Best of
Mystery-Thriller

1981

Red Dragon


Thomas Harris - 1981
    Graham is the greatest profiler the FBI ever had, but the physical and mental scars of capturing Hannibal Lecter have caused Graham to go into early retirement. Now, Graham must turn to Lecter for help.

Gorky Park


Martin Cruz Smith - 1981
    Chief homicide investigator Arkady Renko is brilliant, sensitive, honest, and cynical about everything except his profession. To identify the victims and uncover the truth, he must battle the KGB, FBI, and New York police as he performs the impossible--and tries to stay alive doing it.

The Man With a Load of Mischief


Martha Grimes - 1981
    At the Jack and Hammer, another body was stuck out on the beam of the pub’s sign, replacing the mechanical man who kept the time. Two pubs. Two murders. One Scotland Yard inspector called in to help. Detective Chief Inspector Richard Jury arrives in Long Piddleton and finds everyone in the postcard village looking outside of town for the killer. Except for one Melrose Plant. A keen observer of human nature, he points Jury in the right direction: into the darkest parts of his neighbors’ hearts…

The Mordida Man


Ross Thomas - 1981
    In retaliation, the Libyans kidnap the U.S. President's brother. Enter the Mordida Man--an independent fixer and bribery expert who must find and free the President's brother . . . without causing an international incident.

Death of a Dissident


Stuart M. Kaminsky - 1981
    His superiors in the Moscow police force are suspicious of his Jewish wife, the black-market copies of his beloved Ed McBain 87th Precinct novels are getting tough to find, and his dreams of becoming a competitive weight-lifter are receding at a rapid clip. And then there's the famous dissident who's been murdered right before his trial—a trial intended to showcase the wonders of the Soviet judicial system. Rostnikov is charged with finding the killer, but the arrest had better be politically convenient, acceptable to the KGB. And things only get trickier when the killer strikes again, displaying a fondness for weapons—a hammer, a sickle, a vodka bottle—with a particularly Russian resonance. Clearly, he's making a statement, but what exactly is he saying? And can Rostnikov stop him before he says it again?

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: Book Two


Catherine Edwards Sadler - 1981
    The sign of the four --The adventure of the blue carbuncle --The adventure of the speckled band.

The False Inspector Dew


Peter Lovesey - 1981
    A passionate affair between voracious romance reader Alma Webster and her dentist, Walter Baranov, has led to his wife’s murder. The lovers take flight aboard the Mauretania and the dentist takes the name of Inspector Dew, the detective who arrested the notorious wifekiller Dr. Crippen. But, in a disquieting twist, a murder occurs aboard ship and the captain invites “Inspector Dew” to investigate.

Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler


Frank MacShane - 1981
    

The Old Dick


L.A. Morse - 1981
    When an old gangster Jake put away some forty years ago shows up at his door, it’s time for Jake to grab his hat and Browning automatic and get back to work.Old? Sure. Slower to catch his breath? Maybe. But, sharp as a tack and with a lifetime of investigating know-how, Jake Spanner has nothing to lose and everything to prove. Sniffing out leads between Sunset Boulevard and the Hollywood Hills, Jake pulls in old friends to help. The work is hard; it’s gritty. So is Jake. And, with a three quarters of a million dollars ransom at stake, the bad guys don’t stand a chance.With THE OLD DICK, author L.A. Morse creates a new kind of hero, one that laughs at death not because he’s too young to understand it, but because it’s right around the corner. It’s time to face it head on and maybe go out swinging.

Normandie Triangle


Justin Scott - 1981
    Here is an intriguing story based on the destruction of the world's most beautiful ocean liner in her time, the French Line's Normandie and an American man who wanted to copy her for his own country's project for an ocean greyhound.Justin uses the well worn theory of sabotage in his story and Normandie destruction being part of a plan for even more carnage.Set against a race for time, Justin uses the then secret underworld of the spying network that both sides used during the second world war.Famous people from the salvage operation are interwoven into this novel.

Crime and Puzzlement: 24 Solve-Them-Yourself Picture Mysteries


Lawrence Treat - 1981
    The clues are all here, just waiting for the reader to piece together the solutions. Guided by questions, young sleuths can narrow down the evidence and find the culprit.