At elementary school I was a paid bodyguard. Kids gave me cookies and lunch money to watch their backs. Some bully stepped out of line, I was waiting for him on his way home. I never started a fight, but I was in plenty. I broke arms, did damage. But I felt I was on the side of the angels.
I wanted to recapture that feeling and update it into adulthood. A former U. Army M. Like Stephen Hunter, Lee Child simply does everything right: great dialogue, devious plotting, terrific suspense, vividly colorful settings, and white-knuckle action scenes. Here, near the end of Persuader, Reacher is trapped under icy, pounding surf, with killers above shooting at him to keep him beneath the waves:. Thirty seconds. I was drowning. I knew it. I was weakening.
My lungs were empty. My chest was crushed. I had a billion tons of water on top of me. I could feel my face twisting in pain. My ears were roaring. My stomach was knotted. My left shoulder was burning where Paulie had hit it. I kicked on. Forty seconds. I was making no progress.
I was being hurled down into the depths. I was going to hit the seabed. Clawed at the tide. Fifty seconds. My ears were hissing. My head was bursting. My lips were clamped against my teeth. I was very angry. Quinn had made it out of the ocean. This scene of Reacher fighting the surf goes on for an unendurable six pages. Unendurable, because the reader finds himself unintentionally holding his own breath as he reads.
Nobody, not even Stephen Hunter, writes better action scenes than Lee Child. While the Reacher novels can be read out of sequence, I still recommend that you start with Killing Floor. Big mistake. Boston-based private eye Spenser—no first name ever provided—is a first-rate action hero, and his bullet-fast stories have set the standard for contemporary detective fiction.
Parker is peerless when it comes to dialogue. Spenser and Hawk shatter tough-guy stereotypes: though they are hulking brutes, they are also highly if self- educated, often playfully trading arcane literary references, mocking each other over the use of some fancy word, or quoting poetry while bashing bewildered, chromosome-deficient bad guys.
Nobody does a better job of working complex human and romantic relationships into action stories. And it is a grand romance: they have remained head-over-heels in love for decades—which no doubt explains why the Spenser stories appeal as much to women as to men. My wife, no fan of thrillers, nonetheless got hooked on the Spenser novels and raced through them all in a month-long gallop.
That was a fairly mundane detective tale, but the introduction of Susan and Hawk in subsequent novels quickly raised the Spenser stories far above the competition. Though the series has lost some oomph in recent years, Spenser will never bore you: these are very fast reads and always rewarding. In recent years, Parker has launched a couple of other detective series—one about a small-town New England police chief named Jesse Stone, the other about a female detective, Sunny Randall.
My main problem with Stone is that he is far more flawed a man than Spenser, and for this kind of reading, I prefer my heroes For a writer of detective fiction, about the most complimentary comparison would be to liken him to Robert B. Have read every one. You are my top crime writer Jo. More books please.
I like his stuff better than a lot of these. Conan Doyle only makes 21! And the writer who arguably created the genre is only at How is Dean Koontz crime or thriller? No Ludlum, no Clancy, no Forsyth, no Hammett. This article or blog is of no use at all….. I condemn these ratings and the people who have voted for these authors who are well anonymous for many of us…. Your email address will not be published.
Scroll down to find out if your vote made the top James P. Bridgestock R. Peter James Peter James has effortlessly stolen the crown with an incredible number of votes. Peter James 2. James Patterson 3. Val McDermid 4. Ian Rankin 5. Agatha Christie 6. Martina Cole 7. Sheila Quigley 8. Bridgestock 9. Karin Slaughter Tess Gerritsen Mark Billingham Patricia Cornwell Ruth Rendell Karen Rose Chris Carter Lee Child Simon Kernick James Thomas Harris Stuart MacBride Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Matt Johnson John Connolly Dennis Lehane Dan Brown Henning Mankell Jo Nesbo Peter May Harlan Coben Gillian Flynn Dick Francis John Grisham Sarah Hilary Mandasue Heller Linwood Barclay Kimberley Chambers Cooper Michael Connelly Nicci French Faye Kellerman Jeffery Deaver Kathy Reichs Jonathan Kellerman Colin Bateman Ed McBain Raymond Chandler Reginald Hill Sophie Hannah Tana French Patricia Highsmith Simon Toyne Michael Robotham Dean Koontz Apples Never Fall.
City on Fire. How It Ends. Then She Was Gone. One by One. Heartbreak Bay. The Consequences of Fear. We Begin at the End. The Devil's Hand. The Beirut Protocol. Behind Her Eyes. The Committed. The Venice Sketchbook. Trust No One. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. The Devil in the White City. The Titan's Curse. Slow Fire Burning. Troubled Blood. The Wife. Masked Prey. Drown Her Sorrows. An Unexpected Peril. Heaven, My Home. The Stillwater Girls. The Searcher. Sherlock Holmes. The Kaiser's Web.
Mexican Gothic. The Bombay Prince. Time's Convert. The Wife Upstairs. Behind Closed Doors. Punching Tickets. Kings Lake Investigation Series. Something in the Water. And Then There Were None. Parable of the Talents. An Easy Death. Long Bright River. In Cold Blood. The Final Girl Support Group. A Private Cathedral. Bath Haus. Still Life. Transient Desires. He is also a serial cheater, gaslighter and narcissist. Lilja will do anything to hold on to him. And so she accepts his deceptions and endures his sexual desires.
She rationalizes his toxic behaviour and permits him to cross all her boundaries. In her desperation to be the perfect lover, she finds herself unable to break free from the toxic cycle. And then an unexpected ultimatum: an all-consuming love, or the promise of a life reclaimed. Rabbits is a secret, dangerous and sometimes fatal underground game. The rewards for winning are unclear, but there are rumours of money, CIA recruitment or even immortality. But everyone knows that the deeper you get, the more deadly the game becomes — and the body count is rising.
Since the game first started, ten iterations have taken place. Nell Ballard is a runaway. A former foster child with a dark secret she is desperate to keep, all Nell wants is to find a place she can belong. So when a job comes up at Starling Villas, home to the enigmatic Robin Wilder, she seizes the opportunity with both hands.
But her new lodgings may not be the safe haven that she was hoping for. Her employer lives by a set of rigid rules and she soon sees that he is hiding secrets of his own. After forensic veterinarian Cooper Allen travels to the scene, the investigators soon uncover evidence of a chain of crimes in the community — disappearances, arson and mutilations — all culminating in the reveal of something deadly lurking in the ground itself.
In the dark days that follow, the town slips into panic and paranoia. Everything is not as it seems. Anyone could be a suspect. And as Cooper finds herself unable to leave town, Alec is stalked by an unseen threat. The two investigators race to uncover the truth behind these frightening and insidious mysteries — no matter the cost.
Sixteen Horses is the debut literary thriller from an extraordinary talent, Greg Buchanan. A story of enduring guilt, trauma and punishment, set in a small seaside community the rest of the world has left behind. The Imposter — Anna Wharton's debut thriller — is a compelling story of obsession, loneliness and lies.
Newspaper archivist Chloe lives a quiet life until one day at work she reads about the long-forgotten cold case of Angie Kyle, a girl who went missing as a child.
When an unexpected turn of events finds her living as a lodger in Angie's parents' house, Chloe soon learns that the case of the missing girl is not as simple as it first seemed and becomes obsessed with finding out the truth. When Claire is just seven years old, her teenage sister Alison vanishes while they are on holiday with their parents on the Carribean island Saint X. As the story hits the tabloids, the lives of Claire and her parents are changed forever.
Sure this is fate, she engineers another meeting and begins an obsessive search for the truth. This moving, atmospheric novel has all the tension of a crime thriller novel as it hurtles towards a devastating end. This tense mystery from Jenny Quintana is a must-read for thriller fans. Marina was adopted as a baby after she was found wrapped in a blue shawl in a shared house in London.
The press nicknamed her Baby Blue, but the circumstances around her birth are still unknown. Marina longs to uncover the truth about her birth, so when a flat in the house where she was found is put up for rent, she seizes her chance. But what if it's not just the house hiding secrets? What if someone knows what happened that day, and wants to make sure the truth never comes to light?
Radical extremists are rising and governments, the military and intelligence agencies are outmanoeuvred, borders are breaking down and the people in power are puppets. In this new world, one man will make a difference.
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