Category Archives: thriller

***Mortal Prey

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St. Louis arch

(photo: wikipedia.org)

By John Sandford – At a big family celebration last year, I queried my tablemates about the thriller writers they most like to read, and one guest enthusiastically endorsed John Sandford. Since I generally steer clear of Big Type book covers, I was happy to have this recommendation.

In Mortal Prey, Sandford did a strong job establishing the main characters (#13 in a loooooong series)—Lucas Davenport, a Minneapolis deputy police chief, and his primary antagonist, Clara Rinker, a hit-woman Davenport has tangled with previously. Now she’s gunning for some of the lowest lifes in St. Louis, and the FBI wants to stop her. There’s a passel of semi-bumbling FBI agents who’ve apparently spent too much time behind desks. Even more entertaining were the street-smart retired local St. Louis cops Davenport hooks up with. Lots of amusing manly banter.

In a flimsy pretext typical of thrillers that the reader can sail on by, the Minneapolis cop is working out of his jurisdiction and with the feds, which both limits his action and frees him from certain other constraints. Much of the plotting is believable (again, in the thriller context), until near the end, when Sandford abandons the point of view of the sniper, and her actions become increasingly risky to herself and others. Until she becomes a top spinning out of control, she’s a step or two ahead the feebs all the way.

I do wish Sandford had paid more attention to his character names. When Davenport met with agents Mallard and Malone and Mexican police colonel Manuel Martin and the Mejia family, I got kinda lost. No need for that. Thank goodness it wasn’t an audiobook.

Fast-paced, good humor, I’d read another one of these!

****Rage Against the Dying

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Route 66, highway, Arizona

(photo: wikimedia.org)

By Becky Masterman, read by Judy Kaye — Delighted to find this first-time mystery-thriller, which appeared on seven “best of” lists for 2013. At first, I thought, “Oh no, not another story about long-haul truckers and their women victims,” but the book soon took a sharp turn away from that tired track, and we discover the would-be victim is a retired FBI agent with certain skills.

The agent is Brigid Quinn, asked informally to help put to rest an old case—the murder of her young trainee by the “Route 66 killer.” A man has confessed to this string of murders and told authorities where to find the agent’s body. But the FBI agent in charge of the case doubts the confession and persuades Quinn to doubt it, too. Meanwhile, the real killer is out there . . . and no one but the two of them appears to care whether he’s caught.

The book uses its Tucson setting to advantage, and Quinn shines hard as a diamond in the unrelenting Arizona light. Her first-person narrative is “chilling, smart, funny, and what a voice she has,” said Gillian Flynn, author of Gone Girl. The narration was perfect. Cheers to both Masterman and Kaye. Looking forward to reading the second book in the series, out now!

****Mr. Mercedes

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car, Mercedes

(photo: commons. wikimedia)

By Stephen King. I’d resolved to read some Stephen King this year and picked this one up in the San Diego airport. I see that the Mystery Writers of America have nominated it for the Edgar Award—“Best Novel” category—for 2014. Five more nominees to go.

King fulfills all the standard thriller conventions—ticking clock, protagonist who must act outside the system with aid only from clever, but unofficial sources (in this case a black high school student and a woman with a serious mental disorder), a diabolical threat against a passel of innocents, and an opponent with sufficient intellectual- and fire-power to keep the stakes stoked. With characters from the crime novel version of Central Casting, perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that the plot–despite its interesting set-up–is more than a wee bit predictable.

It’s an artful page-turner, if you don’t think too hard, and King fans may love it, but it breaks no new ground. (Read about the “King for a Year” project, which so far revisits some of his more innovative works.) And perhaps it’s no surprise then, that Mr. Mercedes will be turned into a television series, with the script to be written by David E. Kelley (Boston Legal and Ally McBeal), and Jack Bender (Lost and Under the Dome) to direct.

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Looking for Something Good to Read?

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reading

(photo: Nico Cavallotto, Creative Commons)

The stack of books I’m excited to read in 2015 is already pretty high, and to make room, sorted the books of 2014—keep, donate, donate, keep, keep. Handling them again and in writing last week’s post on the 11 very best, I couldn’t help thinking how many more really good ones there were! All 22 **** books of the past year.

Mysteries & Thrillers

  • Sandrine’s Case by Thomas H. Cook – originally I gave this 3 stars, but when I couldn’t stop thinking about it, slapped on a fourth
  • The Golden Hour by Todd Moss—believable political thriller, awesome first novel
  • Standing in Another Man’s Grave by Ian Rankin—an always-satisfying outing with Edinburgh’s Inspector John Rebus
  • Mystery Girl by David Gordon—a wacky Hollywood tale with oddball characters and LOL dialog
  • The Cottoncrest Curse by Michael H. Rubin—I met Rubin, so bought his book about late-1800s murders on a Louisiana plantation. So glad I did!
  • Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger—won all the big mystery world prizes in 2013
  • Spycraft by Robert Wallace, H. Keith Melton, and Henry Robert Schlesinger—non-fiction, describing the technologies of espionage (and avoiding recent scandals entirely)
  • The Reversal by Michael Connelly—Harry Bosch AND Mickey Haller
  • The Cold, Cold Ground by Adrian McKinty—really makes his Belfast-during-the-Troubles setting work for him

Other Fiction

 Biography, History, Politics

Great Places

  • The White Rock by Hugh Thomson—adventurers still discovering lost Inca outposts
  • The Danube by Nick Thorpe—from the Black Sea to the river’s origins in Germany
  • The New York Nobody Knows by William B. Helmreich—this sociologist walked more than 6000 miles of NYC streets and talked to everybody

 Stephen King

book, imagination

(Cinzia A. Rizzo, flickr.com, CC license)

**** The Golden Hour

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Todd Moss, diplomacy, thriller,The Golden HourBy Todd Moss (sounds like a nom de plume, doesn’t it?). Read by Peter Marek. This was the best, most realistic (to me!) political thriller I’ve read in recent months. For a first-time novel, impressive. I bought it after reading this Washington Post profile of Washington insider Moss. The book tells the story of an Amherst academic, Judd Ryker, who develops a theory that the period for action after a military coup is limited—just a few days—otherwise the usurpers will be too entrenched and it will be impossible to easily get rid of them and reestablish the (presumably) more legitimate government. He calls this period “the golden hour,” taking the name from emergency medicine and the limited period after a massive traumatic injury in which medical treatment is most likely to avoid death. Ryker is recruited by the State Department to test his theory in real life and promptly ignored.

The book is not only about a newbie in the shark tank of seasoned diplomats, a coup in Mali, the kidnapping of a powerful Senator’s daughter, and U.S. security imperatives, but also about finding out whom you can trust. I liked that the main character isn’t an armed-to-the-teeth master of 20 forms of martial arts. He’s just a guy, a very smart guy, using his wits. He doesn’t meet up with a woman character as a flimsy excuse for the author to write a couple of steamy sex scenes. He doesn’t make decisions that had me silently screaming, “Why are you DOING that?” He doesn’t fall predictably off the wagon–a dead giveaway that things are going to go very wrong. Instead, he goes quietly about his business, calls his wife, checks on his kids at the beach, and learns who his friends really are. When he makes one most fateful decision, you understand he makes it based on his principles, not the external exigencies of the author’s plot.

Thriller writer John Sandford called it “A tough, realistic, well-written tale of American diplomats scrambling to reverse an African coup amidst intense turf battles – State, Defense, White House, Congress, and CIA – and ever-shifting facts on the ground. Moss is an insider who knows how these things are really done – and how thin the line is between triumph and disaster.”

The narration may make Judd sound a drop more tentative than necessary, but Marek’s portrayal of the African characters and military were beautiful. Awesome first book by Todd Moss. First of a series.

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* The Highway

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By C.J. Box – I met this popular and award-winning thriller author at a conference two years ago, and he was so highly praised there, I figured I was missing something by CJ Box, The Highwaynot having read any of his books. I still am. Box, a Wyoming native, sets his books in the West, with his series character, Joe Pickett, a Wyoming game warden. This book (a gift) isn’t part of that series, and it was a real disappointment. The book is told through the eyes of several of the characters, including long-haul trucker Ronald Pergram, who calls himself the Lizard King, for his well developed schemes for trapping, torturing, and murdering “lot lizards,” the prostitutes who prowl the parking areas of the big Interstate truck stops—and any other women he comes across when the need to “go hunting” overtakes him.

Being inside the head of this character and privy to his disturbed (and not very original) thoughts is some especially sordid category of TMI. It’s a relief when Box switches to the point of view of the women in the story. We follow Cassie Dewell, a new Investigator for the Lewis and Clark County (Montana) Sheriff’s Department. Inexperienced and unsure of herself, she ends up alone on the trail of disappeared teen sisters—disappeared, as the reader knows, by Pergram. And parts of the story are told from the perspective of the younger of the sisters, sixteen-year-old Gracie Sullivan. Box handles girl teen-speak rather well, and the girls seem plausible enough, as is Cassie.

The book doesn’t lack for tension. During the early scenes in which Pergram is chasing down the girls’ little red car in his 80,000-pound Peterbilt (teach your daughters to pay attention to the “check engine” light!), I wasn’t sure I could keep reading. A number of Amazon readers’ comments show mine was a common reaction: “I almost took an early exit from ‘The Highway.’” “I hope that ‘The Highway’ was just the result of [Box] taking a wrong turn on a bad day.” “I love the Pickett series, but I just couldn’t stomach this one.” I may have to try again.

The West is a great place to live in, but Ronald Pergram’s head is not.

Flammen & Citronen

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Flame and Citron, Mads Mikkelsen, Thure Lindhardt

(photo: upload.wikimedia.org)

Wandering the Internet, I found reference to this 2008 Danish drama (trailer) about Danish resistance fighters during the Nazi occupation. Flame and Citron being their noms de guerre, one for the man’s flaming red hair and the other for his having bombed the Citroën auto factory. Directed by Ole Christian Madsen.

The film is loosely based on two real-life and much-decorated fighters, Bent Faurschou-Hviid, played by Thure Lindhardt, and Jørgen Haagen Schmith, played by Mads Mikkelsen—looking, as always, like he just ate a bad oyster. They start their train of murders with Danish collaborators, in order to minimize German reprisals, but when they branch out, it gets complicated. Where are their orders coming from? Are they killing collaborators or innocent Danes? The ambiguity and hesitation they feel seems much more real to me than the Killing Machine assassins of so many films.

The fractures in human relationships and trust that occur in such pressure-cooker situations are not a surprise, and the denouement is over-long, but the movie is compelling and well acted. It was nominated for numerous awards, winning several. Rotten Tomatoes critics rating: 87%; viewers 82%. “To its credit, the film gives full weight to the confusion and ambivalence of war; the struggle for liberation from tyranny rarely looks so dubious,” said Colin Covert in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

Thrilling First Sentences

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homeless, dog

(photo: shiftfrequency.com)

Thrillerfest—the International Thriller Writers’ annual summer get-together—this year sponsored a first sentence contest, in which seven leading thriller writers looked through a pile of manuscripts submitted for critique and picked their favorite openers. Below is what some of the masters find gets them going. Let’s hope the authors polish up their manuscripts and deliver them into the hands of publishers soon! Watch for them! I marked my favorites—the more stars, the better. Yours?!

Wylde knew it was too early, but when the girl started screaming, he went in anyway. (Judith O’Reilly)

**Death couldn’t part us soon enough. (Katalin Burness)[I like the narrator’s tone already!]

Sophie was late—and naked. (Terry Rodgers)

Quizz Murphy propped himself against the cold facade of an office building and summoned a nearby sparrow to pluck the lice from his beard. (J. E. Fishman)

***I knew what I was doing; I just didn’t know what I was capable of. (Nathaniel Free)[lots of possible places to go after an opener like that. And a semi-colon. Whoa!]

Dad, are you and mom getting a divorce? (Ray Collins)

*Sleeping with a married guy was one thing, telling his wife he was dead was another. (Margaret Carroll)[OK, you got me. She could have borrowed the semi-colon, though.]

*** The Director

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Robin Hood

“Robin Hood’s Band Made Merry by Killing the King’s Deer” (photo: c1.staticflickr.com)

By David Ignatius (narrated by George Guidall). This thriller is set in the bowels of the nation’s national security apparatus, at the time a new CIA director is appointed who is not a Beltway insider, but plucked from the corporate world. The new director, Graham Weber, is pitted against the puppeteers of competing security agencies and (this is not a spoiler) a computer wizard inside the Agency who has gone rogue, James Morris.

How much readers like the book seems to depend on how excited they were by the electronic shenanigans of Morris, though there didn’t seem to be a lot new there—not for readers of Wired, anyway. Still, while Morris and his network were entertaining, the old-school-tie boys on Weber’s other flank were palpably less convincing. The women in the story fell into their respective stereotypes. A flimsy seduction scene is best ignored.

But the bigger problem—and where this book diverges from the best writing of, say, Neal Stephenson—is that, while it has the geeky stuff down, it has no social science sense. “Rob from the banks of the rich countries and give to the poor ones?” Really? Which poor countries would that be? Zimbabwe? North Korea? Myanmar? Uganda? Many of the world’s poorest countries stay that way because the leadership class steals everything they can get their hands on. Sending them “free” cash makes no sense. I didn’t want to read a lecture on political science and economics, but needed some acknowledgement that such sophisticated technologists thought deeper than a Robin Hood fantasy. Unfortunately, this gap undercuts their whole motivation for the crime.

If you can ignore that problem, and if you, like me, worry about our growing electronic vulnerabilities, you may like this book! And, you’ll notice the similarities in supposed high-mindedness between Morris and real-life cyber-spy Ed Snowden.

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***The Cobweb

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spider, cobweb

(photo: pixabay.com)

By Neal Stephenson and J. Frederick George (narrated by Marc Vietor)–As a huge Neal Stephenson fan, I was delighted to see this political thriller—co-written with J. Frederick George—in a special Audible 2-for-1 sale. Unfortunately, it lacked the very aspects of Stephenson’s other works that I enjoy most—complexity, humor (ok, there was a bit), challenging ideas, although there was some effective skewering of government bureaucracy.

J. Frederick George is the pen name of historian George Jewsbury, a Russia specialist—whose special expertise is little-used in this tale about the first Gulf War—who is also Stephenson’s uncle. This book was originally published under another pen name for the two of them, Stephen Bury. That’s not quite the most complicated aspect of the plot.

The story takes place in Iowa and Washington, D.C., and the title refers to how people in the nation’s intelligence agencies can protect themselves by keeping anyone who might disturb their world so smothered in procedure and paperwork and investigative committees that they lose their ability to actually accomplish anything. Ample evidence since the book’s publication (1996, reissued in 2005) demonstrates how the different pieces of the nation’s security apparatus have worked at cross-purposes and always to their own presumed advantage and protection. Amazon reviewers familiar with Stephenson’s other work gave it lower ratings (“Neal Stephenson lite,” one said), but overall, four stars.

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