Book picks similar to
Skydancer by Geoffrey Archer


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The Mahdi


A.J. Quinnell - 1981
    — The greatest "miracle" in fourteen hundred years is about to take place...a miracle orchestrated by British Intelligence and the CIA, joined incredibly by the KGB. — One blinding eruption of flame--and three millions Arabs at Mecca will think they're witnessing the arrival on earth of the Mahdi, the reincarnation of Muhammad, fourteen centuries after the prophet's death. It is a plan of immense audacity and unthinkable consequences.

Invasion


Robin Cook - 1997
    Now, in his most provocative thriller to date, he explores a sudden outbreak of strange new symptoms that defy diagnosis. The cause is unknown—and unknowable—because it is unlike anything humankind has ever seen....

Last Man Standing / Saving Faith


David Baldacci - 2006
    As the FBI investigates, suspicion surrounding Web deepens. Now, he needs help from an unlikely ally in his desperate search for the killer of his friends, and finds himself up against a force intent on finishing the job that began in the alley.SAVING FAITHWhen a zealous CIA Chief begins personally spying on his clients to promote a secret agenda of his own devising, the beautiful Faith Lockhard, one of Washington's greatest influence-peddlers, tells the FBI all her suspicions. Now in mortal danger, she still hopes to see justice done. Yet who will rescue Faith?

The Red Zone


Tim Green - 1998
    But what begins as a high-profile murder case, evolves into a frightening conspiracy involving huge amounts of money, corrupt police and a horrible and bizarre truth.

Launch Code


Michael Ridpath - 2019
    A well-crafted ingenious mystery, tightly plotted, compelling and contemporary, this could well be Michael Ridpath's best novel yet.' - Stav Sherez, author of the Carrigan & Miller series November 1983: Three hundred feet beneath the Atlantic, US submarine Lieutenant Bill Guth and his fellow officers suddenly receive the order they've long-dreaded - to launch their nuclear missiles in a retaliatory strike against the USSR. But in the unexpected chaos that follows, one person on board lies dead... Norfolk, England, November 2019: Bill is celebrating Thanksgiving with his four daughters and his English son-in-law when they are interrupted by a historian who turns up unannounced to ask about a near-apocalyptic incident back in 1983. And the death that prevented it. Bill smiles but does not respond – the details are classified – and the historian leaves, unenlightened. That night, the historian is brutally murdered in the local pub. Bill and his family are thrown under suspicion. What happened all those years ago? Just how much is Bill to blame for events in the past, and indeed the present? As the layers of history reveal themselves, it becomes clear there is a killer at work who will stop at nothing to keep the secrets of 1983 where they belong... 'Deadly state secrets and deadlier family secrets - perfectly crafted, scrupulously researched Launch Code weaves an ingeniously dark and tangled web that will keep you gripped and guessing to the very end. Ridpath is one of the best thriller writers around.' - Craig Russell, author of The Devil Aspect

The Friends of Harry Perkins


Chris Mullin - 2019
    At the UN there was talk of relieving the UK of its seat on the Security Council.' Thirty-five years after the publication of A Very British Coup, former Labour MP Chris Mullin has written a compelling and timely sequel. In a near-future, post-Brexit Britain, the fault lines forged in the white heat of the referendum have become entrenched features of British political life. Britain's standing in the world has steadily diminished as its problems have grown. Into the maelstrom steps Fred Thompson, former aide to left-wing prime minister Harry Perkins and his successor as MP for Sheffield Parkside.  As he ascends the greasy pole of British politics, Thompson must deal with corruption, the threat of the Far Right and personal tragedy. Along the way, he learns that power does not come without a personal price and that shadowy forces are at work behind the scenes...which, this time, appear to be on his side.  At once a gripping political thriller and a chilling prognostication of where we may be headed, this taut, insightful and engrossing novel is essential reading for our troubled times.

Year of the Dragon


Robert Daley - 1981
    Police Captain Arthur Powers tries to close down the organized crime syndicate that controls Chinatown.

The Mercy of the Night


David Corbett - 2015
    When a young woman he’s taken under his wing disappears, the former lawyer devotes himself to finding her—despite her puzzlingly unhelpful family and his own ghosts.Jacquelina Garza has been to hell and back. Abducted and tortured by a child predator when she was eight years old, she still, years later, bears the scars of the incident and its aftermath—including a very public trial. Her teenage life takes an even steeper downward spiral when she’s drawn into a murder case that threatens to tear apart her hometown of Rio Mirada, the gateway to Napa Valley’s opulence.Can these two wayward souls find redemption amid the convenient lies and difficult truths that have followed them for so long?

Paladine Box Set: Paladine / Russian Holiday / Traffick Stop


Kenneth Eade - 2017
    Retirement was not in the cards for Robert, so he disappeared instead. After he comes out of the cold to answer the call to aid a fellow soldier facing a bum rap, he is thrust back into the spotlight when he is in the wrong place at the wrong time and kills a terrorist, thereby saving dozens of lives. He finds gainful employment in the slaughter of jihadists, which sparks an urban legend that Robert, a dangerous and unfeeling assassin, is a living paladin, whose mission is to rid the earth of evil for the betterment of mankind. Social media gives him the name: "Paladine" and God help whoever gets between him and his next target. Russian Holiday (Paladine Political Thriller #2) In this installment of the series, Paladine crosses paths with a Russian assassin, which puts him in the middle of the controversial new cold war between the United States and Russia. Traffick Stop (Paladine Political Thriller #3) In this installment of the series, Paladine seeks to retire from the assassination business and finds himself fighting a band of Syrian sex traffickers.

In a Deep Dark Wood


Tina Pritchard - 2021
    She tells the police exactly what she saw, but their investigation doesn’t seem to make much headway.Fran tries to settle back into a normal life, but is tormented by guilt – was there something she could have done to save the boy? Fran can’t let it go and finds herself drawn to Tyler’s grieving mother, Mel, both finding some strange connection through this shared trauma.Then someone launches a terrifying campaign of intimidation against Fran and her husband, Laurie. Could it be the killers? Are they letting her know she had better be careful what she says? Who she sees? And why is Mel acting so strangely? Does she know more about her son’s death than she is saying?Fran can’t help herself – she needs to know the truth. But when she begins to dig, she uncovers the terrible secret of the deep, dark wood – a secret that will change her life forever.

Sea Raptor: A Deep Sea Thriller


John J. Rust - 2014
    Army Ranger, until an unfortunate incident forced him out of the service. He is soon hired by the Foundation for Undocumented Biological Investigation and given a new mission, to search for cryptids, creatures whose existence has not been proven by mainstream science. Teaming up with the daring and beautiful wildlife photographer Karen Thatcher, they must stop a sea monster's deadly rampage along the Jersey Shore. But that's not the only danger Rastun faces. A group of murderous animal smugglers also want the creature. Rastun must utilize every skill learned from years of fighting, otherwise, his first mission for the FUBI might very well be his last.

Unknown Remains: A Novel


Peter Leonard - 2016
    Outside his office window, Jack hears a booming sound, and then the worst thing imaginable. He works in the World Trade Center, and it is September 11, 2001.His wife in Connecticut, Diane, is visited the next day by a grief counselor, and then the mob, where she learns her husband owes them $750,000. Their personal bank accounts have been emptied. She’s totally and utterly broke. Lost in grief and now shock, Diane soon learns her husband was not the loving spouse he appeared to be. But neither is she, owing to that Beretta she keeps tucked into her handbag.The perfect summer read, Unknown Remains boasts an exciting crime story, inventive plot twists, and a cast of rogues, who just might be using a national tragedy to cover up their own deep transgressions and greed.

Stone


Jack Buchanan - 1985
    A new kind of war.  Mark Stone has a score to settle. A former Green Beret, he has only one activity that gives meaning to his life - finding American's forgotten fighting men, the P.O.W.'s the government has conveniently labeled M.I.A.'s, and bringing them back from their hell on earth.  It's too big a job for one man. But Stone has friends. And with Hog Wiley and Terrance Loughlin-a merc from east Texas and a crack British commando - Stone returns to the steaming jungles of Laos on a do-or-die mission: to free a captured fighter jock from the sadistic commander who has sentenced him to a fate worse than death....

Mission to Malaspiga


Evelyn Anthony - 1974
    Katherine’s brother is dead. It was heroin that killed him, but Katherine can’t help but blame his death on the organized crime so rife in Italy. The drug trade may not make much money for the small-time pushers, the petty crooks, and the addicts. But for the men at the top—men like the Malaspigas, who run their yachts and their big houses on the profits of other people’s misery—drugs are big money. The Bureau of Narcotics are determined to nail these men once and for all. It’ll be a dangerous enterprise, full of deceit. And they want Katherine to help them....Moving from New York and Beverly Hills to Rome and the burnished gold loveliness of Florence and the Tuscan hill towns, here is a riveting novel of a beautiful young woman who sets out to pay a debt of love to a dead brother, only to come face to face with her own heritage - a heritage of passion and death.

Tom Clancy: Two Complete Novels (Red Storm Rising & The Cardinal of the Kremlin)


Tom Clancy - 1993
    Tom Clancy brings a chilling ring of truth to these enduring masterpieces, proving why his gripping novels have sold in excess of 38 million copies.