Book picks similar to
The Deep by Mickey Spillane
mystery
crime
mickey-spillane
action
Recoil
Jim Thompson - 1953
Fifteen years on the inside for a victimless crime, under the care of a warden whose penchant for violence is legendary -- surely nothing could be worse. But when an unbelievably Samaritan act by a psychologist he's never met places Cosgrove in the care of Roland "Doc" Luther, Cosgrove's not so sure he hasn't traded the frying pan for the fire after all. On the one hand, Doc claims that Cosgrove owes him nothing, and seems at times like the most decent man alive. But at other times, Doc's potential for cruelty seems unimaginable. As it turns out, freedom's not as freeing as he thought it would be -- especially when it might end up getting him killed.
The Dead Man's Brother
Roger Zelazny - 2009
That was strange enough—but when a CIA agent showed up to spring him from NYPD custody, things got a lot stranger.Now the CIA is offering to clear up the murder charge but only in return for a favor: They want Ovid to fly to Vatican City and trace the trail of a renegade priest who has gone missing with millions in church funds. What’s the connection? The priest’s lover, a woman Ovid knew in his smuggling days…
Hide and Seek
James Patterson - 1995
So how could she have murdered not just one, but two of her husbands?Will Shephard was Maggie's second husband.A magnificent athlete and film star, he was just as famous. But Will had dark, dangerous secrets that none of his fans could have imagined... that his own wife could never dreamed of.
The Death and Life of Bobby Z
Don Winslow - 1997
When Tim Kearney, a small-time criminal, slits the throat of a Hell's Angel and draws a life sentence in a prison full of gang members, he knows he’s pretty much a dead man. That’s until the DEA makes Kearney an offer: impersonate the late, legendary dope smuggler Bobby Z so that the agency can trade him for one of their own, who was captured by a Mexican drug kingpin. Knowing his chances of survival are a little better than in prison, Kearney accepts, and he winds up in the middle of a desert at the notorious drug lord’s lavish compound. To his surprise he meets Bobby Z's old flame, Elizabeth, and her son. At first, it’s a short vacation by the pool, but when things turn bloody, the three of them begin the most desperate flight of their lives, with drug lords, bikers, Indians, and cops furiously chasing after them. Whether he pulls it off, whether he can keep the kid and the girl and his life, makes this compelling novel a hilarious, fast-paced thriller about a con caught in a devil’s bargain.
The Switch
Elmore Leonard - 1978
The Grand Master whom the New York Times Book Review calls, “the greatest crime writer of our time, perhaps ever,” has written a wry and twisting tale that any of the other all-time greats—Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, John D. MacDonald, James M. Cain, Robert Parker…every noir author who ever walked a detective, cop, or criminal into a shadowy alley—would be thrilled to call their own. Leonard, the man who has given us U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens (currently starring in TV’s Justified) is at his storytelling best, as a spurned wife decides to take a rightful—and profitable—revenge on her deceiving hubby by teaming up with the two thugs he hired to abduct her.
The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes
Adrian Conan Doyle - 1954
The plots are all new, with painstaking attention to the mood, tone, and detail of the original stories. Here is a fascinating volume of mysteries for new Sherlock fans, as well as for those who have read all the classics and crave more!The Adventure of the Seven Clocks The Adventure of the Gold Hunter The Adventure of the Wax Gamblers The Adventure of the Highgate Miracle The Adventure of the Black Baronet The Adventure of the Sealed Room The Adventure of the Foulkes Rath The Adventure of the Abbas Ruby The Adventure of the Dark Angles The Adventure of the Two Women The Adventure of the Depthford Horror The Adventure of the Red Widow
False Impression
Jeffrey Archer - 2005
It’s a young woman in the North Tower when the first plane crashed into the building who has the courage and determination to take on both sides of the law and avenge the old lady’s death. Anna Petrescu is missing, presumed dead, after 9/11 and she uses her new status to escape from America, only to be pursued across the world from Toronto to London, to Hong Kong, Tokyo and Bucharest, but it is only when she returns to New York that the mystery unfolds. Why are so many people willing to risk their own lives and others' to own the Van Gogh Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear? Jeffrey Archer, one of the greatest popular novelists of our generation, delivers a truly page-turning thriller.
Op-Center
Jeff Rovin - 1995
It is run by a crack team of operatives both within its own walls and out in the field. When a job is too dirty--or too dangerous--it's the only place our government can turn.But nothing can prepare Director Paul Hood and his Op-Center crisis management team for what they're about to uncover--a very real, very frightening power play that could unleash new players in a new world order...
Girl Missing
Tess Gerritsen - 1994
She's young. She's beautiful. And her corpse, laid out in the office of Boston medical examiner Kat Novak, betrays no secrets - except for a notebook clutched in one stiff hand, seven numbers scrawled inside. The next body is a warning. When a second victim is discovered, Kat begins to fear that a serial killer is stalking the city streets: a shadowy madman without mercy or apparent motive. The police are skeptical. The mayor won't listen. And Kat's chief suspect is one of the city's most prominent citizens. The final body . . . might be hers. With the death toll rising, Kat races to expose a deadly conspiracy and the brutal killer at its heart - a killer who will stalk her from the dangerous streets of the inner city to the corridors of power. Because he's closer than she ever dreamt. And every move she makes could be her very last.
Cherchez la Femme
Dana Stabenow - 2011
They don’t have to be young, they don’t even have to be pretty, but there is one woman in every Alaskan village whose very presence short circuits something in the nervous system of the male of the species, resulting all too often in events that spiral into intervention on the part of a professional peace officer.In Niniltna, it was Dulcey Kineen. Emphasis, it seems, on the was. A short story.
The Black Echo
Michael Connelly - 1992
This one is personal...because the murdered man was a fellow Vietnam "tunnel rat" who had fought side by side with him in a hellish underground war. Now Bosch is about to relive the horror of Nam. From a dangerous maze of blind alleys to a daring criminal heist beneath the city, his survival instincts will once again be tested to their limit. Pitted against enemies inside his own department and forced to make the agonizing choice between justice and vengeance, Bosch goes on the hunt for a killer whose true face will shock him.
Layer Cake
J.J. Connolly - 2000
The worst thing about drug dealing—according to our unnamed narrator—whether you're a classy top dealer trading millions or a down-and-out street pusher, is that you have to relate to a lot of total idiots - loudmouths and tough-guy wannabes who aren't afraid to "get nicked by old bill and thrown in the boob" (arrested by police and jailed). Our narrator is a smoothly diplomatic 29-year-old cocaine dealer who has earned a respected place among England's Mafia elite. Speaking in a language rich with drug jargon, vulgarities, British slang, and Cockneyisms, he manages high-level trafficking with a tough old veteran partner, Mister Mortimer, a man who gave the narrator his start in the business, and who has seen his share of prison (five and a half year term) and deadly fights (he owns a porn store, and loves to set up guys looking for child porn by directing them to come back at a special time, then beating the living daylights out of them when they return). Our narrator’s goal is to retire at 30 and spend his remaining years far from the danger and double-dealing of London's crime gangs. But like most high rollers, he finds it hard to walk away from "just one more" deal.Morty rings up our narrator one early Saturday morning with an invitation to an exclusive members only restaurant far off in the English countryside. They’re off for “a spot of luncheon” with the Don, Jimmy Price. Jimmy is a legend, a crime boss who’s been in the business for years by hiring the best lawyers and keeping a low-key profile. This is a man who is always gets what he wants, and is not used to people refusing him favors. Which is exactly the spot our narrator soon finds himself in when over lunch, Jimmy hands down a tough assignment: find Charlotte Ryder, the missing rich princess daughter of Jimmy's old pal Edward, a powerful construction business player and gossip papers socialite. It’s a hard deal to refuse, but Jimmy can spot the edge on our narrator and makes him a deal – if you find Charlotte, you can leave the life for good.Our narrator sets out to find Billy Bogus, a grifter with a gift for mimicry and ingratiating himself into any area of society he wants. Bank and credit card fraud is his trade, with a healthy dollop of hustling young women out of their trust funds for good measure. On his way to meet Bogus, he runs into a small time punk named Sid in a local nightclub who runs with a band of thugs called “the Yahoos.” With him is a stunning woman, a “real love-a-player type” named Tammy. Sid tells our narrator a bloody story about a friend of his named “The Duke” who recently got ambushed by a state of the art crew armed with laser sighted Uzis. Our narrator won’t figure out the significance of this story until later as he’s too busy checking out Tammy, who flirtatiously gives him her number while Sid is distracted.Our narrator reports to Jimmy’s right hand man, Gene, that he’s on the case, but Gene has other business. Turns out that the Yahoos have two million pounds' worth of Grade A ecstasy to sell, and Gene wants our narrator to handle the deal. It’s an irresistible deal, just the right amount of money to top off his retirement fund. He sets up a meeting with him, Mort, and the Yahoos kingpins, Big Frankie and JD while finally catching up with Billy Bogus, who agrees to help find our narrator Charlotte by tracking down Charlotte’s boyfriend Kinky—for a price, of course.Big Frankie and JD keep quiet about where they’ve gotten the tablets, but the “gear” is top quality, confirmed by none other than Sir Alex (“chief chemical taster”). Things are looking up when Mort sets up his gang to meet up with a crew, headed by a man named Trevor, up in Northern England who he thinks will be perfect to unload the goods on. There’s only one problem – they don’t want the goods. This crew informs our narrator that an Ecstasy factory has been hijacked—most likely by the Yahoos—and now a brutal neo-Nazi sect wants those pills back. They’ve already hit up a house that belongs to “the Duke”, and here is where Sid’s story from the club all makes sense.Our narrator drives back to London with Mort in tow and gets a call from Bogus, who tells him he’s found Kinky. Dead. In a London housing project. It looks like a typical drug overdose, but a young kid drug dealer who helped Bogus find Kinky says he was murdered.Meanwhile, our narrator sets up a rendezvous with Tammy in a hotel room. As he steps out of the shower, two toughs ambush him, who roll him up in a carpet, and abduct him in a long box. The toughs take him to a construction site to meet with their boss, Eddie Ryder, Charlotte’s father. Eddie tells our narrator that Jimmy Price has pulled a fast one on him – his daughter’s isn’t missinnnnnng. What’s worse, Jimmy’s made a deal with some renegade Chechens that have swindled him to the tune of thirteen million pounds. To pull himself out of the hole, he set up the narrator to find Eddie’s daughter, then hold her for ransom. The double cross, though, turns into a triple cross when Eddie plays our narrator a tape that reveals Jimmy Price is an informer for the police and has set up a sting for our narrator where he plans to send him to jail for long time, and make off with the narrator’s retirement fund.Finding himself undercut, double-crossed, hung out to dry, and struggling to survive, our narrator’s survival instincts kick in. He changes from a turn-the-other-cheek diplomat to a revenge-charged hit man overnight, starting by killing Jimmy Price. Next, he agrees to sell the ecstasy tablets to Ryder, who plans to unload them to the Yakuza in Japan, which will put a nice chunk of change in our narrator’s pocket. Just before he leaves, our narrator mentions a bit of dirt that Jimmy gave him in passing about Eddie, insuring that Eddie won’t kill our narrator—just in case he gets any funny ideas about doing so.Suddenly, all of the narrator’s problems looked solved. Jimmy’s dead, and those two million tabs of ecstasy are headed to Japan. Then, Jimmy’s right hand man Gene asks for a meeting with Mort and our narrator. Gene accuses our narrator of killing Jimmy and threatens to kill him unless he confesses. Our narrator plays the tape Ryder gave him for Gene and Morty, revealing Jimmy’s double-dealings with the police. Gene lets our narrator go and agrees never to discuss the crime again.All that remains is the little matter of two million tabs of ecstasy. In a flourish of double and triple crosses, our narrator’s deal to exchange the tabs for cash at Heathrow Airport falls apart, but ends up with the tabs in Amsterdam. As he prepares to dash off to Amsterdam to collect the loot, he decides to give Tammy a call before he leaves. Unfortunately, Tammy’s jealous boyfriend Sidney tailed her, and shot the narrator three times, including twice in the head. The narrator lived, recovered in the hospital, and is ordered into retirement and exile by the cops. He rings Tammy to offer her one more chance to meet, but she tells him “girls like dangerous guys but you’re seriously fuckin’ life threatening. How many girls do you know end up covered in blood, chief prosecution witness in an attempted murder trial on their first date?” She wishes our narrator well, who has plenty of time to reflect on his life as an ex-pat in Curacao, Brazil. He acknowledges that, in life, you never stop learning, but you never stop forgetting either. He has plenty of time now to ruminate on both, living a life where he can remember why he left the business, but never forget why he can’t tell us his name.
You Were Never Really Here
Jonathan Ames - 2013
Solitary and haunted, he prefers to be invisible. He doesn't allow himself friends or lovers and makes a living rescuing young girls from the deadly clutches of the sex trade. But when a high-ranking New York politician hires him to extricate his teenage daughter from a Manhattan brothel, Joe uncovers a web of corruption that even he may not be able to unravel. When the men on his trail take the only person left in the world who matters to him, he forsakes his pledge to do no harm. If anyone can kill his way to the truth, it's Joe...Novelist, essayist, creator of the beloved TV series Bored to Death and Blunt Talk, Jonathan Ames is celebrated not only for his comic sensibilities and devotion to the absurd but for his lurid attraction to inner demons. In this shocking and suspenseful thriller, the author goes darker than noir, with an ass-kicking and psychologically tormented guardian angel who rescues others but refuses to save himself.