Home » Posts tagged "thriller fiction" (Page 8)

Book Review: Nine Elms (Kate Marshall Book 1) by Robert Bryndza

Nine Elms by Robert Bryndza

Thomas & Mercer, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-542005-68-5

Availability: Hardcover,  paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook, audio CD

 

When it comes to reading choices, there are a LOT of crime thrillers featuring a female detective as the lead available, and many of them get turned into a series of books.  For a book to stand out from the competition, the story and writing has to be very good.  Robert Bryndza’s new book Nine Elms meets both of the criteria.  Excitement, good story development, solid characters, unexpected plot twists… all the elements are there.  It won’t be any surprise to see heroine Kate Marshall return for another go-around in a second book, and continue what looks to be a the start of yet another enjoyable series.

The book starts fifteen years prior, with a 26 page lead-in to the main story.  Kate is a detective, on the trail of a killer known as the Nine Elms Cannibal (although he doesn’t eat his victims, he simply takes a few bites out of each of them).  The author takes a nice swing at the media, when it’s revealed that despite the lack of actual cannibalism, the media hung the nickname on the killer in their never-ending quest for sensationalism.    Kate catches the killer and becomes a hero, but she quickly becomes the goat due to her relationship with the killer, and she resigns from the police force.

Jump ahead 15 years: Kate is a professor of criminology at a local college.  She receives a letter out of the blue from a family who found new evidence in the case of their daughter’s murder, which happened 20 years ago.  They want to hire her to look into it, since the police aren’t interested.  Kate and her academic assistant, Tristan, reluctantly agree.  Another string of grisly murders starts at the same time, and Kate sees similarities between the Nine Elms Cannibal killings, the new ones, and the cold case of the daughter.  Kate and Tristan are slowly but surely drawn into the fray.  It’s a race to track down the new killer, and find out how all three cases tie together.

Author Bryndza writes with a sure hand, like the seasoned literary veteran of detective writing he is.  No wasted words, no overdevelopment, and no slow parts: every chapter guns along at a fast clip and rolls right into the next chapter, guaranteed to keep you turning pages.  Of course, half the fun of these books is trying to guess the killer’s identity, and Bryndza does a good job keeping it hidden until close to the end.  It’s usually done one of two ways in crime thrillers: the killer was introduced as someone living behind a mask in the beginning, or he doesn’t make an actual appearance until partway through.  The author chooses the correct one here for maximum effect.  It helps that the story has three threads to work off of, as the original Nine Elms killer still does play a significant role throughout the book, and an important part in the climax.  For readers that always need the “why?” question answered as to the killer’s motives, Bryndza does provide enough explanation for both killers.  It’s not overly done, just enough to make sense and keep the story rolling.   His characters are also nicely done in shades of gray: they are not just one-dimensional, especially Kate.  She’s not perfect, and has her weaknesses like everyone else.

As Dabney Coleman famously said to Henry Fonda in On Golden Pond, “what’s the bottom line here…?” The bottom line for Nine Elms is, if you like crime thrillers, you don’t want to miss this one.  It isn’t quite up to the gold standard that Graham Masterton set for detective novels with his Katie Maguire series, but it’s a strong contender for the silver.  Recommended.

 

Contains: violence, profanity, mild gore

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

Posted on January 7, 2020 by , Reply

Book Review: How Quickly She Disappears by Raymond Fleishmann

How Quickly She Disappears by Raymond Fleishmann

Berkeley, 2019

ISBN-13: 978-1984805171

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition, audiobook

 

This novel has been billed as the cross between The Dry and Silence of the Lambs.  That’s a boast if I ever read  one. Is it accurate? Read on to find out. If nothing else, it’s a fine thriller that has a great comparison line.

Set in 1941 in the wilds of Alaska, the story begins with Elisabeth Pfautz living in a small town with her husband who works as a teacher, and her daughter. Everything seems normal– boring, even– but they’re content with life.

The postal plane arrives on a regular schedule, their only connection the outside world. One day, a different pilot and carrier, Alfred Seibel, lands and asks a small favor: to be put up in the family home as the agreement states as part of an old town rule. Alfred departs the plane and inserts himself into Elizabeth’s life. With Alfred being German, the situation could get ugly, easily, for both sides.

Once he’s settled into the house, Elizabeth is plagued by dreams of her twin sister, Jacqueline, who disappeared twenty years prior, never to be found.

Alfred quickly inserts himself into her family, and the town. Yet one day, he murders a local, a close friend of Elizabeth’s. Once in prison, Alfred tells her he has information about Jacqueline and how he might be able to solve the mystery that has plagued Elizabeth for most of her life. With a poor marriage and no life in the desolate land, she accepts his request to visit him in prison.

He offers her this: for each gift she gives him, he’ll take her one step closer to her sister.

She accepts, and finds that although Alfred begins innocently enough, he quickly steps up his game. As Elizabeth discovers the cost of each gift she gives, he has her hooked with the puzzle he hands her.

Alfred turns out to be a quality villain who is much more than he seems to be, full of flaws that Lecter never revealed. Elizabeth is no Clarice. but she’s not meant to be. Her surroundings, family, and town, all serve as antagonists in her quest to find her sister, or at least the final piece of the puzzle. This literary fiction novel masquerading as a thriller/horror hybrid lulls the reader into a stark place that ultimately delivers in all three genres.

A challenging, yet highly rewarding, read for this new year.

 

Reviewed by David Simms

 

Posted on December 31, 2019 by , Reply

Book Review: Scavenger Hunt by Michaelbrent Collings

Scavenger Hunt by Michaelbrent Collings

Written Insomnia Press, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-699207-49-9

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

 

Five strangers wake up in a room, with no memory of how they got there.  They find out they are part of a game controlled by a sinister mastermind, who wears a mask and communicates through electronic means.  The mastermind expects them to do bad things.  That’s the plot of Michaelbrent Collings’s newest thriller, and it’s a plot you’ve seen before, many times.  Collings himself used it in his previous novel, Terminal, and many authors, from King to Koontz, have also recycled it.  Unlike certain purveyors of said plot (example: the SAW and CUBE film franchises) Collings actually knows how to make an old plot seem new and fresh, due to the speed of the writing and the unseen twists that pop up throughout the book.  Scavenger Hunt is a fast ride through a familiar plot, and is worth the time to read.

Aside from the basic plot, there are elements that you can guess will show up.  The obvious one is that all the strangers were chosen for a reason.  Even though they don’t know each other, their lives were all connected at some point in the past.  Collings wisely spaces interlude chapters throughout the book, one for each character.  Each chapter fills in the backstory of one character, and it helps you see how the plot slowly ties together.  Collings also has a variety of chapters detailing police online investigations throughout the book that don’t seem related to the plot, but are, although the reasons don’t become apparent until later.  The whole story works this way: the reader gets a clue at a time to figure out the puzzle, but it’s a very difficult one to figure out, as Collings doesn’t give away anything obvious.

Therein lies the strength of this novel.  Not everything is as it seems, and the perception of the characters changes throughout the book, turning the story into a maddeningly elliptical puzzle.

The protagonists and antagonists flip roles throughout the book, and even what seems like a sick game might be perceived as salvation by the end.  Collings does an excellent job confounding expectations with this commonly used plot.   A nice touch was the creative way to keep the game players from simply running away, once they are free to go out on the streets.  Each player has a collar and wristwatch fitted with explosives, giving the game’s mastermind the freedom to blow a limb-or head-off of any of the players whenever he sees fit.  This is also one of the few stories of this type where some of the players are actually given a chance to leave the game, if they are fine with abandoning the other players to their fate.  It’s the little things that make an old plotline seem new and exciting.

Overall, this is a well-written, fast-paced story that should please fans of horror or thriller novels.  It has elements of both, but doesn’t swing too strongly one way or the other.  If you want excitement, don’t miss this one.  Recommended.

 

Contains: violence, profanity

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

Posted on December 3, 2019 by , 1 comment
First « 678910 » Last