Featuring authors like Harlan Coban, Sandra Brown and Tess Gerritsen, Jon Land shares the best thrillers of the past month in the latest edition of The Thrill List.
Nobody’s Fool by Harlan Coban
I don’t know how he does it, but Harlan Coban keeps churning out thrillers that fool me every time. And his latest, Nobody’s Fool, keeps that trend going in pitch-perfect fashion.
The setup is one we’ve seen before: a man wakes up with a dead woman in the bed with him. In this case, the man is recent college grad Sami Kierce and the dead woman is his girlfriend Anna. Sami never really recovers from that night, working 20 years later as a low-rent private detective after an undistinguished career as a cop. He’s actually teaching others stupid enough to want to follow in his tracks, when one night in class he spots none other than Anna seated in the room. Or is it? It must be, since she rushed from the class as soon as their eyes met. That sets up a frantic chase for a woman who’s been dead for two decades. And along the way, Sami meets all manner of cons, low-lifes and criminals as he pieces the truth together in shattering fashion.
The twists come a mile a minute and the turns are sharp enough to lend the pages of Nobody’s Fool a razor’s edge. Coben’s brilliance lies in his ability to always be a step ahead of the reader to the point where you have to wonder if he secretly ghost wrote the likes of The Usual Suspects and The Sixth Sense. A nonstop fun read only a fool would miss.
Blood Moon by Sandra Brown
Speaking of great reads, Sandra Brown is back with the blistering and bracing Blood Moon, a stunner of a tale in which reality TV collides with the unsolved disappearance of a teenage girl 3 years before.
That comes as welcome news to down and out Auclair, Louisiana, Detective John Bowie, who feels his efforts to find Crissy Mellin were short-circuited inside his own department. The mystery being featured on the hit show Crisis Point feels like a second chance for Bowie, even as he’s down to his last one as a cop. Then it turns out Crissy wasn’t alone. Other teenage girls have been disappearing regularly over the years throughout the region, always on a blood moon. And, wouldn’t you know it, there’s one on the lunar calendar coming in less than a week, which puts Bowie’s efforts to find the culprit at long last on a time clock.
Rich in atmosphere that can best be described as Cajun-noir, led by great characters and told in prose that shimmers off the page, Blood Moon is an exquisite exercise in primal terror. A psychological thriller extraordinaire that showcases Brown at the height of her powers.
The Summer Guests by Tess Gerritsen
Tess Gerritsen has done the great Murder, She Wrote television series one better by planting former spy Maggie Bird in Purity, Maine, which, for all we know, is located in the vicinity of Jessica Fletcher’s Cabot Cove. Like Fletcher, bad things keep finding Bird, as demonstrated in The Summer Guests.
This time out, Maggie and her fellow ex-spy neighbors, aka the Martini Club, are on the trail of a missing teenage girl. Maggie’s friend and neighbor is a prime suspect, which is all the motivation she needs to lend in-over-her-head local police chief a helping hand. It turns out there’s more than unsolved mystery afoot under the summer sun, the stakes escalating to the point where Maggie just might be the next body to drop.
Gerritsen has hit pop culture gold with this series that’s anything but cozy. And The Summer Guests is the perfect read for any season, as relentlessly entertaining as it is superbly structured.
Splinter Effect by Andrew Ludington
We may only be a few months into 2025, but it’s hard to imagine any book topping Andrew Ludington’s terrific debut Splinter Effect as the most original thriller of the year.
Time travel takes center stage, which, on its face, is nothing all that new. What is new is Ludington’s seamless weaving of that trope into a propulsive narrative that follows Rabbit Ward, an archaeologist who calls the Smithsonian home, on his expeditions into the past to retrieve priceless historical artifacts before they get washed away by history. The problem is, Rabbit has a rival who will stop at nothing to get what he wants, even if it means getting Rabbit out of the picture. The object of interest is a relic from the Second Temple of Solomon, believed to be in 6th century Constantinople, where Rabbit might find himself stranded if he isn’t careful.
Splinter Effect reads like a great Michael Crichton book, only not written by Crichton, a mantle Ludington appears prepared to claim for himself. Supremely effective storytelling that never lets up or lets us down.
Gravewater Lake by A.M. Strong and Sonya Sargent
Speaking of early candidates for best book of the year, look no further than Gravewater Lake, from the stalwart team of A.M. Strong and Sonya Sargent, in the psychological thriller category.
Instead of time travel, the theme here is the oft-tested notion of amnesia. A woman who may or may not be named “Anna” awakens in the midst of a Vermont blizzard with no memory whatsoever of who she is or how she got there. Fortunately, she spots a house through the storm and is welcomed in by its owner, Gregg. It’s clear he’s hiding something, but what? With the storm showing no signs of slowing down, he and “Anna” find themselves mired in secrets and searching for the truth about their respective plights.
Gravewater Lake is a striking achievement in post-modern gothic noir, an old-fashioned tale of dark romance that reminded me of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. The movie version became the launching pad for Alfred Hitchcock’s career and, if the master were still around today, he would be adding this taut, tempestuous and terrific tale to his list of books to adapt for the screen.
Broadcast Blues by G. Belsky
G. Belsky’s sterling Broadcast Blues takes us behind the scenes at a major New York local television news operation. The picture isn’t always rosy, but it’s plenty better than the NYPD.
That’s because a hefty measure of the plot is devoted to Wendy Kyle, an ex-cop who left the force under a cloud of controversy to establish her own private detective business. When she’s murdered, intrepid TV news reporter Clare Carlson (making her sixth appearance in the series) rushes into action to not just report the story, but also investigate it. Along the way, she does a deep dive into Kyle’s caseload, figuring one of them might have gotten her killed. That leads to a shadowy cabal of the ultra-wealthy who bleed money and power, and don’t like to be crossed. Carrying a microphone and a notepad instead of a gun, Clare races to expose them before she becomes their next victim.
Belsky’s sparse prose and heavy reliance on dialogue is the perfect recipe for this smooth and savory mindsnack that unfolds at a breakneck pace which leaves us little room to breathe. We can’t turn the pages of Broadcast Blues fast enough, though flipping the last one means we’ll have to wait another year for Clare’s next adventure.
Scars and Secrets by Thomas Grant Bruso
My sleeper pick of the month is Scars and Secrets, Thomas Grant Bruso’s scintillating stunner of a tale about murder and betrayal in which Ralph Ashton finds himself a suspect in the murder of his former boyfriend, Elijah Ray.
Besieged by problems both personal and professional, things haven’t been going well for Ralph, even before Elijah shows up in his life again. But not for long, since Elijah is found dead shortly after. Ralph’s already dealing with cancer eating away at his mother, an apt metaphor for the turmoil inside him, especially when the police pin Elijah’s death on him.
This is actually a finely written novel with a mystery backdrop, as Ralph’s efforts to find Elijah’s real killer morph into an existential quest that will test every thread stitched into the fabric of his being. The more he unravels, the more determined he becomes to find the murderer, willing to risk his own life in the midst of his own dissolution. The perfectly named Scars and Secrets draws us into Ralph’s netherworld as he searches for the light amidst the darkness. In this case, that light lies in Bruso’s compact writing style that’s the perfect complement to this emotionally wrenching noir.
The Accomplice by John D. MacDonald
Major kudos to Strand Magazine and its legendary editor Andrew Gulli for continuing to unearth previously undiscovered stories from true masters of their craft. The most recent issue contains one by none other than John D. MacDonald called “The Accomplice,” and it’s a masterpiece of form and function.
“After two weeks in the grocery store, Joe figured out what it was about her,” the story opens. What follows is a devilishly delightful trip back in time to this literary master’s heyday when his staccato prose paved the way for the likes of Elmore Leonard and George Higgins. “I bet, Joey, that the girls tell you you look like Burt Lancaster,” Belle, the woman who’s caught his attention, tells him at one point. Again, classic MacDonald, as is the base nobility Joey unearths in his thuggish self, the story whipsawing along in directions we never saw coming.
“The Accomplice” is an elegant exercise in traditional noir by the man who created Travis McGee. Unlike other so-called discoveries by other outlets, this story represents MacDonald at his level best. We should all be grateful Andrew Gulli and Strand Magazine are on the job. Remind me to renew my subscription!
Check out this issue of Strand Magazine here.
English (US) · 