Crime Thriller Books

The best crime thriller book reviews. “Crime thriller” is a catch-all term for thriller subgenres that feature a struggle for dominance between criminals and law enforcement, such as mafia thriller, police procedural, detective fiction, true crime, serial killer fiction and others.

The Picasso Job is the Book of the Year

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The Bottom Line: Voted Book of the Year in the 2025 BestThrillers.com Book Awards. Avanti Centrae, award-winning author of the VanOps series, returns with a standalone that fuses the moral grit of The Shawshank Redemption with the sophisticated intrigue of The Thomas Crown Affair. Like those classics, The Picasso Job is taut, visual and ready for the big screen. Dakota “No-flak Dak” Black once dreamed of joining the FBI. Instead, he’s serving time […]

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The Regression Strain is the Year’s Best Medical Thriller

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The Bottom Line: Voted the Year’s Best Medical Thriller in the 2025 BestThrillers.com Book Awards. Kevin Hwang, a widely published professor of internal medicine, delivers a standout work of medical suspense in The Regression Strain, this year’s Best Medical Thriller. The novel opens as Dr. Peter Palma joining the medical staff of a transatlantic cruise, expecting the usual mix of minor ailments and vacation mishaps. Instead, a

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GRQ is the Year’s Best Domestic Thriller

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The Bottom Line: Voted the Year’s Best Domestic Thriller in the 2025 BestThrillers.com Book Awards. GRQ (Get Rich Quick) begins in Los Angeles, where a mysterious financial advisor (who swears he’s not an unreliable narrator) begins by telling us about his client, Marlon. It seems that Marlon is an ideas man who purchased a home he couldn’t afford. As foreclosure notices slip through the mail slot, we

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Justice for Emerson is the Year’s Best Mystery Novel

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The Bottom Line: Voted the Year’s Best Mystery Novel in the 2025 BestThrillers.com Book Awards. Karen E. Osborne’s chilling new novel opens at the headquarters of a local not-for-profit organization 45 minutes North of New York City. If you’re the kind of reader who warns characters about the dangers of dark basements, prepare to get started in the very first chapter. Aria, the organization’s 50-year-old CEO,

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The Edge of Guilt is the Year’s Best Legal Thriller

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The Bottom Line: Voted the Year’s Best Legal Thriller in the 2025 BestThrillers.com Book Awards. Attorney Christopher Miraldi, drawing on more than four decades in civil law, delivers a taut, true-events–inspired story about a family seeking accountability after a teenager’s suicide. The Edge of Guilt combines procedural accuracy, emotional depth and a rare willingness to portray the legal community’s ethical failures with stark realism. Hidden motives, shifting

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Mind the Blinds, a Character-Driven Psychological Thriller by Becky Anyanwu

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The Bottom Line: A spellbinding, character-driven psychological thriller that will keep you questioning what is real and who to believe. Mind the Blinds follows Elyas Kamalu, a 17-year-old Nigerian student navigating the world with alexithymia, a condition that makes emotional interpretation feel like a foreign language. His struggle to understand both his own impulses and the intentions of others gives the story a uniquely charged internal tension.

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The Last One to Die, a Compelling New Domestic Thriller by Terri Greening

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The Bottom Line: An atmospheric, unnerving thriller about the secrets we bury to survive.  Set against the misty backdrop of a fictional lakeside town, The Last One to Die invites readers into a world where every calm surface hides something unspeakable below. At its center is Faron Chevalier, a recently widowed woman fleeing notoriety after the shocking death of her wealthy husband. Seeking solace, she retreats to the

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Full Circle, a Darkly Clever Murder Mystery by Stephen Kronwith, MD

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The Bottom Line: Darkly clever, fiercely human and utterly engrossing. Kronwith has created another original gem. Full Circle opens with an unforgettable prologue: a young policewoman witnesses a fatal hit-and-run, and her sharp observations and quick action lead to the conviction of the driver, a brilliant but unrepentant physicist named Liam Martin. Ten years later, the same officer, Detective Sergeant Jane Rieger-Franklin, has built an

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My Sister’s Daughter and Silent Echo, a Pair of Brilliant Domestic Thrillers by Liv Constantine

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The Bottom Line: A pair of brilliant domestic thrillers that deftly explores the intersection of greed, grief and maternal instinct. Highly recommended.  My Sister’s Daughter begins as photographer and married mother of two Ashley Bowers arrives at her deceased sister’s home to do the unthinkable – adopt her thirteen year old niece, Serena. The sisters’ estranged relationship makes the tragic circumstances especially awkward, as this is the

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Wings of Madness, a Hypnotic Serial Killer Thriller by R. John Dingle

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The Bottom Line: A hypnotic, moody and suspenseful serial killer thriller that pulls you into its darkness and refuses to let you get away. Wings of Madness opens in a damp stone cellar on the outskirts of Pawtucket Falls, Massachusetts, where Michelle Townsend wakes to the terrifying realization that she is being held captive. It soon gets worse, as her abductor evidently takes pleasure in forcing his victims to

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