Words can hurt, and in the case of Owen Laukkanen’s compelling, thought-provoking new thriller, The Watcher in the Wall, they can be enough to kill.

Laukkenen’s recurring FBI agents Kirk Stevens and Carla Windermere pursue an Internet troll who encourages fragile teenagers to commit suicide, while recording their final moments via webcam for a black market on the dark web. The case takes on a deeper meaning for Windermere, who continues to berate herself over a past mistake in which she stood by as a fellow classmate was bullied in school to the point she one day never came back. Catching the predator in this case serves as a chance, however slight, for redemption. Interestingly, in the acknowledgements, Laukkanen admits he also dealt with depression and suicidal thoughts as a teenager, making the book even more deeply personal.

Laukkenen’s fast-paced prose and short chapters pull readers along on a cross-country pursuit to identify the predator behind the online suicide forum and stop him before he can rack up more victims. They encounter numerous technological roadblocks along the way and must rely on help from the FBI’s crack technology team to penetrate the suspect’s cybertrail.

Laukkenen based the novel in part on the real-life case of William Melchert-Dinkel, a Minnesota man whose online “encouragement” drove an Ottawa teen to commit suicide in 2009, and who is suspected of entering into fake suicide pacts with at least five other victims. If parents were afraid of whom their impressionable kids are socializing with online before, they will only be more wary after reading this eerily timely and poignant book.

Readers of Laukkanen’s earlier novels in the FBI series, including The Professionals and The Stolen Ones, need not worry that the case is a mask for social commentary, however. It’s a true page-turner up to the final act, which quickly escalates into a fiery exchange of gunfire and action-packed pursuit of the perp.

The Singing Bone, the debut spine-chiller from Beth Hahn, is a concoction of sophistication and surprise. The book takes readers into the heart of the charismatic and sinister Jack Wyck and his cult-like coterie of young followers, presenting an unsparing look at the unsettling power of its manipulative leader. 

In the 1970s, a small group of teens fall under Wyck’s spell, and chapters alternate between the young people as we first meet them and some of those same characters 20 years later, after the terrible deeds have long been done. While flashbacks in fiction can often seem superficial or confusing, Hahn has used the technique here with great success, as the cumulative effect of the years becomes clear in her extraordinary telling. As the chilling Wyck holds the group in thrall, little by little readers come to understand the tragic extent of his mesmerizing influence and ability to shape the young minds he holds in an unrelenting grip.

Sometimes hard to read but always riveting in detail and nuance, The Singing Bone begins with 17-year-old Alice Pearson as she falls under Wyck’s spell along with friends Molly, Stover and Trina. They join Wyck’s bizarre household, one that already includes a wily young man named Lee and an enigmatic woman named Allegra—who may be either a victim or an accomplice. They appear to aid Wyck as he unrolls schemes to defraud innocent families whose soldier sons are missing in the Vietnam conflict.

The early years center on issues within the group, as members of the “household” vie for Wyck’s affections and a prime place, literally, in his bed. Horrific evidence begins to surface that Wyck’s deceptions and trickery have been used many times before, with similar tragic consequences. Years later, Wyck’s surviving victims struggle to gain a semblance of normality in their lives, while Wyck sits in prison awaiting parole, still exerting an uncanny ability to control from behind bars.

Near the end, a researcher looking into the past events imagines one person who might “leave the house, abandon Jack Wyck, return to his own life—but he knows that magic doesn’t exist. The images of freedom won’t save the boy.” Hahn’s prose, simple and never overdone, underlines the dramatic and lasting consequences of all that was surrendered.

BookPage Fiction Top Pick, March 2016

On a bleak, harsh winter afternoon in Chosen, a small town in upstate New York, local art history professor George Clare comes home to find his 3-year-old daughter, Franny, hiding in fear and his wife, Catherine, murdered. George becomes the chief suspect, and the investigation turns up details about his personal life—secret relationships, temper issues, a disintegrating marriage—that cast his innocence in doubt for everyone but his closest family. Still, the police investigating remain unable to pin his wife’s murder on George, and the crime goes unsolved for decades.

Death seems to hang over Chosen; the town is rural, close-knit and poor, with a dark history—the Clares’ own house was the site of a suicide not long before the family moved in. The community struggles not only to understand who killed Catherine, but also how and why. Years will pass—and Franny Clare will have to return to her childhood home, now long abandoned—before any justice is found.

In her third novel, Elizabeth Brundage, who has an MFA from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, combines a classic murder mystery with a gripping psychological thriller, exploring the complexities of grief, relationships—romantic, familial and friendly—and small-town life. All Things Cease to Appear is a smart, original take on the mystery genre, with nuanced depictions of rural New York, the people who inhabit it and the secrets they keep.

This article was originally published in the March 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Bestselling author Thomas Perry loves plans, escapes and perfect getaways. He also has a low-key, sardonic sense of humor and is a master at creating witty and likable thieves that we end up rooting for, often over the more straight-and-narrow option. All of these keystones are in place in Perry’s most recent standalone thriller, Forty Thieves—and there are at least that many iffy characters tumbling around in this winning novel.

One year has passed since the body of research scientist James Ballantine was found stuffed in a storm drain, and the crime has gone unsolved. Enter two husband/wife teams, each hired for separate reasons connected with the case. Private detectives and former LAPD cops Sid and Ronnie Abel are hired by Ballantine’s former employers to pick up the dropped threads of the earlier investigation and to search out the killer. Ed and Nicole Hoyt are skilled assassins hired by a middleman to stop the Abels from completing their assignment.

Perry is skilled at developing the backstories of this at-odds quartet, and readers may find their sympathies meandering all over the place. All four are handy with their weaponry, and the good guy/bad guy labels may get a bit murky at times. Also, there’s another picturesque gang behind the Ed/Nicole hire, and readers may grow to like them, too: a bunch of Russian diamond thieves who really just want to retire quietly in southern California after an exhausting career.

For all who’ve never read a Perry novel, an unforgettable experience awaits. The author cuts the hyperbole and offers blow-by-blow descriptions of a series of game plans as they’re activated and carried out with varying degrees of success. The writing is spare, literal and droll at the same time, often reminiscent of the late Donald Westlake’s intrigues with his steely Parker and comic Dortmunder characters.

Forty Thieves is an adrenaline rush, as fast-moving vehicles crisscross like searchlights arcing across an urban night sky, as Ed, Nicole, Sid and Ronnie engage in their exciting game of search and destroy. As for the victim whose murder started the whole thing off, he may be the character you’ll end up liking least of all. And it may not be giving too much away to say that to work it all out, it’s “cherchez la femme” from start to finish.

Vincent Zandri captures readers’ attention from the opening scene of his new suspense novel, Orchard Grove, and proceeds to careen through lust and lives. Lana, as a young girl, brutally slays her stepfather who has been sexually abusing her for months. In an unusual twist, Lana relishes the power she experiences when she kills him, and he becomes the first of many men she murders throughout her life.

Fast forward about 36 years, and Lana returns to the bucolic area near Albany, New York, where her murderous spree occurred. Now, however, she’s bored, is married to a police detective and has a proclivity for topless sunbathing. Her neighbor, has-been Hollywood writer Ethan Forrester, stares at her from his bedroom window and fantasizes about a relationship with her. As his fantasy becomes a reality, the story charges up and down a razor’s edge of tension and seduction.

Ethan’s obsession with Lana only increases after they have sex, and he puts their marriages, his welfare and his sanity on the line. Meanwhile, Lana also exerts her mesmerizing sexual powers over Ethan’s wife. The Forresters recognize the havoc Lana is wreaking on their marriage, but Lana’s allure is impossible for them to resist. So when Lana devises a diabolical plan and needs Ethan’s help to execute it, he ignores his better judgement and agrees to her scheme, forever altering the course of his, his wife and Lana’s lives.

While the characters don’t have many redeeming qualities, Zandri manages to create a likable persona in Ethan for whom readers can root while head-smacking him for his stupidity. The sheer audacity of the violence and sex in the novel creates a story that, much like the Forresters' obsession with Lana, is hard to tear away from once a reader is hooked.