Twelve Red Herrings / First Among Equals


Jeffrey Archer
    

The Judge


Farin Powell - 2016
    The story is impressive in the way it shifts readers’ sympathies … a gem of a legal thriller, full of plot twists and juicy secrets.” —Kirkus Reviews “Powell’s third novel, a legal thriller, reveals the complexities and tragedies of our criminal justice system. It shows how a series of unexpected events can force a law abiding individual to choose a criminal path. The story in this fast-paced novel will stay with the reader forever.” —Focus On Women Magazine From the courtroom to the kidnappers’ lair, Powell keeps the excitement in tune with a pitch-perfect delivery of realistically motivated characters and a nonstop series of powerfully tense situations. There is no lag in the book, from the opening pages depicting the kidnapping to the thrilling conclusion. ROSE GARRETT —Clarion Reviews As Judge Walter McNeil heads home from Washington, DC’s Superior Court, he is preoccupied with the triple-murder case assigned to him. But everything changes when a car pulls up next to him and a man asks for directions. Seconds later, McNeil is pushed into the backseat of the car, knocked unconscious, and whisked away into uncertainty. McNeil’s kidnappers are three ex-convicts whose lives have been ruined by the judge’s harsh sentences. Out for revenge, they feed the judge drugs, repeatedly threaten his life, and then imply they have his teenage daughter, Daphne, who disappeared four years earlier. After they tell him at gunpoint that he must rule favorably on a defense attorney’s motions in the triplemurder case, McNeil has no idea his ordeal is just beginning. Before it is over, the judge’s life will be turned upside down. Now it is up to criminal defense attorney Amanda Perkins and detective Aristo Manfredi to partner together in a race against time to unravel the clues and hopefully save the judge from a fate he never could have imagined. In this legal thriller, a judge is kidnapped and thrust into the midst of a twisted web that intertwines him with the lives of three ex-convicts and the mystery surrounding his missing daughter.

The Perfect Child / When She Returned


Lucinda Berry - 2019
    All that’s missing is a child. When Janie, an abandoned six-year-old, turns up at their hospital, Christopher forms an instant connection with her, and he convinces Hannah they should take her home as their own.But Janie is no ordinary child, and her damaged psyche proves to be more than her new parents were expecting. Janie is fiercely devoted to Christopher, but she acts out in increasingly disturbing ways, directing all her rage at Hannah. Unable to bond with Janie, Hannah is drowning under the pressure, and Christopher refuses to see Janie’s true nature.Hannah knows that Janie is manipulating Christopher and isolating him from her, despite Hannah’s attempts to bring them all together. But as Janie’s behavior threatens to tear Christopher and Hannah apart, the truth behind Janie’s past may be enough to push them all over the edge.When She Returned:One woman’s reappearance throws her family into turmoil, exposing dark secrets and the hidden, often devastating truth of family relationships.Kate Bennett vanished from a parking lot eleven years ago, leaving behind her husband and young daughter. When she shows up at a Montana gas station, clutching an infant and screaming for help, investigators believe she may have been abducted by a cult.Kate’s return flips her family’s world upside down—her husband is remarried, and her daughter barely remembers her. Kate herself doesn’t look or act like she did before.While the family tries to help Kate reintegrate into society, they discover truths they’ve been hiding from each other about their own relationships. But they aren’t the only ones with secrets. As the family unravels what happened to Kate, a series of shocking revelations shows that Kate’s return is more sinister than any of them could have imagined.

The Sinister Silence


Moitrayee Bhaduri - 2015
    However, Saahil's familystrongly denies that possibility and calls in ex-super cop-turned-detective MiliRay to investigate.While doctors are uncertain about Saahil's survival, the police discover theblood-soaked body of Saahil's colleague Farzad.Why are IT engineers being targeted? Is there a link between these ghastlyattacks and Saahil's cutting-edge invention – the PA software?Ray and her team – Advocate Gatha and ex-army officer Anubhav – dive intothis case, which is turning murkier by the hour. Unaware that a connivingassassin is stalking her, Ray races towards a dangerous trap while murderousattacks continue to haunt the IT world.Who is behind these assaults – a jealous co-worker, an IT kingpin, an estrangedfriend, or someone else? With the killer on the loose, Ray's credibility is atstake...Set in Mumbai, The Sinister Silence is an edge-of-the-seat thriller that traces detective Mili Ray's journey through amysterious case that poses new threats every time she inches closer to her goal.

Cyberstrike: London


James Barrington - 2020
    7/7/2005: Ben Morgan, a cybersecurity specialist with the Metropolitan police, starts another day at work. It will be the last normal day he ever has.The Present: In Hong Kong, a crime overlord is offered a deal by shadowy agents from Beijing: his life for a new kind of operation in London. Morgan, now a part of an off the books cyber-terrorism prevention unit, must do everything to stop its spread.This is a new kind of war: different goals, tactics, rules, stakes. And Morgan is caught right in the centre... A pulse-pounding thriller rooted in reality, perfect for fans of Frederick Forsyth, Andy McNab and James Deegan.

Trouble in Paradise


L.T. Vargus - 2021
    And an old flame to complicate the trip.Check out this beach-y Violet Darger short featuring Darger, Loshak, Owen, and Spinks.When 17-year-old Micaela Tolliver goes missing during her beach vacation, FBI profiler Violet Darger heads to Curacao to investigate. The case vexes local law enforcement, with plenty of suspicious characters around and comparisons to Natalee Holloway aplenty.Red herrings. False starts. People who will go great lengths to protect the island's long held secrets.Further complications emerge due to someone else entangled in the case -- Darger's old friend and former lover, private investigator Owen Baxter. They're working together for the first time after a bad breakup. The tension is palpable, and Darger begins to question the knot of conflicts in her own heart.Corruption. Death. Sand. Romance.Once again, Violet Darger shines her light into the shadows. And what she finds there in the darkness will change her.

How to kill your friends


Phil Kurthausen - 2019
    Who needs enemies?There’s something about Meredith…Meredith is a young underachiever, living in a squalid apartment, struggling to stay one step ahead of her landlord and the law when she meets a man from her past who offers her a way out and a chance to start over.Having worked her way into the lives of the rich and privileged, Meredith will do just about anything to preserve her new lifestyle.But just how far is she prepared to go?

Hoods: The Gangs of Nottingham, A Study in Organised Crime


Carl Fellstrom - 2006
    The slaughter of Joan and John Stirland revealed an evil empire of powerful ganglords, contract killings and police corruption. At its dark heart was the East Midlands city of Nottingham. A prosperous centre of business, education and leisure, Nottingham had fallen under the shadow of vicious gangsters. Eventually its police were investigating so many murders that their boss had to appeal to other forces for help, and the influx of drugs and weapons saw the city labelled "Gun Capital UK".HOODS traces the roots of the gangs, revealing how economic dislocation and the clash of cultures between working-class white residents and black immigrants from the 1950s onwards created an alienated underclass. In the 1990s, a more malignant breed of organised criminal emerged. Crime families who had been involved in armed robbery, protection rackets and extortion now sought to control the recreational drugs trade and forged links across Europe to import wholesale quantities of cocaine, ecstasy and amphetamines. By 2002, shootings were running at one a week. HOODS uncovers how outlaw Yardies pioneered the sale of crack cocaine and imported the ruthless violence of the Jamaican ghettos; how young black gangs from the so-called NG Triangle of the Meadows, St Ann’s and Radford areas clashed in a series of turf wars; how the shadowy Dawes Cartel built a lucrative international drugs empire; and how the Bestwood Cartel and its terrifying leader, Colin Gunn, corrupted police officers and left dead and maimed in its wake. As local police struggled to cope with the mayhem, MI5 and the National Crime Squad launched a massive undercover investigation into the Nottingham ‘untouchables’. It led ultimately to the dismantling of some of the UK’s most powerful crime networks. HOODS is a stark account of what happens when the rule of the gun supplants the rule of law and fear stalks the streets.

The Trial


Larry D. Thompson - 2010
    She had volunteered for a clinical trial of a drug that both the company and the FDA knew was dangerous. When his daughter's liver starts to fail, and he realizes a liver transplant is out of the question, he decides to fight the drug company on the playing field he knows best...the courtroom. Discovering what was hidden from the public, he finds himself faced with a ruthless adversary willing to commit bribery, kidnapping and murder to keep the drug on the market.

Victims for Sale


Nish Amarnath - 2018
    A new voice whose sharp, descriptive prose is reminiscent of Megan Abbott." - Charles Salzberg, author of the Swann detective series, New York. “A thriller that accentuates the cadence of a finely crafted literary oeuvre.” - ITV America. "A dark, well-crafted tale that takes readers on a disturbing ride through society’s underbelly.’ - Adam Hamdy, author, screenwriter and film producer, London, UK."Nish Amarnath's new book gives you the chills, showing how crime can unfold in both lethal and cosy setups." - The Hindu.For fans of Stieg Larsson's 'The Girl Who Played with Fire' and Sophie Hannah's 'A Room Swept White', this debut psychological thriller and crime suspense novel, set in London, is a strident expose on an under-reported form of social injustice where the line of distinction between the betrayer and the betrayed increasingly fades into oblivion. BLURB:BBC stringer Sandy lives as a paying guest with the Sawants, a regular, quiet family. Or so she thought. Until she woke up to a woman with a knife … and a dark secret.It is only after she runs a sting operation on a home for the differently abled that Sandy makes a connection between an institute acting as a front for something sinister and the strange family she lives with. Chasing the truth up a trail of brutal murders, Sandy must evade the clutches of a thriving sex racket and expose the predators before her time runs out.

Purple Death


Brian L. Porter - 2010
     The victims, all unconnected to each other, are dispatched using a unique poison, previously associated with the notorious Borgia family. As the murders begin to multiply at an alarming rate, Connor finds clues hard to come by, and every lead takes him down yet another blind alley. The killer seems to be one step ahead of the police at every turn. Together with his assistant, Sergeant Lucy Clay, they must piece together the shreds of evidence that will lead them to the mysterious Chocolate Woman, and in turn to the brain behind the horrific murders that soon come to be known as the Purple Death.

SLOW DRiP: First in a series of heart-racing thrillers


Gary Polisano - 2019
    Clues and taunts left by the killer along with the knowledge held by the teenager cause the three characters to intersect in a dangerous game of cat and mouse.

El Camino del Rio: A Mystery


Jim Sanderson - 1998
    Border Patrol agent Dolph Martinez to the corpse of a man executed in the desert…a murder that shatters the fragile calm in a dusty, Texas town. His investigation pits him against the Mexican Army, the DEA, big-money Houston real estate interests, a Catholic nun who practices voodoo, a charismatic revolutionary wanted on both sides of the border, and perhaps deadliest of all, the demons from his own, tortured past.

No Going Back


Casey Kelleher - 2021
    A family is out for revenge.Riley Cooke is just one day old when he is stolen from the hospital. His young mother, Shelby, is beside herself. DC Lucy Murphy and her team face a race against time to find the vulnerable baby and bring him home – before the child’s grandfather, fearsome gangster Pete Baker, takes matters into his own hands.Pete is sure he knows who’s behind baby Riley’s abduction, and he thinks they ought to pray Lucy finds them before he does. Because someone is going to pay dearly for causing this much pain to his family.They say never stand between a gangster and his target. But that’s exactly what Lucy must do – because if Pete is wrong, innocent blood could flow.A shocking and addictive read that will keep you turning the pages. Fans of Martina Cole, Kimberley Chambers and Emma Tallon will love this.

The Scars Beneath the Soul


Dave Sivers - 2013
    In a quiet market town in Buckinghamshire, a brutal killer strikes, shattering any illusions Detective Inspector Lizzie Archer might have had about her new patch in Aylesbury Vale being a sleepy hollow. NEW SCARS... Disfigured in the line of duty, Archer has transferred in from the Met, hoping to make a fresh start in her life and her career. The last thing she needs is an awkward colleague, but that is what she seems to find in Detective Sergeant Dan Baines. OLD SCARS... Baines bears scars of his own, the kind that cannot be seen. Eleven years ago, his family fell victim to a serial killer, and recently his life has fallen into fresh turmoil. Haunted by dreams and visions of his still-missing son, and confused by feelings for his murdered wife's identical twin sister, he finds himself resenting a new boss who knows nothing about the area. HOW MANY MORE VICTIMS? But the killer shows no sign of stopping and with no obvious connection between the victims and the body count rising daily, Archer and Baines must put aside their differences and work together if they are to stop a maniac whose appetite for slaughter seemingly knows no bounds.