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 Girl Next Door, One of the Year’s Best Thrillers

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The Bottom Line: One of the year’s best thrillers, The Girl Next Door had me at “donuts and high heels.” This cheeky, stylish and sophisticated novel is a must for anyone who loves unreliable narrators. Lisa Aurello’s The Girl Next Door begins with a murder, then rewinds a few weeks to eavesdrop on a conspiratorial café conversation between her likely killers. But in a clever […]

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The Moving Blade, One of the Year’s Best Thrillers, by Michael Pronko

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The Bottom Line: One of the year’s best thrillers. A string of grisly murders, high stakes geopolitics and the prose of a master craftsman elevate this crime thriller to rarefied air. What do a murdered American diplomat, a set of rare erotic Japanese wood block prints, and an agreement to keep American bases in Japan have in common? That’s the question facing investigators in The

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Zyklon, a Timely Political Thriller by John Hazen

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The Bottom Line: A brazen political thriller for our times. Timely, spellbinding and entirely plausible. The follow up to John Hazen’s brilliant novel, Fava (which made our list of The Best FBI Thrillers), centers on a reporter chasing both a serial killer and an incendiary presidential campaign. Told from the point of view of TV news anchor Francine Vega, Zyklon opens as Vega introduces the story

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The Death of Vultures, a Dark Psychological Thriller by Susan Wingate

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The Bottom Line: This grim mystery about guilt, loss and the dark allure of vigilante justice is unlike anything you’ve read this year. Set on an island in the rural Pacific Northwest, Susan Wingate’s The Death of Vultures tells the story of a heartbroken middle-aged woman, Meg Storm, and her struggle to come to grips with the deaths of her husband and daughter. Both died

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The Thin Blue Sliver, a Hardboiled Crime Thriller by Troy Adami

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The Bottom Line: A delicious helping of contemporary noir from an exciting newcomer to the genre. Fans of hardboiled crime fiction legends Dennis Lehane, Jo Nesbo and Raymond Chandler will love The Thin Blue Sliver. Troy Adami’s crime novel opens in a Fort Lauderdale bar circa 2005, as former Miami-Dade Police Department homicide detective John Moss takes up his usual place at the bar. An

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The Outsider, a New Paranormal Thriller by Stephen King

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The Bottom Line: Although not officially a part of King’s Mr. Mercedes series, there’s enough left of the original trilogy’s magic here for one more good story. King’s marriage of the police procedural and horror genres pays off once again. In The Outsider, a small town is rocked when a longtime little league baseball coach is publicly arrested for the rape and murder of a young

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Digital Velocity, a Steamy Crime Thriller by Reily Garrett

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The Bottom Line: A steamy, seductive police procedural about a cyber predator whose deviant mayhem originates in the dark web. Set in the fictional city of Callouston, Digital Velocity follows a pair of police detectives, Ethan and Larrick, as they follow an anonymous tip that points to a possible serial killer. As the book begins, the detectives enter a murder scene that quickly devolves into

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A Fan of Death and Shakespeare, a Psychological Thriller by Rick Lacey

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The Bottom Line: One of the decade’s most original and surreal psychological thrillers, Lacey has crafted an impossible-to-put-down murder tale while skewering corporate dysfunction and deftly exploring a rare twin psychopathy. Rick Lacey’s new thriller opens in 1994 – the same day as the O.J. Simpson murders – as BP employee John McCall discovers his boss’ body in his office. McCall calls Cleveland homicide detective

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Nemesis, a Winning Psychological Thriller by Julie Hodgson

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Bottom Line: A blistering psychological thriller that will have readers begging for a sequel. Buy it. When it comes to her clientele, psychologist Kathy Smith – who is also a gifted psychic – has become something of a specialist. Smith takes on murderers, rapists, pedophiles, thieves, violence, junkies and other “generally nasty people.” But she’s taking a year off from her practice to take on

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Bring Me Flowers, a Small Town Murder Mystery by D.K. Hood

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The Bottom Line:  Fans of small town murder mysteries may love this intense, under-the-radar gem. Told with the alluring, foreboding darkness of a Dean Koontz novel, this second installment in D.K. Hood’s Kane and Alton series is a perfect entry point for newcomers. Hidden deep in the forest, schoolgirl Felicity Parker is found carefully laid out on a rock with nothing but a freshly picked

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