Minette Walters. Red Moon – Benjamin Percy. A blend of supernatural thriller and
alternate history showcases the plight of an underclass of citizens—lupine ...
MYSTERY & THRILLERS Publishers Weekly Death of a Nightingale – Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis Artfully drawn characters who are a pleasure to know populate this writing pair’s third thriller featuring Danish nurse Nina Borg, who bonds with Natasha Doroshenko, a Ukrainian refugee accused of murder. (MYS) *Enigma of China: An Inspector Chen Novel – Qiu Xiaolong Qiu neatly delineates the dilemmas of being an ethical cop in a police state in his eighth novel featuring Chief Insp. Chen Cao, who looks into the apparent suicide of the director of Shanghai’s housing development committee. (MYS) Fear in the Sunlight – Nicola Upson Real-life mystery writer Josephine Tey is featured in Upson’s psychologically complex fourth whodunit. The murders of three women on the set of Rear Window in California in 1954 connect to three other murders committed 18 years earlier in the resort town of Portmeirion, Wales, where Tey met a promising young director named Alfred Hitchcock. (MYS) *Gods and Beasts – Denise Mina Det. Sgt. Alex Morrow’s third outing takes the reader into the dark, beating heart of modern Glasgow, where the real deals are struck and the spoils divided. (MYS) *How the Light Gets In – Louise Penny In her ninth novel with Chief Insp. Armand Gamache of the Quebec Sûreté, Penny balances personal courage and faith with heartbreaking choices and monstrous evil, as Gamache looks into the murder of an elderly
woman, the last survivor of a set of quintuplets who were once national celebrities. (MYS) Murder as a Fine Art – David Morrell Thomas De Quincy, author of the controversial essay “On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts,” sets out to solve a multiple murder case in 1854 London that replicates the real-life Ratcliffe Highway murders of 1811. The Other Child – Charlotte Link A college student leaves her babysitting gig late at night to travel home across a remote part of Yorkshire, only to become a murder victim, in German author Link’s U.S. debut, which will appeal to fans of Ruth Rendell and Minette Walters. Red Moon – Benjamin Percy A blend of supernatural thriller and alternate history showcases the plight of an underclass of citizens—lupine shapeshifters known as lycans—who illuminate much of recent U.S. history, including the “war on terror.” *Red Sparrow – Jason Matthews Matthews brings all the authenticity and tradecraft of his 33 years as a CIA agent to his first novel, in which CIA agent Nate Nash matches wits with beautiful Dominika Egorova, an agent of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service. The Silent Wife – A.S.A. Harrison Gone Girl fans will welcome Canadian author Harrison’s first novel, a smart, nuanced portrait of a faltering marriage. Harrison breathes life into Adlerian psychology.
Library Journal Circle of Shadows – A Westerman/Crowtheer Mystery – Imogen Robertson Late in the 18th century, a secret society threatens to topple a politically significant European duchy. Opera, potions, and automata all play parts in a mesmerizing historical thriller laden with intrigue. Cries of the Lost – Chris Knopf Fugitive Arthur only wants the truth about his late wife’s criminal pursuits. Crisscrossing Europe, he barely stays ahead of the bad guys in this witty, cleverly concocted sequel to the Nero Award–winning Dead Anyway. Death on Demand – Paul Thomas Maori DS Tito Ihaka’s original instincts were unpopular but correct, and now his boss needs him to solve a cold case. His audacious methods rattle society’s cages in this gritty procedural from one of New Zealand’s best crime writers. (MYS) Bookmarks Gun Machine – Warren Ellis After watching his partner die from a shotgun blast, Detective John Tallow stumbles on a cache of weapons that will solve hundreds of decades-old cold cases. Little Green: An Easy Rawlins Mystery – Walter Mosley Easy finds himself recovering from a car crash in hippie-culture Los Angeles, a city he no longer understands. (MYS)
Live by Night – Dennis Lehane Joe Coughlin, the son of an Irish-born deputy superintendent in the Boston Police Department, turns to crime during Prohibition, winds up on prison, thrives as a bootlegger, and more. The Racketeer – John Grisham Malcolm Bannister, a black lawyer from Winchester, Virginia, is halfway through a prison sentence for a crime he didn’t commit when he concocts a way out. The Wall Street Journal The Dinosaur Feather – Sissel-Jo Gazan Introduces a brilliant loner policeman who tests hypothetical solutions in an environment full of eccentrics even less social than he. (MYS) Holy Orders – Benjamin Black Black returns us to a melancholy 1950s Dublin. Kinsey and Me – Sue Grafton Traces connections between fiction and fact, pairing stories featuring Ms. Grafton's private detective Kinsey Millhone with others including Kit Blue, a fictional version of the author as a young woman. The Rage – Gene Corrigan The author gives brutal glimpses of today's Irish capital. Seven for a Secret – Lyndsay Faye This is the second in Lyndsay Faye's exciting series about Timothy Wilde, a police detective in 1846 Manhattan. Under Tower Peak – Bart Paul
Bart Paul's suspenseful debut, accompanies a pack-station guide in California's Sierra Nevada through a hair-raising adventure starting with the mountaintop discovery of a dead billionaire inside a crashed plane. NPR (National Public Radio) Brilliance – Marcus Sakey What if the X-men were real? They'd probably have powers a lot like Marcus Sakey's "brilliants" — endowed not with disbeliefstraining flight or laser eyes but with accelerated human talents like pattern recognition, programming and strategy…. Brilliance is a tightly plotted thriller with classic questions beating in its geeky heart. *The Cuckoo’s Calling – Robert Galbraith A thoroughly satisfying crime novel — even if you didn't know it was really written by J.K. Rowling. (MYS) Doctor Sleep – Stephen King Read this book anywhere … except, say, if you're alone and snowbound in a vacant, isolated hotel. Yes, Stephen King brings us the sequel to The Shining — and it's almost as gripping as the original. The Shining Girls – Lauren Beukes In her first book set in the U.S., South African novelist Lauren Beukes defies genre, and she dazzles as she does it. The Shining Girls is a murder mystery, thriller and time travel puzzle all in one. A young girl is left for dead in a brutal and seemingly motiveless attack. An itinerant miscreant steps through the door of a menacing house. As their stories converge (through decades and different locales) to a terrifying climax, the reader also meets a group of women — each ordinary and yet each a chillingly, and fatefully, designated "Shining Girl."
Speaking from Among the Bones: a Flavia De Luce Novel – Alan Bradley Twelve-year-old chemist and detective Flavia de Luce is just fun to read about. In her latest book (the fifth in the series), she tries to unravel a mystery involving hidden corpses, missing treasure, secret passageways, family secrets and a surefire way to scare the heck out of the vicar's wife. (MYS) Kirkus Breaking Point – C. J. Box Wyoming Fish and Game Warden Joe Pickett, who attracts trouble the way carcasses attract maggots (Force of Nature, 2012, etc.), gets in the line of fire between an old friend and the Feds. (MYS) A Fatal Likeness – Lynn Shepherd A detective in Victorian England takes a case involving several renowned and infamous literary figures. Light of the World – James Lee Burke Pruning away the florid subplots that often clutter his heaven-storming blood baths, Burke produces his most sharply focused, and perhaps his most harrowing, study of human evil, refracted through the conventions of the crime novel. (MYS) Never Go Back – Lee Child For the pure pleasure of uncomplicated, nonstop action, no one touches Reacher, who accurately observes that "I trained myself...to turn fear into aggression. The October List – Jeffrey Deaver Perhaps the cleverest of all Deaver's exceptionally clever thrillers. If you've ever wished you could take the film Memento to the beach, here's your chance.
The Shadow Tracer – Meg Gardiner If you can accept the preposterous setup, the ruthlessly two-dimensional villains and the world's most uncomplaining 5-year-old, Gardiner (Ransom River, 2012, etc.) will keep you up half the night with nonstop action and nary a pause for breath. Nightrise – Jim Kelly Cambridgeshire reporter Philip Dryden (The Skeleton Man, 2008, etc.) returns to solve the mystery of his father's death—an especially challenging case, considering that the old man apparently died twice. (MYS) Spirit of the Steamboat – Craig Johnson Unlike Walt's usual adventures (A Serpent's Tooth, 2013, etc.), this novella shuns mystery for a wild and dangerous adventure that will leave you both touched and breathless. (MYS) Stolen Prey – John Sandford Sandford keeps every stage of the investigation clear, compelling and suspenseful while peeling back layer after layer of a world in which "everybody was hot, everybody was rich. Bear is Broken – Lachlan Smith A newly minted attorney investigating his brother's shooting ends up learning more about the victim than he'd ever wanted to know. (MYS) Tatiana – Martin Cruz Smith Anyone who enjoys crime novels but hasn't read Smith is in for a treat. Read this book, then look for other Arkady Renko adventures.
These titles were chosen by, Kirkus, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, Bookmarks, NPR, and The Wall Street Journal
You can find all of them here at
The Ridgefield Library
(*Designates books found on “best books” lists of more than one publication) (Annotations taken from publications)
