Book picks similar to
The Standoff by Chuck Hogan


fiction
thriller
mystery-thriller
chuck-hogan

Venom


Colin Falconer - 1990
    I will survive and come back to haunt you. All of you ... A beautiful French girl and her Indian lover locked in the white heat of illicit passion. The result is Michel. Thrown out onto the dangerous streets, he grows to ferocious manhood in the alleys of Saigon.He survives to wreak the most extreme vengeance for every beating, every betrayal. Possessed of a raw sexuality and the flair of a master criminal, driven by a pitiless hidden violence, he leaves a trail of blood that stretches from the backstreets of Bombay even to the boulevards of Paris. But when the judge's gavel cracks across a Delhi courtroom and the world waits for justice, his destiny will hang on one last ironic twist of fate ... "Exotic, exciting, darkly suspenseful - a splendid novel." - Campbell Armstrong.

Home Before Dark


Charles Maclean - 2009
    Frustrated with the police inquiry, Ed sets out to discover who killed her, & why. His quest brings him ever closer to the charming, lethal psychopath Ward, & his website, Home Before Dark.

Black Sunday


Thomas Harris - 1975
    . . 80,000 people had better get ready to die. — The Super Bowl--where thousands have gathered for an all-American tradition. Suddenly it's the most terrifying place on earth . . . — Michael Lander is the most dangerous man in America. He pilots a television blimp over packed football stadiums every weekend. He is fascinated with explosives. And he happens to be very, very crazy. That's why a beautiful PLO operative has seduced him. That's why--on Super Bowl Sunday--the world will witness the bloody assassination of the U. S. president and the worst mass murder in history. Unless someone discovers what Michael Lander plans . . . and can kill him first.

Firestorm


Iris Johansen - 2003
    This time a gifted arson investigator teams up with a mysterious operative to stop a killer raging completely out of control...For Kerry Murphy, the inferno is never far away. The flames of that long-ago night still burn in her nightmares: the heat, the choking smoke, the helplessness. She can never run fast enough...Now Kerry works as an arson investigator with her evidence-sniffing dog, Sam. Together they're a great team, but her life is about to change in the time it takes to strike a match. The deadly flames of her past are back, and from out of the ashes a stranger appears. Who is Silver? And why has he chosen her in the desparate race to find a killer determined to ignite hell on earth? Kerry and Silver may not have a chance against a psychopath as coldhearted as his method is red-hot. To save themselves and the innocent lives at stake, Kerry will have to do what she hoped she'd never have to do: fight fire with fire.

The Mask of Atreus


A.J. Hartley - 2005
    A secret room...in an obscure museum has become the final resting place of its proprietor, whose dead body lies surrounded by an astonishing collection of Greek antiquities--a treasure once looted from the Nazis.The face of death...A priceless Mycenaean death mask has been taken, along with the bones of a legendary hero thought to exist only in ancient myth.AN UNHOLY GRAIL OF EXTRAORDINARY POWERThe theft draws museum curator Deborah Miller into a terrifying web of murder, mystery, and devastating retribution by those whose dreams of glory remain undefeated...

Doors


Ezra Hannon - 1975
    A crib burglar, he robs apartments—never hotels, never offices, never liquor stores, never jewelers. Strictly apartments, and strictly during the day. He’s paranoid, ready to cut and run as soon as a job turns sour—he’s already been to prison once, and he doesn’t plan on getting caught again—but he’s about to get the offer of a lifetime, the big make he’s always been looking for. How can he say no? This could set him up for life—but it could also send him back to Sing Sing for good. The stake revolves around Daisy, a one-legged hooker who spends Thursday afternoons at the home of a Westchester millionaire. It would be simple if Alex wasn’t increasingly distracted by Jessica, his square neighbor who has no idea he’s a burglar and seems to like him. Between these two very different women lies the biggest opportunity of Alex’s life. Will he get his hands on it before the alarms start to sound?

Runway Zero-Eight


Arthur Hailey - 1958
    At least five passengers are sick. Both pilots are unconscious and in serious condition. My name is George Spenser. I am a passenger on this airplane. Correction: I was a passenger. I am now the pilot. What happened? Who was the new pilot? Would anyone reach the ground alive?

Omerta


Mario Puzo - 1999
    No one knew why Aprile, the last great American Don, had adopted Astorre Viola many years before in Sicily; no one suspected how he had carefully trained him ... and how, while the Don's children claimed respectable careers in America, Astorre Viola waited for his time to come.Now his time has arrived. The Don is dead, his murder one bloody act in a drama of ambition and deceit --- from the deadly compromises made by an FBI agent to the greed of two crooked NYPD detectives and the frightening plans of a South American Mob kingpin. In a collision of enemies and lovers, betrayers and loyal soldiers, Astorre Viola will claim his destiny. Because after all these years, this moment is in his blood ...

Sphinx


T.S. Learner - 2009
    During a clandestine dive to an old shipwreck, archaeologist Isabella Warnock unearths an artefact unlike anything she has ever seen: an astrarium, a powerful ancient device rumoured to have shaped the destinies of pharaohs and kings since the beginning of time. But her discovery comes at a terrible price.

The Survivor


Gregg Andrew Hurwitz - 2012
    But as he's steeling himself, a crew of robbers bursts into the bank and begins to viciously shoot employees and customers. With nothing to lose, Nate confronts the robbers, taking them out one-by-one. The last man standing leaves Nate with a cryptic warning.Nate soon learns what that message meant. He is kidnapped by Pavlo, a savage Russian mobster and mastermind of the failed heist. Unable to break back into the bank to get the critical item inside, Pavlo gives Nate an ultimatum—break in and get what he needs or watch Pavlo slowly kill the one thing Nate loves most—his ex-wife Janie and his teenaged daughter Cielle—both lost when he came back from Iraq broken and confused. Now he's got one last chance to protect the people he loves, even if it's the last thing he is able to do.

Sherlock Holmes and the Hentzau Affair


David Stuart Davies - 1991
    He is to engage the services of Rudolf Rassendyll once more to impersonate the King while the monarch recovers from a serious illness. But Rassendyll had mysteriously disappeared. In desperation Sapt consults Sherlock Holmes who with Watson travels to the Kingdom of Ruritania in an effort to thwart the plans of the scheming Rupert of Hentzau in his bid for the throne.

Everything to Lose


Andrew Gross - 2014
    A car ahead of her careens down a hill and slams into a tree. Stopping to help, she discovers the driver dead--and a satchel stuffed with a half a million dollars.That money could prevent her family's ruin and keep her special needs son in school. In an instant, this honest, achieving woman who has always done the responsible thing makes a decision that puts her in the center of maelstrom of dark consequences and life-threatening recriminations--a terrifying scheme involving a twenty-year-old murder, an old woman who's life has been washed out to sea, and a powerful figure bent to keep the secret that can destroy him hidden.With everything to lose, everything she loves, Hilary connects to a determined cop from Staten Island, reeling from the disaster of Sandy, to bring down an enemy who will stop at nothing to keep what that money was meant to silence, still buried.

The Last Thing I Remember


Deborah Bee - 2016
    And she doesn't know how she might get out.But then she discovers that her injury wasn't an accident. And that the assailant hasn't been caught.Unable to speak, see or move, Sarah must use every clue that she overhears to piece together her own past.And work out who it is that keeps coming into her room.

Ricochet


Sandra Brown - 2006
    When Detective Sergeant Duncan Hatcher is summoned to the home of Judge Cato Laird in the middle of the night to investigate a fatal shooting, he knows discretion and kid-glove treatment will be key to staying in the judge’s good graces and keeping his job.It’s an open-and-shut case: Elise, the judge’s beautiful trophy wife, interrupted a burglary and killed the intruder in self-defense. Yet Duncan is suspicious of the beautiful woman’s story of innocence and his gut tells him her account of the shooting is only partially true.Determined to learn the dead man’s connection to the Lairds, Duncan investigates further but soon finds his career, and integrity, in jeopardy. Despite his suspicions, Duncan is increasingly drawn to Elise―even if she is a married woman, a proven liar, and a murder suspect.When Elise seeks Duncan out privately, he initially dismisses her incredible allegation as the manipulative lie of a guilty woman. But if she’s telling the truth, then that single fatal gunshot at her home takes on even more sinister significance, possibly involving Duncan’s nemesis, the brutal crime lord Robert Savich. And then Elise goes missing...

Odds Against


Dick Francis - 1965
    Now, he has to go up against a field of thoroughbred criminals--and the odds are against him that he'll even survive.