Book picks similar to
Music of the Night: from the Crime Writers' Association by Martin Edwards
short-stories
mystery-crime
randomthings
crime
Old Anger (Colt Harper Book 2)
Phillip Thompson - 2020
Sheriff Colt Harper believes he's colorblind in his enforcement of the law. But is he? When a black man is murdered, it ignites age-old anger in the African-American community over the injustices they've endured and forces Harper to confront his own personal demons. Harper's single-minded pursuit of justice for the dead man thrusts him between two volatile groups -- furious blacks who don't know if they can trust him and racist whites who want to use the controversy to spark a bloody race war."Old Anger has some sweet echoes of the past while being something modern at the same time. Pacing is outstanding and the story is engaging. It has a western rash under it's skin. Recommended." Joe R. Lansdale""Phillip Thompson combines the visceral verbal skills of Craig Johnson with the white knuckle tension of Stephen Hunter. Old Anger will leave you soaked in sweat and gasping for air" S.A. Cosby author of Blacktop Wasteland."Old Anger is a modern Southern novel in the best sense-exploring issues of race, privilege, and generational mistrust with candor and grace. It's also a fiercely engaging mystery. Thompson's lawman, Colt Harper, is a man of honor in a world that could use more of 'em. Consider me a fan." Chris Holm, Anthony Award winning author of The Killing Kind"In Thompson's well-wrought third crime novel featuring Mississippi sheriff Colt Harper. Thoughtful prose is matched by solid characterizations. Thompson delivers a timely tale of racial violence." Publishers Weekly
The Kurt Vetter Trilogy (The Reluctant Hero)
William Esmont - 2014
With Amanda's help, he uncovers a rogue CIA plot to detonate a nuclear bomb in Moscow. Meanwhile, the assassins who killed his brother launch an all-out hunt to silence him and anyone else who may thwart their plans.In a frantic sprint across Europe, Kurt and Amanda must stay one step ahead of the killers while racing against the clock to prevent the bomb from incinerating millions of innocent people.Book Two: PressedBruised and battered from a recent mission, ex-CIA analyst Kurt Vetter is pressed into service once again when hackers launch a devastating cyber-attack on the United States Strategic Early Warning System, nearly triggering a nuclear confrontation.When Kurt and his partner Amanda Carter investigate the security lapse, they discover that elements of a Russian sleeper cell have compromised the integrity of the National Military Command Center. To further complicate matters, Kurt and Amanda also learn that a Chechen arms dealer with a stolen nuclear warhead is about to start selling suitcase nukes to the highest bidder.With membership in the nuclear club poised to explode and the United States effectively blinded to the threat, Kurt and Amanda are the last line of defense before the world descends into anarchy.Book Three: Blood in the StreetsA routine trip to China turns disastrous for intelligence agent Kurt Vetter when a deadly series of attacks on civilian targets plunges the country into anarchy. Trapped in a disintegrating nation, Kurt and his team take to the war-torn streets of Beijing to locate a Chinese double agent who may know the truth behind the source of the violence.As the politicians in Washington struggle with how to respond to the imminent collapse of the United States' largest trading partner, the responsibility falls on Kurt to prevent the destruction of the modern global economy.When the conflict begins to spread beyond China's borders, Kurt and his team learn the threat is larger and more insidious than anyone could have imagined. If they don't act fast, the entire region, and perhaps the entire world may be draw into a conflict unlike any seen before.
The Jack Reacher Cases (Complete Books #10, #11 & #12)
Dan Ames - 2019
A USA TODAY BESTSELLING SERIES THE MAN WHO STANDS TALL - BOOK 10 THE MAN WHO WORKS ALONE - BOOK 11 A MAN BUILT FOR JUSTICE - BOOK 12
The Reluctant Detective
Adrian Spalding - 2019
He just wanted a quiet life. Something his mother was not going to allow. There again he never for one moment imagined he would have to look into the death of a 90-year-old lady who was gambling away her family fortune. The Hayden Detective Agency has no need of clients. The very existence of the Agency allows Martin Hayden to claim his large monthly allowance from the family fortune - without lifting a finger. Martin’s biggest problem is his interfering mother, who understands her idle son too well. She takes steps to find him not just clients but also a personal assistant to keep an eye on him. Under pressure from the women in his life, Martin agrees to take on his first client. How hard can it be to follow a 90-year-old woman who spends her time losing money at roulette tables? As it turns out harder than Martin ever thought possible, especially with the old lady dying in strange circumstances. Soon the Reluctant Detective is grappling with shady estate agents, an intellectual artist, missing charity money and an irritating Indian waiter. Luckily for Martin there is help in the form of Colin, a transvestite who, apart from having very good fashion sense, is an expert at breaking into houses.
The Tiger Gets New Teeth
Amit Bagaria - 2021
The NP had done remarkably well in elections in four states. It was the party’s heroic return. It was an even larger triumph for the Dalal family, who had survived several calls for their ouster from party leadership. The fireworks started at 11:59 and four bottles of champagne were uncorked, as the ‘Nationalists’ and few staff members watched the night sky from the garden below.BOOM. Huge explosions razed most of 10, Lokpath, the entire Dalal lineage reduced to body parts and blood splatter on the grass. Though the explosion was restricted to the property, the tremors would soon be felt throughout the country.Naresh Mistri was woken up at 1:08 a.m. His national security team had reached his residence. The PM saw the news on TV. Even BP’s staunchest supporters would suspect the party. First the dreadful electoral performance and now this! It could be the biggest threat to his political career. As the world’s gaze would firmly be on Mistri, would he lose his greatest asset of all, public opinion?The IB and RAW had more often than not failed to provide intelligence on such attacks. And there was no ‘national’ police force that could investigate and solve this crime and bring the culprits to justice quickly. No, the PM had to turn to someone else. He said, “I want ISSCO to investigate this.”Realising that India needed an agency like the USA’s FBI, Russia’s FSB, and UK’s MI5, which could work with surprise, speed, and intensity, Mistri had three months ago approved ISSCO, a covert, privately run but government-funded intelligence and security organisation. He had told ISSCO they were to do everything that IB, RAW, DIA, NIA, and NSG said couldn’t be done, and do it better, faster, and quieter.
Blood Is Thicker Than Water
Paul Gitsham - 2015
There's been a tragic accident: the old man fell asleep in his chair, woke up in the dark, fell and hit his head on the mantelpiece. But the Crime Scene Manager isn't happy. There are just too many details that aren't quite right and Charles Michaelson's accident becomes a suspicious death.And, as DCI Warren Jones investigates, he and his team discover that all is not as it appears to be in the dead man's caring family when his son-in-law disappears. Then they uncover some dark secrets in Michaelson's past and a motive for murder.Fans of Peter Robinson and Peter James will love Blood is Thicker Than Water, an all-new short story in Paul Gitsham's DCI Warren Jones series.
Colorful Death
S.Y. Robins - 2015
Her little cottage has a leaking roof, her car broke down, and she’s managed to lose her favorite hat while walking back home. So far, this trip to England has not been so much the restful country retreat she wanted. So far, it has pretty much sucked. And unfortunately, it’s about to get worse. When she catches attractive neighbor Maddox out in a horrible rainstorm, Jade invites him in out of the cold, only to see scratches on his arms. Maddox is pleasant and polite, but even Jade can see that something is wrong. When she learns the next day that an old lady was murdered in her cottage, Jade has a sinking feeling that she knows who’s to blame. When another body crops up soon after, Jade sets out to find the truth. After all, how much worse could this vacation get? She might as well tramp over the heath and figure out what’s going on. But all this poking about is going to put her squarely in the killer’s sights. And now that they’ve murdered twice, they’re not going to stop until all of their enemies are dead.BONUS FREE story included in this book!
The Murders at Foxglove Close: A brilliantly addictive cozy murder mystery (A Neighbourhood Watch Mystery Book 1)
Rose Temple - 2021
Death Served Cold
Sourabh Mukherjee - 2021
A teenager poisons her family for the love of her tutor. A woman driven by greed ruthlessly bludgeons eight members of her family.A beautician gangs up with her lover to rob a house, killing innocent women from three generations of a family. A practising lawyer strangles her lawyer husband with the cord of a mobile charger. A friendly and jovial teacher commits at least six murders over fourteen years in a sleepy town down south.DEATH SERVED COLD is a painstakingly researched collection of true, blood-curdling accounts of gruesome murders committed by India’s most dangerous women over the last three decades.These stories explore the dark recesses of the female psyche and challenge popular stereotypes by revealing shocking excesses of sadism and aggression rarely associated with women.
The First Alex Delaware Omnibus
Jonathan Kellerman - 2001
The Trespassers (Kindle Single)
Elmore Leonard - 2013
Told from the perspective of a young wife who’s become increasingly frustrated with her mild-mannered husband, “The Trespassers” begins as a quiet domestic drama and quickly escalates into a nightmare. When Evan refuses to confront men who are illegally hunting on the couple’s remote homestead, Chris takes matters into her own hands, with terrifying results. Written in 1958, when Leonard was working at a Detroit advertising agency and writing short stories on the side, “The Trespassers” shows the emerging talent of a man whose spare style and dark wit would redefine a literary genre. Filled with as much sexual menace as Sam Peckinpah’s classic thriller “Straw Dogs,” this timelessly relevant story delivers a sly surprise that could only come from the mind of Elmore Leonard. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Elmore Leonard wrote forty-five novels across his six-decade career, including the bestsellers “Road Dogs,” “Up in Honey’s Room,” “The Hot Kid,” “Mr. Paradise,” “Tishomingo Blues,” and the critically acclaimed collection of short stories “When the Women Come Out to Dance.” Many of his books have been made into movies, including “Get Shorty,” “Out of Sight,” and “Jackie Brown.” “Justified,” the hit series from FX, is based on Leonard’s character Raylan Givens, who appears in “Riding the Rap,” “Pronto,” the short story “Fire in the Hole,” and the novel “Raylan.” Leonard received the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the Lifetime Achievement Award from PEN USA, and the Grand Master Award of the Mystery Writers of America. He was known to many as the “Dickens of Detroit” and had lived in the Detroit area since 1934. PRAISE FOR ELMORE LEONARD “Elmore Leonard can write circles around almost anybody active in the crime novel today.” —The New York Times Book Review “There is no greater writer of crime fiction than Elmore Leonard, and no one who has more resplendent energy.” —The Guardian (UK) “Elmore ‘Dutch’ Leonard is more than just one of the all-time greats of crime fiction. He’s … an authentic American icon.” —The Seattle Times “People look on writers that they like as an irreplaceable resource. I do. Elmore Leonard, every day I wake up and—not to be morbid or anything, although morbid is my life to a degree—don’t see his obituary in the paper, I think to myself, ‘Great! He’s probably working somewhere. He’s gonna produce another book, and I’ll have another book to read.’ Because when he’s gone, there’s nobody else.” — Stephen King “The King Daddy of crime novelists.” —The Seattle Times “As crime fiction goes, Leonard has few living equals. His characters leap from the page with a few short keystrokes, like a form of bloodstained haiku.” —The Cleveland Plain Dealer “[Leonard’s] finely honed sentences can sound as flinty/poetic as Hemingway or as hard-boiled as Raymond Chandler. His ear for the way people talk—or should—is peerless.” —The Detroit News “A master of narrative … A poet of the vernacular … Leonard paints an intimate, precise, funny, frightening, and irresistible mural of the
Blood Underground: A Blood Detective Short Story
Dan Waddell - 2017
A body entombed in a London tube station. DCI Grant Foster is called in to investigate, but within days a second corpse is discovered in the bowels of a disused underground ‘ghost’ station. With the possibility of the murders being linked, Foster enlists the help of his friend, genealogist Nigel Barnes. Between them, they try to untangle the twisted secrets of the past, buried deep beneath London’s streets – where no one can hear you scream, and the murderer is closing in on his next victim . Includes an extract from The Blood Detective, the first book in the Blood Detective series.
The Girl from Moscow's Edge
Nadya Frank - 2021
But her partner in crime is dead.Zoya Volkova finds him at the garage icy floor. Her friend and accomplice, in a puddle of his own blood. Maybe it was one of the rich Muscovites they scammed for a car repair in that very garage. Maybe it has to do with a heist they’ve planned, the job that would change their lives.Her boyfriend wants to go on with the rip-off. Her bestie talks her out of it. Caught up in a whirlwind of mistrust, Zoya learns about terrible things her estranged mother had done to Zoya’s siblings. Now she needs this money to mitigate the damage, but is it safe when she suspects everyone?Racing against the time, at odds with the police, a local crime boss and her own conscience, Zoya needs to find out who murdered her partner. Will she fix her life or will she lose everything?An unputdownable prequel novella to the Zoya Volkova thriller series.
How To Send A Message
Caimh McDonnell - 2017
Two of the stories feature Detective Bunny McGarry, the unlikely anti-hero from Caimh's critically-acclaimed Dublin Trilogy novels. You can get the collection by signing up here:http://whitehairedirishman.com/free/