Book picks similar to
Geek Mafia: Black Hat Blues by Rick Dakan


mystery
prev-recommendations
paper
read-general-fiction

Moving Day


Jonathan Stone - 2014
    A life he could have easily lost long ago.When a con man steals his houseful of possessions in a sophisticated moving-day scam, Peke wanders helplessly through his empty New England home, inevitably reminded of another helpless time: decades in Peke’s past, a cold and threadbare Stanislaw Shmuel Pecoskowitz eked out a desperate existence in the war-torn Polish countryside, subsisting on scraps and dodging Nazi soldiers. Now, the seventy-two-year-old Peke—who survived, came to America, and succeeded—must summon his original grit and determination to track down the thieves, retrieve his things, and restore the life he made for himself.Peke and his wife, Rose, trace the path of the thieves’ truck across America, to the wilds of Montana, and to an ultimate, chilling confrontation with not only the thieves but also with Peke’s brutal, unresolved past.

Die Again Tomorrow


Kira Peikoff - 2015
    But when she unwittingly gives an unscrupulous mogul a chance to profit from her murder, she becomes the target of a terrifying killer who makes nature seem tame by comparison.At first left for dead, she is rescued by a medical research team that operates outside the law.  She awakens to find she's the living proof of a breakthrough that can change the world. Some people would pay any price to control it. Others would simply steal the secret--even if it costs Isabel's life. As powerful rivals pursue her, Isabel must risk everything to protect those she loves--or die again tomorrow.“Die Again Tomorrow held me captive me from the opening chapter—in which a murdered woman is subjected to a secret medical procedure that brings her back to life. From there the story takes off like a rocket, full of surprises, fascinating science, and vivid characters. If you enjoy the medical thrillers of Crichton and Cook, this book is for you. I can’t recommend it highly enough.”—Douglas Preston

The Devil's Feather


Minette Walters - 2005
    Reuters Africa correspondent Connie Burns suspects a British mercenary: a man who seems to turn up in every war-torn corner of Africa, whose reputation for violence and brutality is well-founded and widely known. Connie's suspicions that he's using the chaos of war to act out sadistic, misogynistic fantasies, fall on deaf ears - but she's determined to expose him and his secret. The consequences are devastating." Connie encounters the man again in Baghdad, but almost immediately she's taken hostage. Released after three desperate days, terrified and traumatized by the experience--fearing that she will never again be the person she once was--Connie retreats to England. She is bent on protecting herself by withholding information about her abduction. But secluded in a remote rented house - where the jealously guarded history of her landlady's family seems to mirror her own fears - she knows that it is only a matter of time before her nightmares become real.

Complicity


Iain Banks - 1993
    The source is pretty thin, but Cameron senses a scoop and checks out a series of bizarre deaths from a few years ago - only to find that the police are checking out a series of bizarre deaths that are happening right now. And Cameron just might know more about it that he'd care to admit...

Dead and Alive


Hammond Innes - 1946
    Then came the letter that turned his trading plans upside-down. "Find out what has happened to Monique, please, " and the faded image with it seemed to leave him no alternative. The letter took him to the Camorra, to pay the bloody ransom for a life.

The Righteous Men


Sam Bourne - 2006
    . . .A teenage computer prodigy is mortally strangled in Mumbai. A far-right extremist is killed in a remote cabin in the Pacific Northwest. A wealthy businessman is murdered in Thailand. A pimp in Brooklyn is found stabbed to death and mysteriously covered by a brown shroud. What connects the victims is an ancient prophecy that leads to the end of the world, and it's up to Will Monroe, a fledgling reporter at the New York Times, to stop it.But Monroe's investigation quickly makes him some shadowy enemies, who kidnap his wife and hold her hostage in Crown Heights. Desperate to find the link between the killings and to save his wife, he enlists his college sweetheart, TC, an eccentric artist and Kabbalah expert. As the death toll rises, they follow a trail of clues that seems to lead inexorably to a set of ancient texts containing a prophecy that promises to save the world—or to destroy it.What will happen when the one secret that has kept the world safe for thousands of years is revealed to all? In The Righteous Men, a blistering thriller filled with mystery, romance, and suspense, Sam Bourne takes readers deep into the hidden worlds of fundamentalist religion, mysticism, and biblical prophecies. This is a visionary tale that is as frightening as it is entertaining. Readers won't stop turning the pages until the very end.

Smilla's Sense of Snow


Peter Høeg - 1992
    She thinks more highly of snow and ice than she does of love.  She lives in a world of numbers, science and memories--a dark, exotic stranger in a strange land.  And now Smilla Jaspersen is convinced she has uncovered a shattering crime...It happened in the Copenhagen snow.  A six-year-old boy, a Greenlander like Smilla, fell to his death from the top of his apartment building.  While the boy's body is still warm, the police pronounce his death an accident.  But Smilla knows her young neighbor didn't fall from the roof on his own.  Soon she is following a path of clues as clear to her as footsteps in the snow.  For her dead neighbor, and for herself, she must embark on a harrowing journey of lies, revelation and violence that will take her back to the world of ice and snow from which she comes, where an explosive secret waits beneath the ice....

The Estate


Liza Costello - 2020
    She's fine. Great. Settled in her single life. Until friends start peeling away, moving on to careers and family, leaving her feeling impatient and angry. When she bumps into Jason at a party, she spots the opportunity for her own fresh start - to turn her back on a reckless life of drinking and missed deadlines. She can build a new life, too...can't she? When she discovers that Jason has the opportunity to house-sit a new build out of town, she glimpses her chance. There's only one catch - Jason needs to stay in town for the sake of his new job. But Beth can keep their dreams alive on her own, can't she? As her drinking worsens, and new friends turn out to be prospective enemies, her sense of reality begins to unravel. As Beth comes to confront the mysteries of her own past, she moves closer to understanding the desperate crime at the heart of the estate. But first she must learn who is behind the strange attacks on her new home. And is Jason who she thought he was? Can she even trust him?In this taut crime novel set in the aftermath of the Irish recession, a change for the better turns into a nightmare of uncertainty. An edge-of-your-seat psychological thriller, perfect for fans of Ruth Ware and Cass Green.

Fallout: A Sam Jameson Conspiracy Thriller (Sam Jameson Conspiracy Thriller Series Book 6)


Lars Emmerich - 2015
    Move over, Lee Child." "Lars Emmerich is right up there with Patterson, Baldacci, Forsyth, and DeMille." "Some of the best action and spy thriller fiction you will ever read." Special Agent Sam Jameson's friend and colleague was just murdered in Budapest. It falls to Sam to clean up the mess. Unsavory, but routine. Until she discovers she's being followed. And before she can make heads or tails of the situation, she's fighting for her life, alone and outgunned in a strange city. As Sam claws her way through a ruthless and brutal cabal, she discovers that she's up against one of the most dangerous conspiracies in history. Fallout is a transcontinental thrill ride full of twists, turns, and pulse-pounding suspense.

Numbered Account


Christopher Reich - 1998
    A woman he shouldn't have loved... A secret he shouldn't expose...if he wants to live.Nick Neumann had it all: a Harvard degree, a beautiful fiancée, a star-making Wall Street career. But behind the dazzling veneer of this golden boy is a man haunted by the brutal killing of his father seventeen years before.Now chilling new evidence has implicated his father's employer, the United Swiss Bank, in the crime. Nick doesn't know how. Or why. But he has a plan to find out: move to Zurich. Work for the same bank. Follow in his father's footsteps. Look for the same secrets...and uncover something so shocking, so unexpected, justice may not be enough.For as a circle of treachery tightens around him, as a woman with secrets of her own enters his life, Nick makes another chilling discovery. Not just about his father but about himself. And how far he's willing to go to find out what happened seventeen years before--when a man died and a conspiracy was born.

Spooker


Dean Ing - 1995
    It's his escape hatch--a stash that contains false identification, keys to a hidden car or boat or plane, weapons, and money--lots of money.It took U.S. intelligence a longtime to figure out that somone was stalking and killing agents for their spookers. It was the perfect crime, almost. Agents are killed every day by people they are spying on. And these killers were good--invisible, quick, leaving no trace behind.But finally the killers made one mistake.

Snowbound


Blake Crouch - 2010
    Will under suspicion, they flee. Suddenly a hard-edged FBI agent appears on their doorstep. “I know you’re innocent, because Rachael wasn’t the first ... or the last.”

Panic Button


Frazer Lee - 2011
    On board the private jet, they are invited to take part in the in-flight entertainment – a new online gaming experience. But this is no ordinary game. Trapped at 30,000 feet and forced to play for their lives and the lives of their loved ones by their mysterious captor, they are about to learn that putting your life on-line can have deadly offline consequences… In PANIC BUTTON, Frazer Lee explores timely fears about online privacy and security, cyber bullying and identity theft.

Norwegian by Night


Derek B. Miller - 2012
    An ex-Marine, he talks often to the ghosts of his past - the friends he lost in the Pacific and the son who followed him into the US Army, and to his death in Vietnam.When Sheldon witnesses the murder of a woman in his apartment complex, he rescues her six-year-old son and decides to run. Pursued by both the Balkan gang responsible for the murder, and the Norwegian police, he has to rely on training from over half a century before to try and keep the boy safe. Against a strange and foreign landscape, this unlikely couple, who can't speak the same language, start to form a bond that may just save them both.An extraordinary debut, featuring a memorable hero, Norwegian by Night is the last adventure of a man still trying to come to terms with the tragedies of his life. Compelling and sophisticated, it is both a chase through the woods thriller and an emotionally haunting novel about ageing and regret.

Ordinary Thunderstorms


William Boyd - 2009
    There is a reward for his capture. A hired killer is stalking him. He is alone and anonymous in the huge, pitiless modern city. Adam has nowhere to go but down - underground. He decides to join that vast army of the disappeared and the missing that throng the lowest level of London's population as he tries to figure out what to do with his life and struggles to understand the forces that have made it unravel so spectacularly. His quest will take him all along the River Thames, from affluent Chelsea to the sink estates of the East End, and on the way he encounters all manner of London's denizens - aristocrats, prostitutes, priests and policewomen amongst them - and version after new version of himself.William Boyd's electric follow-up to Costa Novel of the Year Restless is a heart-in-mouth conspiracy novel about the fragility of social identity, the scandal of big business, and the secrets that lie hidden in the filthy underbelly of every city.