The Guilty One By Bill Schweigart

The Guilty One is a mind-churning psychological crime thriller that plays as much with your emotions as it does with your head as Bill Schweigart takes you through a razor-sharp balance between reality and insanity.

Cal Farrell is a sort of celebrity in Alexandria when he is hailed by the public as the hero cop who stopped and gunned down an active shooter. Cal wishes he could relish in this celebration but he can’t seem to remember what exactly happened in those scary moments. As he works with a psychologist to tap into his memories, he comes across a vicious killer whose body count keeps ramping up in his city. With patterns and clues that draw Cal in closer in his hunt for the killer, things begin to add up and not in his favor. The narrative becomes a dangerous and unhinged game of cat and mouse but it’s not clear if Cal is the hunter or the hunted and it all comes down to what he cannot remember.

Bill Schweigart sparks a relatable protagonist in Cal Farrell. As a protagonist, he embodies the best qualities we would seek in ourselves; brave in the face of danger, committed to being a better person despite the darkness he has seen, and a smooth player. However, the narrative is a rather sinister one at that as Schweigart weaves through parallel lines of storytelling, both focused intimately on Cal, and keeps readers hesitant of who Cal truly is. The crime solving aspect tugs at all fans of realistic and gritty thrillers but there is an added nuance of psychological that beckons you to be circumspect of Cal. Avoiding the careless mishap of giving away the punchline too soon, Schweigart keeps the suspicions bouncing around different characters, giving us a taste of the unfiltered paranoia Cal feels when he can't even trust himself to be truly good.

The Guilty One is uninhibited in its dangerous thrills and kickass action that channels the raw power of hard-hitting action sequences of Jack Reacher books. It is truly an immersive experience as we get onboard this adventure with Cal Farrell and shoot across the pages with our predictions, wary of the dangers that may befall the protagonist not only from others but from himself. The Guilty One represents the best kind of thrillers, the ones that leave you fulfilled and enriched both as thriller fans and as general readers.

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Robert Ludlum's The Treadstone Rendition By Joshua Hood

Just when I thought Joshua Hood had perfected the Treadstone series, he shatters the illusion with a riveting and timely action-driven narrative that radically alters the game for his protagonist Adam Hayes once more.

The Treadstone Rendition sees Adam Hayes pulled back into the fold of violence when he has to repay an old debt to a friend stuck in Afghanistan. With rogue CIA forces chasing his afghan friend and his family, Hayes needs to get into a country where everything is falling apart and US forces are pulling out. Without nearly close enough to having the right resources, Hayes makes it up he goes, dodging bullets, missiles, and drones.

There’s no mistaking that Joshua Hood has a lot more planned for Adam Hayes. The Treadstone Rendition is a more personal narrative than the previous two books in the series, building up to a Faustian bargain once again just when Hayes thought he could have a simple life with his family. While this could have easily been a simple transitioning narrative to get Hayes back in the fold of espionage, Joshua Hood makes it a hard-hitting and memorable read with non-stop action that’s written with a keen eye for realistically harrowing consequences. The action sequences indeed bear the mark of Hood’s excellence with fast-paced vivid gunfights and chaotic combat with tactical awareness and technical authenticity, the combination of which makes for breathtaking explosive moments of pure bliss. However, it’s the subtle focus on the emotional drive that supercharges the entire reading experience to amazing heights and complements the action. 

The Treadstone Rendition is a shining example of thrillers that you can’t help but devour in a single day because the action ratchets up by the pages. 

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Wolf Trap By Connor Sullivan

Connor Sullivan writes an intriguing take on the future of energy and politics wrapped up in a mirage of subterfuges and double crosses and paced with breakneck action in Wolf Trap.

Brian Rhome is a former Ground Branch paramilitary officer who, after a disastrous tragic mission, spends his days in the icy wilderness contemplating suicide as means of reckoning. When a new energy initiative spearheaded by US and Saudi Arabia goes awry in the worst possible way, leading to facility meltdowns, foul play is suspected with a suspected Iranian officer involved. Rhome is offered an outlet for his grief in the form of a new mission to settle a debt once and for all and in turn help stop another global catastrophe orchestrated by high-ranking members of the US   Government in cahoots with those in the Saudi Royal family.

The narrative is poised with the energy of a Red Bull fueled rampage that keeps the story simmering throughout for an explosive finale. There’s a bit of everything, from cutthroat espionage and politics to all-out kinetic operations with crisp and fast action sequences, all of which drive forward a timely storyline centered around the plausible danger of a not-so-distant future that tackles the monopoly of fossil fueled energy with renewable sources. While the depiction of all the involved parties may not be as rooted in realism as those in more cerebral espionage thrillers, the emphasis remains on an adrenaline-pumping ride spearheaded by a grieving and raging protagonist who quickly becomes a fan favorite operator on the path for retribution. 

With twists and turns that will keep you reading late past your bedtime and a healthy dose of action, Wolf Trap is a thriller that fans of the genre will enjoy the heck out of. 

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Deep Fake By Ward Larsen

Deep Fake is a mind-churning jaw-dropping mixture of Cold War era thrillers and cutthroat political narratives that serve as meaningful and thoughtful commentaries about the world we find ourselves in today. Ward Larsen stretches out to a different sort of thriller than his David Slaton action-packed adventures and proves that he has both the emotional and intellectual intelligence to tackle different sub genres within the thrillerverse.

When a junior congressman, Bryce Ridgeway, puts his life at risk to stop a suicide bomber, he’s immediately regaled as a public hero and jettisoned off to the political races for a shot at the presidency. The moments of relief and celebration for the Ridgeway family start falling apart when Sarah Ridgeway notices peculiarities in her husband’s demeanor. She reaches out to a friend, a research scientist, whose groundbreaking work opens the door for unsettling revelations about an audaciously horrific conspiracy. Is the man in the spotlight truly her husband?

There’s a delicate balance between narratives that are wonderfully delightful but ridiculously impossible and those that seem eerily probable. Ward Larsen walks the pitch perfect line in a scary armament of modern technology that’s not only in use today but the implications of which are still not feared widely by society at large. Larsen’s grasp on up-and-coming technology is commendable and perhaps best describes the threat posed by unregulated technology in both politics and espionage when those who are relentless in their pursuit of a bold idea get their hands on something so powerful and damaging to a world that basically runs on 0’s and 1’s. 

While grappling with the scary modern-day voodoo that is technology, Larsen doesn’t lose sight of the effects of such threats on the very human characters that are first and foremost in the narrative. Sarah’s dilemma of discovering the dark side about her “husband” feels so genuine that it crosses over into unsettling territory even for a reader who knows this isn’t actually happening. Her unofficial investigation with her best friend leads her down a turmoil path that rivets and twists like a formula-one race track. You don’t get a moment of breather as Ward Larsen takes you on a roller coaster of a thriller.

Deep Fake is as good as it gets for smart political thrillers that keep you engrossed in the pages and offer a fresh narrative and perspective. There’s a great aerial combat sequence in the climax that stands out as one of the most intense finales I have read so far. Leave it to Ward Larsen to deliver nail-biting action on both the ground and in the air. 

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Beast Three Six By Jason Kasper

Jason Kasper brings the heat in Beast Three Six, packing tenacious action and kickass heroes you’d want to save you if you ever got yourself in a jam. 

After the harrowing ending of Narco Assassins, David Rivers and his team are on the hunt for those that escaped their grasps with weapons of mass destruction. Their directive gets trickier when a senator’s daughter is abducted by a Filipino terrorist who had crossed paths with the team once before. When the terrorist explicitly demands a meeting with Rivers, the timeline on their mission accelerates as the team finds a nefarious plot brewing under the pretense of a hostage situation. It’s up to the team to rescue the hostage while preventing a large-scale cleansing in Libya with the weapons they failed to secure the first time around.

Jason Kasper brings the action to life with characters that feel so authentic that we have no trouble imagining them running around the globe saving us from all the unsavory bad guys hiding in the shadows. Even acting as expendable assets with no clear oversight, the team led by David Rivers is one of courage and honor while staying pragmatic about the parameters of the mission. The action sequences are rendered in crisp and clear images in your mind with way too many badass moments to count on one hand alone. With a sense of righting a wrong on a more personal scale, the action is tinged with an emotional vendetta that makes the team even more unpredictable in its mission to destroy its enemy by taking bold risks to get the job done.

Beast Three Six is an adrenaline-fueled tactical adventure that continues to show why Jason Kasper is one of the best military action thriller writers of this generation, mashing tactical and technical authenticity to achieve a symphony of hard-hitting violence for the sake of good. 

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Red London By Alma Katsu

Alma Katsu continues to shine as an extraordinary spy author presenting the most believable and nail-bitingly intense stories in step with the geopolitics straight out of the headlines.

CIA agent Lyndsey Duncan is assigned to the London office where she is tasked with handling a newly turned Russian asset. When an attack on a Russian oligarch and his family in their London home makes sparky headlines, her MI6 counterpart and former flame asks her help in going undercover with the oligarch’s wife to find out why the Kremlin would brazenly attempt an assassination on foreign soil. Lyndsey agrees to step into the battlefield of spies and assassins to figure out what the newest Russian despot has in store for the world. Undercover stories have never felt so intense and anxiety-inducing.

Red London elevates the cerebral espionage aspect that readers loved so much in Red Widow. Lyndsey’s greatest assets are her smarts in outwitting her opponents and disarming them intellectually rather than with brute force. The emphasis on tradecraft has never felt more poignant and necessary and helps achieve the perfect balance between old school cerebral tales and modern day fast-paced thrillers. You never know what’s going to happen in the next sentence let alone the next page. This unpredictability stems from complex and dynamic characters with multi-layered motivations that make them remarkably lifelike. The impending feeling of doom stays in the air as you flip through the pages, rooting desperately for Lyndsey as she makes some difficult decisions to accomplish what she must.  

Alma Katsu keeps you engaged and hooked from the inception to the conclusion, ending on such a scary cliffhanger that you can’t help but tense up thinking about what will come next. Katsu is setting up this universe splendidly with a plethora of interconnected narratives and subplots to pay off with a bang. I can’t wait to read where Lyndsey Duncan finds herself next, especially after that haunting last sentence. 

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Antimatter Blues By Edward Ashton

Edward Ashton is my new favorite author when it comes to the ingenious world of science-fiction stories in a thrilling and chilling voice.

Antimatter Blues is a worthy follow-up to the soon-to-be-seen-in-cinemas Mickey7. Mickey Barnes establishes a shaky peacetime with the inhabitants of the alien world known as Niflheim when he gives them a nuclear weapon as peace offering much to the dismay of human colony’s Commander Marshall. All is fine with the world for a while, before winter comes along and the existing nuclear reactor starts malfunctioning. With a plausible threat of losing power and freezing to death, Barnes must go back into the danger zone and retrieve the peace offering. It’s only then he realizes the repercussions of what he did to secure his freedom the first time; he may not make it out alive a second time.

Antimatter Blues is the awesome embodiment of how science fiction can be blended with thriller elements to create something exotic and exciting. In Barnes’s quest to retrieve the nuclear weapon, he and his team face off against scary spider-like aliens in descriptive and artistic action sequences reminiscent of those in Robert A Heinlein’s Starship Troopers with futuristic weapons that are quite cool to visualize.

The action works so well because it’s led by characters that you actually root for. The first person POV centered on Mickey Barnes is mind-blowingly written with a mix of sarcasm and confidence in the face of grave danger. The realistic dialogues and thought processes of Barnes are fierce enough to put you in his shoes until someone taps you on your shoulder to snap you out of the experience, which is quite annoying at times. Even better are the interactions with the alien race. Barnes forms unlikely alliances with a representative of the alien clan and forges a bond that ironically teaches Barnes (and us) what it means to be a human.

Strap in for an edge-of-your-seat breathtaking journey across the universe with a story so amazingly atypical and thought-provoking that you will want to take at least a 3-day break from everything to process the entire book in all its glory.

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The Mazatlan Showdown By Patrick Weill

The Mazatlan Showdown is what the doctor recommends if you’re in need of a high-adrenaline dose from explosive shootouts, car chases, underwater combat, and general chaos. Patrick Weill begins his new series with an exciting entry.

Jeff Walker is a champion surfer with a chip on his shoulder to confront the murderer of his father and bring him to justice. He has no idea how violently his wish may come true as he witnesses a shooting and when he swims out to the crime scene, he finds himself in a sticky mess that leads right back to the killer Walker has been waiting to get his hands on all his life. Walker, along with his friends including the devastatingly formidable Park, lead their own investigation into uncovering a major smuggling ring but soon enough, they may dig a hole too deep for them to climb out.

Patrick Weill imbues The Mazatlan Showdown with a sort of 80’s vibe that invokes a free-spirited adventure set against the backdrop of sunny beaches, guns, and fast cars and bikes. Walker and Park complement each other as protagonists with Walker’s inexperience with combat matched by Park’s subtle nature shaped by years of discipline in practicing violence against enemy combatants, much like the old-school buddy-action stories that are always a delight to absorb. Each character brings something different to the table and each gets sucked into a myriad of trouble until the last explosive showdown.

Packed with double crosses, gruesome violence that make you cringe expecting the worst to happen to the good guys, and hardcore vendetta-fueled carnage, it easily envelopes you into the world of heartbreak and action. If you’re looking for a thriller to get lost in easily, The Mazatlan Showdown is a safe choice and one that you won’t regret.

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What Have We Done By Alex Finlay

Alex Finlay dazzles readers once again with a twisty as heck thriller that tackles everything from coming-of-the-age dilemmas to harrowing secrets and gruesome action in What Have We Done.

Told from multiple perspectives of seemingly ordinary people living out their lives when each and every one is targeted for termination by a masked assassin wielding a very unorthodox weapon. From pop stars to stay-at-home moms, each character shares a chilling past together that has brought violence to their doorstep once again. In order to get to the heart of the mystery, they must come together again and put aside their differences. It all goes back to their time in the orphanage, from where they all emerged alive but broken.

What Have We Done imbues a sinister and eerie tone of unpredictability and distrust as it tells the one big narrative from the POVs of the characters. Each character has his/her distinctive charms and quirks that create a compelling page turner as the prose and the story stay fresh and active no matter what.  Even with a large roster of characters and the back and forth between past and present, the narrative never gets confusing or too much to unpack. Alex Finlay is a bona fide master of entwining multiple layers of storytelling with a practiced finesse that meets the highest of expectations. 

With such a domestic vibe, I was pleasantly surprised to read hard-hitting fast-paced action written in crisp bursts of adrenaline and surety of technical prowess. With one of the characters doubling as a highly trained and lethal assassin, the action sequences were wonderfully handled as bouts between formidable adversaries that will please those looking for an action-packed and adventurous read interspersed with high suspense and dark mystery.

Can’t get enough of stay-up-all-night-skip-work-tomorrow thrillers? What Have We Done is exactly the kind of thriller that you can sacrifice your sleep for and still be happy through the next day because it is just that scrumptious to devour in one sitting.

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Death Watch By Stona Fitch

Death Watch is a fascinating commentary on the societal schisms that spring forth for the silliest of reasons with the most disastrous circumstances. Stona Fitch writes a clever narrative that pulls you in with the first-person POV immersive experience.

You’re put in the shoes of an ad-campaign manager, Coe Vessel, who is tasked with promoting an eccentric provocateur’s latest creation; a watch that has the ability to kill its wearer. Desperate to land the lucrative contract, Coe and his team market the watch as the must-have modern accessory that serves to both embrace the fashion-wealth statement of the capitalist world as well as a rebuttal against its fast-paced nature. What’s thought of as a nifty marketing trick to attract sales ends up actually killing whoever wears the watch. What’s worse, is that Coe has the first ever death watch on his wrist too.

Stona Fitch presents a satirical and dark horror narrative that extends beyond the reading experience to make you think deeply about the society that now prevails, dominating our mindsets and choices with all that we do. Fitch’s clever approach of using a first person POV helps with actively pondering over the all-consuming nature of the amalgamation of the capitalistic and artistic world we’ve come to be in. It’s a rather unsettling experience when the narrative starts to feel like something you are personally experiencing.

Death Watch is an exciting high-stakes concept with a cautionary tone that carries palpable tension amplified by the plight of the characters so closely aligned with our own culture. It reads like a fast-paced thriller and yet it doesn’t just fall into that purview but rather utilizes the high-octane power of a well-crafted and suspenseful thriller to convey timely subliminal messages for readers to understand and in the best case, work towards the prevention of such pervasion. 

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The Kind Worth Saving By Peter Swanson

If there is anyone I trust to write a wacky psychological thriller with dark and devious characters with no clear idea of whether they’re good or bad, it’s Peter Swanson. In his traditional style, he has concocted another jarring tale of murder and betrayal in The Kind Worth Saving.

Henry Kimball is a private eye who is hired by a woman he once taught as a high school teacher to confirm her suspicions about her husband committing adultery. A simple investigation that turns horribly dark when he becomes a witness to a murder of two individuals. With his instincts nagging at him, he takes a deeper look into her student, Joan, where incongruities start surfacing. Known for his obsessions getting the best of him, Kimball sets down another rabbit hole but he may not get out of this one alive.

Peter Swanson is unbelievably adept at crafting plot twists within plot twists and linking them in a manner that doesn’t lose your attention even a tiny bit. There is a sinister twang to his prose that seeps into you as much as it does into the characters and opens you up to consider darkly intriguing possibilities about the whodunit narrative, almost like you are untangling the web of mystery with Henry Kimball. Personally, there’s another character I loved even more than Kimball and that is Lily Kinter, the mastermind from Swanson’s The Kind Worth Killing. If you haven’t read it, you’ll best enjoy this one after reading its predecessor as the dynamic of Kimball and Kinter follows very closely from its events. Lily Kinter compliments Kimball as a dark knight willing to go to depths that Kimball’s white knight can’t possibly fathom in order to truly crack this case open without any official jurisdiction, given that Lily mirrors Joan so closely they might as well have been the same persons, except for a few nuances which are highlighted brilliantly by Peter Swanson to present a nerve wrecking battle of wits between two murderers.

Clever, dangerous, and addictive, The Kind Worth Saving is one doozy of a thriller that pairs you with genuine characters and palpable circumstances that will keep you coming back for more. Peter Swanson continues to impress with his ingenious affairs of double crosses and murders.

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Net Force: Moving Target By Jerome Preisler

Jerome Preisler ushers in the future of espionage and action with Net Force: Moving Target. It’s not the Tom Clancy thrillers we’ve grown up with, but it certainly has its own charm.

The narrative focuses on Kali Alcazar, a former member of Net Force team who’s now hunted by bio-enhanced Russian assassins as she navigates through the underground world of Paris to rescue a loved one. At the same time, the Net Force team is gearing up to storm a heavily armed fortress to capture a dangerous hacker who’s got a few tricks up his sleeve for his guests.

What’s most distinctive about this thriller is the integration of bio-tech into operators to aid them in the lethal art of hunting their prey. Jerome Preisler adds not-so-distant futuristic tech into the mix that augment the nature of the threats and the overall story with a Blade Runner-esque vibe, painting a dangerous picture of the next generation of combat. Preisler’s ability to immerse readers into the futuristic world by breaking down the action in vivid strokes of punches, kicks, and gunshots with bio-enhanced precision is worth the price of admission alone as you feel every strike that’s inflicted on the characters. 

While the intriguing characters with nebulous drives and unsuspecting change of plans at the last moment keep you hooked until the culmination, it’s best read in chronological order of Net Force series by Jerome Preisler as the fast-paced narrative that drops you right into the middle of the action leaves little room for proper introduction of the series. That said, Net Force: Moving Target shows that this is a series for thriller fans to check out pronto.

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Dempsey By Andrews & Wilson

Brian Andrews and Jeffery Wilson once again prove the excellence of their writing as they give us one of their most action-packed and boldest thrillers. Dempsey is my favorite of their Tier One/Team Ember series.

Set after the traumatizing events of Red Specter, we see the badass titular protagonist in a Russian gulag, missing from the face of the planet and missed dearly by his team. Under a carefully constructed guise, he is working undercover to accomplish what will be his most important mission yet; to assassinate the despotic and aggressive Russian president after his attempts to kickstart World War 3 by killing innocents. It will take the collective effort of Dempsey and his team of compatriots to pull this off, even if they have to do it from different parts of the world at once.

While Andrews and Wilson have always retained an emotional resonance in their action-packed stories, Dempsey is be the most personal one yet. The authors hone in on Dempsey’s predicaments of retaining his sanity and cover, both of which seem to progressively become mutually exclusive as he serves his time in the prison where he cannot let his guard down for even a second. In the course of the narrative, his spycraft becomes more and more polished as he reluctantly partners up the Russian spymaster in his mission, a partnership that puts him on edge as he learns to navigate the perilous game of trusting foes for a shared cause, after which there is no telling what may happen.

In addition to high emotional stakes, the narrative is rife with crisp and scrumptious action sequences that rival the best we could see on the big screen and in literature. From smooth trigger pulls to bullets whizzing past, the authentic and powerful combat sequences will put a smile on your face as you visualize the badass protagonists dish it out with the bad guys in the most realistically badass ways one could fathom.

Dempsey is a shining beacon of high-class writing in the thriller genre and it’s bound to go on the best of 2023 action-thriller list.

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Burner By Mark Greaney

The Gray Man is back more formidable than ever this time around with an ax to grind. We get our butt-kicking, Glock-toting, unstoppable assassin with a new flavor to mix things up.

Burner packs the classic Greaney gut-punch of putting Court Gentry through the wringer in the backdrop of an uber-current socio-political climate. With Russia’s atrocities against the Ukraine ramping, Gentry puts his skills to a higher cause by taking out material investments of Russian oligarchs trying to protect their assets from being seized. When he gets roped into another CIA off-the-books directive to find Alex Velesky, a Ukrainian Swiss banker, who seems to be in possession of information that everyone from the Russian mafia to the CIA wish to extract for their own agendas. What Gentry does not know is the vital nature of this information such that it exposes a vast criminal conspiracy set in the heart of Russia-Ukraine conflict. Sadly, Gentry also does not know that pursuing this mission will put him in the crosshairs of his estranged love, Zoya Zakharova, and not in the happy way he keeps daydreaming about.

Just when I seem to think The Gray Man series has reached its peak, Mark Greaney blasts along to prove otherwise. Burner is packed with unbelievably gorgeous and extravagant action sequences. I don’t mean unbelievable in a bad way. True to his form, Greaney keeps a tactically and technically realistic purview of the action but it’s all just so awesome. I must have read each shootout and hand-to-hand combat sequence at least twice because the details are so vivid and neat to picturize while you’re reading through the pages with dangerous amounts of adrenaline coursing through your bloodstream. Its no secret that The Gray Man is more John McClane than James Bond, and we get a wonderful depiction of it in unorthodox moments of Gray Man-badassery.

12 books in and yet, Mark Greaney still keeps the Gray Man series fresh and the readers on their toes with a constantly evolving protagonist. As globetrotting as Burner is, it’s still a very empathetic story that keeps an imperative focus on Gentry as he wrestles with his purpose after all he has been through. The ending opens up a new chapter for Court and Zoya, one that britches away from the previous close calls to create a more meaningful next step for the two lovebirds. I cannot wait for the next Gray Man adventure!

Grand and cinematic, Burner is Greaney’s best work yet. The only downside is the terrifying long wait after you finish Burner in a few days and then yearn for what may come next from the master of action and espionage.

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Black Wolf By Kathleen Kent

Kathleen Kent presents a razor-sharp thriller that blends a cerebral espionage thriller with a dark atmospheric serial killer narrative in The Black Wolf. 

When Melvina Donleavy arrives in Soviet Belarus in 1990, her team of CIA undercover agents have no idea about her real mission that supersedes that of her team, for she is a “super-recognizer” and her abilities are put to the test to find out how nuclear weapons are being siphoned out from the Soviets to some dangerous parties in the Middle East. If contending with the brutal KGB was not enough to get her perspiring, she soon comes across a devious serial killer who goes around abducting and murdering young women in brutal fashion in the streets of Soviet Belarus. She’s committed to both the mission and her personal sense of morality to right wrongs in this gritty game of cat and mouse with unlikely allies and enemies.

What makes The Black Wolf such a memorable thriller is the brilliant authenticity that swings off the pages, no doubt from the author’s time under the US Department of Defense. The spycraft is both exciting and tense, glimmering with a smooth but edgy prose that keeps on coiling with bouts of nervous energy from all the dangers spies face behind enemy lines. The focus on cerebral espionage is key to the mind-boggling twists and turns that help drive the narrative ahead. At the same time, Melvina’s expertise in crime solving from watching her dad in law enforcement lends dangerous credence to her motivation in solving the murders perpetuated by a deranged serial killer who may be high on the political/espionage ladder. Melvina Donleavy is an outstanding protagonist who exudes the badassery of female protagonists in thrillers done right where romance does not step in front of the hard-hitting and unflinching reality of espionage tradecraft.

I almost didn’t want the story to end, only giving in because of the gravitating desire to find out who the killer is. That’s just one of the numerous proofs of Kathleen Kent’s mastery of suspenseful storytelling. If you’re looking for a sparkling read that’s distinctive yet familiar to your thriller-seeking mind, The Black Wolf is a no-brainer pick.

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The Last Orphan By Gregg Hurwitz

Right off the bat, The Last Orphan exhibits all indications of being Gregg Hurwitz’s best Orphan X experience yet. Hair-raising action sequences, warm and tender emotions, and a storyline that just keeps ramping up the excitement by the minute, this thriller is truly special.

The Last Orphan sees Evan Smoak on the run once again from the full force of the US President as he’s cornered to carry out an assassination that does not necessarily align with Evan’s moral commandments. Little do his adversaries know, a feral beast is most dangerous when cornered, and Evan is the most feral one. Orphan X sets afloat on a unique mission that rattles him like nothing before. Gregg Hurwitz superbly displays a chink in Evan’s armor; one that intriguingly grounds him in realistic storytelling and offers an inspirational message for all readers. 

The best part about the book is undoubtedly the fantastic action sequences with fun shootouts, martial arts, and foot pursuits as Orphan X outwits his opponents in spectacular fashion without being ridiculous. Teaming up with Candy, the fan-favorite femme fatale, Evan wreaks havoc of all sorts in a fun chaotic manner.

Orphan X stories are beloved by readers for keeping a clear and absolute focus on Evan Smoak’s emotional as well as physical prowess and The Last Orphan continues the recipe of infusing high octane momentum with impactful characters and dialogue that are second to none in the genre. In the simplest of words, The Last Orphan is a must-read! 

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The Bullet Garden By Stephen Hunter

The Bullet Garden is an epic tale of war that is driven as much by genuine heartfelt emotions as it is by bolstering action with beautiful descriptions of weaponry that tactical fans will immediately fall in love with.

Set in the chaotic midst of World War 2, Allied soldiers are thrown in disarray and abject fear by German snipers picking at over a hundred Allied targets each day. When the situation reaches a tipping point, General Eisenhower tasks Pacific hero Earl Swagger, legendary for his war efforts and exquisite trigger finger with a sniper rifle, to lead the operation of taking the fight to the German snipers. The essence of the time-bound mission is exacerbated with the lingering possibility of a mole who seems to be providing the snipers with target packages. It’s up to Swagger to quickly study his shrouded-in-mystery opponents and take them out swiftly on the battlefield before they exact even more Allied casualties.

Much like how Swagger nails his targets, Stephen Hunter scores a bullseye with The Bullet Garden. The narrative is grand in scope, relentless in retention, and explosive in pacing. Hunter dabbles in giving readers exquisite insights into the main protagonists and antagonists in a manner befitting a proper work of literature, exploring the worldview from varying degrees to subtly convey the nuances of life and death on the battlefield. Hunter brilliantly builds up the momentum in an assured manner, taking the time to fully develop the battle arena along with Swagger’s keen deductions in his investigations that catapult readers into a deadly finale of sniper vs sniper that packs an emotional payoff in addition to the gritty pulse-pounding action sequence.

Even though I prefer to read contemporary thrillers more than historical, I will easily make another exception for Stephen Hunter if he chooses to write a follow-up to The Bullet Garden. It’s a thriller with a heart of gold, crafted with meticulous preciseness akin to a magnificent firearm.

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Shadow State By Andy McNab

Andy McNab branches out into a new division of modern espionage thrillers with Shadow State. Nathan Pike is a witty and brilliant cryptography and cyberweapons specialist with a background in espionage who, after landing himself in a Cambodian prison, is approached by an enigmatic woman on behalf of a secretive benefactor with an offer that promises to challenge Pike’s skills like nothing before. Andy McNab keeps readers in the dark as the characters stumble across the globe from El Salvador to Athens and all the way to Dubai in an exotic story packed with twists and turns that confound and contribute to the overall mystery. Only, Nathan Pike isn’t one to be underestimated. 

Shadow State is a hard-boiled caper that seals in the flavor of crime and danger in the modern age of cyberspace where anything and everything can be controlled using zeroes and ones, by those who know how to wield the unlimited power. While there’s still a healthy amount of old school subterfuge and thievery in the narrative that invokes a nostalgia of classics like Ocean’s Eleven, Andy McNab brilliantly injects the new threat of realistic cyberweapons such as Zero Day exploits all of which are explained in layman’s terms so that no reader feels out of sync with what’s going on in Nathan Pike’s head. If you’re a cyberspace geek, then it’s even more of a treat for you. 

At the same time, the narrative never gets too convoluted for its own good and is very much driven by the protagonist, Nathan Pike. Andy McNab phenomenally sets up his new protagonist with emphatic insights into his foundations that help cement Pike as a full fledged character in our heads without compromising the velocity of the fast-paced storytelling. Pike is not an action-man. He can throw a punch and take one but his expertise lies in infiltrating technical systems, giving the narrative an extra touch of realism as Pike and his minders sneak into high security locations in sequences of intense nail-biting fervor. 

Shadow State marks the beginning of an exciting new chapter for Andy McNab as he dabbles in the world of cryptography and cyberspace with the best attributes of a heat-seeking missile-paced thriller.

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Still Standing By Stephen Leather

If you’re looking for a high-octane tactical action banger, Stephen Leather’s Still Standing is the one for you. Gun battles in the exotic jungles of Thailand have never felt more cinematically awesome.

When a SAS team member’s death in Thailand is hurriedly passed off as a suicide, alarm bells ring off on Matt Standing’s trouble radar. Knowing something must be afoot, Standing travels to Thailand with the brother of the deceased soldier to find out exactly what happened. It’s clear they’re in for a long haul because the moment they step off into the jungle, they’re pressured and attacked by the criminal syndicate and corrupt police officers. What they don’t know is that Standing is as mean as they come and he wages his own private war against the bad guys.

Stephen Leather evolves his protagonist such that we see a different side to the quick-to-anger war machine. Learning from his previous mistakes, Matt Standing takes a more Zen and tactical approach to matters this time around by dealing with trouble more like a scalpel than a blunt tool. 

However, when push comes to shove, Standing lays waste to his enemies without hesitation or remorse. Readers will revel in the visually-striking ballistic shootouts that you’ll find yourself reading again and again in a go because you don’t want it to end. From the trusty HK 417s and M-16s to double barreled AR-15s (codenamed Gilboa Snake), the shootouts are some of the most kinetic and jaw-dropping I’ve read of recent. There seems to be no wasted movements from Standing as he takes down enemy combatants in fluid non-stop bursts of gunfire. 

Treat yourself to an action extravaganza with a wild adventurous ride that keeps the pedal to the metal unapologetically. Still Standing is brutal, unrelenting, and darn entertaining for thriller fans who like their action swirling with technical and tactical authenticity.

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Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Dragonfire By James Swallow

James Swallow scores a lethal hit with Splinter Cell: Dragonfire that ramps up the awesomeness of the Splinter Cell games to a whole nother level and blows past the high bar set by its predecessor, Splinter Cell: Firewall. If you thought you’d seen all there is to know about Sam Fisher, you’re in for an action-filled treat that’s going to have you giddy and full of adrenaline.

Sam Fisher finds himself in hot waters when he’s set up and arrested in North Korea behind enemy lines. Declared persona non grata, he has to fight for his life any way he can. His only hope beyond his own training and survival skills is his daughter, Sarah Fisher, who will put her skills as a recent inductee of the Splinter Cell program to the test when she has to go dark in order to save her father’s life. Adding to the complexity of infiltrating enemy lines without backup is a new cabal of shadowy forces working in conjunction to bring an end to the Korean War in a rather explosive and destructive manner, having the means and reach to turn everyone against the Fishers.

An action-heavy synopsis as this merits gritty and smooth combat sequences. James Swallow captures the vibrant and fluid nature of the video games when it comes to the pulse-pounding shootouts and raw hand to hand fisticuffs. From the very beginning, the bar is set high for action when we get a glimpse of panther-like stealth combat followed by an all-out chaotic battle between Sam and his adversaries. Sam Fisher is revered by action-thriller fans as an iconic assassin with ‘tacticool’ gadgets and weaponry and this is an aspect James Swallow explores to the maximum without compromising the finality of danger that lies in every decision Fisher makes on the ground. Fans of the Ghost Recon video games will be pleased to see the titular team of operatives making a fun cameo in this entry.

What further makes Splinter Cell: Dragonfire a distinctive thriller in the modern narrative is the presence of fresh villains and a plotline both far from saturated topics in the genre. The cabal of antagonists is shown to be bigger than just a few players, hinting at a possible return in the sequels with something even more sinister. Drawing from his experience of the Nomad series, James Swallow is terrific at world-building as we see a whole universe of characters that not only live up to our expectations but also improve upon their 3D dimensionality to appear even more grounded and exciting.

Splinter Cell: Dragonfire is the best kind of book you can hope to read when you’re craving top-notch action and a refreshing roster of characters and motivations that fuel the narrative at breakneck speeds.

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Purchase Splinter Cell: Dragonfire
(Note: most indie bookstores can fulfill an order as quickly as larger retailers. Please consider contacting them for your next purchase.)

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Murder By The Book
Once Upon A Crime
The Book Dragon
The Poisoned Pen

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