Thriller Reviews

The best thriller book reviews, including crime, fantasy, historical fiction, horror, legal thrillers, medical, psychological thrillers, sci-fi and more.

To Hell with Johnny Manic, One of the Year’s Best Thrillers

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The Bottom Line: One of the year’s best thrillers. Part psychological suspense, part contemporary noir, Johnny Manic is wonderfully unreliable. Tom Gantry, a.k.a. Johnny Manis, a.k.a. Johnny Manic, is having an identity crisis of epidemic proportions. As Tom tells it, the gregarious, effortlessly cool Johnny Manis became legendary in the tech world for making a fortune off mobile video games, publishing a manifesto, then deleting […]

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White Oaks, an Ingeniously Dark Comic Thriller by Jill Hand

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The Bottom Line: A thriller about greed, gluttony and murder that is destined for the big screen. The promise of inheritance has divided families since the beginning of time, and from time to time has ended in murder. But novelist Jill Hand’s White Oaks has introduced an ingenious new twist on the time-old tale, as three siblings hoping to get a cut of their father’s

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The Disappeared, an Evocative Thriller by Sibel Hodge

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The Bottom Line: Lush and evocative. The perfect introduction to Sibel Hodge, one of the decade’s most dynamic literary talents. Set in the fictional West African country of Narumbe (you thought I was going to say Wakanda, didn’t you?), author Sibel Hodge delivers a taut thriller that could be a bonafide blockbuster. While Hodge commits the cardinal sin of calling her own book “gripping” (check the

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The New Holy Warriors, a Compelling Christian Thriller by Alice Sandoval

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The Bottom Line: A blend of non-fiction and fiction that works on many levels. Alice Sandoval’s The New Holy Warriors adds a potent new layer to the canon of post-9/11 political thriller literature. The primary story begins on September 13, 2001, as Dr. Rodrigo Bravo and his wife Sally, both Doctors Without Borders volunteers vanish in Mexico City. Fortunately, the Bravos have two highly educated

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Don’t Fear, My Darling is Impossible to Put Down

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The Bottom Line: A wonderfully claustrophobic murder mystery with a razor-sharp amateur sleuth. As long as there have been artists, there have been long-suffering personal assistants. But author Laura Stewart Schmidt, author of the deftly-written Until Proven Innocent, manages to deliver plenty of surprises in Don’t Fear, My Darling. In 1987, twenty-two-year-old Louisa Berry is desperate for a job, leading her to apply for a

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The Bedwetter: Journal of a Budding Psychopath, a Highly Recommended Thriller by Lee Allen Howard

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The Bottom Line: Original, audacious and raw. A truly dark treat for fans of the serial killer genre.  Russell Pisarek, the budding killer at the heart of The Bedwetter, is truly in a class of his own. Should Lee Allen Howard’s The Bedwetter be adapted for TV, the money line in the series trailer will surely be, “I could care less about skinning this cat. That’s kid

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The Persian Gamble, a Timely Military Thriller by Joel C. Rosenberg

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The Bottom Line: Exceptional pacing and a ripped-from-the-headlines thriller make this a top pick for military thriller fans. Brad Thor fans awaiting the next Scott Harvath thriller should check out The Persian Gamble, a believable novel about a fictional nuclear alliance formed by Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Shot out of the air in enemy territory in the middle of the greatest international crisis since the

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Desperate Paths, a First-Rate Crime Thriller by E.C. Diskin

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The Bottom Line: A masterfully crafted murder mystery that spins a small town’s dark secrets about family, faith and racial tensions into pure gold. Within a week of returning to her hometown to care for her father, struggling actress Brooklyn Anderson finds herself at the epicenter of two brutal crimes. Just hours before her arrival, an unknown assailant shoots A-list actor and Eden native Darius

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Damned (A Magnus Blackwell Novel #1), an Engrossing Gothic Paranormal Thriller by Alexandrea Weis with Lucas Astor

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The Bottom Line: Atmospheric and engrossing, Damned is a perfect read for fans of gothic paranormal fiction. The first entry in the Magnus Blackwell series takes place on an island off the coast of Maine, more than a century after the series prequel. Architect Will Bennett has purchased Altmover Manor as a surprise for his fiancée, Lexie. After getting over the initial shock regarding the

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The Madhouse, One of the Year’s Best Thrillers, by Lawrence Matrick M.D.

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The Bottom Line: A gritty tour-de-force medical thriller that showcases both the wonders and horror of 20th-century medicine. One of the year’s best thrillers. The Madhouse is the story of New Orleans native Alex Gage, who struggles out of poverty to become not only a respected psychiatrist, but also an aspiring reformist. The story begins in the deep south as Alex is born with a

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