Book picks similar to
The Perfect Couple by Lexi Landsman


thriller
crime
australian-author
nook-special

The Motive


Khurrum Rahman - 2021
    A student house party means quick easy cash, but it also means breaking his own rules. But desperate times lead him there - and Jay finds himself in the middle of a crime scene

Girl Last Seen


Nina Laurin - 2017
    Thirteen years apart.Olivia Shaw has been missing since last Tuesday. She was last seen outside the entrance of her elementary school in Hunts Point wearing a white spring jacket, blue jeans, and pink boots. I force myself to look at the face in the photo, into her slightly smudged features, and I can't bring myself to move. Olivia Shaw could be my mirror image, rewound to thirteen years ago. If you have any knowledge of Olivia Shaw's whereabouts or any relevant information, please contact... I've spent a long time peering into the faces of girls on missing posters, wondering which one replaced me in that basement. But they were never quite the right age, the right look, the right circumstances. Until Olivia Shaw, missing for one week tomorrow. Whoever stole me was never found. But since I was taken, there hasn't been another girl. And now there is.

Proximity: If the police always know where I am... How do I kill you?


Jem Tugwell - 2019
    Is this where we're heading?’ Abi Silver Leading the trend in speculative crime thrillers, Jem Tugwell’s thrilling and thought-provoking debut sits alongside Black Mirror and The City and the City in a compelling exploration of our near future. Proximity draws on Jem’s 20 years of professional experience as a software developer in the city to give an unnerving insight into how our world might be transformed by the rapid advance in embedded technology and fitness trackers. What if the cash-strapped NHS can be given a second life by using tech to regulate our health and behaviour? What if we can eradicate knife and other proximity crimes by tracking everyone’s activity? What if civil liberty is seen as an acceptable sacrifice for the greater good? What if the convenience of technology is used for control? “Proximity is inspired by the fascinating possibilities of technology, AI and the law of unintended consequences. From my own experience, technologists are often amazed or horrified about the other uses that people imagine for their products. Clive and Zoe’s world might be closer than we think, but is it heaven or hell? How do we decide the perfect balance of free will and greater good?” – Jem Tugwell DI Clive Lussac has forgotten how to do his job. Ten years of embedded technology – ‘iMe’ – has led to complete control and the eradication of crime. Then the impossible happens. A body is found, and the killer is untraceable. With new partner Zoe Jordan, Clive must re-sharpen his detective skills and find the killer without technology, before time runs out for the next victim…

The Silent Child Boxset: A Collection of Riveting Kidnapping Mysteries


Roger Hayden - 2018
    These stories have accumulated over 300 five-star reviews and have been boxed together for the first time! The Missing A detective nearing retirement must solve a string of child abductions before it’s too late Detective Charles Knight has seen a lot in his long years as an investigator for the Melville County Police Department. Nothing, however, can prepare him for a missing children’s case involving two young girls, eerily abducted around the same time. The search leads to several potential suspects and one mysterious person who sends anonymous letters to Detective Knight’s home, promising more abductions to come. The clock is ticking, the town is on edge, and Knight must use all his resources to save the girls, with the aid of newly-arrived FBI Agent Tanya Garrett. Will they save the girls in time, or will the kidnapper’s deadly game spiral to the point of no return? The Secret Letter A mysterious chain letter is only the beginning to an inescapable nightmare. Homicide Detective Michael Dobson has seen many things in his long years on the force, but nothing can prepare him for a series of murders linked through the same mysterious chain letter mailed to the victims before their untimely demise. The answers lie in the victims’ pasts, leading Dobson and his rookie partner on a serpentine quest through the dark recesses of vengeance and betrayal. Can he stop the killer in time, or will a brutal fate await all who have made the killer’s list?

Uncommon Stock: Version 1.0


Eliot Peper - 2014
    But when her best friend James asks her to partner with him to start a disruptive new software company she discovers that the world of technology startups is fraught with intrigue, adrenaline, soaring successes, and scorching failures. It turns out this is especially true when your technology threatens entrenched drug cartels. Mara has to juggle mysterious investors, opaque partners, critical customers, and a team that is as brilliant as it is dysfunctional until only one question remains: win or die.

Full Whack


Charlie Higson - 1995
    But when two faces from his old gang turn up, he finds himself getting involved in a new scam, and soon he is embroiled in a world he wants to escape and is forced to confront a man who is dangerously unhinged.

The Wyatt Butterfly: Two Barrels of Classic Wyatt


Garry Disher - 2010
    Cool and efficient as always, Wyatt bypasses the alarm system, snatches the cash and eludes the cops. But can he make it safely back to his bolthole in Hobart?Port Vila Blues is Wyatt's fifth heist, this time leading him to a reckoning far from home. The Fallout finds Wyatt on a boat with policewoman Liz Redding and a fortune in stolen gems. He escapes, triggering a manhunt, but who exactly is hunting him? In this sixth Wyatt novel, Wyatt joins forces with his nephew to pull off one of his trickiest robberies-and his most dangerous task yet.'Disher's writing is as lean and relentless as his hero. No one does dryly poetic evocations of paranoia and human folly more seductively.' Australian

Peacemaker


Marianne de Pierres - 2014
    She maintains public safety and order in the park, but her bosses have brought out a hotshot cowboy to help her catch some drug runners who are affecting tourism. She senses the company is holding something back from her, and she's not keen on working with an outsider like Nate Sixkiller.When an imaginary animal from her troubled teenage years reappears, Virgin takes it to mean one of two things: a breakdown (hers!) or a warning. Dead bodies start piling up around her, so she decides on the latter. Something terrible is about to happen in the park and Virgin and her new partner, U.S. Marshall Nate Sixkiller, are standing in its path...

Here in the After


Marion Frith - 2021
    Anna has survived the worst. So has Nat. Two broken souls, struggling to find a place in a world they no longer fit.Anna, 62, is the victim of a terrorist attack in which eleven others were murdered. Nat, 35, is an Army veteran who fought in Afghanistan. They have so little in common. And so much.A friendship stirs between them, tentative and unlikely, its foundation the violence they have seen and the memories that stalk them. Together, they begin to search for a way back home.But when Nat's wife falls unexpectedly pregnant, terrible ghosts from his wartime past rise up and much more than a friendship is at stake.Here in the After is a poignant and uplifting exploration of the legacy of trauma and the healing power of connection.'Bold, unflinching and courageous, this book dives with sensitivity and compassion into the dark shadows of PTSD to uncover light and acceptance. Heartbreaking and devastating, but luminous, tender and hopeful. The last book I read that moved me so deeply was A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini.' Karen Viggers, author of The Orchardist's Daughter'A moving meditation on the toll trauma takes on the body and mind, and the human connection that can be its balm.' Vanessa McCausland, author of The Lost Summers of Driftwood'Powerful, insightful and ultimately hopeful, Here in the After is a compelling and poignant exploration of the price exacted by terror and warfare and the redemptive powers of an unlikely friendship.' Suzanne Leal, author of The Deceptions

Twinmaker


Sean Williams - 2013
    But her best friend, Libby, is determined to give it a try, longing for a new, improved version of herself.What starts as Libby’s dream turns into Clair’s nightmare when Libby falls foul of a deadly trap. With the help of Jesse, the school freak, and a mysterious—but powerful—stranger called Q, Clair’s attempt to protect Libby leads her to an unimagined world of conspiracies and cover-ups. Soon her own life is at risk, and Clair is chased across the world in a desperate race against time.Action and danger fuel Sean Williams’ tale of technology, identity, and the lengths to which one girl will go to save her best friend.

The Guest House


David Mark - 2021
    On a remote spur of the Scottish Highlands, she kept her successful guest house going and even met a new man, Bishop.But it turned out that Bishop had secrets. He had shady connections and shadier plans to use the coastal town as a European gateway for drugs, guns – and something far worse. Now he's disappeared, and Ronnie wants answers.Is he in trouble or simply ignoring her? Was she just his play-thing from the start? And, most importantly, is he dragging them both into something that neither of them will survive?Praise for David Mark:'Dark, compelling crime writing of the highest order' DAILY MAIL'Breathtaking' PETER MAY'Truly exhilarating and inventive. Mark is a wonderfully descriptive writer' PETER JAMES

The Comfort of Others


Kay Langdale - 2016
    Now in her seventies, she finds herself looking back to a life that has been shrouded with sorrow, and a painful secret that she has guarded since her teens.Eleven-year-old Max, who lives opposite Minnie on the housing estate built in Rosemount's grounds, has grown up happily with his single mother. But his mum has begun a new relationship and suddenly life is starting to change.As each of them tell their stories, she via a resurrected childhood journal, him via a Dictaphone, they spot each other through their bedroom windows and slowly and hesitantly an unlikely friendship begins to form.A friendship that might just help Max come to terms with the present and enable Minnie, finally, to lay to rest the ghosts of her past...

Alice to Nowhere


Evan Green - 1984
    Two vicious murderers, fleeing Alice Springs, hide on a battered truck carrying mail, food and supplies on its fortnightly journey to remote cattle stations.

Summer Girl


Linda Watkins - 2018
     Jake Chambers is also on a collision course with the past as he returns to Cutter Island for the first time in more than a decade. And, as the ferry approaches the wharf, he finds his mind filled with thoughts of a summer long forgotten and a girl destined to haunt him forever. From award-winning author, Linda Watkins, comes a story of love, loss, survival, and, most of all, hope...SUMMER GIRL, A Novel.

Double Take


Kendall Talbot - 2015
    A detective with more clues than time. A double cross no-one saw coming.Jackson Rich will do anything to save his wife. . . even if it means falling back into his criminal ways. Robbing a bank though, isn’t a one-man job and to make it out of the vault alive, he needs help from his old crew. But someone is watching every move he makes, and they are in it for the thrill and the money.Detective Steel receives a tip-off about a bank robbery set to be committed during the prized Melbourne Cup horse race. The clues pile up, as do the suspects. But each baffling lead runs to a dead-end and as the heist draws closer, Steel is drawn into a web of deceit that puts his stellar career on the line.When a shocking deception leaves the heist crew shattered and exposed, they aim for revenge—and more than one person will be trapped in the crosshairs. Double Take is a full-length, stand-alone heist thriller that will have you turning the pages all night long.Fans of John Grisham, Robert Dugoni, Melinda Leigh, Michael Connelly and Joy Ellis will enjoy this pulse-pounding mystery.