Mystery & Thrillers

If you knew when the world was going to end, to the day, what would you do? Would you abandon everything and do the things you always wanted to? Would you wallow in despair? Would you go insane? Would you end your life? Or would you cling to your identity, doing what you'd always been doing right up to the end? You will ask yourself these questions and many more as you read through Ben H. Winters' The Last Policeman.  

The English Monster, by Lloyd Shepherd, blends two stories of horror—one short, sharp, and bloody while the other is a slow unraveling of a man’s conscience.

October, 1564: A handsome young man, just married and very much in love, travels a dangerous path to the port of Plymouth, England, where he hopes to find a berth on a ship bound for adventure, but more importantly, riches to make their new life together secure. It is try and succeed or fail and never return for William Ablass. His letter of introduction earns him a place on board Captain Hawkins’ vessel where he becomes shipmates and friends with Francis Drake, later “El Draco,” the terror of the Spanish fleet.  Their adventures succeed in turning a golden profit but at a very dark cost.

Arnaldur Indridason's Jar City: A Reykjavik Thriller, the first of a series starring Inspector Erlendur, is a gripping crime novel set in the insular world of Reykjavik, Iceland, where the climate is unforgiving and murder is a relatively rare phenomenon. 

An elderly man, Holberg, is found murdered in his city flat, and, unlike most murders in Iceland that are crimes of passion, Erlendur and his colleagues Sigrinudur Oli and Elinborg quickly realize that this is not going to be a typical murder investigation, especially since the only clues are a cryptic note stating, “I am HIM” and the photograph of a young girl’s grave.

This readalike is in response to a patron's book-match request. If you would like personalized reading recommendations, fill out the book-match form and a librarian will email suggested titles to you. Available for adults, teens, and kids.  You can browse the book matches here.

Gone Girl: A Novel by Gillian Flynn: On the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary, Nick’s wife Amy suddenly disappears. The police immediately suspect Nick. Amy’s friends reveal that she was afraid of him, that she kept secrets from him.  He swears it isn’t true. A police examination of his computer shows strange searches. He says they aren’t his. And then there are the persistent calls on his mobile phone. So what really did happen to Nick’s beautiful wife? (catalog description)

If you like Gone Girl: A Novel by Gillian Flynn, you may also like these titles:

Before I Go To Sleep: A Novel by S.J. Watson: Am amnesiac attempts to reconstruct her past by keeping a journal and discovers the dangerous inconsistencies in the stories of her husband and her secret doctor. (catalog description)

Fear the Worst by Linwood Barclay: Your daughter doesn’t come home one night from her summer job. You go there looking for her. No one’s seen her. But it’s worse than that. No one’s ever seen her. So where has she been going every day? And where is she now? In Linwood Barclay’s riveting thriller, an ordinary man’s desperate search for his daughter leads him into a dark world of corruption, exploitation, and murder. Tim Blake is about to learn that the people you think you know best are the ones harboring the biggest secrets. (from summary)

This is a work of fiction that is actually closer to the truth than not. Sharyn McCrumb’s careful research has resulted in an exciting and informative book about the well-known story of Tom Dooley. You may remember The Kingston Trio's hit song called Hang  Down Your Head, Tom Dooley.  His actual name was Tom Dula, pronounced Dooley in the local dialect of the North Carolina mountain residents of the 1860s. Many of us know the story--or think we do, but Sharyn McCrumb’s research has revealed a slightly different story, well-backed up by her evidence. This in itself makes The Ballad of Tom Dooley worth a read.

On the surface Gone Girl reads like a whodunit thriller, and it makes a great summer read--but it’s also a literary novel in disguise with its imagery of a landscape of an economic wasteland, the characters’ moral bankruptcy, and its themes of identity and marriage. It’s been the book of the summer for me.

On their fifth anniversary, Nick Dunne comes home, and his wife Amy is gone. The initial crime scene: an open door, the ottoman turned over, broken glass, and the iron left on.  Instead of beginning with “boy meets girl,” the plot starts with “boy loses girl.” Detectives arrive and the media circus begins.

Told in alternating he said/she said chapters, we learn the back story of Nick and Amy.  Gilliam Flynn throws her readers red herrings with sneaky abandon. I found myself shifting loyalties back and forth from Team Amy to Team Nick and then being horrified and guiltily fascinated with both of them.

I'd put off reading Altered Carbon for a few years, always reading something newer.  Shame on me.  This Philip K. Dick Award-winner is a brilliantly dark and gritty mixture of hardboiled detective fiction and cyberpunk that anyone looking for a story with a razor-sharp edge will love. 

For those who have followed Charlotte and Thomas Pitt from their awkward yet charming days of courtship in The Cater Street Hangman, Anne Perry’s recent Dorchester Terrace is a very enjoyable continuation of the series. Thomas has risen far since his days as a regular London policeman. He’s now head of Special Branch, a reward for his brilliant detective work and, probably not incidentally, saving Queen Victoria from a dastardly plot.

But, in class-conscious, 19^th-century Britain, family background matters a lot to some people. Thomas, a gamekeeper’s son, often encounters people who question his ability to do his job when they find out who he isn’t. One of those is his immediate predecessor as head of Special Branch, Victor Narraway. In the preceding novel, Victor lost his job to Thomas almost but not quite disgracefully and rather lost his heart to Thomas’ clever and kind wife, Charlotte. Charlotte, born to live in Narraway’s world of privilege, has assisted her husband’s investigations through the years, but now that he is privy to so many state secrets, that will surely change—won’t it?

Déjà Dead by Kathleen Reichs: "Dr. Temperance Brennan spends her days in the autopsy suite, the courtroom, the crime lab, with cops, and at exhumation sites. Often her long days turn into harrowing nights. It's June in Montreal, and Tempe, who has left a shaky marriage back home in North Carolina to take on the challenging assignment of director of forensic anthropology for the province of Quebec, looks forward to a relaxing weekend. First, though, she must stop at a newly uncovered burial site in the heart of the city. One look at the decomposed and decapitated corpse, stored neatly in plastic bags, tells her she'll spend the weekend in the crime lab. This is homicide of the worst kind. To begin to find some answers, Tempe must first identify the victim. Who is this person with the reddish hair and a small bone structure?"

If you enjoyed the mystery plots and attention to forensic detail in Reichs' novels, here are some other titles you may enjoy:

The Apprentice by Tess Gerritsen
A series of shocking crimes that end in abduction and death terrorizes Boston during a boiling summer. Forced again to confront the killer who scarred her--literally and figuratively--Detective Jane Rizzoli is determined to finally end Hoyt's awful influence on a murderous disciple. (worldcat.org)
 

Blindsighted by Karin Slaughter
A small Georgia town erupts in panic when a young college professor is found brutally mutilated in the local diner. But it's only when town pediatrician and coroner Sara Linton does the autopsy that the full extent of the killer's twisted work becomes clear. (worldcat.org)
 

Every once in a while a patron will call me to tell me how much they enjoyed a book.  Now I have a blog to share these sentiments with you.  The Jefferson Key (DB 73400) by Steve Berry is a book that received a glowing endorsement from a patron. 

Steve Berry has written a series of books using the character of Cotton Malone, a former Justice Department operative, who gets caught up in historical mysteries. In the newest book of the series, four presidents have been assassinated.  Were the assassinations unrelated or were the presidents all murdered for the same reason?  After saving the current president from an assassination plot, Cotton Malone realizes that he has angered a secret society.  The hunt for  that society leads him on a fast-paced chase that is highly thrilling.

Berry always does incredible research for his novels and even lets the reader know what is fiction and nonfiction at the end of the book. If you are looking for a good conspiracy theory, this might be it!