Book picks similar to
Forever and a Death by Donald E. Westlake
hard-case-crime
thriller
fiction
crime
One False Move
Alex Kava - 2004
Now, just as Melanie is ready to pull out and settle down, Jared Barnett re-enters their lives with a ballsy plan for the ultimate heist. Recently released from a life sentence on a murder charge, Jared is frighteningly high on the feeling of invincibility that comes from getting away with murder. Melanie and Charlie agree to Jared's plot to rob a local Nebraska bank, but during the hold up, everything goes terribly wrong and innocent people end up dead. Suddenly Melanie, Charlie and Jared are on the run, and more lives are at stake--now that the three have nothing left to lose.
Gun Machine
Warren Ellis - 2012
When examined, each weapon leads to a different, previously unsolved murder. Someone has been killing people for twenty years or more and storing the weapons together for some inexplicable purpose. Confronted with the sudden emergence of hundreds of unsolved homicides, Tallow soon discovers that he's walked into a veritable deal with the devil. An unholy bargain that has made possible the rise of some of Manhattan's most prominent captains of industry. A hunter who performs his deadly acts as a sacrifice to the old gods of Manhattan, who may, quite simply, be the most prolific murderer in New York City's history.
Foreign Deceit
Jeff Carson - 2012
All that trouble falls to background noise, however, when Wolf learns his brother has just committed suicide in northern Italy. Devastation and resentment of his sibling's selfish act is short-lived, because Wolf knows one thing is for certain: his brother would never kill himself. Or would he? A nagging suspicion there's more to the story is enough to pull Wolf from his volatile life, to Lecco, Italy--a picturesque city along the shores of Lake Como, where danger lies amid the ancient cobblestone alleys.With the aid of a beautiful Carabinieri agent, can Wolf piece together what really happened to his brother without suffering the same fate?
Flower Net
Lisa See - 1997
ambassador's son is discovered entombed in a frozen lake in Beijing. Then the son of a powerful Chinese politician is found dead in the hold of a smuggler's freighter bound for California. The Chinese and American authorities suspect the deaths are linked and, in a rare move, join forces to solve the crime, and soon U.S. District Attorney David Stark is sent across the Pacific to team up with brilliant yet rebellious police detective Liu Hulan. Their investigation takes them into every corner of today's China -- from glitzy karaoke bars, where government leaders and mafia kingpins make their most unsavory deals, to Beijing's labyrinthine hutongs, where working-class Chinese have eked out their livings for centuries.Revealing a China that most Westerners have never seen -- a strange nation at once admirable and frightening -- Flower Net is an utterly original story and one of the most timely, thrilling, and thought-provoking reads from an astonishing new writer."Flower Net is a treat. In this, her debut mystery, Lisa See begins to do for contemporary Beijing what, say, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle did for turn-of-the-century London or Dashiell Hammett did for 1920s San Francisco". -- Washington Post
The Dogs of War
Frederick Forsyth - 1974
At certain times of the day the mountain emits a strange glow. Only Sir James Manson knows why. The mountain contains ten billion dollars worth of the world's most valuable mineral, platinum. Now the only question is, how to get hold of it. Sir James knows how. Invade the country with a band of savage, cold-blooded mercenaries. Topple the government and set up a puppet dictatorship. Unleash the dogs of war.
The Firm
John Grisham - 1991
He made a deadly mistake. When Mitch McDeere signed on with Bendini, Lambert & Locke of Memphis, he thought he and his beautiful wife, Abby, were on their way. The firm leased him a BMW, paid off his school loans, arranged a mortgage and hired him a decorator. Mitch McDeere should have remembered what his brother Ray — doing fifteen years in a Tennessee jail — already knew. You never get nothing for nothing. Now the FBI has the lowdown on Mitch’s firm and needs his help. Mitch is caught between a rock and a hard place, with no choice — if he wants to live.--jgrisham.com
Don't Know Jack
Diane Capri - 2012
Fifteen years and sixteen novels later, Reacher still lives off the grid, until trouble finds him, and then he does whatever it takes, much to the delight of readers and the dismay of villains. Now someone big is looking for him. Who? And why? Hunting Jack Reacher is a dangerous business, as FBI Special Agents Kim Otto and Carlos Gaspar are about to find out. Otto and Gaspar are by-the-book hunters who know when it's necessary to break the rules; Reacher is a stone cold killer. But is he their friend or their enemy? Only the secrets hidden in Margrave, Georgia will tell them.
The Outsider
Stephen King - 2018
A confounding investigation. At a time when the King brand has never been stronger, he has delivered one of his most unsettling and compulsively readable stories.An eleven-year-old boy’s violated corpse is found in a town park. Eyewitnesses and fingerprints point unmistakably to one of Flint City’s most popular citizens. He is Terry Maitland, Little League coach, English teacher, husband, and father of two girls. Detective Ralph Anderson, whose son Maitland once coached, orders a quick and very public arrest. Maitland has an alibi, but Anderson and the district attorney soon add DNA evidence to go with the fingerprints and witnesses. Their case seems ironclad.As the investigation expands and horrifying answers begin to emerge, King’s propulsive story kicks into high gear, generating strong tension and almost unbearable suspense. Terry Maitland seems like a nice guy, but is he wearing another face? When the answer comes, it will shock you as only Stephen King can.
The Heist
Janet Evanovich - 2013
Her boss thinks she is tenacious and ambitious; her friends think she is tough, stubborn, and maybe even a bit obsessed. And while Kate has made quite a name for herself for the past five years, the only name she’s cared about is Nicolas Fox—an international crook she wants in more ways than one.Audacious, handsome, and dangerously charming, Nicolas Fox is a natural con man, notorious for running elaborate scams on very high-profile people. At first he did it for the money. Now he does it for the thrill. He knows that the FBI has been hot on his trail—particularly Kate O’Hare, who has been watching his every move. For Nick, there’s no greater rush than being pursued by a beautiful woman . . . even one who aims to lock him up. But just when it seems that Nicolas Fox has been captured for good, he pulls off his greatest con of all: he convinces the FBI to offer him a job, working side by side with Special Agent Kate O’Hare.Problem is, teaming up to stop a corrupt investment banker who’s hiding on a private island in Indonesia is going to test O’Hare’s patience and Fox’s skill. Not to mention the skills of their ragtag team made up of flamboyant actors, wanted wheelmen, and Kate’s dad. High-speed chases, pirates, and Toblerone bars are all in a day’s work . . . if O’Hare and Fox don’t kill each other first.
Pacific Vortex!
Clive Cussler - 1972
The latest victim is the awesome superb Starbuck, America's deep-diving nuclear arsenal. Its loss poses an unthinkable threat to national defense. Pitt's job is to find it, salvage it, before the sea explodes. In a furious race against time, Pitt's mission swirls him into a battle with underwater assassins-and traps him in the arms of Summer Moran, the most stunningly exotic and dangerous toward disaster, Clive Cussler plummets his hero onto an ancient sunken island-the astonishing setting for the explosive climax of Pacific Vortex!
Sandstorm
James Rollins - 2004
And now the search for answers is leading Lady Kara Kensington; her friend Safia al-Maaz, the gallery's brilliant and beautiful curator; and their guide, the international adventurer Omaha Dunn, into a world they never dreamed existed: a lost city buried beneath the Arabian desert. But others are being drawn there as well, some with dark and sinister purposes. And the many perils of a death-defying trek deep into the savage heart of the Arabian Peninsula pale before the nightmare waiting to be unearthed at journey's end: an ageless and awesome power that could create a utopia... or destroy everything humankind has built over countless millennia.
Unbecoming
Rebecca Scherm - 2015
She calls herself Julie, says she’s from California, and slips back to a rented room at night. Regularly, furtively, she checks the hometown paper on the Internet. Home is Garland, Tennessee, and there, two young men have just been paroled. One, she married; the other, she’s in love with. Both were jailed for a crime that Grace herself planned in exacting detail. The heist went bad—but not before she was on a plane to Prague with a stolen canvas rolled in her bag. And so, in Paris, begins a cat-and-mouse waiting game as Grace’s web of deception and lies unravels—and she becomes another young woman entirely.Unbecoming is an intricately plotted and psychologically nuanced heist novel that turns on suspense and slippery identity. With echoes of Alfred Hitchcock and Patricia Highsmith, Rebecca Scherm’s mesmerizing debut is sure to entrance fans of Gillian Flynn, Marisha Pessl, and Donna Tartt.
The Intercept
Dick Wolf - 2012
So when a passenger from the same plane disappears into the crowds of Manhattan, it’s up to Fisk and his partner Krina Gersten to find him before the celebrations begin... And time is running out.
Beat the Reaper
Josh Bazell - 2009
Peter Brown is an intern at Manhattan's worst hospital, with a talent for medicine, a shift from hell, and a past he'd prefer to keep hidden. Whether it's a blocked circumflex artery or a plan to land a massive malpractice suit, he knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men.Pietro "Bearclaw" Brnwna is a hitman for the mob, with a genius for violence, a well-earned fear of sharks, and an overly close relationship with the Federal Witness Relocation Program. More likely to leave a trail of dead gangsters than a molecule of evidence, he's the last person you want to see in your hospital room.Nicholas LoBrutto, aka Eddy Squillante, is Dr. Brown's new patient, with three months to live and a very strange idea: that Peter Brown and Pietro Brnwa might-just might-be the same person ...Now, with the mob, the government, and death itself descending on the hospital, Peter has to buy time and do whatever it takes to keep his patients, himself, and his last shot at redemption alive. To get through the next eight hours-and somehow beat the reaper.Spattered in adrenaline-fueled action and bone-saw-sharp dialogue, BEAT THE REAPER is a debut thriller so utterly original you won't be able to guess what happens next, and so shockingly entertaining you won't be able to put it down.
Norwegian by Night
Derek B. Miller - 2012
An ex-Marine, he talks often to the ghosts of his past - the friends he lost in the Pacific and the son who followed him into the US Army, and to his death in Vietnam.When Sheldon witnesses the murder of a woman in his apartment complex, he rescues her six-year-old son and decides to run. Pursued by both the Balkan gang responsible for the murder, and the Norwegian police, he has to rely on training from over half a century before to try and keep the boy safe. Against a strange and foreign landscape, this unlikely couple, who can't speak the same language, start to form a bond that may just save them both.An extraordinary debut, featuring a memorable hero, Norwegian by Night is the last adventure of a man still trying to come to terms with the tragedies of his life. Compelling and sophisticated, it is both a chase through the woods thriller and an emotionally haunting novel about ageing and regret.