The Inquisitor


Mark Allen Smith - 2012
    And in his business—called "information retrieval" by its practitioners—that gift is invaluable, because truth is the hottest thing on the market.Geiger's clients count on him to extract the truth from even the most reluctant subjects. Unlike most of his competitors, Geiger rarely sheds blood, but he does use a variety of techniques—some physical, many psychological—to push his subjects to a point where pain takes a backseat to fear. Because only then will they finally stop lying.One of Geiger's rules is that he never works with children. So when his partner, former journalist Harry Boddicker, unwittingly brings in a client who demands that Geiger interrogate a twelve-year-old boy, Geiger responds instinctively. He rescues the boy from his captor, removes him to the safety of his New York City loft, and promises to protect him from further harm. But if Geiger and Harry cannot quickly discover why the client is so desperate to learn the boy's secret, they themselves will become the victims of an utterly ruthless adversary.Mesmerizing and heart-in-your-throat compelling, The Inquisitor is a completely unique thriller that introduces both an unforgettable protagonist and a major new talent in Mark Allen Smith.

Try Not to Breathe


Holly Seddon - 2016
    Only fifteen years old, Amy disappeared walking home from school one day and was found in a coma three days later. Her attacker was never identified and her angelic face was plastered across every paper and nightly news segment.Fifteen years later, Amy lies in the hospital, surrounded by 90’s Britpop posters, forgotten by the world until reporter Alex Dale stumbles across her while researching a routine story on vegetative patients.Remembering Amy’s story like it was yesterday, she feels compelled to solve the long-cold case.The only problem is, Alex is just as lost as Amy—her alcoholism has cost her everything including her marriage and her professional reputation.In the hopes that finding Amy’s attacker will be her own salvation as well, Alex embarks on a dangerous investigation, suspecting someone close to Amy.Told in the present by an increasingly fragile Alex and in dream-like flashbacks by Amy as she floats in a fog of memories, dreams, and music from 1995, Try Not to Breathe unfolds layer by layer to a breathtaking conclusion.

1st Case


James Patterson - 2020
    Angela Hoot's government career begins with an ending. Her unorthodox programming skills get her kicked out of MIT's graduate school and into the Bureau's cyber-forensics unit. A messaging app with sophisticated tracking capabilities surfaces. Its beta users, all young women, are only identified as they turn up dead in their bedrooms. As Angela races to crack the killer's digital code, their technical rivalry escalates. She must deny the killer access to her personal life, or risk losing her life to the underbelly of the Internet.

Hangman


Jack Heath - 2018
    His frantic mother receives a disturbing ransom call. It's only hours before the deadline, and the police have no leads.Enter Timothy Blake, codename Hangman. Blake is a genius, known for solving impossible cases. He's also a sociopath - the FBI's last resort.But this time Blake might have met his match. The kidnapper is more cunning and ruthless than anyone he's faced before. And Blake has been assigned a new partner, a woman linked to the past he's so desperate to forget.Timothy Blake has a secret, one so dark he will do anything to keep it hidden.And he also has a price. Every time he saves a life, he takes one…Already sold into five territories, Hangman is a mesmerising dissection of the criminal mind and a bulletproof thriller. ‘Jack Heath’s Hangman is a perverse, twisted take on a crime novel—and I loved every page of it. What a rarity to find a thriller as dark as a Palahniuk and as compulsively readable as a Patterson. Two well-chewed thumbs up for Hangman.’ —Gregg Hurwitz, NYT-Bestselling author of Hellbent‘Jack Heath’s writing grabs you by the throat, gnaws on your bones, and washes it all down with a hefty dose of funny. Sick, twisted, violent, and oh so good. In Timothy Blake, Heath has created a one-of-a-kind character. I hope.’ —Emma Viskic, internationally bestselling author of And Fire Came Down‘Wild and original, HANGMAN stamps a high and bloodied mark on this dark genre. Hannibal Lecter will be adding Jack Heath to his reading list.’ —Ben Sanders, internationally bestselling author of American Blood

Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line


Deepa Anappara - 2020
    From his doorway, he can spot the glittering lights of the city’s fancy high-rises, and though his mother works as a maid in one, to him they seem a thousand miles away.Jai drools outside sweet shops, watches too many reality police shows, and considers himself to be smarter than his friends Pari (though she gets the best grades) and Faiz (though Faiz has an actual job). When a classmate goes missing, Jai decides to use the crime-solving skills he has picked up from TV to find him. He asks Pari and Faiz to be his assistants, and together they draw up lists of people to interview and places to visit.But what begins as a game turns sinister as other children start disappearing from their neighborhood. Jai, Pari, and Faiz have to confront terrified parents, an indifferent police force, and rumors of soul-snatching djinns. As the disappearances edge ever closer to home, the lives of Jai and his friends will never be the same again.Drawing on real incidents and a spate of disappearances in metropolitan India.

Aunty Lee's Delights


Ovidia Yu - 2013
    Instead she threw herself into building a culinary empire from her restaurant, Aunty Lee's Delights, where spicy Singaporean home cooking is graciously served to locals and tourists alike. But when a body is found in one of Singapore's beautiful tourist havens, and when one of her wealthy guests fails to show at a dinner party, Aunty Lee knows that the two are likely connected.The murder and disappearance throws together Aunty Lee's henpecked stepson Mark, his social-climbing wife Selina, a gay couple whose love is still illegal in Singapore, and an elderly Australian tourist couple whose visit-billed at first as a pleasure cruise-may mask a deeper purpose. Investigating the murder is rookie Police Commissioner Raja, who quickly discovers that the savvy and well-connected Aunty Lee can track down clues even better than local law enforcement.Wise, witty and unusually charming, Aunty Lee's Delights is a spicy mystery about love, friendship and home cooking in Singapore, where money flows freely and people of many religions and ethnicities co-exist peacefully, but where tensions lurk just below the surface, sometimes with deadly results.

The Prophet


Michael Koryta - 2012
    When they were teenagers, their sister was abducted and murdered, and their devastated family never recovered. Now Adam keeps to himself, scraping by as a bail bondsman, working so close to the town's criminal fringes that he sometimes seems a part of them. Kent Austin is the beloved coach of the local high school football team, a religious man and hero in the community. After years of near misses, Kent's team has a shot at the state championship, a welcome point of pride in a town that has had its share of hardships. Just before playoffs begin, the town and the team are thrown into shock when horrifically, impossibly, another teenage girl is found murdered. When details emerge that connect the crime to the Austin brothers, the two are forced to unite to stop a killer - and to confront their buried rage and grief before history repeats itself again.

Nefertiti: The Book of the Dead


Nick Drake - 2006
    With her husband, Akhenaten, she rules over Egypt, the most affluent, formidable, sophisticated empire in the ancient world. But an epic power struggle is afoot, brought on by the royal couple's inauguration of an enlightened new religion and the construction of a magnificent new capital. The priests are stunned by the abrupt forfeiture of their traditional wealth and influence; the people resent the loss of their gods—and the army is enraged by the growing turbulence around them. Then, just days before the festival that will celebrate the new capital, Nefertiti vanishes.Rahotep, the youngest chief detective in the Thebes division, has earned a reputation for his unorthodox yet effective methods. Entrusted by great Akhenaten himself with a most secret investigation, Rahotep has but ten days to find the missing Queen. If he succeeds, he will bask in the warmth of Akhenaten's favor. But if Rahotep fails, he and his entire family will die.

Follow Her Home


Steph Cha - 2013
    with razor-sharp wit and a breaking heart.Juniper Song knows secrets–how to keep them and how to search them out.  As a girl, noir fiction was her favorite escape, and Philip Marlowe has always been her literary idol. So when her friend Luke asks her to investigate a possible affair between his father and a young employee, Juniper (or "Song" as her friends call her) finds an opportunity to play detective. Driving through L.A.'s side streets, following leads, tailing suspects-it all appeals to Song's romantic ideal of the noir hero. But when she's knocked out while investigating a mysterious car and finds a body in her own trunk, Song lurches back to the real L.A., becoming embroiled in a crime that goes far beyond role play. What's more, this isn't the first time Song has stuck her nose in other people's business. As she fights to discover the truth about her friend's family, Song reveals one of her own deeply hidden secrets, something dark and damaging, urging her to see the current mystery through, to rectify the mistakes of her past life.A dazzling debut from fresh new talent Steph Cha, featuring a strong, modern, sharply observant heroine with an unforgettable voice, Follow Her Home takes readers through dangerous twists and turns, beyond the glittering high-rises and freeways of L.A. on a case that will stay with them long after the final page.Praise for Follow Her Home “Stephanie Cha's brilliant debut is as Noir as Old Nick's sense of humour. Compelling from first to last page, she takes on contemporary L.A., sweeping the reader through Chandler's twilight, heartbroken city from mansions to faux K-town hostess bars.  L.A. Noir at its finest.” -- Denise Mina, author of The Dead Hour "Follow Her Home takes a fresh trip down the sunny, dark streets of Los Angeles, and Juniper Song is a great guide - young, sharp, and worldly-wise. Keenly observed and deeply felt, the story slowly got under my skin. I couldn't put it down." - Meg Gardiner, Edgar Award-winng author of Ransom River “In a glittery L.A. of pretty, privileged twentysomethings, Stephanie Cha's Follow Her Home opens like a playful homage to Raymond Chandler but deepens into something darker:  an utterly 21st-century  ode to sisterhood in the face of crime.  A fast-paced thriller told in smart, sparkling prose, Follow Her Home is a moving exploration of mothers and daughters, men and women, immigrant history, loss, and hope.” –Joy Castro, author of Hell or High Water

Drood


Dan Simmons - 2009
    All of the first-class carriages except the one carrying Dickens are smashed to bits in the valley below. When Dickens descends into that valley to confront the dead and dying, his life will be changed forever. And at the core of that ensuing five-year nightmare is…Drood… the name that Dickens whispers to his friend Wilkie Collins. A laudanum addict and lesser novelist, Collins flouts Victorian sensibilities by living with one mistress while having a child with another, but he may be the only man on Earth with whom Dickens can share the secret of…Drood. Increasingly obsessed with crypts, cemeteries, and the precise length of time it would take for a corpse to dissolve in a lime pit, Dickens ceases writing for four years and wanders the worst slums and catacombs of London at night while staging public readings during the day, gruesome readings that leave his audiences horrified. Finally he begins writing what would have been the world’s first great mystery masterpiece, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, only to be interrupted forever by…Drood.Based on actual biographical events, Drood explores the still-unresolved mysteries of one of our greatest writer’s dark final days in a profoundly original tale that confirms Lincoln Child’s assessment of New York Times bestselling author Dan Simmons as “a giant among novelists.”

The Cold Dish


Craig Johnson - 2004
    Two years earlier, Cody and three accomplices had been given suspended sentences for raping a Northern Cheyenne girl. Is someone seeking vengeance? Longmire faces one of the more volatile and challenging cases in his twenty-four years as sheriff and means to see that revenge, a dish that is best served cold, is never served at all.

In the Bleak Midwinter


Julia Spencer-Fleming - 2002
    Alban's new priest, fits like a square peg in the conservative Episcopal parish at Millers Kill, New York. She is not just a "lady," she's a tough ex-Army chopper pilot and nobody's fool. Then a newborn infant left at the church door brings her together with the town's Police Chief, Russ Van Alstyne, who's also ex-Army and a cynical good shepherd for the stray sheep of his hometown. Their search for the baby's mother quickly leads them into the secrets that shadow Millers Kill like the ever-present Adirondacks. What they discover is a world of trouble, an attraction to each other--and murder...

The Word Is Murder


Anthony Horowitz - 2017
    But did she arrange her own murder?One bright spring morning in London, Diana Cowper – the wealthy mother of a famous actor - enters a funeral parlor. She is there to plan her own service.Six hours later she is found dead, strangled with a curtain cord in her own home.Enter disgraced police detective Daniel Hawthorne, a brilliant, eccentric investigator who’s as quick with an insult as he is to crack a case. Hawthorne needs a ghost writer to document his life; a Watson to his Holmes. He chooses Anthony Horowitz.Drawn in against his will, Horowitz soon finds himself at the center of a story he cannot control. Hawthorne is brusque, temperamental and annoying but even so his latest case with its many twists and turns proves irresistible. The writer and the detective form an unusual partnership. At the same time, it soon becomes clear that Hawthorne is hiding some dark secrets of his own.New York Times bestselling author of Magpie Murders and Moriarty, Anthony Horowitz has yet again brilliantly reinvented the classic crime novel, this time writing a fictional version of himself as the Watson to a modern-day Holmes.A masterful and tricky mystery that springs many surprises, The Word is Murder is Anthony Horowitz at his very best.

A Conspiracy of Paper


David Liss - 2000
    The son of a wealthy stock trader, he lives estranged from his family - until he is asked to investigate his father’s sudden death. Thus Weaver descends into the deceptive world of the English stock jobbers, gliding between coffee houses and gaming houses, drawing rooms and bordellos. The more Weaver uncovers, the darker the truth becomes, until he realizes that he is following too closely in his father’s footsteps - and they just might lead him to his own grave. An enthralling historical thriller, A Conspiracy of Paper will leave readers wondering just how much has changed in the stock market in the last three hundred years ...

The Writing Class


Jincy Willett - 2008
    Published at only twenty-two, she peaked early and found critical but not commercial success. Now her former life is gone, along with her writing career and beloved husband. A reclusive widow, her sole companion a dour, flatulent basset hound who barely tolerates her, her daily mantra Kill Me Now, she is a loner afraid to be alone. Her only bright spot each week is the writing class that she teaches at the university extension.This semester's class is full of the usual suspects: the doctor who wants to be the next Robin Cook, the overly enthusiastic repeat student, the slacker, the unassuming student with the hidden talent, the prankster, the know-it-all... Amy's seen them all before. But something is very different about this class—and the clues begin with a scary phone call in the middle of the night and obscene threats instead of peer evaluations on student writing assignments. Amy soon realizes that one of her students is a very sick puppy, and when a member of the class is murdered, everyone becomes a suspect. As she dissects each student's writing for clues, Amy must enlist the help of everyone in her class, including the murderer, to find the killer among them.Suspenseful, extremely witty, brilliantly written, unexpectedly hilarious, and a joy from start to finish, The Writing Class is a one-of-a-kind novel that rivals Jincy Willett's previous masterpieces.