Publisher: PGW
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 11/04/2013
ISBN-13: 9780802126078
ISBN-10: 0802126073

Noir Fiction. As with all books in Ken Bruen's Jack Taylor series, you shouldn't expect a happy ending to this dark, fatalistic noir novel. The 10th in the series, Purgatory has the former cop ignoring a serial killer (to his peril) and knocking heads with a mogul who's been buying up Galway real estate. Precariously sober and busy with a new girlfriend, Taylor doesn't want to deal with the serial killer -- a vigilante who's invited him to play along -- until it's almost too late. If you're unfamiliar with the series but are looking for some dark Irish crime fiction, you can start with the first, The Guards, or check out the BBC television series Jack. Those already fond of Taylor should expect some surprises.

Publisher: Grand Central
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 10/08/2013
ISBN-13: 9781455508648
ISBN-10: 1455508640

Legal Thriller. There are a couple different strands in this character-driven story. In one, a defense attorney learns a dangerous secret about his employer, who isn't about to lose a profitable career because someone else wants to do the right thing. In another, the incredibly wealthy former CEO of a company that went belly-up, destroying the lives (and pensions) of countless workers, has been killed. Connecting the two is Tom Wylie, an attorney dying of cancer, who wants his son (strand A) to defend the man accused of killing one of the most hated corporate criminals in the U.S. (strand B). Plenty of character development plus a few twists and turns keep the pages flying.

Publisher: Little Brown
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 10/22/2013
ISBN-13: 9780316198837
ISBN-10: 0316198838

Historical Thriller. Author Dan Simmons is one of those writers who writes so many different kinds of books that you really need to hear a lot about a new one before categorizing it. The Abominable is no different, mixing elements of horror, espionage, and historical fiction. It takes place in 1925, when four climbers attempt to recover the body of missing adventurer Lord Bromley in the wake of his disappearance (and George Mallory's purported death) atop Everest the year before. To say more might give away too much, but rest assured that the chill you'll feel is as much due to the machinations of the plot as it is to the incredibly detailed world of snow and ice-bound exploration that Simmons describes.

Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 10/22/2013
ISBN-13: 9781250023612
ISBN-10: 1250023610

Suspense Fiction. An oil tanker in the South China Sea has just been boarded and several people on board kidnapped. The ransom request? The release of all political prisoners in the U.S., China, and India -- plus $500 million from each country. The worst part is that the kidnapped parties are Secretary of State Agnes Lawton and her Indian and Chinese counterparts, who'd been meeting on a secret project. Fulfilling the request is not really an option, but neither is leaving the hostages to die...so former CIA operative Robin Monarch is called in to effect a rescue. This 2nd in the series "fits perfectly into the Ludlum or Vince Flynn mode" (Booklist) and will appeal to anyone looking for nonstop action and a high-octane premise.

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Bestselling novelist Gillian Flynn hit a nerve with the mesmerizing, intense, near-claustrophobic Gone Girl, which featured a marriage gone terribly, horribly awry, shifting perspectives, devilish plot twists, and characters that managed to be realistic, dark and creepy, and unreliable by turns. It's already under development for the big screen (as is her earlier novel Dark Places), but if you want to read something similar, try one of the books mentioned below.

Publisher: Minotaur Books
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 04/09/2013
ISBN-13: 9781250023636
ISBN-10: 1250023637

Psychological Suspense. As in Gone Girl, The Perfect Ghost contains plentiful plot twists and unreliable characters motivated by love, rivalry, and revenge. The story follows Em Moore, half of an autobiography-ghostwriting team, after the death of her co-author (and lover). He'd handled the parts of the job that required speaking to people, but she's determined to finish the biography of film director Garrett Malcolm; slowly but surely she becomes spellbound by his charismatic personality, despite foreboding signs of dark family secrets and professional troubles. Parallels to Hamlet (currently in production on Malcolm's estate) add to an atmosphere where nothing is as it seems.

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Publisher: Viking/Pamela Dorman Books
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 02/21/2013
ISBN-13: 9780670026722
ISBN-10: 0670026727

Psychological Suspense. Both Gone Girl and The Burning Air focus on terrifically creepy characters whose twisted emotions and far-reaching plans provide plenty of taut and disturbing thrills. In The Burning Air, old wounds and long-buried family secrets come crashing down on the seemingly untouchable MacBride clan not long after matriarch Lydia MacBride dies. Connecting everything is a mysterious confession in Lydia's extensive diaries and an outsider bent on exacting terrible revenge on the MacBrides. Shifts in perspectives -- and in time -- as well as the disappearance of a baby lend an increasingly urgent air to this third novel by a British author who's been compared to Sophie Hannah, Ruth Rendell, and Morag Joss.

Publisher: Hogarth
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 02/12/2013
ISBN-13: 9780770437855
ISBN-10: 0770437850

Psychological Suspense. Over the course of an evening at a fashionable Amsterdam restaurant, two couples move from small talk during the appetizer to weightier issues as the meal continues. Brought together by their sons -- who have done something terrible -- we learn more about what ties the families together, and what seems to be a skewering of upper-class values turns into something far more serious. On the face of it, The Dinner may not seem to have much in common with Gone Girl. However, both successfully mix literary prose with taut suspense and dark humor, and feature unlikeable, unreliable narrators who slowly reveal details of the crimes that have torn apart their families.

Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 06/22/2010
ISBN-13: 9780307270702
ISBN-10: 030727070X

Psychological Suspense. It's another tale of a terrible marriage -- or three. Having imagined his beloved wife's death in many ways (you name it, he probably thought of it), video game designer David is eventually charged with killing her after she dies from anaphylactic shock (she's allergic to peanuts). But the New York investigators dealing with David have their own experiences with marital problems and murder. A "Möbius strip of a novel" (Kirkus Reviews), Mr. Peanut also features a quite-possibly-unreliable narrator, but its central theme focuses on the ways that marriages fail.

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Publisher: Harper
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 06/14/2011
ISBN-13: 9780062060556
ISBN-10: 0062060554

Psychological Suspense. An accident in her 20s severely damaged her memory, so although Christine Lucas is now 47, she doesn't recall anything that has happened since the accident. Each morning, her husband has to tell her who she is, and who he is. But each morning after he leaves for work, she receives a phone call and is prompted by a doctor to retrieve her secret journal. There, she discovers increasingly frightening inconsistencies in the stories that her husband tells her -- and also in what the doctor says. With a story that is both "complicated and compellingly hypnotic" (Kirkus Reviews), Before I Go to Sleep is, like Gone Girl, a relentlessly suspenseful novel featuring a fractured narrative, a complicated plot, and uneasy discrepancies between what appears to be happening and what is really going on.

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