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Mystery & SuspenseSuspense

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Readers know they can count on Robin Cook for a thriller that never lets up in intensity until the final page, and Vector is no different. It’s a true page-turner, with a little levity thrown in for good measure.

Yuri Davydov is a Russian emigre who drives a cab in New York City. He hates it. He has also begun to hate his adopted country because he believes it has denied him his slice of the American Dream. He is snarled at by customers, ignored by other drivers, and pushed to near distraction by his wife, a compulsive eater and chronic complainer.

Davydov has the skills to strike out at the whole world. In his homeland, he was a technician in the Soviet biological weapons program his last assignment being at a plant identified only as Vector.

He falls in with a couple of firemen named Curt and Steve who find out about Davydov’s capabilities. They have a deadly project of their own they want to blow up a federal building. Davydov would simply like to release anthrax in Central Park and kill a few thousand people.

He has already experimented on a few poor-tipping fares and sundry other souls. Now, at the behest of Curt and Steve, Davydov decides that his wife must be killed for security reasons so he kills her.

In the meantime, Drs. Jack Stapleton and Laurie Montgomery begin to witness some rather curious things in their capacity as forensic pathologists, including the fact that a young, reasonably healthy black woman is dead of respiratory failure. She is Yuri Davydov’s wife. But before Stapleton can get through the bureaucracy to request permission for an autopsy, she is cremated.

Stapleton begins to think that a series of curious coincidences is really a string of murders, but nobody except Laurie believes him; his superiors and colleagues are skeptical. Some think Stapleton is off his rocker, to put it mildly.

It becomes a race against time for Jack and Laurie to solve what amounts to a jigsaw puzzle with lots of missing pieces. If they do not, thousands may die in a city most vulnerable to biological weapons. Cook has a super-charged story to tell, and as usual, he tells it very well. Lloyd Armour is a retired newspaper editor.

Readers know they can count on Robin Cook for a thriller that never lets up in intensity until the final page, and Vector is no different. It's a true page-turner, with a little levity thrown in for good measure.

Yuri Davydov is…

Mystery & SuspenseSuspense

Review

Review by bookpagedev

In his latest international thriller, The Marching Season, Daniel Silva continues the unique blend of fact and fiction that gives his stories the immediacy and urgency of the evening news. Michael Osbourne, the CIA officer who narrowly survived an assassination attempt by a former KGB killer, code named October in The Mark of the Assassin, retired from the agency and eased into a comfortable, domestic routine with his Wall Street lawyer wife Elizabeth and their young twins. The Marching Season begins several years later when Douglas Cannon, Elizabeth’s father and a retired U.

S. senator, accepts appointment as the American ambassador to Great Britain with a commitment to advance a fragile peace agreement in Northern Ireland, the Good Friday Accords. Despite its acceptance by the country’s major political factions, the agreement also spawned a few small extremist groups dedicated to destruction of the peace process. One such group, the Ulster Freedom Brigade (UFB), begins a bombing campaign and then sets its sights on Douglas Cannon as its next high-profile target. Michael’s longtime friend lures him back into service in the agency’s effort to reinforce British security measures to protect the new ambassador.

The expected attack on Cannon and Osbourne’s role are reminiscent of a younger Jack Ryan in Tom Clancy’s Patriot Games. Silva’s narrative has the same effect on this earlier fictional creation as tilting a holographic picture; the reader suddenly sees a new and intriguing perspective.

With The Marching Season, Daniel Silva confirms his position as a frontrunner to succeed Tom Clancy as America’s foremost source of international intrigue fiction. Clearly, Osbourne has a great future; one that Silva will share with his many admirers.

John Messer is a freelance reviewer in Ludington, Michigan.

In his latest international thriller, The Marching Season, Daniel Silva continues the unique blend of fact and fiction that gives his stories the immediacy and urgency of the evening news. Michael Osbourne, the CIA officer who narrowly survived an assassination attempt by a former KGB…

Mystery & SuspenseFictionSuspense

Truth in Cambodian minefields

Behind the Book by K.T. Medina

Drawing on years of experience in the British armed forces, debut author K.T. Medina delivers a striking thriller that bores into the dark heart of postwar Cambodia, fraught with poverty and superstition. Her heroine descends into the killing fields in search of her husband’s killer—but as Medina reveals in the essay below, evil goes much deeper than murder.

To my parents’ dismay, I was not a normal girl. I dressed in army fatigues, sported a crew cut and used to line my teddy bears up at either end of the lounge and send them into battle. My favorite game was to traverse blocks purely by climbing over fences, cutting through people’s gardens, sneaking through their open back doors and slipping out the front, unnoticed. My mother and father despaired, entirely nonplussed. However, my interest in all things military probably developed from the hours I spent hiding behind the sofa, when I was supposed to be asleep, watching such World War II classics as The Great Escape and The Dirty Dozen through my father’s legs. 

When I went to university to study psychology, it felt like a natural progression to join the Territorial Army, where I spent time both in the Infantry and in the Royal Engineers, rising to Troop Commander. On leaving university, I joined Jane’s Information Group, the world’s leading publisher of defense intelligence information. It was whilst working at Jane’s, responsible for land-based weapons, that I was inspired to write my debut thriller, White Crocodile. As part of that role, I spent a few weeks in the minefields of northern Cambodia, working alongside professional mine clearers from two clearance charities, Cambodian Mine Action Centre and Mines Advisory Group. I was privileged to get to know both Western and Khmer mine clearers and to spend time talking with Khmers who had lost limbs to land mines. I also visited many of the locations that appear in White Crocodile, including the great swathes of minefields that dominate the region and the Red Cross Hospital for the victims of land mines, where the novel’s fictional Dr Ung saves lives and rehabilitates. There are huge numbers of amputees in Cambodia, including very young children who, in many cases, thought that the anti-personnel mine they found was a toy.

"I wanted to use the power of fiction to take readers on an unforgettable journey to this dark and disturbing place."

Cambodia is a visually beautiful country of emerald green paddy fields and ochre earth; the people are friendly and the majority kind; but its traumatic history, including five years of mass genocide under the Khmer Rouge, depicted in the famous film The Killing Fields, casts an indelible shadow. Cambodia is still incredibly poor and the government corrupt, building presidential palaces and grand government buildings while the majority of the population live in unimaginable deprivation and hardship. There is no social security, and unless people make a living for themselves and their families, they quite literally starve. The presence of six million land mines, buried mainly in the northwest region around Battambang where White Crocodile is set, makes the job of survival even harder. 

Off the tourist trail, Cambodia is a heartbreaking place to visit that left a huge and lasting impression on me. On coming home, back to England and the privileges that I enjoy here in the West, I felt very strongly that I wanted to use the power of fiction to take readers on an unforgettable journey to this dark and disturbing place—a journey that would have them wanting to read, without pause, until the very last page.

White Crocodile is also a story about families: love and hatred; kindness and cruelty; the destructive nature of some families and the long-term damage these families can cause. As part of my degree in psychology, I studied the effect of poor family dynamics and abuse on children. The fear and helplessness a child trapped in a severely dysfunctional family feels must be all-consuming, and for me was a very powerful emotion to explore in a novel, as was its flip side, intense love and an overwhelming desire to protect. 

I am drawn to people who have a different psychology from my own, whether in terms of mass cultural beliefs, such as in Cambodia where the white crocodile signifies death, or with individuals who, perhaps because of their upbringing or life experiences, display an abnormal psychology. The heroine of White Crocodile is Tess Hardy, an ex-British Army combat engineer and mine clearer who, against her better judgment, travels to Cambodia to discover the truth behind the death of her violent husband Luke. However, whilst Tess is strong, clever and independent, she is also a complex character who has her own very personal demons to deal with. 

I have always loved to read and write, and much of my childhood was spent immersed in stories. Enid Blyton’s Famous Five series was one of my early favorites, and in common with many other tomboys, I wanted to be George. I am still an avid crime and thriller reader, and I particularly like novels that bring more to me than just a great story. Novels that stay with me long after the last page are those such as Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, novels that explore real-life trauma through the medium of story and unforgettable characters, and that was my aim with White Crocodile.

K.T. Medina lives in London with her husband and three children.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of White Crocodile.

 

This article was originally published in the July 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Drawing on years of experience in the British armed forces, debut author K.T. Medina delivers a striking thriller that bores into the dark heart of postwar Cambodia, fraught with poverty and superstition. Her heroine descends into the killing fields in search of her husband’s killer—but as Medina reveals in the essay below, evil goes much deeper than murder.
Mystery & SuspenseFictionSuspense

From one unforgiving landscape to another

Behind the Book by Beth Lewis

Beth Lewis drops readers into an unexpected and brutal world with The Wolf Road, the story of a girl who has just discovered that her savior, a man she calls her father, may be a serial killer. Lewis shares a look behind her debut.

When I pull back the curtain and actually think about where The Wolf Road came from, rather than what single moment inspired it, I realise writing it was pure escapism. It was a novel partly born of frustration at city life. There’s too many people, too much concrete and glass and noise, not enough trees and fresh air and wildlife. Elka’s attitude to and love of nature is mine, her mystification at certain peoples’ behaviour is also mine. Whenever I would put pen to paper, or more accurately, fingers to laptop, I would be transported to the forest and mountains, away from my too-small middle-floor London flat. It was wonderful and I hope is something readers can experience too.

When I dig deeper, pull the curtain back further, this frustration diminishes and I realise there are other reasons behind certain aspects of The Wolf Road. I grew up in the countryside. Two fields stood between me and the wild Cornish coast, the sheer cliffs and hidden coves, bristling with tales of smugglers and pirates. The weather bore down on us from all sides, and sometimes the squall lasted all night. It was a visceral, evocative place, and I’d never realised before how much it’d fed into my writing.

In the fields and along the coast stood two Second World War watchtowers. Both abandoned and given up to the elements. One tall and thin, three storeys of red brick with open sides on the top floor. The other squat, made of dark grey stone, walls two-foot thick and further away, on an area of moorland at the lip of a valley. We’d play in them, make them our dens, then flee when we saw the farmer coming. My brother and I would wander around these valleys and scrubland, populated by straggling sheep and too many rabbits, and we’d find dozens of shell casings, unexploded artillery rounds, ammo boxes, even an old, crumbling rifle. They were remnants of another world, a past of violence and gunshots and invading forces that I knew almost nothing about. At 10 years old, I had a vague sense of WWII, but it wasn’t a real event to me. It was what we learned in history class or were forced to hear about from grandparents. I knew it was Big and Bad and it left its mark everywhere, but it was never in the forefront of my mind. At that age, I never needed or wanted detailed and thorough explanations of the cause or its repercussions throughout the country. It didn’t affect me. It was done and dusted years ago. I just lived where a piece of it had happened.

The fact that this huge, world-changing event could happen and, eventually, be largely forgotten about, was fascinating to adult me and perfect story fodder. I figured the people alive generations down the line would not be all that interested in why their world was the way it was, instead, I thought, they’d be concerned with just living their lives. That’s really the origin of the post-apocalyptic element of The Wolf Road and the reason the Damn Stupid, Elka’s term for the decades-ago war that changed the world, is only touched upon. Even with scraps of history all around her, tales handed down from grandparent to parent to child, Elka’s concerns were of the “here, now” not the “back then,” as were mine at her age. She was worried about where her next meal would come from, where she would sleep that night, how she could reach the top of the ridge and there is a beautiful purity in those most simple of motivations.

 

Beth Lewis was raised in the wilds of Cornwall and split her childhood between books and the beach. She has traveled extensively throughout the world and has had close encounters with black bears, killer whales and great white sharks. She has been, at turns, a bank cashier, a fire performer and a juggler, and she is currently a managing editor at Titan Books in London. The Wolf Road is her first novel.

www.bethlewis.co.uk
Twitter: @bethklewis
Facebook: facebook.com/bethlewisauthor

Author photo credit Andrew Mason.

It’s Private Eye July at BookPage! All month long, we’re celebrating the sinister side of fiction with the year’s best mysteries and thrillers. Look for the Private Eye July magnifying glass for a daily dose of murder, espionage and all those creepy neighbors with even creepier secrets.

Beth Lewis drops readers into an unexpected and brutal world with The Wolf Road, the story of a girl who has just discovered that her savior, a man she calls her father, may be a serial killer. Lewis shares a look behind her debut.

Mystery & SuspenseFictionSuspense

A dark and twisted thriller drawn from 15 years of academic memories

Behind the Book by Joanne Harris

My grandfather was a teacher. My parents were both teachers. Their friends were all teachers, which meant that at home, their conversation revolved almost exclusively around teaching. For me, as a child, that meant a constant stream of school stories, drama and intrigue. It also meant that for many years it was more or less accepted that I, too, was destined for the teaching profession.

And when, age 9, I timidly dared to challenge this decree and suggest that I might try writing books instead, my mother showed me a room in our house, in which stood a wall of books—all by 19th-century French novelists, all having died in poverty, of syphilis and TB—after which she said to me: “And that’s why you need a Proper Job!”

And so I became a teacher. I liked it—I was good at it—and yet I kept on writing. During that time—over 15 years, most of which I spent teaching in a boys’ grammar school in Yorkshire—three of my books were published, though it was only after the unexpected success of Chocolat that I was able to give up teaching for good. And my mother’s advice served me well, for during those 15 years I was able to collect enough wild tales, dreadful scandals, quirky characters and everyday moments of drama to fill a hundred books.

I realized during those 15 years that a school is a factory of stories. Small communities so often are, and schools, with their volatile chemistry, cut off from the rest of the world by arcane rules and rituals, are a kind of microcosm, a mirror for the outside world. And it is from the events and experiences of those 15 years that I built my books—especially Gentlemen and Players, and my new book, Different Class: both set in St. Oswald’s, a fictional boys’ grammar school in the north of England. 

Knowing this, it must be tempting for readers to assume that the events depicted in my books are based on some kind of real-life event. The fact is that real life is nowhere near as plausible as fiction, at least as far as schools are concerned, and if I were to base my books on actual, real-life incidents encountered during my teaching career, the critics would scoff and refuse to believe that any such thing had happened. Having said that, schools are filled with stories; they’re communities in which tragedy and farce are only ever the turn of a page away. My teaching career saw plenty of both, and it is inevitable that certain stories, incidents and characters remained in my writer’s subconscious.

The writing process is very much tied up with memory. But St. Oswald’s is a construct, rather than a portrayal of any single place. It contains elements of schools (and universities) at which I was a pupil, as well as the schools in which I taught. Some minor incidents are based on things that really happened. The main plots, however, are mostly made-up or loosely based on current events.

As I was writing Different Class, I was also watching the unfolding of the Operation Yewtree police investigation, the results of which rocked [the U.K.] and implicated a number of TV and radio celebrities in a series of accusations of historical sex abuse. This scandal, with all its complexities, seemed to have disturbing parallels with the book I was writing. Again, I didn’t plan it this way. Ideas are like dandelion seeds, landing where the wind takes them. That year, the wind was full of tales of past and present abuses. Some of them must have made their way into the book I was writing: a story about the past, about memory and perception, about loyalty and childhood and guilt and of the dark side of friendship.

I find my “dark” books at the same time curiously satisfying to write, and emotionally and intellectually draining. But I believe that stories should contain equal proportions of light and shade in order to be meaningful. The monsters of our daily lives are not the demons and werewolves of fairy tale, but sexual predators, murderers and those who hide their malevolence behind an everyday façade. Stories enable us to face our monsters, and sometimes, learn to fight back. Facing them isn’t always easy, but maybe that’s the point.

During her 15 years as a teacher, Joanne Harris published three novels, including the bestselling Chocolat (1999), which was made into an Oscar-nominated film. Since then, she has written 15 more novels, two collections of short stories and three cookbooks. Her new novel of psychological suspense, Different Class, is set at an antiquated, failing prep school. A new headmaster arrives, bringing changes that seem more corporate than academic. While curmudgeonly Latin teacher Roy Straitley does his best to resist these transformations, a shadow from his past begins to stir—a boy who haunts his dreams, a sociopathic young outcast from 20 years before. Harris lives with her husband and daughter in Yorkshire, where she writes in a shed in her garden.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a review of Different Class.

 

This article was originally published in the January 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

My grandfather was a teacher. My parents were both teachers. Their friends were all teachers, which meant that at home, their conversation revolved almost exclusively around teaching. For me, as a child, that meant a constant stream of school stories, drama and intrigue. It also meant that for many years it was more or less accepted that I, too, was destined for the teaching profession.
FictionSuspense

The harrowing world of intelligence

Behind the Book by T.L. Williams

It was July 16, 1991, and 17 November, the Greek terrorist group, had just attempted to assassinate the Turkish charge-d’affaires in a car bomb attack. I had driven through the very intersection where that attack took place with my family, 10 minutes before the fateful event took place. Despite varying our routes and times of departure every day on our way to work, we could easily have been the victims that morning.

“In Zero Day: China’s Cyber Wars . . . I was able to draw upon 30 years of experience as an Operations Officer in the CIA to portray true-to-life operational scenarios.”

Years before, in China, I had faced a very different sort of menace. The Chinese security services viewed foreigners, particularly American diplomats, with a great deal of mistrust, even animus.  Local citizens, the Public Security Bureau, and the counterintelligence professionals surveilled their targets constantly, monitoring their every move. From the moment we left our residences until we returned home in the evening, American diplomats were under some form of surveillance. Even the housekeepers we hired to clean our apartments were required to report on their employers’ contacts and patterns of activity.  It genuinely felt as though we were living in a goldfish bowl.

In the late 1990s, I was part of the NATO SFOR Stabilization Force in Bosnia Herzegovina. There were snipers in the hills between the embassy and my location at Camp Ilidza, SFOR Headquarters. There were mines and other unexploded ordinance strewn all over the country. A misstep here, or a wrong turn there, could spell disaster. But I had a job to do and I accepted those risks as part of my everyday life as a CIA officer deployed to a war zone.

These are just a few examples of the types of threats CIA personnel all over the world face day-in and day-out as we go about fulfilling our respective missions. We accept these risks because we view ourselves as the first line of defense against America’s enemies, foreign and domestic. We have sworn an oath to defend the Constitution, and we take that pledge seriously.

In Zero Day: China’s Cyber Wars, as well as my two previous novels, Cooper’s Revenge and Unit 400: The Assassins, I was able to draw upon 30 years of experience as an Operations Officer in the CIA to portray true-to-life operational scenarios imbued with the kind of rich contextual detail that only comes from actually having lived and worked in the cultures and geographic locales that I portray. It’s the difference between gazing down on a scene from 10,000 feet and being plunked down in the thick of it. One’s senses are sharpened from participating in the real life experience on the ground, and with any luck, the author is able to transport the reader to that same place with a measure of authenticity that enriches the reading experience like no other. As John le Carré famously said, “A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.”

The methods of espionage, known in the business as tradecraft, have evolved over the years, with the most modern technological advances typically cloaked in secrecy decades after they are added to the ‘toolbox,’ unless they are somehow compromised and are thrust into the public domain. But the age old techniques of running surveillance detection routes and conducting recruitment operations remain very much the same as when they first appeared in the early days of spy literature. These methods have been bountifully described in the espionage literature of the 19th and 20th centuries. This might lead one to conclude that anyone could write a convincing scene describing the lead-up to a clandestine meeting in a high-threat counterintelligence environment, or the planning that is involved in conducting a recruitment operation against a high priority foreign target.  

Would you trust your mechanic to do your heart surgery? I’m sure that anyone could read Gray’s Anatomy and come away with some sense of where to start, but you would not want that person wielding the scalpel.  There is a reason why people gravitate to experts in all things. It is because we intuitively understand that they are the best at what they do. That’s no less true when you are looking for an authentic voice in the books you read.

T.L. Williams ran clandestine human intelligence (HUMINT) operations in Asia and Europe for over 30 years as a CIA operative. Now retired from active duty and living in Florida, he has written three espionage thrillers, including his latest release, Zero Day: China’s Cyber Wars. The CIA was so concerned about Williams’ extensive knowledge of sensitive national security information that it prevented the book’s publication for months while vetting the manuscript for classified information. 

A CIA operative for more than 30 years, T.L. Williams uses his extensive experience in the intelligence community in his latest spy thriller, Zero Day.
Mystery & SuspenseSuspense

A thriller born in a bookstore

Behind the Book by Chris Pavone

A few summers ago, my wife and kids took a vacation to a fishing camp in middle-of-nowhere Canada, which to me is the opposite of fun. I declined. Instead I went by myself in Paris, where I intended to do some touristing, eat good rich food and spend mornings writing my fourth novel, which I was 100 pages into.

But as soon as I arrived to a city that was still reeling from a series of brutal terrorist attacks, a different book intruded on my consciousness. So I put aside that other 100 pages of the work in progress, and started afresh on a new page 1, with a laptop in a café in St-Germain-des-Prés every morning before setting out for an afternoon of walking, spending the whole day immersed in these imaginary characters, in this new story, trudging mile after mile, stopping on street corners to scribble notes.

In the middle of the week, I went to Shakespeare & Co. to have a drink with the proprietor Sylvia Whitman, and I ended up staying for five hours, talking to regulars who came and went, and Sylvia’s husband and son and shop dog, seeing this whole expat life in this remarkable bookstore that hosted events in the place facing Notre Dame, and the stream of visiting authors and the tumbleweed kids reshelving books, the entire terrific operation guided by this wonderful principle: be open to new people, be welcoming to strangers. It seems so obvious as a decent way to go about life. But it’s not usually a business plan. It’s a deliberate, purposeful choice of how to exist in the world.

Perhaps I was a little bit drunk, but I was struck by the importance of deliberateness, about everything in life. When I awoke in the morning, I felt more even more convinced of this, plus with the immense satisfaction that always comes from realizing that last night was not, after all, a mistake.

So I spent the rest of that week giving tremendous—nearly nonstop—thought to what my next book should be, which characters, what type of plot, themes, twists. What could the world possibly want from me that I can deliver? What would be the best sort of book for me to write at this stage of my career, at this moment in history? I’m a novelist, after all; anything is possible. I’m constrained by nothing except the limits of my imagination, and my willingness to challenge myself.

I came to a lot of conclusions.

Most important, I decided that my ideal next book would be one closely related to my 2012 debut, The Expats, but not a sequel. That it should be tied to real-world events, specifically to terrorism in Paris, but that it should also challenge our assumptions about terror’s goals, about its perpetrators. That the book should utilize my own personal up-close and traumatic experience of downtown New York on 9/11, but without being exploitative, without participating in the commodification of grief.

What else? That the central tensions should fuse personal, intimate conflict—within marriages, within friendships—with mortal jeopardy; that this combination of mundane life and extraordinary circumstances was the best aspect of The Expats, and is in fact what I love about thrillers in general. That the protagonist of that book is my most fully realized character, and that I wanted to further develop this person, this conflicted mother with her sputtering career, middle-age on the cusp of irrelevance. That I wanted these characters to confront their own mistakes, their own failings as humans, alongside the villains, the terrorists. Alongside me, too.

All this is an awful lot to figure out in just a few days. This can be a year’s worth of work, even a decade’s, a lifetime’s. I think this work is the hardest part of being a novelist: not the writing itself, but figuring out what to write. The typing of 100,000 words is the easy part.

And the most important part of this work didn’t happen at a desk, trying to bang out today’s arbitrary quota of words. This happened because I did this other mundane thing that writers do, that readers do: I whiled away an evening at an independent bookstore. In one of the great culinary capitals in the history of civilization, I dined on potato chips with plonk blanc. I talked to the owner, I talked to the staff, I talked to customers, all of us surrounded by shelves and stacks and leaning piles of books, by current bestsellers and Lost Generation classics, in this famous shop in a city where writers have been coming for hundreds of years to become who they want to be.

I didn’t even purchase anything that night. A bookstore is a place you can go even if you don’t want to buy a new book, a place to feel a kinship with other writers, with readers, to feel yourself—myself—in the context of all the other literature that’s out there in the world. A place where you can figure this out, or at least try: Where do I fit in?

 

Author photo by Sam McIntosh

Chris Pavone shares a look behind his new book, A Paris Diversion.
Mystery & SuspenseSuspense

Dig two graves: The five best vigilantes in fiction

Behind the Book by Lisa Unger

In Lisa Unger’s superb new thriller The Stranger Inside, a vigilante is on the loose. But this killer only kills the worst of the worst: people who are almost certainly guilty of heinous crimes but got off on technicalities. We asked Unger which other fictional vigilantes fascinate her.

We love to see justice served, don’t we? Americans especially are spoon-fed the notion that evil never triumphs; cheaters never win; dictators will fall; criminals will go to jail. We want to believe it. We need to believe it. But when bad people get away with heinous crimes, are good people entitled to take the law into their own hands? And what is the difference between justice and revenge?

Vigilantism is a tricky enterprise. Most people who step into its house of mirrors are formed in trauma. They are often operating from a place of rage and fear. And in seeking their own brand of justice, they run the risk of becoming the darkness they despise. Confucius said that before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves—one is for yourself.

As a reader and as a writer, I’ve been drawn to the dark and damaged protagonist, the one who you’re not sure is the hero or the villain, the shadow you fear but also love a little bit. Because life is composed only of layers, and people are never just one thing. I want to dive in deep and be surprised by what I find.

Most of my protagonists have issues—mental illness, dysmorphia, addiction, PTSD. And I’ve wrestled with the concept of justice versus revenge in my fiction before. But Dr. Hank Reams in The Stranger Inside takes all of my questions on these topics to a new level. He’s broken; he does awful things. But he believes in his mission. That might be his most redeeming quality, and one Hank shares with some of my other favorite fictional vigilantes.

 

Batman

The Dark Knight turned 80 this year, a testament to our fascination with this type of character. Created by the artist Bob Cane and the writer Bill Finger, the Caped Crusader has had many incarnations in comics, graphic novels, television and film. I am a lifelong fan of this complicated, edgy icon. The ultimate vigilante—a brooding loner, living a double life—Batman was forged in trauma when a young Bruce Wayne watched his parents die. With all the resources at his disposal to make the bad men and women of Gotham pay, he’s the shadow that comes in the night to foil villains and keep innocents safe. Batman was probably my first and greatest vigilante love.

 

Flora Dane

We first meet Lisa Gardner’s Flora Dane in Find Her, the eighth novel in Gardner’s bestselling series featuring detective D.D. Warren. Flora is a college student who was kidnapped during spring break. Miraculously, she survived and must claw her way back to some kind of normal. But, try as you might, sometimes you just can’t let it go. Lisa Gardner is a true master of suspense and carefully reveals all the layers—including Flora’s nightmarish ordeal—that make this fighter what she becomes in the aftermath of unthinkable brutality.

 

Evan Smoak

Gregg Hurwitz is one of those rare authors whose writing is as stellar as his plots are breakneck, whose characters are as rich and textured as his tech and action sequences are super cool. In his five-book Orphan X series, Hurwitz introduces us to Evan Smoak. A powerless victim, on the run from bad guys, trapped in a situation that has no escape? Evan Smoak is just a phone call away. The only thing he asks in return is that you “pay it forward” by passing along his card to the next person who needs it. Part of a program that recruited orphans to be assassins, Smoak now uses his skills to deliver his own brand of justice, all while trying to stay ahead of the other orphans who are trying to kill him. Hurwitz digs deep into the nuances of the character, Smoak’s formative years, his memories of the man who raised him and his struggles to have meaningful relationships as an adult.

 

Dexter Morgan

In Jeff Lindsay’s Darkly Dreaming Dexter, readers were introduced to forensic blood splatter analyst Dexter Morgan. Lindsay’s character is fascinating because he’s a true violent sociopath, driven by homicidal urges. He carries with him “The Dark Passenger”—the voice in his head that prods him to kill. But Dexter kills rapists, murderers and other monsters not dissimilar to himself, largely because of the influence of his foster father, decorated cop Harry Morgan. Dad recognized Dexter’s proclivities early on and helped him to channel his impulses in a “positive” direction. Again, it’s the facets of this character that keep us deeply involved. The sociopath doesn’t have emotions as you and I know them, but Dexter has just enough humanity to hook us.

 

Hayley Stark

In the 2006 film Hard Candy, 14-year-old Haley Stark lures and captures a pedophile, then proceeds to torture him in his home. This is an edgy, uncomfortable story that delves into the strata of seduction and sadomasochism. Hayley Stark, brilliantly portrayed by Ellen Page, is a manipulative and ruthless captor as she prods and teases the bound Jeff Kohlver (played by Patrick Wilson) into revealing all his dark deeds and desires. The ending is brutal. But there’s a certain satisfaction in feeling like a monster got what he deserved and that there’s a Hayley Stark out there making sure bad men don’t get away with their crimes.

 

Author photo by Jay Nolan.

Lisa Unger, author of The Stranger Inside, shares her five favorite vigilantes in fiction.

Mystery & SuspenseSuspense

‘I love plots where good people face bad choices.’

Behind the Book by Caroline B. Cooney

Caroline B. Cooney is a beloved and award-winning author of books for children and young adults. Though she’s always written thrillers and mysteries, her latest release is her first for an adult audience. In this essay, she explains why the twisty tale of Clemmie Lakefield prompted her to make the switch.

I once wrote a book called The Face on the Milk Carton, in which a young teenager recognizes herself on a missing child poster. How can she find out her history without destroying the family who brought her up? In that book and its sequels, Janie has made none of the decisions that put her in this situation; she is stuck with the choices of others.

But suppose you are 20 when things go wrong for you. A grown-up. You make a shocking decision to live your life as a different person under a different name. Suppose you pull this off for half a century. Think of the pain and loss, danger and anxiety! You give up family and background and friendships. Why? Because you did something so awful, that’s your only escape? Or did somebody else commit some terrible act? Or is it a combination of both?

I love plots where good people face bad choices. But for whom would I write this story? My YA readers couldn’t care less what a 70-something, semiretired Latin teacher might be up to. My readers would figure that she’s dead already, or might as well be. So, I made the exciting decision to switch from YA to adult mystery. And what a good time I am having.

Luckily, I was living in just the right setting: Sun City, a retirement community. The similarity of houses is unnerving. For a long time, I could find my own house only by clicking the automatic garage door opener to see which door went up. Sun City is remarkable for its friendliness. Show up at a club, a meeting or a game and you’re part of it. Nobody cares about your background. They may ask where you’re from, but then they move on to important things: Can you be club secretary? Are you free for pinochle? Not only is your house anonymous—so are your new friends. They might summarize their entire career by saying, “I was in marketing. Listen, are you trying out for the play?” And if they do ask about your background, you could say anything. Who’s to know? You could delete part of your life or add to it. And out of 3,000 residents, at least one is bound to have a shady background. Might as well be you.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of Before She Was Helen.

Your name in Sun City, and for the last 50 years, is Helen. You’re a good neighbor. Like many good neighbors here, you check on others routinely: people who may have had a fall, for example. And what if you go next door to check on your annoying and unpleasant neighbor because he is not answering the daily text you send at his request? And what if you go into that house and make an extraordinary discovery? You take a photo of it on your cell phone.

My age group loves cell phones and we use them constantly, but some of us have little grasp of what we’re doing and what our phones are capable of. So that’s our subplot: You get it wrong. And you know what? You’re cooked. Because you send this photograph to young people. After all, it’s cool and you rarely have anything cool for show or tell. You have forgotten that today’s photograph is forwarded, sometimes indefinitely.

And because what you photographed turns out to be stolen, somebody somewhere is going to notify the police. And you have left your fingerprints in that house. The fingerprints will tell the truth. You were somebody else before you were Helen.

But who?

And why?

And can you save her?

Or are you and the person you were before you became Helen going to be destroyed?

Caroline B. Cooney is a beloved and award-winning author of books for children and young adults. Though she’s always written thrillers and mysteries, her latest release is her first for an adult audience. In this essay, she explains why the twisty tale of Clemmie Lakefield…

Mystery & SuspenseSuspense

No guilt, no rules

Behind the Book by Elaine Murphy

Author Elaine Murphy explains how she got sucked in by the queasily liberating allure of sociopaths—and why you will, too.

Most people use the terms sociopath and psychopath interchangeably, though they’re technically different personality disorders. In both cases, the person acts without conscience and without fear of consequences. They are prone to manipulation, impulsiveness and lies, and they act recklessly. The primary difference is that sociopaths have a bit more emotional wiggle room, if you will. They might have real feelings for one or two people, they might experience a tiny bit of empathy or guilt, and they might have some emotion (like rage), although the emotion is fleeting. 

We’ve all known someone who has one or many of these characteristics, and I’ve personally done my best to avoid them in my life. So why are we still drawn to reading about these types of people?

Because it’s fiction! It’s so fun to watch these characters in action precisely because the stories aren’t real. Sociopaths are impulsive and unpredictable, so we never know what they’re going to do next. But much like when we follow a story about a zombie apocalypse or killer mermaids, we have the safety net of our TV screen or the pages of a book to keep the real threat at a distance. (Keep in mind that not all sociopaths are violent, just as all non-sociopaths are not harmless.)

In Look What You Made Me Do, Carrie Lawrence’s older sister, Becca, is a 30-year-old sociopath. Becca has been killing people since high school and roping her sister in to help hide the bodies. There’s a moment in the book when Carrie notes, “Not once in my life have I been afraid for my sister. She’s always been the biggest predator in the room, the one sitting at the top of the food chain, picking and choosing her next meal.” Sociopaths have no regard for how their behavior affects others and enjoy a “rules don’t apply to me” type of attitude. 

Becca was an amazing character for me to explore as a writer because she’s never boring. She has an idea, and she acts on it. She plunges headlong into whatever motivates her in any given moment and never considers the consequences. Becca wants to break into a building? Let’s go! Learns there’s a serial killer in town and he’s stealing her thunder and needs to pay? Let’s take care of this immediately, no planning required! 

Becca does all those things we wish we could do but have been raised—and possess the empathy and guilt that guide “normal” behavior—not to. Have you ever been in a conversation and just desperately wanted the other person to shut up? Seen something more entertaining over their shoulder and wanted to walk away? Thought the pretzel in their hand looked delicious and wanted a bite? You can watch a character like Becca in that scenario and know you’re not in for a boring scene in which the other person drones on. She’s going to take action. Maybe she’ll simply walk off. Maybe she’ll take the pretzel with her. Maybe she’ll kill the other person and call it self-defense for trying to bore her to death. As a reader and a writer, these are the types of characters that keep me turning—and typing—the pages. 

 

Author photo by Laura Shortt Photography.

Author Elaine Murphy explains how she got sucked in by the queasily liberating allure of sociopaths—and why you will, too.

Mystery & SuspenseSuspense

Goodbye to the Super Spy

Behind the Book by Dan Fesperman

Dan Fesperman’s new espionage novel, The Cover Wife, could have been a soapy, simplistic experiment in dramatics. It follows CIA agent Claire Saylor, as she goes undercover as the wife of an academic in Hamburg, Germany, while a parallel plot line follows Mahmoud, a young Moroccan immigrant who’s being slowly sucked in by a radical group of men at his mosque. But Fesperman, a former journalist who covered both the Yugoslav civil wars and the Middle East in the wake of 9/11, roots Claire and Mahmoud’s stories firmly in reality. In this essay, he reveals why why an individual spy is far less powerful than you’d think, and why that makes their work all the more thrilling.

Behold the Super Spy, who knows all, anticipates all, and because of their operational autonomy, is almost always a step ahead of the competition. Need to Know? That’s a doctrine for chumps and desk jockeys.

Such is the misconception some readers have of CIA officers and others who work in the shadowy world of espionage, believing that spies step into their assignments in full knowledge of the stakes, the objective, the tasks their colleagues will be carrying out and so on.

Claire Saylor, my main CIA character in The Cover Wife, enviously wishes this were true. But, as just about anyone who’s worked in the spy business will tell you, it almost never is.

In a manuscript I’ve just completed, for example, here’s a bit of Claire’s thinking as she approaches an assignment for which she’s been told very little about what to expect. All she knows for sure is that she has been asked to show up for an appointed rendezvous with an unnamed source who will announce his presence with a designated code phrase:

“On its face, it was a simple chore with clear but limited instructions and open-ended possibilities. She was no stranger to work like that. At times, her job in Paris seemed to offer nothing but: Take this parcel and leave it there; Meet Man A and deliver his message to Woman B; Sit on that bench until 3 p.m., while noting every coming and going from the opposite doorway. And so on. Simple orders with complex possibilities.”

The archetype for the Super Spy, of course, is James Bond, although not even your most bedazzled reader seems to believe anymore that real spies live in his glitzy world of casinos, martinis and luxury cars, complete with dinner jacket and an exotic gun.

And, about those guns: There is no such thing as a standard issue weapon for a CIA officer, except for the ones who serve in war zones. Most spies travel unarmed. Not only is carrying a weapon illegal in most countries, it would be a giveaway that you were up to no good.

On the face of it, such limitations make the job seem less exciting. But for me—or, more to the point, for characters like Claire—it only adds to the challenge. She’s always trying to expand smaller roles into bigger ones. Withhold info about an upcoming task and she’ll try to find out more. Or, as I’ve described her: “Whenever an op confined her to the dark, she sought her own path toward the light. It kept the job interesting even as it tended to thwart professional advancement.”

It also helps when, as in The Cover Wife, her supervisor is willing to participate in the subversion, by assigning her additional duties which they both try to hide from their superiors. Layers upon layers.

I suppose this tendency of Claire’s is the spy novel’s equivalent of the detective novel trope of gumshoes who never play by the rules. And you certainly can’t let characters wander too far off the straight and narrow without risking implausibility. But when you’re valued for your ability to dig out forbidden knowledge, it’s not much of a leap to expect this inquisitiveness to exceed its limits. Although Claire, alas, will never enjoy the freedom of the Super Spy.

Author Dan Fesperman reveals why an individual spy is far less powerful than you’d think, and why that makes their work all the more thrilling.

Mystery & SuspenseSuspense

Four gripping thrillers set in gorgeous locations

Behind the Book by Lexie Elliott

Lexie Elliott’s new book, How to Kill Your Best Friend, is perhaps the ideal escapist thriller: a possible murder, a friend group practically bursting at the seams with drama and some very twisted secrets, all against the backdrop of a luxury resort on a gorgeous, isolated island in Southeast Asia. We asked Elliott to share more suspenseful novels with stunning settings.

Writers: We’re a strange breed, and none more so than crime writers. Give us a beautiful villa overlooking a secluded beach and we immediately wonder what might be buried under the palm tree or weighted down at the bottom of the ocean. A sun-dappled European city has us looking past the landmarks and museums for what might be lurking in the narrow alleys. The contrast between the light and shade of human nature is never so stark as when played out in the most seductive of settings, the kind of places where people come to relax and forget their cares. Two of my novels (my debut, The French Girl, and my most recent novel, How To Kill Your Best Friend) feature exactly that delicious contrast, and with that in mind, I bring you some suggestions for thrillers where the gorgeous settings almost steal the scene.

 

The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith

Mongibello, San Remo, Rome, Venice, Greece: The locations in this novel read like a travel agent’s advertisement (though the first is admittedly fictional—Highsmith took inspiration for it from Positano, Italy). Readers will be captivated as the young, wealthy American trust fund socialites of the 1950s frolic through the radiant Italian Riviera, unaware of the twisted obsession growing in the heart of Tom Ripley. I discovered this novel in my teens and it awoke in me a longing (never quite lost) to travel to these beguiling destinations, where surely I would dress most fabulously to drink cocktails in the warm summer evenings at the bars of the most fashionable hotels and restaurants. . . . Highsmith unerringly captures the details of both the time and place, and it’s her depiction of the juxtaposition of the glorious sun-drenched locations with the darkness of the conniving, murder and betrayal carried out by our extraordinarily creepy antihero Tom that truly sets this novel apart. (Oh, and the 1999 movie, with Matt Damon as Tom and Jude Law as Dickie Greenleaf, is excellent too.)

 

Pompeii by Robert Harris

The weather. The landscape. The opulent villas. The togas. Harris’ tautly accurate prose transports the reader to the heart of ancient Italy in the heat of late summer, with a tale of sleazy urban corruption, 79 A.D.-style, with a rigorously intelligent hydraulic engineer to guide us through it—all while trying to keep hold of both his integrity and his life. I defy any reader to finish this novel without a burning desire to immediately visit the ruins of Pompeii (though preferably without Vesuvius erupting at the time).

 

The Chalet by Catherine Cooper

Glamourous locales aren’t always warm: A luxury ski chalet in the snow-covered Alps also ticks the box (Champagne in front of the log fire, anyone?). Cooper’s descriptions of the beautiful, glacial landscape place the reader squarely inside a dual-timeline tale of twisted revenge spanning two decades.

 

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

The queen of crime and the original luxury train experience: It's a match made in exotically located thriller heaven that spans both hot and cold climes. The opening chapters are set in bustling Istanbul, before the action steams along to snow-covered Yugoslavia. With Poirot aboard, and the train itself providing the “locked room” setting, you know you are in for a treat.

 

Author photo © Nick James Photography.

How to Kill Your Best Friend author Lexie Elliott shares four thrillers set in gorgeous locations.

Mystery & SuspenseSuspenseMystery

The best mystery and suspense for your reading group

Feature by Lynn Green

Is your book club ready to try something different after another round of literary fiction? Tired of reading the same titles as every other book club in town? Branch out with one of these mystery and suspense picks for your next book club meeting. The books on our list were screened with these criteria in mind:

• Issues, characters and/or moral dilemmas worthy of group discussion
• Suspense paired with great writing
• Books that stand alone and don’t require knowledge of earlier entries in a series
• Recently (or soon-to-be) available in paperback

Here are our top 10 recommendations:

SiracusaSiracusa by Delia Ephron

Book clubs will find plenty of fodder for discussion in Ephron’s psychological thriller about two American couples whose Italian vacation dissolves into a swirl of acrimony and infidelity. Told in alternating viewpoints by the participants, Ephron’s finely paced tale exposes some raw truths about betrayal and jealousy. A reading group guide is available online.

 

Before the FallBefore the Fall by Noah Hawley

Creator of the FX television series “Fargo” and “Legion,“ Hawley won the 2017 Edgar Award for Best Novel for this riveting mystery about a plane crash off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard that claims the lives of nine well-to-do passengers. Only two aboard survive: struggling painter Scott Burroughs and the 4-year-old son of a wealthy media titan. A reading group guide is included in the paperback edition.

 

Underground AirlinesUnderground Airlines by Ben H. Winters

Not your typical thriller, Winters’ book tackles a deadly serious topic: America’s legacy of slavery and the ways in which it still affects our culture. Described by the author as “an alternate history that wasn’t alternate enough,” this fast-paced novel depicts a present-day U.S.A. where slavery is legal in four states in the South. Victor, a black bounty hunter who tracks down escaped slaves, is on the trail of an escapee known as Jackdaw, and his pursuit will take many dramatic twists and turns.

 

Not a SoundNot a Sound by Heather Gudenkauf

Amelia Winn, the protagonist of this compelling novel, has two characteristics that distinguish her from run-of-the-mill mystery characters: She’s a nurse, and she’s deaf. Struck by a hit-and-run driver, Amelia loses her hearing—and her marriage—as a result of the crash. Two years later, as she attempts to rebuild her life, she finds the body of a fellow nurse in the river near her remote cabin. Gudenkauf, who is hearing-impaired, blends a straightforward and illuminating portrait of Amelia’s disability into this riveting tale.

 

All Is Not ForgottenAll Is Not Forgotten by Wendy Walker

Optioned for film by Reese Witherspoon, Walker’s novel has an intriguing concept: Jenny Kramer, the teenage victim of a brutal rape, is given a controversial drug that erases all her memories of the assault. The reaction of Jenny’s parents to the crime, the treatment by her psychiatrist and the secrets that surface in her Connecticut hometown all offer rich areas for discussion by reading groups.

 

Blood Salt WaterBlood Salt Water by Denise Mina

Though this is the fifth book in the Detective Alex Morrow series, newcomers should have no problem diving into this watery mystery by the masterful Scottish crime writer. Already under police surveillance for possible money laundering, Roxanna Fuentecilla disappears from her Glasgow home and turns up dead in the waters of Loch Lomond. Morrow’s investigation will take her to the scenic seaside town of Helensburgh, which may harbor dark secrets beneath its quaint exterior. Mina’s sharp writing and finely drawn characters have won her numerous awards and an international following.

 

A Great ReckoningA Great Reckoning by Louise Penny

Though we don’t have the space to enumerate all the qualities that make Penny’s Armand Gamache mysteries worth reading, two stand at the top of our list: the powerful writing and rich setting in the charming Quèbec village of Three Pines. In this outing, which earned a spot on several 2016 best books of the year lists (including our own), Gamache investigates the murder of a sadistic professor at the police academy. Discussions questions are included in the paperback edition.

 

The Woman in Cabin 10The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware

Ware follows her hit debut, In a Dark, Dark Wood, with the gripping story of travel journalist Lo Blackstock, who thinks she’s lucky to snag a press pass for a luxury cruise from London to Norway. The idyllic cruise takes a frightening turn on the first night when Lo hears a scream from the next cabin and then a loud splash. There’s no sign of a crime, however, and ship security assures Lo that the cabin wasn’t occupied. Book club topic number one: Are Lo’s concerns overlooked because she’s a woman with a history of anxiety and panic attacks? More questions are available in an online reading group guide.

 

Behind Closed DoorsBehind Closed Doors by B.A. Paris

A handsome and successful English lawyer, Jack Angel shows admirable concern for domestic violence victims by representing battered women. But his personal life tells a different story: Jack’s treatment of his wife, Grace, is cruel and deeply disturbing. After a whirlwind courtship and marriage, Grace has become virtually a prisoner in their home, not allowed any unsupervised contact with the outside world. As Grace prepares for the arrival of her sister, Minnie, who has Down syndrome, she’s faced with a terrifying choice.

 

Redemption RoadRedemption Road by John Hart

Hart, a talented writer who won back-to-back Edgar Awards for Down River and The Lost Child, covers thought-provoking territory in his latest thriller, his first in five years. Two powerful stories are interwoven here, both involving police officers: Det. Elizabeth Bank is under investigation after fatally shooting two black teens who were raping a white girl. Meanwhile, former policeman Adrian Wall is released from prison after serving 13 years for a murder he didn’t commit. As you might expect from the book’s title, the nature of redemption is one of the topics that should generate group discussion.

Is your book club ready to try something different after another round of literary fiction? Branch out with one of these mystery and suspense picks for your next book club meeting.

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