Book picks similar to
You Can Say That Again by James Hadley Chase
crime
james-hadley-chase
novels
thriller
The Old You
Louise Voss - 2018
Now, ten years on, Ed has been diagnosed with early-onset dementia, and things start to happen; things more sinister than missing keys and lost words. As some memories are forgotten, others, long buried, begin to surface... and Lynn's perfect world begins to crumble. But is it Ed s mind playing tricks, or hers...?
Casting Bones
Don Bruns - 2016
When a prominent New Orleans judge is brutally murdered, former Detroit cop Quentin Archer is handed the case. His enquiries will lead him into a world of darkness and mysticism which underpins the carefree atmosphere of the Big Easy. Interrogating crooked police officers, a pickpocket, a bartender with underground contacts and a swamp dweller, Archer uncovers some troubling facts about the late judge's past. But it's only when he encounters a beautiful young voodoo practitioner that he starts to make headway in the investigation.Voodoo queen Solange Cordray volunteers at the dementia centre where her mother lives. When she starts reading the mind of one of her patients, she learns that a secretive organization known as Krewe Charbonerrie may be behind the murder of the judge. And the second murder. And the third . . .
Outcast
José Latour - 1999
The plan goes dangerously amiss, and Steill is soon on the hunt through Miami’s mean streets for the man who betrayed him. To find him, Steill first has to figure out why he was singled out, an exercise that has him mentally searching his past in Cuba for clues.The fast-paced story, which reveals as much about real life in Cuba as it does about the émigré community in Miami, sees Steill transformed into a man of hair-trigger reactions as he’s forced into playing an increasingly violent game of cat and mouse. In just one of the novel’s many twists, the teacher becomes the fast learner he has to be to navigate this new world of greed, corruption, and crime — but also of compassion so unexpected it is wrenching.
One, Two ... He Is Coming For You
Willow Rose - 2011
She is trying to escape her ex-husband and starting a new life for her and her daughter, when the small sleepy town experiences a murder. One of the kingdom's wealthiest men is brutally murdered in his summer residence in Karrebaeksminde. While Rebekka Franck and her punk photographer Sune try to cover the story for the local newspaper another murder happens on a high society rich man. Now Rebekka Franck realizes that the drowsy little kingdom of Denmark has gotten its first serial killer and soon a series of dark secrets - long buried but not forgotten – will see the day of light.
Hide and Seek
Jack Ketchum - 1980
Reckless, dangerous games. Games you might even want to play yourself if you're with the right people. But shouldn't. Not ever. In a small Maine town, a group of thrill seeking college kids finds a game of hide and seek in an abandoned house turning into a reality of stark terror.
I, Witness
Niki Mackay - 2018
Kate has been in prison ever since, but now her sentence is up. She is being released.But the truth is, I didn't do it. There's only one person who can help: Private Investigator Madison Attalee, the first officer on the scene all those years ago.But there's someone out there who doesn't want Kate digging up the past. Someone who is willing to keep the truth buried at any cost.Robert Galbraith meets Susie Steiner in this gripping debut from Niki Mackay.
Since the Layoffs
Iain Levison - 2003
. . . Written with the same kind of deadpan humor Levison used so well in his first book.--USA TodayA gleeful satire. . . . It's an amusingly bleak little (im)moral fable.--Detroit Free PressExciting, funny, poignant and sociologically important.--The Chicago TribuneLevison's irony is acute as he caricatures the working world's groundlings.--The New York Times Book ReviewThe work Jake Skowran is offered is a lot less than legal. He's got little choice except to take it. The guys who owned the factory have left town for someplace where there's more sun and cheaper labor. The deserted plant is fenced in and the fence topped with razor wire, as if they'd worried that the locals would steal tractor-building equipment and start making tractors in their basements. Jake's girlfriend has also decamped (along with the vacuum cleaner and the entertainment center).She went off with some used car dealer, huh? his bookie mocks.He was a new car dealer, Jake retorts.Jake's got six months of unemployment left before he's dead broke and the locks get changed. Life has turned into one big downgrade. It has downsized and hardened him. He's up for anything. The economy is pain, lies and silliness, and he is going to carve off a piece of it for himself or die trying.Iain Levison is the author of A Working Stiff's Manifesto, an account of his postcollegiate work experience, consisting of 42 jobs in 10 years. He lives in Philadelphia.
The Fourth K
Mario Puzo - 1990
AN ARAB TERRORIST ATTACK. DEMOCRACY UNDER SIEGE. Mario Puzo envisioned it all in his eerily prescient 1991 novel, The Fourth K.President Francis Xavier Kennedy is elected to office, in large part, thanks to the legacy of his forebears– good looks, privilege, wealth–and is the very embodiment of youthful optimism. Too soon, however, he is beaten down by the political process and, disabused of his ideals, he becomes a leader totally unlike what he has been before. When his daughter becomes a pawn in a brutal terrorist plot, Kennedy, who has obsessively kept alive the memory of his uncles’ assassinations, activates all his power to retaliate in a series of violent measures. As the explosive events unfold, the world and those closest to him look on with both awe and horror.
Hard Fall
Ridley Pearson - 1991
To FBI Agent Cam Daggett it was more than that. It was personal. His parents and son were on that plane. And for two years he's been after the killer who did it. All he has to go on is a name: Anthony Kort...and the knowledge that Kort is in the United States with a detonator no airport security can detect. HE MUST BE STOPPED. Daggett's colleagues at the Bureau and his girlfriend tell him his vendetta has become an obsession. They suggest he leave the investigation to other agents, in order to keep it objective. But having painstakingly constructed a portrait of the terrorist, Daggett believes he's now the only one with any chance of predicting Kort's next target. A novel of madness and revenge, Hard Fall begs readers to fasten their seatbelts.
Whiteout
Ragnar Jónasson - 2013
Did she jump, or did something more sinister take place beneath the lighthouse and the abandoned old house on the remote rocky outcrop? With winter closing in and the snow falling relentlessly, Ari Thór Arason discovers that the victim's mother and young sister also lost their lives in this same spot, twenty-five years earlier. As the dark history and its secrets of the village are unveiled, and the death toll begins to rise, the Siglufjordur detectives must race against the clock to find the killer, before another tragedy takes place.Dark, chilling and complex, Whiteout is a haunting, atmospheric and stunningly plotted thriller from one of Iceland's bestselling crime writers.
Point Doom
Dan Fante - 2013
Mixing it up with the wrong people in New York, he escaped to L.A.—only to hit rock-bottom after too many nightmares and too much booze.Now forty-six and sober, JD is working hard to get it together. Living in Malibu at his mother's house in Point Dume, he's got a new job selling used cars with his friend Woody and a new girlfriend. But just as things are looking up, JD discovers a gruesome murder. Now the ex-private detective has to make a choice.Determined to exact vengeance, he follows a twisting trail of clues that leads him to unexpected truths about himself and his new life—and to a psychopathic killer with an eerie connection to his past. And, as JD soon learns, this time there's no easy way out.
A Quiet Death in Italy
Tom Benjamin - 2019
When the body of a radical protestor is found floating in one of Bologna's underground canals, it seems that most of the city is ready to blame the usual suspects: the police. But when private investigator Daniel Leicester, son-in-law to the former chief of police, receives a call from the dead man's lover, he follows a trail that begins in the 1970s and leads all the way to the rotten heart of the present-day political establishment. Beneath the beauty of the city, Bologna has a dark underside, and English detective Daniel must unravel a web of secrets, deceit and corruption - before he is caught in it himself. Tom Benjamin's gripping debut transports you to the ancient and mysterious Italian city less travelled: Bologna.
Night Film
Marisha Pessl - 2013
Though her death is ruled a suicide, veteran investigative journalist Scott McGrath suspects otherwise. As he probes the strange circumstances surrounding Ashley's life and death, McGrath comes face-to-face with the legacy of her father: the legendary, reclusive cult-horror film director Stanislaus Cordova--a man who hasn't been seen in public for more than thirty years. For McGrath, another death connected to this seemingly cursed family dynasty seems more than just a coincidence. Though much has been written about Cordova's dark and unsettling films, very little is known about the man himself. Driven by revenge, curiosity, and a need for the truth, McGrath, with the aid of two strangers, is drawn deeper and deeper into Cordova's eerie, hypnotic world. The last time he got close to exposing the director, McGrath lost his marriage and his career. This time he might lose even more.
The Speed of Sound
Eric Bernt - 2018
Resident Eddie Parks’s contribution is nothing less than extraordinary: an “echo box” that can re-create never-recorded sounds using acoustic archeology.All Eddie wants is to hear his late mother’s voice. But what he’s created is inadvertently posing a threat to national security.To Harmony House’s shadowy government backers and radical extremists, the echo box is the ultimate intelligence asset—an end to the very concept of secrecy. Now for Eddie and the compassionate Dr. Skylar Drummond, the true nature of the institution is becoming chillingly clear.As ruthless competing enemies close in on Eddie and his miraculous machine, Skylar risks all to take him on the run. Because once that prize is won, Eddie Parks will no longer be considered a “special person” but a dangerous redundancy. An inconvenient echo that must be silenced.