Book picks similar to
Rapid Descent by Gwen Hunter
mystery
fiction
suspense
thriller
The Escape Artist
Brad Meltzer - 2018
government's most top-secret and high profile cases. America's most important funeral home. To work there, mortician Jim "Zig" Zigarowski has one rule: never let a case get personal. But when a new body arrives--of young female sergeant Nola Brown, who was a childhood friend of Zig's daughter--Zig can't help himself. Looking closely at Nola's body, he realizes immediately: this isn't Nola. Indeed, his daughter's friend is still alive. And on the run. Zig's discovery reveals a sleight of hand being played at the highest levels of power--and traces back through history to a man named Harry Houdini. "Nola, you were right. Keep running."
Prince of Thieves
Chuck Hogan - 2004
Their guns are drawn on the bank manager. She nervously recites the alarm code, and the tumblers within the huge vault fall. The timing and execution are brilliant. It could be the perfect heist. But as the huge sum of cash is stolen, so too is one man's heart -- and that man is the Prince of Thieves...Charlestown, a blue-collar Boston neighborhood, produces more bank robbers and armored car thieves than any square mile in the world. In this gripping, intricately plotted thriller, Claire Keesey, the branch manager for a Boston bank and one of an influx of young professionals chipping away at the neighborhood's insularity, is taken hostage during a robbery. She is released, but Doug MacRay, the brains behind the tough, tight-knit crew of thieves, can't get her out of his mind. Tracking her down without his mask and gun, Doug introduces himself, and as soon as he and Claire meet, their mutual attraction is undeniable -- as are the risks of a relationship. Meanwhile, Doug's crew pulls off another audacious, meticulously planned job. Frustrated by their ingenuity and brazen ambition, FBI Agent Adam Frawley begins to zero in on Doug and his pals -- and against his own better judgment, he, too, develops more than a professional interest in Claire.Under pressure from Frawley's ever-closer investigation, Doug imagines a life for himself away from bank robberies and Charlestown. But before that can happen, the crew learns that there may be a way to rob Boston's venerable baseball stadium, Fenway Park. It's a magnificently dangerous and utterly irresistible opportunity -- yet for Doug, pursuing his former hostage may be the most dangerous act of all... Chuck Hogan's brash tale of four men -- thieves, rivals, friends -- being hunted through the streets of Boston by a tenacious FBI agent, and the woman who may destroy them all, is a spectacular, stylish, heart-pounding thriller.
Airframe
Michael Crichton - 1996
We have an emergency.' The pilot requests priority clearance to land - then comes the bombshell - he needs forty ambulances on the runway.But nothing prepares the rescue workers for the carnage they witness when they enter the plane.Ninety-four passengers are injured. Three dead. The interior cabin virtually destroyed.What happened on board Flight TPA 545?
Girl Last Seen
Nina Laurin - 2017
Thirteen years apart.Olivia Shaw has been missing since last Tuesday. She was last seen outside the entrance of her elementary school in Hunts Point wearing a white spring jacket, blue jeans, and pink boots. I force myself to look at the face in the photo, into her slightly smudged features, and I can't bring myself to move. Olivia Shaw could be my mirror image, rewound to thirteen years ago. If you have any knowledge of Olivia Shaw's whereabouts or any relevant information, please contact... I've spent a long time peering into the faces of girls on missing posters, wondering which one replaced me in that basement. But they were never quite the right age, the right look, the right circumstances. Until Olivia Shaw, missing for one week tomorrow. Whoever stole me was never found. But since I was taken, there hasn't been another girl. And now there is.
Pretty Little Killers
Rita Herron - 2018
She is his most guilty secret—the one-night stand who almost cost him everything.Korine has her own demons. As a child, she witnessed her father’s murder, and she’s spent her life waiting for the killer’s return. She and Hatcher are both looking for closure, but the disturbing case that draws them together could be their last.When the mutilated body of a corrupt Savannah judge surfaces, Hatcher and Korine find themselves on the trail of a vigilante who is showing no mercy. Not for the predators who’ve gone free. And not for anyone who gets in the way.As the body count rises, and as Hatcher’s and Korine’s own pasts unfold, they must risk their lives tracking a killer they’ve come to understand all too well. After all, the ends justify the means.
The Far Empty
J. Todd Scott - 2016
Seventeen-year-old Caleb Ross is adrift in the wake of the sudden disappearance of his mother more than a year ago, and is struggling to find his way out of the small Texas border town of Murfee. Chris Cherry is a newly minted sheriff’s deputy, a high school football hero who has reluctantly returned to his hometown. When skeletal remains are discovered in the surrounding badlands, the two are inexorably drawn together as their efforts to uncover Murfee’s darkest secrets lead them to the same terrifying suspect: Caleb’s father and Chris’s boss, the charismatic and feared Sheriff Standford “Judge” Ross. Dark, elegiac, and violent, The Far Empty is a modern Western, a story of loss and escape set along the sharp edge of the Texas border. Told by a longtime federal agent who knows the region, it’s a debut novel you won’t soon forget.
Blind Faith
C.J. Lyons - 2012
But for Sarah Durandt the nightmare is just beginning... Sarah has just witnessed the execution of the man who confessed to killing her husband and son, among others. She leaves with no closure as the killer has refused her repeated requests to reveal the site of her family's graves. Sarah returns home to her small town of Hopewell in the Adirondacks Mountains and vows to search until she finds Sam and Josh.Her hunt leads her to a trail of lies and unearths a new killer. In a race to save everything she holds dear, Sarah is forced to place her faith in the man who betrayed her...her husband.
Vanished
Kendra Elliot - 2014
In the eye of the storm is local detective Mason Callahan, whose life is crumbling to pieces—he’s related to the victim, and his longtime confidential informant has just been murdered.Both he and Agent McLane hole up in the victim’s family home. Every second counts in a kidnapping case, and the stakes keep rising the longer the girl is missing. As Ava and Mason struggle to hold the family together in their darkest hour, the two investigators find themselves drawn to each other.2015 Overall Daphne du Maurier Award Winner
A Perfect Evil
Alex Kava - 2000
. .The brutal murders of three young boys paralyze the citizens of Platte City, Nebraska. What's worse is the grim realization that the man recently executed for the crimes was a copycat. When Sheriff Nick Morrelli is called to the scene of another grisly murder, it becomes clear that the real predator is still at large, waiting to kill again.Morreli understands the urgency of the case terrorizing his community, but it's the experienced eye of FBI criminal profiler Maggie O'Dell that pinpoints the true nature of the evil behind the killings -- a revelation made all the more horrific when Morrelli's own nephew goes missing.Maggie understands something else: the killer is enjoying himself, relishing his ability to stay one step ahead of her, making this case more personal by the hour. Because out there, watching, is a killer with a heart of pure and perfect evil.
Amagansett
Mark Mills - 2004
Little has changed in the three centuries since white settlers drove the Montaukett Indians from the land. But for Conrad Labarde, a second-generation Basque immigrant recently returned from the Second World War, and his fellow fisherman Rollo Kemp, this stability is shattered when a beautiful New York socialite turns up dead in their nets.On the face of it, her death was accidental, but deputy police chief Tom Hollis - an incomer from New York - is convinced the truth lies in the intricate histories and family secrets of Amagansett's inhabitants. Meanwhile the enigmatic Labarde is pursuing his own investigation.
The Night Manager
John le Carré - 1993
Jonathan Pine is ready to stand up and be counted in the fight against this ultimate heart of darkness. His mission takes him from the cliffs of west Cornwall, via northern Quebec and the Caribbean, to the jungles of post-Noriega Panama. His quarry is the worst man in the world.
The Girl with a Clock for a Heart
Peter Swanson - 2014
When George first met her, she was an eighteen-year-old college freshman from Sweetgum, Florida. She and George became inseparable in their first fall semester, so George was devastated when he got the news that she had committed suicide over Christmas break. But, as he stood in the living room of the girl's grieving parents, he realized the girl in the photo on their mantelpiece - the one who had committed suicide - was not his girlfriend. Later, he discovered the true identity of the girl he had loved - and of the things she may have done to escape her past.Now, twenty years later, she's back, and she's telling George that he's the only one who can help her...
They All Fall Down
Roxanne St. Claire - 2014
Doors open to the best parties, new friends surround her, the cutest jock in school is after her.This is the power of the list. If you're on it, your life changes.If you're on it this year? Your life ends.The girls on the list have started to die, one by one. Is it a coincidence? A curse? Or is the list in the hands of a killer?Time is running out for Kenzie, but she’s determined to uncover the deadly secret of the list...before her number’s up.
The Late Show
Michael Connelly - 2017
A once up-and-coming detective, she's been given this beat as punishment after filing a sexual harassment complaint against a supervisor.But one night she catches two cases she doesn't want to part with: the brutal beating of a prostitute left for dead in a parking lot and the killing of a young woman in a nightclub shooting. Ballard is determined not to give up at dawn. Against orders and her own partner's wishes, she works both cases by day while maintaining her shift by night. As the cases entwine they pull her closer to her own demons and the reason she won't give up her job no matter what the department throws at her.
Black Sunday
Thomas Harris - 1975
. . 80,000 people had better get ready to die. — The Super Bowl--where thousands have gathered for an all-American tradition. Suddenly it's the most terrifying place on earth . . . — Michael Lander is the most dangerous man in America. He pilots a television blimp over packed football stadiums every weekend. He is fascinated with explosives. And he happens to be very, very crazy. That's why a beautiful PLO operative has seduced him. That's why--on Super Bowl Sunday--the world will witness the bloody assassination of the U. S. president and the worst mass murder in history. Unless someone discovers what Michael Lander plans . . . and can kill him first.