Freaky Deaky


Elmore Leonard - 1988
    The St. Louis Post-Dispatch calls Leonard, “the world’s greatest cops ‘n’ robbers novelist.” The Seattle Times says, “Leonard is more than just one of the all-time greats of crime fiction. He’s fast becoming an authentic American icon.” No matter where you wish to place the man who created the character of U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, lately of TV’s hit series Justified, in the pantheon of mystery and noir detective fiction demigods—John D. MacDonald, Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain and the like—there is no denying that nobody does it better than the Grand Master Elmore Leonard!

The King of Torts


John Grisham - 2003
    Clay Carter has been there too long and, like most of his colleagues, dreams of a better job in a real firm. When he reluctantly takes the case of a young man charged with a random street killing, he assumes it is just another of the many senseless murders that hit D.C. every week.As he digs into the background of his client, Clay stumbles on a conspiracy too horrible to believe. He suddenly finds himself in the middle of a complex case against one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, looking at the kind of enormous settlement that would totally change his life--that would make him, almost overnight, the legal profession's newest king of torts...'From the Hardcover edition'

Darkly Dreaming Dexter


Jeff Lindsay - 2004
    He's handsome and charming, but something in his past has made him abide by a different set of rules. He's a serial killer whose one golden rule makes him immensely likeable: he only kills bad people. And his job as a blood spatter expert for the Miami police department puts him in the perfect position to identify his victims. But when a series of brutal murders bearing a striking similarity to his own style start turning up, Dexter is caught between being flattered and being frightened—of himself or some other fiend.

True Blue


David Baldacci - 2009
    police force until she was kidnapped and framed for a crime. She lost everything: her badge, her career, her freedom--and spent two years in prison. Now she's back on the outside and focused on one mission: to be a cop once more. Her only shot to be a true blue again is to solve a major case on her own, and prove she has the right to wear the uniform. Even with her police chief sister on her side, she has to work in the shadows: a vindictive U.S. attorney is looking for any reason to send Mace back behind bars. Then Roy Kingman enters her life.Roy is a young lawyer who aided the poor until he took a high-paying job at a law firm in Washington. Mace and Roy meet after he discovers the dead body of a female partner at the firm. As they investigate the death, they start uncovering surprising secrets.Soon, what began as a fairly routine homicide takes a terrifying and unexpected turn . . . into something complex, diabolical, and possibly lethal.

A Simple Plan


Scott Smith - 1993
    In order to hide, keep, and share the fortune, these ordinary men all agree to a simple plan.

The Power of the Dog


Don Winslow - 2005
    This novel of the drug trade takes you deep inside a world riddled with corruption, betrayal, and bloody revenge. Art Montana is an obsessive DEA agent. The Barrera brothers are heirs to a drug empire. Nora Hayden is a jaded teenager who becomes a high-class hooker. Father Parada is a powerful and incorruptible Catholic priest. Callan is an Irish kid from Hell’s Kitchen who grows up to be a merciless hitman. And they are all trapped in the world of the Mexican drug Federaci. From the streets of New York City to Mexico City and Tijuana to the jungles of Central America, this is the war on drugs like you’ve never seen it.

The Poet


Michael Connelly - 1996
    So when his homicide detective brother kills himself, McEvoy copes in the only way he knows how--he decides to write the story. But his research leads him to suspect a serial killer is at work--a devious murderer who's killing cops and leaving a trail of poetic clues. It's the news story of a lifetime, if he can get the story without losing his life.

Beach Road


James Patterson - 2006
    But his job barely keeps him in paper clips. His clients make a living serving the rich. The billionaires and celebrities swarming the beaches already have lawyers on their payroll.Very ExpensiveThen a friend of Tom's is arrested for a triple murder near a movie star's mansion. Tom knows in his gut that Dante Halleyville is innocent. Dante asks him to represent him in what could be the Trial of the Century.Very ExclusiveTom recruits Manhattan superlawyer Kate Costello to help. She's a tough hire, because Kate is his ex-girlfriend, but she agrees. In their search to find who really executed three locals, Tom orchestrates a series of revelations to expose the killer, and what emerges is staggering.Very ExplosiveThe final scenes of this audiobook unveil a truth that will leave readers gasping in shock. Written with the precision that has made James Patterson "a master of his genre" (USA Today), Beach Road is his wildest, most thrilling novel ever.

The Last Kind Words


Tom Piccirilli - 2012
    Upon the razor-thin edge between love and violence lives a pair of brothers, their bonds frayed by betrayals and guilt, their loyalty to each other their last salvation.Raised to pick a pocket before he could walk, Terry Rand cut free from his family after his older brother, Collie, went on a senseless killing spree that left eight dead. Five years later, only days before his scheduled execution, Collie contacts Terry and asks him to return home. Collie claims he wasn’t responsible for one of the murders—and insists that the real killer is still on the loose.Dogged by his own demons, Terry is swept back into the schemes and scams of his family: His father, Pinsch, a retired cat burglar, brokenhearted because of his two sons. His card-sharp uncles, Mal and Grey, who’ve incurred the anger of the local mob. His grandfather, Shep, whose mind is failing but whose fingers can still slip out a wallet  from across the room. His teenage sister, Dale, who’s flirting dangerously with the lure of the family business. And Kimmie, the woman Terry abandoned, who’s now raising a child with Terry’s former best friend.  Terry pieces together the day his brother turned rabid, delving into a blood history that reveals the Rand family tree is rotten to the roots, and the secrets his ancestors buried are now coming furious and vengeful to the surface.A meditation on how love can confine a person just as easily as it can free him, juxtaposing shocking violence and sly humor, The Last Kind Words is the brilliantly inventive family saga that only a singular talent like Tom Piccirilli could conjure.

Blue Monday


Nicci French - 2011
    A day of dark impulses. A day to snatch a child from the streets ...The abduction of five-year-old Matthew Farraday provokes a national outcry and a desperate police hunt. And when a picture of his face is splashed over the newspapers, psychotherapist Frieda Klein is left troubled: one of her patients has been relating dreams in which he has a hunger for a child. A child he can describe in perfect detail, a child the spitting image of Matthew.Detective Chief Inspector Karlsson doesn't take Frieda's concerns seriously until a link emerges with an unsolved child abduction twenty years ago and he summons Frieda to interview the victim's sister, hoping she can stir hidden memories. Before long, Frieda is at the center of the race to track the kidnapper.But her race isn't physical. She must chase down the darkest paths of a psychopath's mind to find the answers to Matthew Farraday's whereabouts.And sometimes the mind is the deadliest place to lose yourself.

A Drink Before the War


Dennis Lehane - 1994
    Working out of an old church belfry, Kenzie and Gennaro take on a seemingly simple assignment for a prominent politician: to uncover the whereabouts of Jenna Angeline, a black cleaning woman who has allegedly stolen confidential state documents. Finding Jenna, however, is easy compared to staying alive once they've got her. The investigation escalates, implicating members of Jenna's family and rival gang leaders while uncovering extortion, assassination, and child prostitution extending from bombed-out ghetto streets to the highest levels of government. A Drink Before the War , the first in Lehane's acclaimed series with Boston detectives Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro, is a remarkable debut that is at once a pulsating crime thriller and a mirror of our world, one in which the worst human horrors are found closest to home, and the most vicious obscenities are committed in the name of love.

Killing Floor


Lee Child - 1997
    He's just passing through Margrave, Georgia, and in less than an hour, he's arrested for murder. Not much of a welcome. All Jack knows is that he didn't kill anybody. At least not here. Not lately. But he doesn't stand a chance of convincing anyone. not in Margrave, Georgia. Not a chance in hell.

The Hunter


Richard Stark - 1962
    The thriller that introduces Parker. “A brilliant invention”. Played by Lee Marvin in the John Boorman movie. “The funnies call it the syndicate. The goons and hustlers call it the Outfit. You call it the Organization. But I don’t care if you call yourselves the Red Cross, you owe me forty-five thousand dollars and you’ll pay me back whether you like it or not.”This novel was originally titled The Hunter, later retitled Point Blank because of the movie, later retitled Payback because of the other movie.

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 ...

The Black Dahlia


James Ellroy - 1987
    The victim makes headlines as the Black Dahlia—and so begins the greatest manhunt in California history. Caught up in the investigation are Bucky Bleichert and Lee Blanchard: Warrants Squad cops, friends, and rivals in love with the same woman. But both are obsessed with the Dahlia—driven by dark needs to know everything about her past, to capture her killer, to possess the woman even in death. Their quest will take them on a hellish journey through the underbelly of postwar Hollywood, to the core of the dead girl's twisted life, past the extremes of their own psyches—into a region of total madness.