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By Sean Clark, on August 18th, 2011 Author: Gordon Williams
 1969, Titan
Filed Under: Horror, Thriller.
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| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
2 |
| Entertainment..... |
4 |
| Depth..... |
1 |
This is a book that is (to the best of my knowledge) being reprinted for the first time since its original 1969 release. This is because it’s the basis for the movie Straw Dogs (1971), which is getting the remake treatment and hitting theaters this fall–with Dustin Hoffman being replaced by James Marsden. In fact, “Straw Dogs” is presented on the new cover in much larger type than the book’s actual title. This makes sense to me: with it’s one-dimensional characters and blindly stumbling plot, Trencher’s Farm would make a better horror movie than a book. …
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By Nico Vreeland, on July 28th, 2011  Author: John Hart
2011, Thomas Dunne Books
Filed under: Mystery, Thriller
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| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
5 |
| Entertainment..... |
6 |
| Depth..... |
2 |
I first read John Hart when his last novel, The Last Child, was nominated for an Edgar Award in 2010—Child later won that prize, giving Hart back-to-back wins for his second and third novels.
That streak is over. Iron House, Hart’s recently released fourth novel, shows that his writing relies on the strength and tightness of his plots. The Last Child‘s plotting was superb, and it outweighed Hart’s several flaws as a writer, such as his bombastically underwhelming prose and his over-emotive, two-dimensional characters.
Iron House, unfortunately, teeters on an unsteady premise that can’t support its own weight, and its plot delivers only mild thrills. As a result, those underlying problems become much more noticeable. Altogether, it makes for a disappointing mystery/thriller hybrid that can’t quite get off the ground. …
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By Sean Clark, on July 7th, 2011 Author: Megan Abbott
2011, Reagan Arthur Books
Filed Under: Literary, Thriller.
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| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
7 |
| Entertainment..... |
7 |
| Depth..... |
9 |
The End of Everything is a curious beast. It manages to at once be a coming-of-age exploration of girlhood and a somewhat disturbing suburban thriller. What surprised me most was the depths Abbot was able to plumb in a relatively short, and at times predictable, story. It’s not a perfect book by any means, but a lot of different types of readers will find it to be worth their while. …
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By Paul Kirsch, on July 1st, 2011  Author: Dan Simmons
2011, Reagan Arthur Books
Filed under: Mystery, Thriller, Sci-Fi
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| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
8 |
| Entertainment..... |
9 |
| Depth..... |
10 |
Whenever I read a book by Dan Simmons, I learn something new about life, love, and literature. The man knows how to hook his readers. He grabs the emotional center of mass and never lets go. He also taps the intellectual core, using literary allusion and some well-worn clichés to recontextualize the story on the page. By engaging the reader on this risky and intelligent ground, Simmons crafts his books as equal parts thriller and college seminar.
His latest novel, Flashback, is the story of ex-detective Nick Bottom, who submerges into the depths of memory-enhancing drugs in order to revive an investigation gone cold.
His case is deceptively simple: the murder of a wealthy executive’s heir. Except that dozens of detectives failed to solve it already, and Nick’s only resource is his drug-addled memory. Using a combination of high technology, altered consciousness and ham-fisted detective work, Nick hacks and punches his way toward the shocking conclusion. …
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By Nico Vreeland, on June 29th, 2011  Author: S.J. Watson
2011, HarperCollins
Filed under: Mystery, Thriller
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| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
4 |
| Entertainment..... |
5 |
| Depth..... |
2 |
Before I Go to Sleep has already garnered a flood of media attention and praise—from NPR to The Hollywood Reporter, everybody’s singling out this book as a can’t-miss summer thriller. Amazon called it “one of the best debut literary thrillers in recent years.”
That’s absolutely true, if you just take out the word “best” and insert “simplest.” This is a very simple, very short novel that revolves around a simple hook.
After an accident, Christine loses all her memories every time she goes to sleep. Her husband, Ben, patiently re-educates her about her life every morning. One day, Christine discovers a journal she’s kept secret from Ben and finds three chilling words written in it: “Don’t trust Ben.” …
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By Nico Vreeland, on June 21st, 2011  Author: Duane Swierczynski
2011, Mulholland Books
Filed under: Thriller
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| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
6 |
| Entertainment..... |
7 |
| Depth..... |
2 |
Charlie Hardie, the star of comic book writer Swierczynski’s new trilogy of pulp thrillers, housesits for a living. He drinks bourbon, he watches old movies (nothing that was made in his lifetime) and he tries to forget his scarred, shattered history working as a consultant for the Philadelphia Police Department.
He arrives to his latest assignment, the three-story mansion of a movie composer, high in the Hollywood Hills one morning, and falls into his usual routine—checking the ingresses, the egresses, and the media-center situation—when a woman jumps out of the bathroom and hits him in the head with a microphone stand.
The woman, half-naked and scared out of her mind, is a famous movie star, and she’s being hunted by a secret society of covert assassins called the Accident People.
Who are these Accident People? Why do they want to kill the movie star? How’s Hardie going to save her? …
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By Nico Vreeland, on June 16th, 2011  Author: Michael Robotham
2011, Mulholland Books
Filed under: Thriller
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| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
7 |
| Entertainment..... |
7 |
| Depth..... |
5 |
The line between “mystery” and “thriller” often gets blurred, but some novels stay staunchly to one side. The Wreckage, for instance, knows its a thriller, and I’m glad it doesn’t misrepresent itself. But it could’ve used a bit more mystery.
Robotham doesn’t try to fool you, and he doesn’t pace clues out at intervals, to give his narrative a lift when it sags in the middle. The second acts drags, weighed down by long passages where we wait idly by as the book’s heroes do the grunt work of investigation. By that point, we know the outline of the crime at the heart of the story and we’re filling in often inconsequential details; personally, I could’ve used more mystery right about here.
On the plus side, Robotham doesn’t cheat, so the heroes’ victories feel honest, and action sequences—like the riveting ending—captivate. All in all, The Wreckage has its lulls and its rapids, but it’s worth the ride. …
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By Nico Vreeland, on April 28th, 2011 [2011 Edgar Award nominee for Best Novel---see reviews of other 2011 Edgar noms here, or all Edgar-related posts here.]
 Author: Timothy Hallinan
2010, William Morrow
Filed under: Thriller
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| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
8 |
| Entertainment..... |
6 |
| Depth..... |
6 |
The Queen of Patpong opens with a marvelous set piece in which a tall white man and a kind-hearted Thai cop play out a ruse designed to scare the bejeezus out of an underage Bangkok prostitute, to make her give up the bar-girl life and run back to her upcountry village.
The tall white man turns out to be our hero, travel writer (wha? I know, it’s weird) Poke Rafferty. The set piece, in a mere twelve pages, establishes Poke as a complex hero—charitable but still cynical—and also paints a sharp, realistic portrait of both the Bangkok in which we find ourselves, and the bar girls who are almost synonymous with its name. Along the way, Hallinan delivers a heaping helping of nail-biting suspense.
It’s a shame, because the rest of the novel simply can’t live up to that first chapter. …
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By Sean Clark, on April 7th, 2011 Author: Joyce Carol Oates
 2011, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Filed Under: Literary, Short Stories, Thriller
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| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
8 |
| Entertainment..... |
7 |
| Depth..... |
6 |
Joyce Carol Oates’s latest collection treats its subtitle’s promise in very interesting ways. For me the phrase “tales of mystery and suspense” conjures stalker stories, Poe-style tales of confinement, or even panic-ridden accounts of murderers cracking under fear of capture. I assumed a pinion of physical threat would complete the gears for each of these stories. And indeed, it is a real theme in the book. Right off the bat we see it: in the titular story, a woman writes a former lover with a request for his heart for transplant upon his death (when that may come is the underlying threat). The writing in her correspondence navigates the line of menace delicately. But for much of the book, physical threat is not really the suspense at hand; the writing carries similar nuance throughout. …
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By Nico Vreeland, on March 30th, 2011  Author: Taylor Stevens
2011, Crown
Filed under: Mystery, Thriller
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| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
5 |
| Entertainment..... |
6 |
| Depth..... |
4 |
If you were to read The Informationist without any external reference or context, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was just another half-cooked thriller. Vanessa Michael Munroe is a perfect, unstoppable freelance “agent,” for lack of a better word (Stevens’s, obviously, is “informationist,” but I can’t say I prefer it). She takes an assignment, gallops all over the world, gets betrayed and takes revenge.
Right, so… wake me when the movie comes out, depending on who plays Munroe.
Much more interesting is looking at this relatively bland novel through the lens of its author’s headline-grabbing life story, which includes, quite frankly, more intrigue and pathos than a dozen Munroe novels. …
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