Newest Thrillers Reviews
I'm Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid
The unnamed Girlfriend is driving with her boyfriend Jake to his parent's farmhouse out in the country. True to the title, she's thinking about ending their relationship. But something seems a little off. When she meets his parents, the Girlfriend begins to think there's something not quite right about them. On their way back they stop outside an abandoned school, and that's when things get really frightening... Full review...
Distress Signals by Catherine Ryan Howard
Cruise ship The Celebrate is a place for leisure, relaxation and, it seems, disappearance. To Adam's knowledge two women have disappeared from the ship mid-ocean, a fact that interests him as one of them is his partner Sarah. The search for her began with a note and seems to have ended on board but he won't let it go. If Sarah is out there, Adam will find her even though he may not like what he discovers along the way about the woman he loves and thought he knew. Full review...
Trigger Mortis by Anthony Horowitz
Bond is back, this time authored by international best-selling author Anthony Horowitz. It all begins with a seemingly simple mission (at least for Bond). After a few days training, James heads to Germany to race in the European championship at Nürburgring where he plans to stop the Russians using dirty tricks to secure victory. However, we're not surprised that Bond soon uncovers a much bigger and more serious plot: a scheme by Korean Sin Jai-Seong (otherwise known as Jason Sin) and SMERSH (a top-secret department of the Russian government) to undermine the American space programme whilst simultaneously murdering millions of New Yorkers and toppling the Empire State Building. As the clock ticks down, only Bond and CIA field-agent, Jeopardy Lane, can stop it. But are they already too late? Full review...
The Fifth Gospel by Ian Caldwell
Conspiracy thrillers are many and varied. They often promise a lot but leave you feeling frustrated and disappointed. The Fifth Gospel is the rare exception. In a genre filled with mediocrity it soars above the competition. The care and quality that Ian Caldwell brings to his writing is exceptional and his storytelling is gifted. Set in the heart of the Vatican, he weaves a tale around the discovery of a missing gospel. The religious and political intrigues, handled with great subtlety, are twisted into a complex narrative full of intimate details. Full review...
Different Class by Joanne Harris
St Oswald's Grammar School For Boys is in crisis. A murdered schoolboy, a procession of new Head Masters, a(nother) new Head Master, a Crisis Intervention Team and a potential merger with St Oswald's all female counterpart, Mulberry House. Roy Straitley is not altogether dismayed at the prospect of delaying his retirement; St Oswald's has been his life, man and boy and a crisis is a crisis after all is said and done, isn't it? It's probably his duty to stay and right the ship. So when the latest of the new Head Masters and his duo of crisis managers walk into the staff room, Straitley can't quite believe his old eyes. The new Head is an ex-pupil of St Oswald's; a boy who, in his time at the esteemed old School caused such an uproarious scandal that one of the Masters ended up in prison! Full review...
The Hanging Club by Tony Parsons
When the three yobbos who kick to death a young husband and father are given a perfunctory sentence, DC Wolfe finds it hard to hold his true feelings in check. Confounded by the injustice of the British Courts and legal system, DC Wolfe spends a good while soul searching and wondering why he invests so much of his life in fighting crime, finding murderers and bringing them to justice when the integrity of the criminal justice system is so sorely lacking. Luckily for DC Wolfe he has his bright and funny daughter Scout to keep him from looking too hard into the darkness that DC Wolfe knows lives inside every dutiful cop; until the videos start being posted on the internet. Full review...
Orphan X (Evan Smoak) by Gregg Hurwitz
1-855-2-Nowhere is the number you can call when you're in danger. The only payment needed for a very violent but terminal solution is that you pass the number on to someone else in trouble. Evan Smoak, the man attached to the phone number, has been trained. A strategic thinker and total expert in the fields of espionage and killing, he was kidnapped as a pre-teen to take part in a covert programme. That was long ago though and now life is different. Normally everything runs like clockwork but one day that clock stops and a countdown of a different sort begins. Evan is Orphan X and Orphan X is himself in trouble. Full review...
Fault/lines (Hadron Damnation Book 0) by Mark Lingane
What starts off as a day that should be remembered for a medical appointment soon becomes anything but for DCI Tracey Hanson. When planes start falling from the sky she and DI Reggie Chambers are thrown together in the thick of it. In the midst of the carnage, a teenager is orphaned. Definitely a tragic event but is there more to it than that? Full review...
The Missing Hours by Emma Kavanagh
Selena Cole has an unusual job, working in the field of Kidnap and Ransom, but this time she's the one in trouble. While playing in the park with her children she vanishes, and returns 24 hours later with no recollection of where she's been. Oh and in the meantime, a man has been murdered. It's probably completely unconnected, but this is a reasonably small town and for the local police it's unusual to have two such infrequent events in quick succession. Full review...
The Disappearance by Annabel Kantaria
Audrey, widowed mother of grown up twins, is setting off for one last hurrah, taking her children on a Greek island cruise. It's quite a nice gesture for the pair, to whom she's starting to feel something of a burden, but she has the time and the means to treat them, so why shouldn't she? There may be more to it than that, though. Full review...
In Too Deep by Samantha Hayes
Rick is an ordinary man. Husband to Gina, father to Hannah. And then one day he’s not. He goes out to buy the newspaper and never returns. Not so ordinary after all. It’s now months later. The investigation has slowed right down. There are no real leads to follow, and so as far as the Police are concerned, that’s it. Of course it’s not so easy for Gina and Hannah, and so when they get a mysterious phone call they jump quickly to conclusions and jump in the car to follow up. Full review...
The Light of Day by Eric Ambler
If he hadn't been arrested by the Turkish police, he'd have been arrested by the Greek police…and of course it's not his fault. Not at all. Nothing ever is. Arthur Abdel Simpson is one of those people who bumble idly into trouble, never of their own making, naturally. He's also one of those people with an eye for the main chance, so although – taking a generous view – you might even agree with him that but for the actions of others he'd never have been in that position in the first place, once there, he's unlikely to let an opportunity slip by untaken. Full review...
Pretty Is by Maggie Mitchell
One summer there are two disappearances. Two 12 year old girls from opposite coasts go missing, presumed abducted, presumed dead. Maybe they're connected, maybe they aren't. Two months later they are rescued alive and returned to their families. But can they ever really go home again? Full review...
Make Me by Lee Child
Keever is dead. We know this from the outset, because in the opening lines of Make Me he is being buried under the hog pen. There are reasons for this, not least because the ground is already churned up by the hogs, and anywhere else in this vast mid-west expanse of wheat fields would be terribly visible from the air. Full review...
Under Ground by S L Grey
When a devastating super-flu hits, a collection of the paranoid and super-wealthy decide to hole up in a state of the art, luxury underground bunker complex. It doesn't get off to a great start. The separate families don't gel together, the 'luxury' isn't at all what they'd been promised and soon they realise that they would be safer on the outside. When the owner dies mysteriously, the residents of the sanctum are locked in and are being picked off one by one ... but is it a series of fluke accidents, or is there a killer among them? They are trapped together, with no outside communication and with no choice but to rely on those they mistrust. With tension high and food and water low, luxury civilisation has turned into the rules of the jungle. The question is, who will survive? (If anyone ...) Full review...
Too Close to the Edge by Pascal Garnier and Emily Boyce (translator)
Meet Pascal Garnier. Normally, in starting a review that way, I'm on about the main character of the book, but it could be said the biggest character of any Pascal Garnier book is Pascal Garnier, not that that's a flaw. Over a half-dozen titles I've come to know the pattern of his output, and it's fair to say this example fits it very well. Again, not a fault. His thrillers have a small cast list of characters, trapped somehow in a small community, cut off by weather, season or remoteness. Here we are with Eliette, and just a handful of others, and watching her as she celebrates the return of spring to her remote home, an ex-silk farm in southern France. All characters have a darkness about them, including Eliette – she had wanted to retire to the place with her loving, long-term husband, but he died of cancer months before retirement. And the final piece of the Garnier pattern is that that darkness, the black surrounding the night stars to use one of the more memorable lines here, is that things – said situation, other people, life itself – cause people to do some equally black and stupid acts… Full review...
Hester and Harriet by Hilary Spiers
Hester and Harriet are two respectable widowed sisters in their sixties, living a life of pleasant routine in their cottage in a quiet village. Known to all their neighbours, they play bridge, do good turns, and in short are everything two ladies of their age and station should be. It's no surprise, then, that their first thought upon seeing a frightened young woman with a baby in a disused bus shelter on Christmas morning is to take her home and feed her. But not everyone in the world, or even in their village, has such good intentions. Life is about to get terribly complicated. Full review...
The Last Thing I Remember by Deborah Bee
Contemporary writers are mining a rich seam of psychological thrillers and, within this genre, I seem to be particularly attracted to stories featuring comatose protagonists. Comatose protagonists? Isn't that a contradiction in terms? True, you do normally expect a protagonist to, well, do something. And Deborah Mee's heroine Sarah does nothing at all, other than listen, and try and remember, from her unconscious state. In her narrative she offers us nothing more than fractured memories and snippets of conversations from around her bedside. Yet with these meagre tools she helps the reader build up a vivid picture of what is happening around her, of her own character, and of the events leading to her hospital admission. As a reader you gradually piece together what made Sarah what she is today. At first you see an apparently successful career woman in a loving marriage but, as layers are gradually removed, what lies beneath becomes apparent. Sarah's controlling husband has a sinister brother who comes to sit by her bedside, while her toxic mother wages an ongoing war of words with Sarah's spineless father... At times I wanted to weep for what happened to Sarah; at other times I wanted to scream at her for letting it happen. Full review...
You Sent Me A Letter by Lucy Dawson
It's scary enough turning 40 (I've heard) without being awoken on the eve of your birthday by a strange man who has broken into your bedroom with a rather bizarre message. Emerging from the shadows, he hands Sophie an envelope with strict instructions to open it that evening as her party is in full swing. She has no idea what is inside, but it can't be good. Full review...
Where Love Begins by Judith Hermann
Stella lives an ordinary life in a small town in Germany. While her young daughter is at kindergarten, she works as a domiciliary nurse. After school and at the weekend she is for all intents and purposes a single mother, for her husband Jason works away a lot. We don't know if she is happy, per se, but she doesn't seem unhappy. Full review...
Fox by Anthony Gardner
Ok. When reviewing a thriller, you have a dilemma. Because the plot is the point, you see. You don't want to give too much away because it's not just the denouement that's a spoiler; it's the whole thing. But you do have to give potential readers a decent idea of what they'll be getting. So here is my stab at interesting you while still keeping you guessing about Fox. Full review...
Those Girls by Chevy Stevens
Those girls don't have it easy. Jess, Courtney and Dani are grafters. Teen girls with a mum who is gone and a father who is barely there, they have a lot to contend with. They're hard workers but life is not glam, out of the farm where things are dusty, dirty and, at times, dangerous. Full review...
In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware
Nora Shaw hasn't seen her friend Clare since Nora left school ten years ago and didn't look back. Now working as a crime writer and living in London, she is naturally surprised when she receives an invitation to Clare's hen party – a weekend in a woodland cottage in the Northumberland country. Curious as to why Clare would invite her after all these years Nora reluctantly agrees to come, but as the weekend unfolds something goes very wrong and old secrets are slowly revealed. Full review...
Behind Closed Doors by B A Paris
On the face of it they look like the perfect couple. Jack is handsome and a dedicated lawyer. He's never lost a case in his work with battered women. He looks like a loving husband too. His wife, Grace, is elegant and a brilliant housewife. Her sister Millie has Down's Syndrome but Grace is her guardian and they're close. She and Jack go to see Millie at her school most weekends and she'll soon be coming to live with them when she's eighteen. You might wonder why Grace is very careful about what she says in front of Jack and why you can never get her on her own and you're probably a little bit curious as to why Grace is never available for social events during the day when she doesn't work, but there's a very simple answer. Grace is a prisoner. Full review...
Exposure by Helen Dunmore
London - 1960. With the Cold War at its height, spy fever fills the newspapers, the political establishment knowing how and where to bury its secrets. A sensitive file goes missing, and Simon Callington is accused of passing information to the Soviets, and is arrested. His wife Lily suspects that this imprisonment is part of a cover-up, and that those higher than Simon are fighting to prevent their own downfall. Knowing that both she and her children too are in danger, Lily must fight to save Simon and protect her family. Little does she know that Simon is hiding many things from her, including a crime that may carry with it an even greater penalty. Full review...
Midnight in Berlin by James MacManus
Berlin – 1938. In the British Embassy, military attaché Colonel Macrae prepares to defy his ambassador and government, and assassinate Hitler. Elsewhere, Sara Sternschein appears on stage in her role as the lead in the Gestapo's brothel – the Salon Kitty. She has no choice, her twin brother is being held in a concentration camp. In the Gestapo Headquarters, Obergruppenfuhrer Joaqim Bonner waits and watches – with his eyes on Sara Sternschein as his secret weapon. As Colonel Macrae gathers intelligence for his mission he finds himself drawn to Salon Kitty – but does Sara hold the key to thwarting Hitler, or is Macrae being manipulated? Full review...
Try Not To Breathe by Holly Seddon
In Try not to Breathe Holly Seddon offers an addition to the somewhat overflowing thriller shelves. Of course, the reason this particular segment is bursting at the seams is because thrillers, especially psychological ones, are just so compelling. And there have been some good - and hugely successful - books in this category out there of late (before-I-go-to-sleep-I'll-be-gone-with-a-girl-on-a-train). So how does Holly Seddon match up? Full review...
Travelers Rest by Keith Lee Morris
I was a little bit sceptical of Travelers Rest at first. A novel set in an old hotel, buried in snow, where strange things start happening? A young boy whose parents start acting strangely, perhaps foreshadowing tragedy? Now that sounds familiar. But I managed to push away those thoughts, and I’m glad I did. The story may be well-known, but the execution is all new. Full review...
If She Did It by Jessica Treadway
Hanna and Joe had two daughters. Iris, the elder, had done well at school and gone on to be a medical student, but Dawn had always struggled. Hanna worried that it was something to do with the birth when Dawn might have been starved of oxygen for a brief moment. She was never bright, bullied at school and suffered from amblyopia or lazy eye. Dawn called it 'lacy eye'. In her late teens she had a boyfriend - tall, good-looking Rud and was obviously besotted with him and brought him home for Thanksgiving, but the pair left the next morning under a cloud with Joe accusing Rud of having stolen from the house whilst everyone else was out. That night Hanna and Joe were attacked in their beds; Joe died from his injuries and Hanna was left severely scarred and with no memory of the events of that night. Full review...
The Spectre Trilogy by Ian Fleming
With the new Spectre film in the cinema, it's time to revisit the original stories… what exactly is SPECTRE, who is Blofeld… and how exactly does 007 come into the picture? Full review...
