest I’ve ever read: brace yourself for a man having his Adam’s apple bitten out, with the gruesome fruit spat out to roll across the floor. And that’s only a minor character, one of those enmeshed in the politics swirling through London’s grimy, cold winter of 1678, when paranoia about Catholic plots to kill the King and turn the populace toward popery abounds. A light in the gloom is real-life polymath Robert Hooke, who leaves his elaboratory experiments to investigate the murder of the book’s titular boy. The child is found with his blood entirely removed, dates written beside various wounds on his body, and a coded message left on his chest. Once Hooke’s newly invented means of creating a vacuum in a jar is employed to preserve the body, the sleuthing is afoot. London of the day is almost its own character here, with Lloyd shoving readers into the chill, stink, and fear for a wonderfully atmospheric time. Try this if you enjoyed Cathedral of the Sea by Ildefonso Falcones, which illuminates the same era, but in Barcelona

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Review

Catch Her When She Falls

by Brian Kenney

After college and a stint in Chicago, Micah Wilkes returns to her hometown of Calvary, PA. She ends up settling down with Ryan, a former high-school classmate, and opens Stomping Grounds, a coffee shop. All is well, except Micah can’t quite get past the murder of Emily, her best friend back in high school, especially since the murderer was Alex, Micah’s boyfriend, who’s now in jail. Then Micah receives a threatening text—“It should have been you, not Emily”—which propels her into the past, and slowly her well-constructed world starts to crack. She gets drawn into true-crime blogs and forums that rehash the murder and speculate about Micah’s motives. Her house is broken into, and remnants of Emily’s diary are left behind. Ryan, it turns out, has been in touch with Alex this whole time, visiting him in jail. No matter which way she turns, something or someone pops up, forcing her to question the night Emily was murdered, her own role in the crime, and who could have murdered her friend. In the end, Micah—totally unhinged—heads off to confront the one person who can help her understand that night ten years ago. A real slow burn, this book will please readers who appreciate deep character development, little violence, and plenty of suspense.

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Review

Darkness Falls

by Henrietta Thornton

A series that just keeps getting better. Kate Marshall and her sidekick, Tristan Harper, have finally gotten their PI agency off the ground, and their first case is a cold one: a mother hires them to investigate the death of her daughter, Joanna Duncan, murdered 12 years ago. Fortunately, they are able to get their hands on the original case files and go about replicating the earlier investigation—to much different results. Joanna was an ambitious, hard-hitting journalist who made some enemies in her career. But as Kate and Harper dig deeper, they’re pulled in surprising directions, including an exploration of the last few decades of the local gay community. Bryndza is an expert at including just the right amount of information about our investigators’ personal lives: Kate continues in recovery, enjoying her relationship with her young adult son, while Tristan is broke, despairing of his single status. As the novel draws to a close, and the many leads come together, we are treated to a denouement as satisfying as it is sorrowful.

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Review

The New Neighbor

by Henrietta Thornton

Aidan Marlowe—an Irish immigrant to the U.S. who is known by his last name—is lost in a life he never planned. At his young wife’s funeral, he finds out that he won millions in the lottery, and he can’t adjust to life without Holly and with the money. He and his seven-year-old twins move to a huge and forbidding house in Bury, New Hampshire, a move prompted by a voice in his head repeating “bury,” just one of the psychological oddnesses he endures. People in affluent Bury soon let him know that his decision was a bad one: the house was formerly home to a family that’s now missing four members who simply disappeared. And soon after Marlowe and his children move in, he begins receiving threatening letters that make his neighbors’ misgivings seem right but also force him to investigate the neighbors themselves. Marlowe is an unreliable narrator, so that even as readers feel for his turmoil, they are left wondering what’s really going on with this troubled character. Some truly frightening scenes lead to a gripping and satisfying conclusion, but not before a twist that will leave readers’ heads spinning. Marlowe is memorable —single dads in thrillers aren’t that common—but mainly he will stay with readers because of his offbeat vulnerability and the determination that shines through his grief. Wilson’s (The Dead Girl in 2A) unusual psychological thriller is one for fans of Stephen King who are open to reading mysteries.

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Review

A Flicker in the Dark

by Brian Kenney

A brilliant debut, as well written as it is well-conceived. No one should have 12-year-old Chloe Davis’s childhood. In the course of one summer in her small Louisiana town, six teen girls go missing. As terrifying as that is, it gets worse: the murderer, it turns out, is her father, who is promptly tried and sent to prison. Two decades later, Chloe is an adolescent psychologist in Baton Rouge, living with Daniel, her handsome and loving fiancé. The horror of the past seems to be behind her, happiness is in her grasp, when a teen girl goes missing. And then another. These are no random killings. They bear an uncanny resemblance to the murders of 20 years ago, and it turns out that both girls have a connection to Chloe—in fact, one is her patient. Willingham’s genius is the ability to keep so many balls in the air. From Chloe’s intense relationships with Daniel, her brother Cooper, her institutionalized Mom, a New York Times reporter, to ricocheting between the past and the present yet still keeping the narrative moving briskly ahead, this book is so much more than your typical serial-killer novel. Fans of Karin Slaughter, Harlan Coben and Gillian Flynn will love this novel, which has been optioned by actress Emma Stone for a limited series.

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Review

The Wrong Woman

by Henrietta Thornton

This book could just as well be titled The Wrong Man, as it’s a master class in how the police can trudge through the investigation of numerous other suspects before finding the right one. The book stars a dogged FBI agent, Kendall Beck, who reports her car stolen when she can’t get the Denver police to take seriously the disappearance of her roommate, Gwen, who borrowed the car. Professional courtesy means that Kendall is allowed inside details as the hunt for Gwen gathers steam. At the same time, she’s investigating a case of her own: a missing little girl, whose neighbor seems odd and too friendly. Given that a stolen car doesn’t seem like it will take much work, the Denver detective who’s looking for Gwen also has another case of his own, that of a woman who may be the victim of a serial killer who’s been working the area for years. Friendships, love, and the grief when those connections end add a personal touch to the legal and police procedural details shared by Sparks, who formerly had a law career. For fans of Tana French and other authors who shine a light on relationships in policing.

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Review

Deep Sleep

by Henrietta Thornton

Konkoly, Steven. Deep Sleep. January 2022. Thomas & Mercer.
Fans of espionage and breakneck action are the audience for this political thriller from Konkoly (Black Flagged series). Unusually, the catalyst for the action is a dead woman: former CIA agent Helen Grey meets her end early in the book on a mysterious solo mission to kidnap a man from a retirement home. Her son, Devin, is not surprised to hear that his mother is behind this bizarre crime; she’s been paranoid about a government conspiracy for years. But carefully coded messages she left in anticipation of her death lead Devin to the truth of the old saying that just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you. Devin and his former-Marine friend Marnie (will they or won’t they get together by book’s end?) realize that long-swirling rumors about Russian agents infiltrating the U.S. government, working to sabotage the country from within, might be true. While the premise here is interesting, the action makes the book; it’s almost one long fight scene, and those who are nerdy for specs on drones, weapons, and surveillance tech will eat it up. A must for Tom Clancy devotees.

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Review

The Cottage

by Brian Kenney

Suspense fiction for those who enjoy character-driven stories, plenty of dialogue, and simple, straightforward prose. Single parent Kate is awoken by noise in her backyard, but it’s just deer. Then she sees some teens running from the cottage at the end of her property. Days later she starts getting anonymous texts—which are vaguely threatening—then a window is smashed and a knife is found embedded in the cottage’s wall. This would be enough to set anyone on edge, but Kate is especially vulnerable; she survived a home invasion two years ago in which her husband, a cop, was murdered. Fortunately, the former police chief is her father-in-law, and her sister —they’ve been estranged for 20-plus years—agrees to move in and help raise Kate’s two kids. As the terror slowly escalates, and the list of potential suspects grows, Kate has to go deeper into her past to understand who wants to kill her today.

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