#30: Northern Spy by Flynn Berry

A BBC radio producer in Belfast sees on television that her sister appears to be part of an IRA terrorist cell, and ends up in extreme danger learning how and why, in Flynn Berry's Northern Spy.

The latest from Berry has all of her hallmarks; it's a high-octane thriller set against the backdrop of family dynamics, with a sudden, explosive climax.  

I have liked all three of Berry's novels, which I read this year almost back to back, but the political background adds value to the storytelling in this case.  

And the words "page turning" is thrown around a lot, but this one genuinely is, as the last chapters really kept me glued to the fate of the protagonist, a single mom trying to help her sister while keeping her son and her mother out of harm's way.

Reese Witherspoon and I both recommend this one.  I checked it out from the New Castle-Henry County Public Library in New Castle, Indiana and read it very quickly.

#29: Still Lives by Maria Hummel

 A failing art museum is pinning its hopes on a challenging art show featuring paintings of murdered LA women; but when the artist disappears on the night of the opening, the stakes become even higher in Maria Hummel's Still Lives.

Hummel writes a highly literary thriller that is as much a searing indictment on the California art scene as it is a mystery.  In fact, our protagonist--a writer/editor at the museum with a background in investigative journalism, which she left after a traumatic experience--doesn't really knuckle down and get into finding the artist until about halfway through.

Hummel's background seems to be literary fiction, and she is a professor of English, but even though there are highly interesting characters and relationships and vivid writing,  it is in the end just a crackling good thriller.  It's rare that I have trouble putting a book down, but the last fifty pages or so had me locked in.

I really enjoyed this book and will recommend it readily.

I checked this out from the New Castle-Henry County Public Library in New Castle, Indiana, and read it very quickly.

#28: Pursuit of the Eagle by Nick Carter

 Killmaster Nick Carter is tracking an intelligent dog (!) when he finds what looks to be a missing American plane, and is soon on the trail of a kidnapped scientist in Pursuit of the Eagle.

This novel is part of my careful re-read of a favorite series as a youth, before I knew that Nick Carter wasn't a real person but a full slate of authors of various abilities.  I selected this one because it was written by Gayle Lynds, a thriller writer whose work I also read steadily--under her own name--as a young man.

This is a meat-and-potatoes thriller, but feels kind of low-stakes, with Carter being chased by Bulgarian spies and a not particularly adept German terrorist group while being helped by a Macedonian freedom fighter and a jolly French spy.

The mid-80s Eastern European politics seems about right, and the action comes steadily, so a solid entry for fans of the series.  Lynds wrote a handful of these--as did her husband, Dennis Lynds--and I would read another if I found one.

I've been steadily picking these Nick Carter books up here and there and read this one quickly.

#27: A Double Life by Flynn Berry

A child survives a murderous night in her own home, and her affluent father disappears afterwards and becomes the prime suspect; as an adult, she tries to find out if he is dead or alive, and uncovers a wide-ranging connection to his upper-crust friends in Flynn Berry's A Double Life.

This is Berry's follow-up to the superb Under the Harrow, and I picked this one up quickly thereafter because I enjoyed the first so much.  I think this novel suffers a bit from such close comparison; both feature a troubled protagonist, and a close family member with hidden motives.  The denouement here unravels very quickly, and is not quite as satisfying.

But A Double Life is still a cut above the standard thriller fare, and I am sure I will continue to read Berry's work.

I checked this out from the New Castle-Henry County Public Library in New Castle, Indiana and read it quickly.

#26: Northern Heist by Richard O'Rawe

A gang of robbers knock over a Belfast bank, and soon have the cops and the IRA out hunting them, in Richard O'Rawe's Northern Heist.

This is O'Rawe's first foray into fiction after writing several nonfiction accounts based around his own experiences in the IRA.  Northern Heist is a bit of both, fictionalized but based on a true-life large-scale bank robbery in Belfast in the early 2000s.

Of course, there is almost immediately double-crossings, close calls, and other shenanigans, otherwise it would be a short story and not a novel.

O'Rawe writes a very hard-boiled heist novel, and hits all the right beats on par with a Donald Westlake outing.  

I thought the biggest shortcoming is O'Rawe invites the reader to root for the main characters, which I struggled with when they kidnapped two families and terrorized them, forcing two bank employees to carry out the biggest aspect of the heist (called a "tiger kidnapping").

A good heist novel overall, for fans of this type of fiction.

I checked this out from the New Castle-Henry County Public Library in New Castle, Indiana.

#25: We Shall Sing a Song Into the Deep by Andrew Kelly Stewart

More than twenty years after a nuclear apocalypse, a submarine with a single working warhead (and a shipboard culture that has morphed strangely over time) waits to unleash Final Judgment in Andrew Kelly Stewart's We Shall Sing a Song Into the Deep.

As the signs for the End Times accelerate, a single crewmember--rescued from "Topside" years ago for a secret reason--begins to question everything that is going on in the rapidly declining ship.

As curious a genre mash-up that I've read, riffing on elements of The Hunt for Red October, The Caine Mutiny, and A Canticle for Leibowitz, all top of mind but not an exclusive list, as the story zooms along at a breakneck pace.

A slender read, but chock full of ideas, with an enigmatic but satisfying ending.  Recommended.

I checked this out from the Henry County-New Castle Public Library in New Castle, Indiana and read it quickly.

#24: Under the Harrow by Flynn Berry

A young woman stumbles upon her sister's dead body, then starts an investigation of her own when the police seem stalled, in Flynn Berry's debut Under the Harrow.

Berry writes my favorite kind of crime story--one featuring an unreliable narrator, whose complex relationship with her sister leads to some troubling reveals in the storytelling.  

Both the protagonist and her sister prove to be complicated, deeply flawed characters, which plays out in various ways, including a genuinely surprising ending.  The reader gets the sneaking suspicion that they really don't know any of the characters at all, and are left guessing what really happened right to the last few pages.

Under the Harrow is a very compelling, literate thriller that I read quickly, on loan from the Henry County-New Castle Public Library in New Castle, Indiana.  

One of my favorite reads of the year to date and recommended for thriller fans.

#23: The Romantics by Peter Brandvold

 A semi-retired gun-hand leads a newlywed couple into hostile territory with a map to a lost treasure, fighting Apaches, Mexican soldiers, and cold-blooded killers on one hand while fighting off the temptations of the heart with the other in Peter Brandvold's The Romantics.

Brandvold has written scores of what he calls "fast action" westerns, adult-oriented paperbacks with plenty of killing and sex, but he paints on a much broader canvas in this one.  The Romantics hearkens back to the old-fashioned western movies, one part The Searchers and one part The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

The Romantics refers to both the romance of finding a lost treasure, and the blossoming romance between the gunman, with his own troubled past, and the bride in a marriage of convenience.

This one features an absolutely rip-roaring third act with a memorable set-piece in a series of caves.

I always pick up Brandvold when I find him and enjoy his writing, but this is my favorite thus far of his large bibliography.  Recommended for western fans.

I checked this out from the Henry County-New Castle Public Library in New Castle, Indiana and read it quickly.

#22: Later by Stephen King

 A kid sees dead people, but when one starts taking an interest to him, he and his mother are in a dangerous spot in Stephen King's Later.

King has now written a couple of these crime-flavored, supernatural-tinged novels for the Hard Case Crime line.  Hard Case Crime has largely printed reprints of forgotten noir novels, or contemporary novels in that classic vein, but King has somehow forged a relationship with them, and who would turn down a Stephen King novel?

I hate to say, if I did not know King wrote it, I would say it was a second-tier Stephen King knockoff.  The story of a kid with powers and a troubled single parent is not unfamiliar to King fans.

I think what really took me out of the story is that the narrator is in his 20s, in contemporary time, talking about his childhood in the early 2000s, but uses the slang of a guy in his 70s (like the author).  It was surprisingly tone deaf to how modern kids and teenagers talk.

For people who read everything Stephen King writes.

I checked this out from the New Castle-Henry County Public Library in New Castle, Indiana and read it quickly.

#21: The Cairo Mafia by Nick Carter

 A spy accidentally switches a briefcase with Russian plans for a briefcase full of drugs, leading to his death and bringing the incident to the attention of Killmaster Nick Carter in The Cairo Mafia.

I've been revisiting some Nick Carters through adult eyes, after binge-reading through them as a teenager.  I decided to give veteran wordslinger Ralph Hayes another chance, after being disappointed in Agent Counter Agent.

This has a slam-bang open, with Carter breaking into an African prison to kill somebody, then breaking out again.  Once he finds out about the death of his fellow agent, he races his Russian counterparts into Cairo to find the plans and dismantle the crime ring that started it all.

Carter has the help of an Interpol agent/belly dancer and the hindrance of many, many foes.

While still a second-tier spy novel, this one was a more enjoyable read than the last, and much better plotted.  

I picked this up in a lot of Nick Carters somewhere and read it quickly.

#20: Agent Counter-Agent by Nick Carter

Killmaster Nick Carter gets captured and brainwashed by Soviet agents intent on disrupting a South American conference in Agent Counter-Agent, penned by hard-working pulp writer Ralph Hayes.

Hayes has written across all genres from men's adventure to western to romance over a long period of time.  He did a handful in this extensive spy series that I read steadily as a teenager and have decided to revisit here and there with adult eyes.

At the time, I did not know Nick Carter was not a single person but a large cadre of writers, generally thought to have worked with mixed results.  Even as a teenager I thought some were markedly better than others.

This one has a pretty rickety plot, where the spies break into the AXE training center to taunt Carter into catching them in their plans, which his espionage colleagues don't seem to believe for whatever reason.  Naturally it's a female double agent with a knockout lipstick that causes Carter's downfall.  Curiously, Carter is brainwashed into thinking he is an assassin pretending to be Nick Carter, a baroque ruse, and sent to kill the Venezuelan President and American Vice President. 

Fortunately his brainwashing is broken by a jet flying overhead, too complicated to explain, and is able to break the spy ring.

Definitely a second-tier spy novel, but written in an interesting enough way to give Hayes another try.  I got this one in a big batch of Nick Carters from a friend and have another Hayes standing by.

#19: Too Rough for San Remo by Marshall Grover

Two amiable but dangerous Texas cowpokes drift into a small town about to explode in a deadly double-cross in Marshall Grover's Too Rough for San Remo.

Grover was Australian Leonard Meares, who clocked hundreds and hundreds of westerns in his time, with a number landing on these shores.  Confusing is that he is called Marshall McCoy here, for some reason, and his easygoing protagonists Larry and Stretch are called Larry and Streak.  He is also wrote another, more sober series called Big Jim which was christened Nevada Jim here.

These slender volumes are hard to find in the wild, so I have a tendency to buy any I find for under ten dollars, anywhere.  This one relies less on comedy and more on a large ensemble cast of outlaws, including a batch passing themselves off as soldiers to steal some gold.

After an opening scene where Larry and Stretch are skinny-dipping and left to wander naked after all of their clothes--as well as their guns and horses--are stolen, they seem to take a bit of a back seat to the action, signing on as reluctant deputies to catch the owlhoots.

I enjoy these fast-moving and fast-reading westerns and think it is a series worth seeking out.

#18: The Vultures of Sierra Madre by Louis Masterson

U.S. Marshall Morgan Kane reluctantly teams up with a formerly imprisoned Apache scout to hunt a bloodthirsty band of white and Mexican scalphunters in The Vultures of Sierra Madre, part of the long-running western series by Louis Masterson.

Masterson was actually Norwegian Kjell Hallbing, who wrote close to 100 books featuring Kane over an extended period of time, with a number translated into English.  I find them difficult to come across in the wild, and if I see one online for less than ten dollars I will grab it up.

This was a sturdy western and seems to offer more continuity between novels than what is the norm in the usual action-driven western series.  Kane talks about the death of a former love, and we see the return of an old enemy and an old friend from previous installments.

I think Masterson's westerns are a cut above and are recommended for genre fans.

#17: The Historians by Cecilia Ekbäck

In World War II-era Sweden, a young woman finds her old college friend's death is tied to an ugly national conspiracy in Cecilia Ekback's The Historians.

Ekback's historical thriller explores Sweden's status in the war, trying to balance the steadily encroaching Nazis with the needs of the Allies as well as the shifting politics of their own country.  It's a different perspective than I often see in war stories.

But it's also a crackling good thriller with a steady body count, as our protagonist teams up with a government official in hot water, and ends up at a mysterious mountaintop mining operation before finding out how deep the conspiracy runs.  

Spying, treachery, and murder are all in play, and even if the reader sees the denouement coming quicker than the characters it is still fun.

Satisfactory on all counts, with some unsettling true-life elements.  A worthwhile read I checked out from the New Castle-Henry County Public Library in New Castle, Indiana.

#16: Assignment Star Stealers by Edward S. Aarons

Agent Sam Durell, called The Cajun, hunts a rogue group stealing satellite secrets in Edward S. Aarons' Assignment Star Stealers.

Durell ends up having to (sort of) team up with his Russian and Chinese counterparts as well as team up (so to speak) with a childhood friend and sudden widow/heiress.  As these things often do, it all ends up in a hidden base in the desert, with not too many left standing.

Aarons wrote a durable, I think underrated, spy series for several decades.  I read these as a teen and then revisited a big batch a few years ago.  This one came in a mixed box from a friend, and since I had not read one in a long while picked it up.  

This is probably the latest in the series I have read, from 1970, but still as sober and fast-moving as ever.  Features a pretty downbeat ending.

A great 50s-70s spy series, with elements from all those eras, and worth a look for espionage fans.

#15: The Trap by Melanie Raabe

A bestselling author arrives at the scene of her sister's murder, in time to catch a glimpse of the killer escaping; years later, after being homebound by trauma, she gets a glimpse of the person again on television and plots her revenge in Melanie Raabe's The Trap.

Raabe's debut novel, translated from German, has a classic unreliable narrator whose motivations and memories will leave a reader guessing throughout.

Raabe's damaged protagonist writes a thriller novel with intimate details of the crime, designed to draw the killer to her; when the suspect arrives, a cat and mouse game ensues.

I felt the book was a little overlong at 300 pages, based on a plot largely consisting of two characters circling each other in a house over a single long night.  I would have trimmed out the "novel within the novel" chapters, which were just okay. to keep it speeding along.

The Trap is a solidly-plotted thriller and of interest to genre fans.

I checked this out from the Henry County-New Castle Public Library in New Castle, Indiana.

#14: Night in Tehran by Philip Kaplan

A diplomat in late 70s Iran navigates the end of the Shah and the rise of the Ayatollah in Philip Kaplan's Night in Tehran.

Kaplan is a former ambassador writing his first fiction, though it is heavily populated with real figures and situations.  He writes more of a political chess game than an espionage novel (there is only one solitary karate chop, delivered late in the narrative).  But it reads like a World War II spy novel, and even has a mysterious French journalist/spy love interest.

Kaplan's narrative is stone sober and moves at a funeral pace until the last one hundred pages or so, which have the mounting terror of a slow-motion car crash.  Readers with an interest in this time and its politics will be engaged here.

Kaplan's debut belongs in the same family as the writing of Alan Furst and John LeCarre and is a worthwhile addition to genre.

I got this from the Henry County-New Castle Public Library in New Castle, Indiana.

#13: Walk Tall, Ride Tall by Burt and Budd Arthur

Canavan is a former lawman who just wants to settle down with a new wife and a new ranch; but when he immediately gets into a gunfight with a trio of youths whose family runs the town, things get rough quickly in Burt and Budd Arthur's Walk Tall, Ride Tall.

Burt and Budd Arthur were father and son, and prolific western writers on their own and together.  

This is a pretty standard oater in the "one man against a crooked town" vein.  To me the biggest drawback is that Canavan is not particularly likeable; he is aggressive and belligerent throughout and it occurred to me more than once that the townspeople were right, and he wouldn't make a very good neighbor.

I got this from a stash of books in a Secret Santa exchange and read it quickly.

#12: The Tenant by Katrine Engberg

Two mismatched cops (is there any other kind?) look for the killer of a young Copenhagen woman with strange carvings in her face in Katrine Engberg's debut The Tenant.

The young woman's landlord was writing a murder mystery featuring a character--and murder--very much mirroring real life, leading the detectives to look into her writing group, among other leads.

Engberg comes from an arts background, and it shows in interesting details, from a subsequent dead body found in a chandelier during a ballet performance to a famous artist with a penchant for manipulating his assistants.

Otherwise this is a pretty straightforward, though fast-moving, police procedural, for fans of Scandinavian crime novels.

I checked this out from the New Castle-Henry County Public Library and read it quickly.

#11: The Westside Park Murders by Keith Roysdon and Douglas Walker

The Westside Park Murders is a nonfiction account about the notorious double homicide of two high schoolers in 1980s Indiana, with an extensive summary of past events and some speculation as to what happened by two local newspaper reporters.

I was extremely conflicted about reading this, as I went to high school with these students (though they were younger than me).  But it was interesting to revisit the people and places that I knew at the time.

This account is written in a very clear-eyed, journalistic style and appears to be made up of some prior newspaper articles as well as new information and interviews.  The case remains unsolved--it is occasionally revisited locally and appears to still be open--so does not really wrap up as continue to explore questions.

Although it has been featured in other articles, television programs, and podcasts over the years, this is a good read for fans of true crime.

I bought this from Amazon and read it very quickly.

#10: The Missing American by Kwei Quartey

An American goes to Ghana to meet a woman he connected to online and disappears; soon it's up to a straight-laced private investigator to find out what really happened in the first entry of Kwei Quartey's new series featuring Emma Djan, The Missing American.

Although Djan is the protagonist, there is a wide net of interesting characters, from enterprising streetwise internet scammers, to crooked cops and priests, to the highest politicians in the land.

The internet scam the American falls for is threaded all through the culture of Ghana, and Djan ends up brushing elbows with her former police colleagues (she quit after being targeted for sexual harassment), a charismatic priest with a pet alligator in a tub, and a mysterious masked journalist targeted for assassination for his writing, among others.  

This is an expansive, fast-moving crime novel with unique characters and situations.  For readers who wants to read something different.

I checked this out from the Henry County-New Castle Public Library in New Castle, Indiana and read it quickly.

#9: The Preserve by Ariel S. Winter

A small-town cop and his big-city ex-partner--who happens to be a robot--try to solve a murder that seems to lead to a mysterious drug-trafficking network in Ariel S. Winter's The Preserve.

Winter writes a real genre-buster; it is a hard-nosed buddy-cop crime novel, but in a dystopian future where the human race has been reduced by plague (!) and has ceded control to robot overlords.  What few humans remain live in a vast self-governed preserve that functions somewhat like a reservation, with the robot government always sniffing around the borders.

What I liked about it was that the world-building is in the far background; the mystery is grounded in two cops chasing bad guys over 24 hours, with the clock ticking on a dangerous drug getting out.  There's no planet-shattering change in the status quo by the end of the fast-paced story.

Highly enjoyable and offbeat police procedural/science fiction mashup.

I checked this out from the New Castle-Henry County Public Library and read it quickly.

#8: Nympho Lodge by Jack Lynn

Swingin' PI Tokey Wedge goes to a resort to bodyguard a woman afraid of being murdered by her husband, only to find his list of suspects--and potential love interests--continuing to grow exponentially in Jack Lynn's Nympho Lodge.

Jack Lynn was Max Van DerVeer, a working mystery writer who penned these "spicy" mysteries under a different name for reasons that were probably more obvious in 1959.  By today's standards, the spiciness is very mild indeed and more implied than anything.

And it is all presented in a fairly comedic manner reminiscent of a low-grade version of Richard Prather's Shell Scott (and I don't think that's a coincidence). 

To put it politely, the characters are not finely shaded by contemporary standards; every woman is eager to jump into bed with Wedge, and he never pauses for self reflection, even when he ends up shooting one five times at the denouement.

This is the first in a new line of reprints by Grizzly Pulp, a company committed to putting out at least a half dozen of the hard-to-find Tokey Wedge books.  

I will get the next one as well, but would hope they would work more closely on editing, as there were a lot of mistakes in the text that threw me for a loop a time or two.

For fans of pulp paperbacks.

#7: Architects of Memory by Karen Osborne

 A space salvage crew finds a powerful alien weapon at the center of a galactic war, pitting human against alien and corporation against corporation, in Karen Osborne's Architects of Memory.

The spine of Osborne's plot is not unfamiliar; a future run by megacorporations rather than governments, and a perhaps misunderstood first contact with a mysterious alien race, but the central characters are well-rounded and interesting.

And it's high-octane space opera most of the way, to an action-packed finale that leaves open the door for a sequel that is reportedly in the works.

Osborne's debut novel didn't break new ground, but was interesting and enjoyable throughout.

I checked this out from the New Castle-Henry County Public Library Bookmobile and read it steadily.

#6: Zero Zone by Scott O'Connor

In 70s Los Angeles, an artist built an outdoor installation to honor a dead lover--only to find it taken over by a handful of disenfranchised people with a dangerous agenda--and has to live with the fallout in Scott O'Connor's Zero Zone.

We see the artist's backstory unspool over several chapters, which includes the death of her parents and estrangement from her cinephile brother, threaded with the lives of the people who hole up in the installation--including an affluent teenage runaway, a Las Vegas waitress, a recent parolee, and a charismatic but physically and emotionally scarred young man.

The last chapters have a more cinematic feel, as several untimely prison releases threaten to heighten the danger around the artist again. 

This is the kind of literate thriller I have always enjoyed, with musings on the art and film worlds and how a creative life can work for and against people.  Recommended.

I checked this out from the New Castle-Henry County Public Library Bookmobile and read it quickly.