Book picks similar to
The Lights of Skaro by David Dodge
man-on-the-run-thrillers
sleazy-pulp
tbr
espionage
The King Tides
James Swain - 2018
And that of strangers, too. Wherever she goes, she’s being watched. Each stalker is different from the last, except for one thing—their alarming obsession with Nicki.Desperate times call for desperate measures, and Nicki’s father is turning to someone who can protect her: retired private detective and ex–Navy SEAL Jon Lancaster. Teaming up with FBI agent and former abduction victim Beth Daniels, Lancaster can help—his way. He’s spent most of his career dispatching creeps who get off on terrorizing the vulnerable. Unlicensed, and unrestricted, he plays dirty…But this case is unusual. Why so many men? Why this one girl? Does Nicki have something to hide? Or do her parents?Trawling the darkest depths of southern Florida, Lancaster faces a growing tide of secrets and deception. And the deeper he digs, the more he realizes that finding the truth won’t be easy. Because there’s more to this case than meets the eye.
The Spy Killer (John Smith Book 1)
Jimmy Sangster - 2019
"An exquisite series launch. A tight and often violent tale of intrigue. Spy fiction fans will revel in this dark, witty story." Publishers Weekly Ex-British spy John Smith is nearly broke, has bad teeth, is lousy in bed, and drinks too much. But he's no fool. He's a man who knows his own limitations and works within them. He blackmailed his way out of the secret service years ago and is barely making a living as a London private eye when his ex-wife comes calling and asks him to follow her philandering husband. But that sleazy, all-too-common job leads to some uncommon trouble...and Smith is thrown like a chunk of raw meat into a lion's den of international espionage, betrayal, and killing. His only hope of surviving is to outwit his clever and brutal adversaries at their own deadly game. "Very astutely plotted, with many surprising twists and a sharp bite" The New York Times "There's nothing ordinary about this adventure. It's big league intrigue." Kirkus Reviews "A deadly, cold, serious drama of counter-espionage." Atlanta Constitution "A witty spy story in the anti-James Bond tradition." The Cedar Falls Courier This novel was originally published under the title private I and was adapted into a feature film The Spy Killer starring Robert Horton, Jill St. John and Sebastian Cabot.
Watched: When Road Rage Follows You Home
Kerry Wilkinson - 2013
He’s won awards for his work with children, his brother is a chief inspector and he runs the neighbourhood watch scheme.But Esther Pooley sees him differently.After a road rage incident, she’s convinced he’s the person terrorising her and husband, Charlie, at their suburban dream home.As the stakes begin to rise, they must decide if bricks and mortar are worth more than their relationship, with Charlie stuck on the toughest of all dilemmas. How far will he go to protect his wife?This is the latest novel from Kerry Wilkinson, Kindle No.1 bestselling author of the Jessica Daniel series."Wilkinson’s story spreads like a pool of blood...his talent becomes ever more obvious."- Daily Mail on Think of the Children"Locked In has changed my mind. Expecting little, I was pleasantly surprised."- The Guardian on Locked In"Plotting, high drama and characterisation are becoming the hallmarks of the his thrillers"- Lancashire Evening Post on Playing With Fire
Child 44
Tom Rob Smith - 2008
He arrests whomever he is told to arrest. He dismisses the horrific death of a young boy because he is told to, because he believes the Party stance that there can be no murder in Communist Russia. Leo is the perfect soldier of the regime. But suddenly his confidence that everything he does serves a great good is shaken. He is forced to watch a man he knows to be innocent be brutally tortured. And then he is told to arrest his own wife. Leo understands how the State works: Trust and check, but check particularly on those we trust. He faces a stark choice: his wife or his life. And still the killings of children continue...
Nomad
James Swallow - 2016
But when a brutal attack on his team leaves Marc as the only survivor - and with the shocking knowledge that there are traitors inside MI6 - he's forced into the front line.However the evidence seems to point towards Marc as the perpetrator of the attack. Accused of betraying his country, he must race against time to clear his name. With nowhere to turn to for help and no one left to trust, Marc is forced to rely on the elusive Rubicon group and their operative Lucy Keyes. Ex US Army, Lucy also knows what it's like to be an outsider, and she's got the skills that Marc is sorely lacking.A terrorist attack is coming, one bigger and more deadly than has ever been seen before. With the eyes of the security establishment elsewhere, only Lucy and Marc can stop the attack before it's too late.
Jail Bird
Jessie Keane - 2010
Everyone believes she got what she deserved, but Lily knows she was fitted up.Now she’s out, and she doesn’t do forgiveness. In her absence, things have moved on and the old order has changed. But now she’s ready to reclaim her position as head of the King family.Fuelled by vengeance, Lily King is back, and some people aren’t going to know what’s hit them.
The Hunter
Tom Wood - 2010
It is titled 'The Killer' in the US.Forget James Bond. Forget Jason Bourne. Forget Jack Bauer. Meet Victor: He's an assassin--a man with the no past and no surname. But when a job in Paris goes spectacularly wrong, Victor finds himself running for his life across four continents accompanied by a woman too beautiful to trust . . . pursued by enemies too powerful to escape.The hunter has become the hunted Victor is a freelancer, a professional, a killer---the best there is. He’s ice cold, methodical, and deadly. He lives alone. He operates alone. No one knows his background, or even his name. For him, business is a straight transaction. He’s given a job; he takes out the target; he gets paid.He’s in Paris to perform a standard kill and collect for an anonymous client. The contract is simple, routine, and Victor completes it with trademark efficiency, only to find himself in the middle of an ambush and fighting for his life. Faced with powerful and determined enemies, and caught in the crossfire of an international conspiracy unfolding across four continents, Victor is forced to go on the run across a winter-ravaged Europe. Pursued by the authorities, hired assassins, and intelligence agencies from both sides of the Atlantic, he discovers that no place is safe for him anymore and there is no one he can trust.But Victor is no easy target, and he’s every bit as ruthless as those hunting him. He will find out who wants him dead and why, one corpse at a time.
Trouble in Paradise
L.T. Vargus - 2021
And an old flame to complicate the trip.Check out this beach-y Violet Darger short featuring Darger, Loshak, Owen, and Spinks.When 17-year-old Micaela Tolliver goes missing during her beach vacation, FBI profiler Violet Darger heads to Curacao to investigate. The case vexes local law enforcement, with plenty of suspicious characters around and comparisons to Natalee Holloway aplenty.Red herrings. False starts. People who will go great lengths to protect the island's long held secrets.Further complications emerge due to someone else entangled in the case -- Darger's old friend and former lover, private investigator Owen Baxter. They're working together for the first time after a bad breakup. The tension is palpable, and Darger begins to question the knot of conflicts in her own heart.Corruption. Death. Sand. Romance.Once again, Violet Darger shines her light into the shadows. And what she finds there in the darkness will change her.
Walk in Silence
J.G. Sinclair - 2017
She was there the night he murdered the mother of a five-year-old boy. She remembers it well - it was the same night he put three bullets in her chest and left her for dead.But there are powerful people who want the hit man back on the streets. When they kidnap the boy, she is given a choice: commit perjury, blow the trial and allow the killer to walk or give evidence, convict him and watch the child die. Keira must make a decision. This time, does she have to cross a line to win?
Out of the Black
John Rector - 2013
But just as the little girl—who survived the accident—finally starts thriving, Matt’s former in-laws threaten to take her away via a bitter custody battle. Desperate to keep Anna and in debt to some dangerous local thugs, Matt has no good options. But he does have Jay, one very bad friend. Just out of jail and plagued by drug addiction, Jay tempts Matt with a foolproof kidnapping scheme. But what sounds like the perfect solution to all his problems eventually leads Matt through a nightmarish maze of betrayals and reversals, pushing him to his breaking point—and beyond.
The Judge
Farin Powell - 2016
The story is impressive in the way it shifts readers’ sympathies … a gem of a legal thriller, full of plot twists and juicy secrets.” —Kirkus Reviews “Powell’s third novel, a legal thriller, reveals the complexities and tragedies of our criminal justice system. It shows how a series of unexpected events can force a law abiding individual to choose a criminal path. The story in this fast-paced novel will stay with the reader forever.” —Focus On Women Magazine From the courtroom to the kidnappers’ lair, Powell keeps the excitement in tune with a pitch-perfect delivery of realistically motivated characters and a nonstop series of powerfully tense situations. There is no lag in the book, from the opening pages depicting the kidnapping to the thrilling conclusion. ROSE GARRETT —Clarion Reviews As Judge Walter McNeil heads home from Washington, DC’s Superior Court, he is preoccupied with the triple-murder case assigned to him. But everything changes when a car pulls up next to him and a man asks for directions. Seconds later, McNeil is pushed into the backseat of the car, knocked unconscious, and whisked away into uncertainty. McNeil’s kidnappers are three ex-convicts whose lives have been ruined by the judge’s harsh sentences. Out for revenge, they feed the judge drugs, repeatedly threaten his life, and then imply they have his teenage daughter, Daphne, who disappeared four years earlier. After they tell him at gunpoint that he must rule favorably on a defense attorney’s motions in the triplemurder case, McNeil has no idea his ordeal is just beginning. Before it is over, the judge’s life will be turned upside down. Now it is up to criminal defense attorney Amanda Perkins and detective Aristo Manfredi to partner together in a race against time to unravel the clues and hopefully save the judge from a fate he never could have imagined. In this legal thriller, a judge is kidnapped and thrust into the midst of a twisted web that intertwines him with the lives of three ex-convicts and the mystery surrounding his missing daughter.
Accidental Heroes
Danielle Steel - 2018
A pregnant flight attendant. A dedicated TSA agent. The fates of these three, and many others, converge in Danielle Steel’s gripping new novel—a heart-stopping thriller that engages ordinary men and women in the fight of their lives during a flight from New York to San Francisco. On a beautiful May morning at New York’s John F. Kennedy airport, two planes have just departed for San Francisco—one a 757, another a smaller Airbus A321. At a security checkpoint, TSA agent Bernice Adams finds a postcard of the Golden Gate Bridge bearing an ambiguous—perhaps ominous—message. Her supervisor dismisses her concerns, but Bernice calls security and soon Ben Waterman arrives. A senior Homeland Security agent, still grappling with guilt after a disastrous operation in which hostages were killed, Ben too becomes suspicious. Who left the postcard behind, which flight is that person on, and what exactly does the message mean? As Ben scans the passenger manifests, his focus turns to the A321, with Helen Smith as its senior pilot. Helen’s military service and her tenure with the airline have been exemplary. But her husband’s savage death in Iraq was more than anyone should bear, leaving her widowed with three children. A major film star is on board. So is an off-duty pilot who has just lost his forty-year career. So is a distraught father, traveling with the baby son he has abducted from his estranged wife. Sifting through data and relying on instinct, Ben becomes convinced that someone on Helen’s plane is planning something terrible. And he’s right. Passengers, crew, and experts on the ground become heroes out of necessity to try to avert tragedy at the eleventh hour. In her stunning novel, Danielle Steel combines intense action with stories of emotionally rich, intertwined lives. As the jet bears down on its destination of San Francisco, strangers are united, desperate choices are made, and futures will be changed forever by a handful of accidental heroes.
Digital Fortress
Dan Brown - 1998
What she uncovers sends shock waves through the corridors of power. The NSA is being held hostage... not by guns or bombs, but by a code so ingeniously complex that if released it would cripple U.S. intelligence.Caught in an accelerating tempest of secrecy and lies, Susan Fletcher battles to save the agency she believes in. Betrayed on all sides, she finds herself fighting not only for her country but for her life, and in the end, for the life of the man she loves.(back cover)
The Cutting Crew
Steve Mosby - 2006
Four months on, that group is in disarray. Sean has disappeared into the city's black heart and not returned, and Martin is separated from his job, his wife, and his friends. But then a simple note from his ex-partner forces him to re-enter an investigation he'd rather forget. "I found her," it says. The search leads him from one side of the city to the other in a downward spiral of violence and pain, and drags him into the orbit of the things that are really wrong with the city—the eight brothers rumored by legend to have control over everything.
Almost the Truth
Margaret Yorke - 1994
Fearing for their safety, Derek offers no resistance, but one of the men is not content with robbery and a brutal rape takes place.Though subsequently the men are caught, a bond of trust has been broken and Derek’s family falls apart. Desperate to make amends, and hungry for revenge, he conceives a plan to punish the rapist in a way the criminal justice system has failed to do...