The world of Colin Harrison’s new novel, Afterburn, is a world of dark extremes. Unrelentingly corrupt, its characters oscillate between cynicism and melancholy. Their violent acts are dispassionate; their passionate couplings verge on violence. The tangled plot begins with the capture and torture of fighter pilot Charlie Ravich by the Viet Cong in 1972. Charlie withstands starvation, beatings, and incoherence, only to be riddled with friendly fire just prior to his rescue. But he survives, and the narrative leaps ahead to 1999, where Charlie has become a successful international businessman. On a trip to Hong Kong, he witnesses a death that makes him a very wealthy man. But wealth only assuages Charlie’s physical and emotional pain. His wife seems to be slipping away to what may be Alzheimer’s, his only son died years before. So, when Charlie learns that his daughter is unable to bear a child, he takes steps to assure his own genetic immortality by advertising for a woman to bear his child. At the same time, a mathematical whiz named Christina Welles is freed unexpectedly from prison, where she has been serving a sentence for trafficking stolen goods. Christina suspects that her early release has been orchestrated by Tony Verducci, the mobster she has betrayed. Sure that Tony wants to exact some form of revenge, Christina lays low in Manhattan, assuming the name of another woman. Her old boyfriend, Rick Bocca, is warned by the cops that Christina is out of prison and the target of Tony’s vendetta. Still in love with her, and feeling guilty for her incarceration, he goes in search of her, not realizing that his hunt is endangering Christina as well as himself.

When Christina hooks up with Charlie Ravich in the bar of the Pierre, Charlie is fascinated by this clever, attractive woman. They become lovers, and Charlie, knowing nothing of her past, speculates that she might be the ideal woman to bear his child. But once his and Christina’s worlds collide, Charlie quickly becomes the unwitting target of Tony’s pitiless wrath. With ingenious plot turns reminiscent of Jim Thompson’s The Grifters, the truth is slowly revealed about Christina’s inventive deception of Tony. With its muscular prose and graphic depictions of a nefarious world, Afterburn is clearly not a book for faint-hearted readers. But for those who can steer through the raging sex and violence, Colin Harrison will reward them with a compelling story fueled by lots of surprises, including two kickers at the end. ¦ Robert Weibezahl is the co-author of A Taste of Murder (Dell).

I picked up my review copy of Void Moon expecting another installment in the fine police procedural novels featuring world-weary detective Harry Bosch. Instead, I found that author Michael Connelly has returned with a hero working on the other side of the law a scam artist extraordinaire.

Cassie Black has been clean for some time now; she sells Porsches in a trendy Los Angeles dealership, a far cry from her previous profession as a hotel thief. In her previous incarnation, Cassie worked Vegas, in particular the hotels along Las Vegas Boulevard, the Strip. It had been an exciting and lucrative profession until the inevitable intrusion of the law . . . Murphy’s Law. In the space of a few minutes, the perfect heist went south in a big way, culminating in the death of her partner and Cassie’s subsequent arrest.

Now, nearly six years later, Cassie is living the straight life, albeit somewhat reluctantly. She shows up on time for her parole appointments, and she keeps her nose clean. She also monitors the progress of a five-year-old girl the daughter she gave up for adoption while in jail. One afternoon, on a routine reconnaissance mission to catch a glimpse of her daughter at play, Cassie is brought up short by the presence of a For Sale sign on the front lawn of the hillside bungalow where the girl lives. A little judicious probing reveals that the occupants will soon be moving to Paris for an indefinite stay. Fear grips Cassie as she realizes that she may never see her daughter again; she hasn’t the resources to go to Paris, nor is she allowed by condition of her parole to leave the county, let alone the country. Cassie needs a big score, and she needs it fast. She needs enough cash to get a pair of fake passports, a couple of plane tickets, and seed money to start a new life. Reluctantly, she places the call that will close the chapter on the straight life once and for all.

ÊVoid Moon is a terrific change of pace for Connelly’s readers, even those who are anxiously awaiting the next Harry Bosch novel.

I picked up my review copy of Void Moon expecting another installment in the fine police procedural novels featuring world-weary detective Harry Bosch. Instead, I found that author Michael Connelly has returned with a hero working on the other side of the law a scam artist extraordinaire.

Cassie Black has been clean for some time now; she sells Porsches in a trendy Los Angeles dealership, a far cry from her previous profession as a hotel thief. In her previous incarnation, Cassie worked Vegas, in particular the hotels along Las Vegas Boulevard, the Strip. It had been an exciting and lucrative profession until the inevitable intrusion of the law . . . Murphy’s Law. In the space of a few minutes, the perfect heist went south in a big way, culminating in the death of her partner and Cassie’s subsequent arrest.

Now, nearly six years later, Cassie is living the straight life, albeit somewhat reluctantly. She shows up on time for her parole appointments, and she keeps her nose clean. She also monitors the progress of a five-year-old girl the daughter she gave up for adoption while in jail. One afternoon, on a routine reconnaissance mission to catch a glimpse of her daughter at play, Cassie is brought up short by the presence of a For Sale sign on the front lawn of the hillside bungalow where the girl lives. A little judicious probing reveals that the occupants will soon be moving to Paris for an indefinite stay. Fear grips Cassie as she realizes that she may never see her daughter again; she hasn’t the resources to go to Paris, nor is she allowed by condition of her parole to leave the county, let alone the country. Cassie needs a big score, and she needs it fast. She needs enough cash to get a pair of fake passports, a couple of plane tickets, and seed money to start a new life. Reluctantly, she places the call that will close the chapter on the straight life once and for all.

ÊVoid Moon is a terrific change of pace for Connelly’s readers, even those who are anxiously awaiting the next Harry Bosch novel.

Best-selling author Charles Wilson has taken the axiom that knowledge is power to its ultimate limit in his tenth thriller and hardcover debut, Game Plan, in which he builds on research exploring the role of electrical energy in powering the human brain. Recent studies have demonstrated that minute electrical charges can stimulate the brain’s distinction between light and dark in the absence of optical nerves. The military has given such research a high priority because of its potential for improving human performance on the battlefield. In Game Plan, a defense research project that involves enhancing human intelligence demands the greatest secrecy; huge amounts of data are inscribed on microchips which are then implanted in test subjects’ brains to expand their knowledge and memory, and enhance their body strength and coordination. Subjects are recruited from the military’s prison population with the promise of eventual parole. Five hardened criminals are able to apply their newly gained intelligence to break out of the research facility, destroy all the project’s records, and assume new identities. The five succeed not only in becoming wealthy and influential, but also in continuing the research project. Their plans take a sudden turn, however, and a chain of events is set off, ending in the death of a pathologist. Enter Dr. Spence Stevens, the protege of the murdered pathologist. When he decides to investigate the homicide of his mentor, worlds collide and knowledge becomes power.

Like each of his earlier techno-thrillers, Wilson’s Game Plan reaches over the horizon just far enough to create real plausibility and telegraphs another potential path for today’s research. Wilson has dealt his readers another intriguing card; let’s hope there are many more in his deck.

John Messer once served in the Pentagon.

After eight years as an Atlanta Falcon, Tim Green knows his football. Having earned a law degree, he knows his way around that end of the business, too. He’s witnessed criminal behavior in the NFL and, as a Fox Sports commentator, he’s still plugged into the heart and soul of the game. Now Green author of The Dark Side of the Game brings his guns to bear on several of the NFL’s unspoken bugaboos race, religion, and righteous rage. The result is an uneven but highly entertaining novel which dares to pluck aside the locker room curtain. Less a thriller than a morality play, Double Reverse follows Clark Cromwell, a born-again player on the LA expansion team Juggernauts (slyly styled after the Cowboys), as he falls in love with Annie, seemingly the girl of his dreams. Meanwhile dealing with a substantially reduced post-injury contract, he is shocked when Annie turns out quite different than expected. Enter Trane Jones and his flamboyant, videocamera-wielding agent Conrad Dobbins. Jones is the bad boy of the NFL, signed to a bloated contract with money shaved from Clark’s renegotiated salary. Dobbins is behind a huge but shady stock manipulation deal with the piratical CEO of Zeus Shoes. The beautiful lawyer/agent Madison McCall (previously in Green’s Outlaws) helps Clark with his contract, but ends up owing the Juggernauts’ owner a favor a favor which comes due when Trane Jones’s new girlfriend is murdered with his golf club. Strangely, the victim is Annie, Clark’s old girlfriend. The case takes on O.

J. Simpson overtones, and Madison soon finds suspicion shifting along with motive. That you might be able to figure out the identity of the culprit isn’t the point the point is that peek behind the curtain. While locker room dialogue often degenerates into familiar sports cliches, it’s clear Green knows his stuff. By dealing specifically with race and the new religious trend, Green explores vital issues, but he avoids lobbing the hardballs. Still, the most fun is to be had trying to spot the real names behind some of the characters. Green is at his best when describing the bone-crunching, spine-rattling full contact of the NFL, in which players ignore pain that would cripple normal people. He wears his opinion of the morality factor in professional football openly on his sleeve, flavoring this non-traditional thriller with painful realism.

William D. Gagliani is the author of Icewall in Robert Bloch’s Psycho and Other Stories.

Focusing on four main characters two Nazi and two Russian snipers David L. Robbins takes us into the opposing trenches of embattled Stalingrad, where The thought of being hunted through a telescopic sight, of being marked unknowingly with invisible black crosshairs and then selected for a bullet in the brain and instant death, was a chilling, ugly prospect. Through vivid, incisive narration and compelling interior monologues, we live with each of these two pairs of killers as they wait for their foe to make the fatal error.

Stalingrad’s five months of horror begin on August 23, 1942, as over a million German forces advance and retreat, parry and thrust, with the 60 thousand Red Army troops within the city. In trenches and from the ruins of rat-infested buildings, the Russians’ skilled assassin, Army Chief Master Sergeant Vasily Zaitsev and his assistant Tania Chernova, kill off a daily toll of enemy victims, including many a careless German officer. Impressed by Zaitsev’s body count of Nazis, Red Army Colonel Nikolai Batyuk orders Zaitsev to recruit and train carefully selected sharpshooters for a sniper school; the members are soon making entries in their sniper journals. The Germans, aware of Zaitsev’s phenomenal marksmanship through an article written for homefront consumption, quickly import their own expert sniper, SS Colonel Heinz Throvald, a suave, sophisticated opera-loving Berliner. His specific task? To kill Zaitsev! Of the four main characters, only Corporal Nikki Mond is completely fictional ( a composite German soldier, Robbins notes in his introduction); Zaitsev, Thorvald, and Tania Chernova were actual combatants at Stalingrad. Each one, as Tania and Zaitsev fall in love, or as Nikki soliloquizes, becomes known to us in often painful depth. On the bloody canvas that was Stalingrad, we live with the characters. And despite the grim horror of their deadly work, readers will care about and remember them.

Dennis J. Hannan lives in Wappingers Falls, New York.

A single mother trying to raise a teenage son; a past affair she cannot forget; a resolute belief in justice despite the death of her husband and the threats issued by his killer. These are the elements that have defined Lake Tahoe lawyer Nina Reilly’s life in the earlier bestselling legal thrillers written by sisters Pamela and Mary O’Shaughnessy under their common pen name, Perri O’Shaughnessy. These terms also dominate their latest work, Move to Strike, in which Reilly struggles to prove the innocence of a 16-year-old girl accused of murdering her wealthy uncle, a prominent Lake Tahoe plastic surgeon.

Reilly is drawn into the case at the urging of her son, only to learn that the case is considered a slam dunk by a district attorney who easily establishes her client’s means, motive, and opportunity. Nina finds herself trying to picture the crime based on the widely divergent accounts offered by an array of suspects. Her adolescent client does not help with a series of misguided attempts to mislead the police and withhold vital information.

Nina turns to a former lover and private detective, Paul Van Wagoner, to help piece together the conflicting details surrounding the sensational case. Like Nina, Paul brings his own problems: his agency is about to fold; he never fully recovered from his earlier affair with Nina, and he carries a deadly secret that could end their relationship forever. There is no shortage of suspects: the mother of a teenage patient who died on the surgeon’s operating table and has sworn vengeance; a local burglar observed at the scene; a bearded foreigner seen arguing with the victim shortly before the murder; Nina’s client, a juvenile delinquent who was seen at the crime scene and acknowledges an intent to rob the victim; and, finally, the client’s mother, a ditsy, aspiring actress whose car was spotted at the scene of the crime.

O’Shaughnessy’s solution to this vexing puzzle comes as a sudden and violent surprise proving that the Irish sisters have not lost their touch for providing suspenseful, entertaining reading.

John Messer writes from Ludington, Michigan.

Edward Rollins is worth something in the neighborhood of $2 million dollars. He works at an investment firm in Boston in a dead end job, and he has no aspirations to move higher. He was once a reporter but he got burned out when he took a certain story too far. He is also a voyeur. Following people and watching their mundane lives is the one thing he enjoys no one in particular, just a random car here or there. He details each “pursuit” on a tape recorder, and through this hobby, he comes alive.

One night he follows an Audi chosen for no particular reason. As he tails the car north out of Boston, it proceeds as a normal pursuit for Rollins. However, following a number of quick, unsignaled turns, the Audi pulls into a quiet residential neighborhood and parks in front of an unassuming house. The driver quickly heads to the door, unlocks it, and slips inside. Rollins is perplexed and a little unnerved though, when no lights are turned on. Fearing that he was spotted and wanting to avoid confrontation, Rollins heads off into the night.

That experience rattles and unnerves him to the point that he breaks one of his own rules; he shares some personal information with someone. That lucky person is a younger co-worker named Marj. She is eager to learn more and actively pumps Rollins for further details. And that’s when the troubles begin.

The Dark House is a tense and intriguing debut novel from author John Sedgwick. He has created a complex and troubled hero in Edward Rollins, and a spunky, if somewhat less fleshed out, heroine in Marj. Both characters behave in a realistic fashion. There are no unbelievable heroics, no Einsteinian leaps of logic, simply basic human reaction. Granted, Rollins has his problems, and his family is certainly dysfunctional, but the characters are the heart of this story, and they do not disappoint.

Sedgwick has a way with words as well. He has created a multi-layered mystery, which does not immediately surrender its secrets.

While readers may begin to intuit the direction the mystery is heading, Sedgwick is able to throw them off the trail with unexplained twists. Each time the plot appears to be sorting itself out another surprise is added, keeping his reader in suspense until the very end.

Wes Breazeale is a freelance writer living in the Pacific Northwest. The fact that he grew up in an unassuming house north of Boston is purely coincidence. Really.

Nine hundred years ago Hasan-I-Sabah founded the Assassins, the most effective killing machine in the world. Their cult of political murder created a terrorist environment throughout the Middle East.

In this realistic novel by Gerald Seymour, their progeny continue that tradition. Now the murder motive is vengeance.

Frank Perry is living a quiet, hidden life on the shore of Suffolk. A decade ago Perry was known by a different name and was caught by the British government selling machinery to Iran that would enable the Iranians to create chemical and biological weapons. Perry decided to help the British spy agency and became an information courier. At the end of the project he is given a new name and a new life. Now the Anvil is the assassin assigned by the Islamic movement to terminate Frank Perry.

When an FBI agent in Saudi Arabia learns of the mission and warns British authorities, they attempt to rescue Frank Perry by offering him yet another relocation. Perry refuses. He is tired of running and determined to stay. The tension builds as the assassin travels by ship from Iran to England and makes his way to Suffolk.

This is High Noon with Frank Perry in the Gary Cooper role. Seymour’s elegant and nuanced details of espionage activities lend realism as the novel moves toward its stunning climax.

Larry Woods is an attorney in Nashville.

Toronto’s leading radio host Kevin Brace greets the newspaper deliveryman at the front door of his luxury condo, covered in blood, a confession on his lips.  His beautiful common-law wife lies dead in the bathtub. The crime appears to be solved before the first chapter is over, but the way the case unfolds makes Old City Hall, by newcomer Robert Rotenberg, an exciting addition to the legal thriller genre.  

Like Scott Turow and John Grisham, Rotenberg is a criminal lawyer turned writer with almost 20 years of legal practice behind him. Old City Hall is a tightly plotted thriller, but what lifts this book to the next level is the engaging cast of characters, from the legal workers right down to the Iranian doorman at Brace’s condo. And Rotenberg writes with relish of the neighborhoods, architecture, and multicultural population of his beloved hometown of Toronto. He is sure to have some avid fans by the close of this striking debut—which luckily contains signs of a sequel in the works.

This review originally appeared with the hardcover edition.

Pilot Airie may be losing his mind. Twenty years ago, Pilot’s sister, Fiona, disappeared without a trace. Nothing has been the same since. The disappearance caused his family to unravel; his father left, his brother grew distant, and his mother now sees ghosts. Pilot has now taken it upon himself to pull it all together again, assuming that he doesn’t unravel first.

Raveling is a genuinely gripping and eloquent debut novel by Peter Moore Smith. This novel has the basic structure of a mystery an unsolved disappearance, puzzled and puzzling characters, suspicions on all sides but it is more a psychological exploration than a straight mystery. Smith doesn’t focus on the details of the disappearance. This is not a book with detailed passages on forensics or lab reports. His focus is on the characters and their interactions.

The story begins as Pilot returns home from California, where his brother found him living on a beach. Because his mother’s vision is failing, Pilot has agreed to live at home to help her. All is going well until he begins to hear voices: the electricity in light bulbs talks to him, the woods behind the house beckon to him.

Eventually Pilot is hospitalized. There, his counselor Katherine takes an interest in his case. As she probes deeper into his past, trying to find a trigger for his psychotic episode, she becomes fascinated with the stories of his lost sister. What could have caused her disappearance? Who could have taken her without leaving a single trace? As she digs deeper into Pilot’s memories, things really start to get interesting.

Raveling is an unusual mystery. It starts slowly, as if the reader has stepped into a story already in progress. But the deeper into the book readers get, the deeper the mystery becomes, and the greater the urge to read on. Unlike many mysteries, in which the unfolding of the story provides a greater understanding, Raveling offers little in the way of clues. This is primarily due to the fact that the protagonist, Pilot, may not be entirely sane.

Yet Pilot’s struggle with his sanity is one of the most intriguing and appealing aspects of the book. The entire story is told from his point of view, that of a medicated schizophrenic. If he himself cannot be certain of the facts, cannot be sure of his own perceptions, how can the reader? There are times when the reader must ponder the question, Is this a clue or a delusion? This uncertainty adds immensely to the pleasure of reading this book. Smith’s descriptions of Pilot’s deluded worldview are beautifully written and captivating, providing insight into his state of mind.

If you enjoy a literary mystery, or enjoy discovering a talented new writer, Raveling is the book for you.

Wes Breazeale is a writer in the Pacific Northwest.

To police investigators, the significance of a criminal’s first victim is clear: The first victim is generally the one that is handled carelessly. It’s only later the criminal mind thinks to start making better preparations, thinks to plan more carefully. When the crime being investigated involves the death and possible murder of illegal immigrants, that sloppy criminal mentality may be the only thing working in Lou Boldt’s favor.

Readers of Ridley Pearson’s previous thrillers will be familiar with the adventures of Boldt, John LaMoia, Daphne Matthews, and others associated with the Seattle Police Department. Pearson, the winner of the first Raymond Chandler Fulbright fellowship at Oxford University, does not let down the pace in this intricately plotted suspense thriller that teams up Boldt with an uncomfortable mix of television news reporters and Immigration and Naturalization Service officers all with different agendas.

Pearson’s trademark cameo characters add spice and verisimilitude to the story line: Chinese matriarch Mama Lu who, in the world of jazz, is a ballad, not bebop ; Dr. Virginia Ammond, the Seattle Aquarium’s expert on the scales of the Snake River Coho; Doc Dixon, the medical examiner who, digging in a grave for evidence, complains, It’s not in the job description! Once again, Pearson combines violent action with careful attention to detail and fascinating glimpses of cutting-edge forensic science to craft a story that moves from the dark territory of dockside gangs and casual violence to the domain of corruption in high places and the murderous significance of the first victim. Robert C. Jones is a reviewer in Warrensburg, Missouri.