Best of
Mystery-Thriller

1993

The Ladykiller


Martina Cole - 1993
    His one soft spot is his daughter, and when she falls victim to the Grantley Ripper, Kelly wants revenge.The DI in charge of the case is Kate Burrows. She feels for Kelly but her growing involvement with a known villain is putting her career at risk . . . As the forces of law and order and London's underworld converge in a huge manhunt, Kate fears she'll lose everything she's ever cared about . . . to the ladykiller.

Point of Impact


Stephen Hunter - 1993
    Today, twenty years later, disgruntled hero of an unheroic war, all Bob Lee Swagger wants to be left alone and to leave the killing behind.But with consummate psychological skill, a shadowy military organization seduces Bob into leaving his beloved Arkansas hills for one last mission for his country, unaware until too late that the game is rigged.The assassination plot is executed to perfection—until Bob Lee Swagger, alleged lone gunman, comes out of the operation alive, the target of a nationwide manhunt, his only allies a woman he just met and a discredited FBI agent.Now Bob Lee Swagger is on the run, using his lethal skills once more—but this time to track down the men who set him up and to break a dark conspiracy aimed at the very heart of America.

Along Came a Spider


James Patterson - 1993
    . . a family of three brutally murdered in the projects of Washington, D.C. . . . the thrill-killing of a beautiful elementary school teacher . . . a psychopathic serial kidnapper/murderer who is so terrifying that the FBI, the Secret Service, and the police cannot outsmart him - even after he's been captured.Gary Soneji wants to commit the crime of the century. Alex Cross is the brilliant homicide detective pitted against him. Jezzie Flanagan is the first female supervisor of the Secret Service. They complete one of the most unusual suspense triangles in any thriller you have ever read. Alex and Jezzie are about to have a forbidden love affair—at the worst possible time for both of them. Because Gary Soneji is playing at the top of his game. The latest of the unspeakable crimes happens in Alex Cross's precinct and it happens under the nose of Jezzie and her men.Alex faces the ultimate test: how do you outmaneuver a brilliant psychopath?

The Mask of Time


Marius Gabriel - 1993
     A wartime sin reaches out of the grave to poison those born from its seed. At the day of reckoning is the cycle of love and betrayal doomed to repeat itself, or can the truth redeem three haunted generations?

Hail Storme


W.L. Ripley - 1993
    He reports violent incident confidentially to the local Sheriff...who is murdered the next day. Storme believes there's a connection and starts asking questions, unraveling a deadly conspiracy of corruption, drug-trafficking and organized crime... and making himself someone that just about everybody wants dead.

A Season in Purgatory


Dominick Dunne - 1993
    Money. Influence. Glamour. Power. The power to halt a police investigation in its tracks. The power to spin a story, concoct a lie, and believe it was the truth. The power to murder without guilt, without shame, and without ever paying the price. America's royalty, they called the Bradleys. But an outsider refuses to play his part. And now, the day of reckoning has arrived. . . .

The Client


John Grisham - 1993
    Now Mark is caught between a legal system gone mad and a mob killer desperate to cover up his crime. And his only ally is a woman named Reggie Love, who has been a lawyer for all of four years. Prosecutors are willing to break all the rules to make Mark talk. The mob will stop at nothing to keep him quiet. And Reggie will do anything to protect her client --even take a last, desperate gamble that could win Mark his freedom... or cost them both their lives.

Gone, But Not Forgotten


Phillip Margolin - 1993
    One by one, the wives of affluent and respected men are vanishing from their homes. The only clues to their disappearance are a single black rose and a note that reads "Gone, But Not Forgotten." It is the rebirth of a horror that has already devastated a community at the opposite end of the country -- and, as it did then, terror and death will follow.Defense attorney Betsy Tannenbaum is trapped in a nightmare as the shadows of a killer darken her world. And she will soon be risking everything she has and everyone she loves to defend a cold, powerful, and manipulating client who may be a victim ... or a monster.

Without Remorse Part I of II


Tom Clancy - 1993
    In 1970, ex-Navy SEAL John Kelly juggles two missions--a private vendetta and the Pentagon's rescue mission of American POWs.Part II is ISBN 0-7366-2604-2 10 cassettes

Desert Heat


J.A. Jance - 1993
    She has Jenny, her adored nine-year-old daughter, and solid, honest, and loving husband, Andy, a local lawman who's running for Sheriff of Cochise County. But her good life explodes when a bullet destroys Andy Brady's future and leaves him dying beneath the blistering Arizona sun.The police brass claim that Andy was dirty -- up to his neck in drugs and smuggling -- and that the shooting was a suicide attempt. Joanna knows a cover-up when she hears one...and murder when she sees it. But her determined efforts to track down an assassin and clear her husband's name are placing herself and her Jenny in serious jeopardy. Because, in the desert, the truth can be far more lethal than a rattler's bite.

A is for Alibi & J is for Judgment


Sue Grafton - 1993
    In "J is for Judgement", Kinsey Millhone finds herself in danger - on the trail of someone who may, or may not, be dead.

Child of Silence


Abigail Padgett - 1993
    Child abuse investigator Bo Bradley gets the case. Staff at St. Mary’s Hospital for Children assume the boy is mentally impaired because he cannot talk, but Bo remembers a little sister named Laurie. She knows that the boy, like Laurie, is deaf. Complicating things is Bo’s manic depressive disorder, a troubling but occasionally valuable problem for which she always, well sometimes, takes her meds. The prime directive in Bo's job is "Don't become emotionally involved with the child!" But the little boy is so bright inside his silence, and so alone. Bo feels the ominous first ripples of an oncoming manic episode and grabs her meds, but they won't have much effect for weeks and the child is in danger now! Risking her job and ultimately her life in a perhaps-delusional race to protect a four-year-old whose only word is his own name - "Weppo" - Bo finds herself alone with the child in a desert night fraught with terrors as she tries to reach an imagined safety among the Paiute. But political intrigue, desperate secrets and a relentless evil lurk in every shadow of a moonlit landscape in which Bo has only her own intense and uncanny perceptions as guide. She knows she's "crazy," but sometimes crazy sees what rational cannot. And "crazy" is now Weppo's only chance for a life! “A sensationally fine first novel… breathtakingly well-told…”The Los Angeles Times

The Concrete Inquisition


Joseph Flynn - 1993
    . . He loses his left eye. He loses his job. And that's after he loses his wife. So what's he going to do? Michael "Doc" Kildare, former undercover narc, sues the government. Claims one-third of the $45 million recovered in the drug raid he led. Armando Guzman, the drug lord who lost the money, doesn't like that. He puts out a contract on Doc's life. Doc's former boss, the superintendent of the Chicago Police Department, also takes exception. He says the confiscated drug money is his. So when he learns of Guzman's contract, he quietly passes the word: Nobody wearing a CPD star is to help Doc in any way. But that's not all. An old friend of Doc's asks a favor. Help find her son. The boy is 17 years old, but mentally handicapped. Doc investigates and soon learns there might be a serial killer working his neighborhood. Oh, yeah. Doc's ex-wife? She's back. He tells himself that she's only after the millions that might be coming his way. Thing is, he doesn't know if that's a good enough reason to turn her away. Hitmen to the right, a maniac to the left, and a redheaded distraction. Nobody ever said retirement would be easy.

Wolf at the Door


Barbara Corcoran - 1993
    Living in the shadow of her beautiful and talented younger sister, Lee cares for a wolf pack that needs protection from cattle ranchers.

Naked Came the Sasquatch


John Boston - 1993
    Michael Fenberg, editor of a small newspaper in the Sierra Nevadas, is out to solve a series of grisly murders. He knows that a monster is committing them. The problem: which monster? Chapter heading illustrations.

The Three Investigators Mysteries (Three-in-one)


Robert Arthur - 1993
    

Shadow Over Babylon


David Mason - 1993
    It is manned by the most savagely skilled death team money can buy. It is armed with the most advanced weapons and technological systems on earth. It is assembled behind the backs of its own and its allies' intelligence agencies. And it is perfectly calculated to bypass the defenses of its target - President Saddam Hussein. A high-ranking government minister conceives the plan for reasons of state the public must never know. Roger Asher, a flamboyant and shady global financier, takes it over. Sir Peter Dartington, a construction magnate in need of mammoth government contracts, is enlisted to bankroll it. And Ed Howard, a maverick who runs his own super-security organization, accepts the contract and meticulously mobilizes an awesome arsenal and international attack team while working out, in daring detail, a course of action that gives new meaning to this mission impossible. Each step is intricately and ingeniously engineered to perfection: from the Highlands of Scotland, where a young deer stalker with a secret motive for murder is recruited for his incredible shooting talent, to the oval office in Washington, where powerful forces are set in motion to derail the plan...from research centers in England, where invaluable esoteric information is gathered, to the plains of Texas, where an American pilot comes aboard...from the Saudi Arabian desert, where a deadly border must somehow be breached, to the most forbidden territory inside Iraq itself...from the most icy and callous conspiratorial minds to the most elemental qualities of courage and endurance. And as the countdown begins on this terrifying master plot to change the course of history, an assassin moves step by step, danger by danger, heartbeat by heartbeat, to the moment when Saddam Hussein moves into the gun sights, and a finger tightens on a trigger.

Carlito's Way and After Hours


Edwin Torres - 1993
    He evokes his doomed world of New York's Spanish Harlem. The sequel, After Hours, a longer, darker tale, shows Carlito, older and wiser, trying to get out of his life of crime.

Three Complete Mysteries: Death in Kenya, Death in Zanzibar, Death in Cyprus


M.M. Kaye - 1993
    A collection of three novels by the famed British mystery writer features Death in Kenya, Death in Zanzibar, and Death in Cyprus.

People of the Whistling Waters


Mardi Oakley Medawar - 1993
    The intricacies of Crow Indian culture are as fascinating as the harrowing scenes of warfare and tragedy that befall this collection of memorable characters. Renee DeGeer, a lusty French Canadian who now calls the Crow his brothers, raises two strong sons: Jacques, Renee's natural born; and Nicolas, who is adopted by the DeGeer's. The young boys soon outgrow the mischief of their childhood and develop into strong warriors. But when Jacques takes a brave white woman as his wife, passions erupt, and one will terrible secret threatens not only to tear the fabric of this close-knit family but the Crow Nation as well.

A Grave Talent


Laurie R. King - 1993
    King into the upper tier of the genre. As "A Grave Talent" begins, the unthinkable has happened in a small community outside of San Francisco. A string of shocking murders has occurred, each victim an innocent child. For Detective Kate Martinelli, just promoted to Homicide and paired with a seasoned cop who's less than thrilled to be handed a green partner, it's going to be a difficult case. Then the detectives receive what appears to be a case-breaking lead: it seems that one of the residents of this odd, close-knit colony is Vaun Adams, arguably the century's greatest painter of women, a man, as it turns out, with a sinister secret. For behind the brushes and canvases also stands a notorious felon once convicted of strangling a little girl. What really happened on that day of savage violence eighteen years ago? To bring a murderer to justice, Kate must delve into the artist's dark past -- even if she knows it means losing everything she holds dear.

Outbreak / Mortal Fear / Mutation


Robin Cook - 1993
    The bizarre and deadly world of high-tech medicine run amok comes alive in a trio of Cook's best-selling horror tales--Outbreak, Mortal Fear, and Mutation.

The Three Investigators 3 in 1: The Mystery of the Screaming Clock; The Mystery of the Moaning Cave; The Mystery of the Talking Skull


Robert Arthur - 1993
    

The List of Seven


Mark Frost - 1993
    Stunned by a shocking display of black magic, Doyle witnesses a murder, nearly falling victim himself before being rescued by a secretive stranger: Jack Sparks, a man who claims to be special agent to Queen Victoria. He tells Doyle that he has been targeted by a diabolical coven of Satanists - the Dark Brotherhood.As they track their attackers across the length and breadth of Britain, assailed by forces of darkness both human and supernatural, Conan Doyle and Sparks unmask a terrifying conspiracy that threatens not only the Crown but the very fabric of modern civilization. Their only clue: a list of seven names, the leaders of the Brotherhood.Skeptical by nature and profession, Doyle labors to prove that the events he has witnessed - horrifying visions, zombies, ghouls, molecular alteration - are elaborate ruses with logical explanations. But if so, why? Simply because Doyle’s anti-occultist writings, never even published, have inadvertently exposed the Brotherhood’s intentions? Who is the elusive, seemingly superhuman mastermind behind the Seven? Most important, as Doyle continues to put his life in the hands of Jack Sparks, the question persists: Can Sparks be trusted?

The Ryer Avenue Story


Dorothy Uhnak - 1993
    The story opens on a Bronx winter night in 1935, when a blow from a shovel kills a man. From the scene flee six children--any of whom might have loosed the fatal strike--whose lives 40 years later will be suddenly shattered by that night's events.