David and Elizabeth Beck, both 25 years old and married for less than a year, are celebrating the anniversary of their first kiss at a secluded lake when Elizabeth is abducted and later murdered.
Although the killer is found and prosecuted, David never gets over the tragic incident.
On the eighth anniversary of Elizabeth’s death, two long-dead bodies are unearthed at the same lake where the kidnapping occurred.
In addition, David receives a shocking email from an unidentified source that mentions a phrase only David and Elizabeth should know.
The It Girl (2022) would seem to be yet another psychological thriller.
But it’s better than most.
A respectable murder mystery that will keep you guessing.
It is too long. Too slow.
And the protagonist is constantly annoying. I regret spending so many hours with that woman.
April Clarke-Cliveden was the first person Hannah Jones met at Oxford.
Vivacious, bright, occasionally vicious, and the ultimate It girl, she quickly pulled Hannah into her dazzling orbit. Together, they developed a group of devoted and inseparable friends—Will, Hugh, Ryan, and Emily—during their first term.
By the end of the year, April was dead.
Now, a decade later, Hannah and Will are expecting their first child, and the man convicted of killing April, former Oxford porter John Neville, has died in prison.
Relieved to have finally put the past behind her, Hannah’s world is rocked when a young journalist comes knocking and presents new evidence that Neville may have been innocent.
As Hannah reconnects with old friends and delves deeper into the mystery of April’s death, she realizes that the friends she thought she knew all have something to hide…including a murder.
A great 2024 book. Murder mystery / psychological thriller.
Set during Covid, it’s very up-to-date in terms of social media.
In this twisty thriller and “compulsive page-turner” (Harlan Coben) … a woman thinks she’s waking up to a romantic vacation—only to find a body in her rental home and her boyfriend gone.
It was supposed to be a romantic getaway weekend in New York City. Breanna’s new boyfriend, Ty, took care of everything—the train tickets, the dinner reservations, the rented four-story luxury rowhouse in Jersey City with a beautiful view of the Manhattan skyline.
But when Bree comes downstairs their final morning, Ty is nowhere to be found and there’s a stranger dead in the foyer—the missing woman the entire Internet has become obsessed with: Janelle Beckett.
Soon, both the police and an army of Internet sleuths are asking questions Bree doesn’t know how to answer.
Desperate to find Ty and to keep her own secrets buried, Bree realizes there’s only one person she can turn to: her ex-best friend, a lawyer with whom she shares a very complicated past.
Fierce, smart, and thrilling to the end, Missing White Woman not only explores “Missing White Woman” syndrome and traveling while Black, but deftly inverts the hallmarks of the domestic suspense genre to ask: How well can we truly know the people we love? And what happens to these stories when seen through the eyes of a Black woman?
The murder of a dinosaur “treasure hunter” in New Mexico.
It’s a bit confusing with too many threads:
A moon rock missing for thirty years.
A scientist with ambition enough to kill.
A monk who will redeem the world.
A dark agency with a deadly mission.
The greatest scientific discovery of all time.
On the upside, Douglas Preston is an expert in palaeontology, working as a writer at the American Museum of Natural History for many years. A lot of his books are grounded in actual science.
Ruth has a new job, home, and partner, and she is no longer North Norfolk police’s resident forensic archaeologist.
That is, until convicted murderer Ivor March offers to make DCI Nelson a deal.
Nelson was always sure that March killed more women than he was charged with. Now March confirms this and offers to show Nelson where the other bodies are buried—but only if Ruth will do the digging.
Curious, but wary, Ruth agrees.
March tells Ruth that he killed four more women and that their bodies are buried near a village bordering the fens, said to be haunted by the Lantern Men, mysterious figures holding lights that lure travelers to their deaths.
Is Ivor March himself a lantern man, luring Ruth back to Norfolk?
What is his plan, and why is she so crucial to it?
This is the first for me — and probably the last. The story telling was TOO SLOW.
An un-Thriller.
Phantom Orbit is his 2024 book. And it is very much up-to-date in terms of technology. The detail, relevancy, and realism are impressive.
Threats to the American GPS system and satellites, especially from Russia and China, is the main thread.
It follows Ivan Volkov, a Russian student in Beijing …
The years pass, and they are not kind to Volkov.
After the loss of his son, a prosecutor who’d been too tough on corruption, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Volkov makes the fraught decision to contact the CIA.
He writes: Satellites are your enemies, especially your own…Hidden codes can make time stop and turn north into south…If you are smart, you will find me.
Any other writer would have broken it up into 3 books.
It’s LONG.
BEST consider it 3 books.
… an epic espionage thriller filled with wrath and retribution, faith and forgiveness, sacrifice, love and loss, all in the name of an almighty being.
It’s a mind-bending story of one man’s evolution from spy to savior when the world descends into “utter darkness.”
Hayes has constructed the plot as a quest narrative, taking Kane to the ends of the earth and back to save humanity from a person who has earned his place in the “pantheon of terrorism.” …
In the novel, Hayes takes us on a deep dive into the workings of the CIA and the National Security Agency when Kane prepares for each stage of his journey. The settings are immersive and the historical details remarkable.
From Afghanistan to Pakistan, from D.C. to Russia’s deep state and so many places in between, each landscape where Kane journeys is described in rich geographic detail with compelling backstories that contextualize each region’s cultures and values. …
At close to 800 pages, this is a really big book with really big themes and chapter after chapter of blockbuster action (and graphic violence), often ending in foreshadowing that cranks up the suspense.
The first three-fourths of “Year” definitely is the book many readers of Hayes’ first novel, “I Am Pilgrim” (another allusion to sacred texts), have waited 10 years to read. When the final part of the novel shifts into sci-fi territory, the sudden syncopation in the plot lines may throw some readers off. It’s bonkers and breathtaking.
Rick McCharles 