Book picks similar to
Defender by Chris Allen


thriller
action-adventure
fiction
favorites

Fallen Out


Wayne Stinnett - 2014
    At 37, his greatest skill is killing people from up to a mile away. He knows there aren’t many job opportunities in the civilian world for that. However, he knows the south Florida waters, is an experienced diver, loves to fish, and knows his way around a boat. A waitress in a waterfront restaurant in north Key Largo gives him an idea and he runs with it. An old friend helps get him set up as a charter fishing and dive boat Captain and a new friend helps him buy just the right boat. Danger lurks in the sleepy little town of Marathon, in the middle of the Florida Keys, as well as in the swamps of the Everglades. But danger doesn’t expect to run into a man like Jesse, who will not only respond swiftly, but with a vengeance unexpected.

Flee


J.A. Konrath - 2011
    Trained by the best of the best, she has honed her body, her instincts, and her intellect to become the perfect weapon.FLEEThen her cover is explosively blown, and she becomes a walking bulls-eye. Stalked by assassins who want the secrets she holds, and those who'd prefer she die before talking.Now Chandler has twenty-four hours to thwart a kidnapping, stop a psychopath, uncover the mystery of her past, retire five equally-trained contract killers, avoid a tenacious cop named Jack Daniels, and save the world from nuclear annihilation, all while dodging 10,000 bullets. Buckle up. It's going to be one helluva ride.

Loose Ends


D.D. VanDyke - 2013
    As a straightforward case takes unexpected twists, Cal must quell a growing fear that an anguished mother may never see her child again. With a shadowy crime lord lurking behind every unexpected clue, Cal struggles to tie up loose ends before evil claims its next victim.Loose Ends is book one in a new P. I. mystery series from D. D. VanDyke. Set against the rich backdrop of the San Francisco Bay Area, Cal Corwin novels brim with intrigue and fully fleshed characters from cops and criminals to hit men, oddball family and unexpected allies.

Extreme Malice


R.E. Swirsky - 2011
    Eighteen year old Josh Anderson, the college boy from next door, is charged with her murder. It was his guitar string around her neck. His footprints are found inside her house. Her earring found under his bed. Donna Gardner's husband Jack was hundreds of miles away on business. Was it the perfect Murder?

The Breach


Patrick Lee - 2009
    It is the world's best-kept secret-and its most terrifying. Trying to regain his life in the Alaskan wilds, ex-con/ex-cop Travis Chase stumbles upon an impossible scene: a crashed 747 passenger jet filled with the murdered dead, including the wife of the [resident of the United States.Though a nightmare of monumental proportions, it pales before the terror to come, as Chase is dragged into a battle for the future that revolves around an amazing artifact. Allied with a beautiful covert operative whose life he saved, Chase must now play the role he's been destined for-a pawn of incomprehensible forces or humankind's final hope-as the race toward Apocalypse begins in earnest. Because something is loose in the world. And doomsday is not only possible...it is inevitable.

Gone the Next


Ben Rehder - 2012
    He's working a routine case, complete with hours of tedious surveillance, when he sees something that shakes him to the core. There, with the subject, is a little blond girl wearing a pink top and denim shorts—the same outfit worn by Tracy Turner, a six-year-old abducted the day before. When the police are skeptical of Ballard's report—and with his history, who can blame them?—it's the beginning of the most important case of his life.

314


A.R. Wise - 2012
    She has a good life as a music teacher now, and might rekindle her relationship with her one true love. However, the number 314 haunts her, and threatens to bring her back to the day that her brother disappeared. When a reporter shows up, just days before March 14th, Alma realizes that her past is coming back to haunt her. What happened on March 14th, at 3:14, 16 years ago? No one but The Skeleton Man can remember.

The Girl in Green


Derek B. Miller - 2017
    Near Checkpoint Zulu, one hundred miles from the Kuwaiti border, Thomas Benton meets Arwood Hobbes. Benton is a British journalist who reports from war zones in part to avoid his lackluster marriage and a daughter he loves but cannot connect with; Arwood is a mid-western American private who might be an insufferable ignoramus, or might be a genuine lunatic with a death wish--it's hard to tell. Desert Storm is over, peace has been declared, but as they argue about whether it makes sense to cross the nearest border in search of an ice cream, they become embroiled in a horrific attack in which a young local girl in a green dress is killed as they are trying to protect her. The two men walk away into their respective lives. But something has cracked for them both. Twenty-two years later, in another place, in another war, they meet again and are offered an unlikely opportunity to redeem themselves when that same girl in green is found alive and in need of salvation. Or is she?

Red Sparrow


Jason Matthews - 2013
    In present-day Russia, ruled by blue-eyed, unblinking President Vladimir Putin, Russian intelligence officer Dominika Egorova struggles to survive in the post-Soviet intelligence jungle. Ordered against her will to become a “Sparrow,” a trained seductress, Dominika is assigned to operate against Nathaniel Nash, a young CIA officer who handles the Agency’s most important Russian mole.Spies have long relied on the “honey trap,” whereby vulnerable men and women are intimately compromised. Dominika learns these techniques of “sexpionage” in Russia’s secret “Sparrow School,” hidden outside of Moscow. As the action careens between Russia, Finland, Greece, Italy, and the United States, Dominika and Nate soon collide in a duel of wills, tradecraft, and—inevitably—forbidden passion that threatens not just their lives but those of others as well. As secret allegiances are made and broken, Dominika and Nate’s game reaches a deadly crossroads. Soon one of them begins a dangerous double existence in a life-and-death operation that consumes intelligence agencies from Moscow to Washington, DC.Page by page, veteran CIA officer Jason Matthews’s Red Sparrow delights and terrifies and fascinates, all while delivering an unforgettable cast, from a sadistic Spetsnaz “mechanic” who carries out Putin’s murderous schemes to the weary CIA Station Chief who resists Washington “cake-eaters” to MARBLE, the priceless Russian mole. Packed with insider detail and written with brio, this tour-de-force novel brims with Matthews’s life experience, including his knowledge of espionage, counterintelligence, surveillance tradecraft, spy recruitment, cyber-warfare, the Russian use of “spy dust,” and covert communications. Brilliantly composed and elegantly constructed, Red Sparrow is a masterful spy tale lifted from the dossiers of intelligence agencies on both sides of the Atlantic. Authentic, tense, and entertaining, this novel introduces Jason Matthews as a major new American talent.

The President's Henchman


Joseph Flynn - 2009
    Which will make her husband--what?Well, if he's the ex-cop who solved the murder of the president's first husband and brought the killers to justice...and if he's not the kind of guy to stand on formality...and if he doesn't want to be the head of the FBI...and if he takes out a license and becomes the first private eye to live in the White House...That would make him The President's Henchman.Jim McGill's first case is to find out who is stalking a member of the White House press corps, before that stalker turns the tables on McGill and maybe even threatens the president herself. He also has to be a shadow adviser to a young Air Force investigator who is looking into a he-said-she-said charge of adultery leveled against a female colonel working at the Pentagon, a case with the potential to derail the new president's administration before it has a chance to begin.

The Gray and Guilty Sea


Scott William Carter - 2010
    An iconoclast. A loner. That's how people describe Garrison Gage, and that's when they're being charitable. After his wife's brutal murder in New York, and Gage himself is beaten nearly to death, the crippled private investigator retreats three thousand miles to the quaint coastal town of Barnacle Bluffs, Oregon. He spends the next five years in a convalescent stupor, content to bide his time filling out crossword puzzles and trying to forget that his wife's death is his fault. But all that changes when he discovers the body of a young woman washed up on the beach, and his conscience draws him back into his old occupation – forcing him to confront the demons of his own guilt before he can hope to solve the girl's murder.

Rogue Operator


J. Robert Kennedy - 2013
    Robert Kennedy.TO SAVE THE COUNTRY HE LOVES, SPECIAL AGENT DYLAN KANE MIGHT HAVE TO BETRAY ITThree top secret research scientists are presumed dead in a boating accident, but the kidnapping of their families the same day raises questions the FBI and local police can't answer, leaving them waiting for a ransom demand that will never come.Central Intelligence Agency Analyst Chris Leroux stumbles upon the story, and finds a phone conversation that was never supposed to happen. When he reports it to his boss, the National Clandestine Services Chief, he is uncharacteristically reprimanded for conducting an unauthorized investigation and told to leave it to the FBI.But he can't let it go.For he knows something the FBI doesn't.One of the scientists is alive.Chris makes a call to his childhood friend, CIA Special Agent Dylan Kane, leading to a race across the globe to stop a conspiracy reaching the highest levels of political and corporate America, that if not stopped, could lead to war with an enemy armed with a weapon far worse than anything in the American arsenal, with the potential to not only destroy the world, but consume it.J. Robert Kennedy, the author of twelve international best sellers, including the smash hit James Acton Thrillers, introduces Rogue Operator, the first installment of his newest series, The Special Agent Dylan Kane Thrillers, promising to bring all of the action and intrigue of the James Acton Thrillers with a hero who lives below the radar, waiting for his country to call when it most desperately needs him.Other Special Agent Dylan Kane Thrillers Available:Containment Failure, Book #2Dylan Kane also appears in the James Acton Thrillers:The Arab Fall, Book #6The Circle of Eight, Book #7

Trident's First Gleaming


Stephen Templin - 2014
    Chris and Hannah are joined by Delta Force’s Sonny Cohen to stop a new terrorist threat from launching a deadly cyber-terror against the United States.Praise for Steve’s Books“As action packed as a Tom Clancy thriller…harrowing…adrenaline-laced.”–Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times“Pulses with the grit of a Jerry Bruckheimer production…”–Stephen Lowman, The Washington PostPraise for Trident’s First GleamingAnother great novel reflecting our Spec Ops forces’ global capabilities. Written by a proven and insightful master storyteller.” –Howard E. Wasdin, SEAL Team Six Sniper and NYT Bestselling Author of SEAL Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite Navy SEAL Sniper“Stephen Templin’s Trident’s First Gleaming is a muscular thrill ride that’s rich with detail and full of heart and energy. A stand out in the ranks of modern action-adventure thrillers, Trident’s First Gleaming is a blast.” –Mark Greaney, #1 NYT Bestselling Coauthor of Command Authority, by Tom Clancy with Mark Greaney.“There are few authors who have as deep an understanding of the shadowy world of global special operations as Stephen Templin. And there are fewer still who can synthesize that knowledge into a thrilling narrative so deftly. In Trident’s First Gleaming, Stephen weaves a tale that reflects today’s complicated reality, where motives and allegiances are rarely black and white and there are no easy answers. Even more impressively, he manages to do this while still bringing plenty of visceral gunfights and car chases.” –Chris Martin, Bestselling Author of Beyond Neptune Spear and Shaping the World from the Shadows

Fire and Ice


Dana Stabenow - 1998
    But that was before his life unraveled. Transferred in disgrace to this rough-and-tumble fishing town on the shores of Bristol Bay, Liam knows Newenham is the end of the line. It's also his last shot at getting his life back.. He's about to come in for a very rough landing. Stepping onto the airstrip at Newenham, Liam walks into a crime scene: a body torn apart by the propeller of a Piper Super Cub. As if that isn't enough of a welcome, the woman bending over the corpse is Wyanet Chouinard, the only woman Liam ever truly loved - and soon to be his prime suspect. Next, a man is held hostage in the town's only decent burger joint--held for shooting out a jukebox that was playing Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville. And Liam still doesn't have his uniform on.

The Terminal List


Jack Carr - 2018
    But when those dearest to him are murdered on the day of his homecoming, Reece discovers that this was not an act of war by a foreign enemy but a conspiracy that runs to the highest levels of government.Now, with no family and free from the military’s command structure, Reece applies the lessons that he’s learned in over a decade of constant warfare toward avenging the deaths of his family and teammates. With breathless pacing and relentless suspense, Reece ruthlessly targets his enemies in the upper echelons of power without regard for the laws of combat or the rule of law.An intoxicating thriller that cautions against the seduction of absolute power and those who would do anything to achieve it, The Terminal List is perfect for fans of Vince Flynn, Brad Thor, Stephen Hunter, and Nelson DeMille.