One Entertaining Thriller
936478
Piroz The ISIS Slayer is an action-packed blast from the get go. Ren is a one-woman weapon and a powerhouse of a heroine. The author proved she can deliver a full-blown battle scene, but it sure goes up a notch when Ren is on the page. I love every minute we get to spend with her and I really like how we are drawn into Ren and Marks love story with ease, all the while as we are watching them run for their lives. This is a strong novella that quickly and beautifully developed complicated characters and in rich settings ripped right out of our current affairs and world news. The story has a great conclusion, so I don't know if well be seeing more of Mark and Ren, but Ill jump right into any mission Sadia Barrameda is storytelling.
2095968
The Girl in Black Pajamas is part crime thriller, part mystery, and wholly full-on adventure. It is effectively comprised of two related stories that race along their meandering paths.

The main character, holding the various strands of the story together, is Bogie, a hacker. He flies to his 'agency's' headquarters in Boston to help solve the mystery of why one of their employees was shot and his IT system breached. Joining forces with a convicted felon and his team, Bogie attempts to understand what his enemy has planned before he and his friends become the next targets. Throw in a missing laptop, some suspicious cops, a hacker nemesis and a number of back stories, and the action doesn't let up.

Accompanying Bogie on his trip to Boston is his 4-year-old, genius daughter, Isabella. She aspires to learn the Five-Point-Palm-Exploding-Heart-Technique from Kill Bill 2, and keeps Bogie and his colleagues entertained with her witticisms and innocent view of the world. She inadvertently prevents the murder of her father on the flight, but will she be able to do it again?

Holding the fort at home in Florida is Bogie's pregnant wife, Bailey, who is left to look after a troop of three: her and Bogie's baby son, Bogie's elder daughter, Amanda, and Bogie's granddaughter. This is made harder by the fact that Amanda's shopaholicism and inability to deal with her infant leads to her husband leaving her and her friends trying to entice her to make porn movies with them. But why is her husband being targeted by his ruthless police colleagues?

Overall, the book's writing style took a while to get used to, with its frequent changes of point of view and quick jumps from one scene to the next. The action was constant and didn't let up, jumping from fights between families to car chases to murder attempts between Boston and Florida.

I haven't read The Girl in White Pajamas, and this may have hampered my ability to warm to the large cast and their complex back stories. But the characters, besides being plentiful, were certainly colourful and the one thing that this book could not be accused of being is boring.

*I received a free copy from the author in return for an honest review.
4610884
So I'll admit it. I'm a sucker for a solid thriller. I'm also recently a fan of thrillers set in and around the world of drug cartels in Mexico, having just finished CARTEL, by Don Winslow, as well as several others.

I do prefer my thrillers to be character-driven and that is not an easy feat. "Thrillers" by genre definition are meant to be plot driven. So it takes a deft authorial hand to pull off the sort of thriller I like. I want my characters fully fleshed-out, in three dimensions.

My kind of thriller doesn't always require a professional assassin, or a surly ex-cop. My kind has a regular Joe (or Joanna) at its core. Someone who's a fish-out-of-water. An innocent, if you will. Someone trying to "do something" in a place or time that is less than accommodating and who must learn lessons as a result of, at times, failing at that "something."

Hence, Brad Peters, the main character of The Brewer's Justice, is right up this reader's alley.

Brad dreams of having his own brewery and when circumstances align to allow him to do just that in Monterrey, Mexico, it would seem as though dreams really do come true.

The Brewer's Justice, is a fast-paced, well plotted first novel that delivers if you are seeking action with a solid dose of well-developed characters and even a side of romance. As with most thrillers, the "romance" piece is a little "insta" as in "insta-love" but hey, it happens.

The craft beer background is in the not-so-much-that-you-need-a-college-course-on-it range, with just enough of realism to tantalize anyone who knows little about it, and to satisfy those of us who know more than a little. The bad guys are pretty bad, and based on what I've read about their type in many other novels and non-fiction pieces, are NOT exaggerated in their zeal to not just "get" a piece of the craft beer action, but to own it.

I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys thrillers and especially anyone who enjoys reading their thrillers with a delicious glass of craft beer to hand.
282364
THE EDGE OF NORMAL is a thriller, a genre I've been reading more of this year.  I blame GONE GIRL.  It's not that I loved GONE GIRL (I just liked it), but that publishers are giving their thrillers more of a push.  And why not?  Thrillers have a wide ranging appeal.  They're fast, but have to be clever to deliver twists.  They're driven by plot, but often require psychological depth.

Reeve LeClaire was held captive for three years.  Her kidnapper was caught only because of a freak car accident.  Six years later, she's still recovering when her therapist asks her to travel across the country and speak to young girl, Tilly, who was recently rescued from her kidnapper.  He thinks it will help both Reeve and Tilly.  It does, but it soon becomes apparent that there's more going on in Tilly's case, and that it isn't as open and shut as it seemed.  There's two other missing girls, Abby and Hannah, and Tilly could be the key to finding them in time.

THE EDGE OF NORMAL switches between points of view, and it's a rare example of villain point of view done well.  The passages narrated by the villain reveal how he keeps staying one step ahead, when otherwise the plotting might fall apart.  The passages are also careful not to reveal his real name.  You know he's in other scenes, but it's often hard to guess which person he might be.

I also liked that the book wasn't overly sensational.  This is Carla Norton's fiction debut, but she has a background in true crime writing.  Reeve and Tilly have been through terrible things, but the focus on them is not that terrible things happened, but how they're moving on.  Reeve keeps a secret for Tilly perhaps longer than she should, but it's clear she wants the girl to have as much control and trust as possible.

I also like that unlike many thriller heroines, Reeve goes to the police pretty quickly.  (She's laughed off, because the plot wouldn't work otherwise, but I like that she went to the authorities like a normal person.)  Reeve gets a couple of potential romantic storylines, but they don't go very far since they aren't about perfunctory romance, but Reeve opening up to chance.

THE EDGE OF NORMAL will leave you at the edge of your seat.  I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and hope Norton keeps on with this fiction thing.  THE EDGE OF NORMAL has fascinating, complex characters, a twisting, fast-paced plot, and it lingers in the mind afterwards.  It's everything a good thriller should be.
2683101
"Hush" was a book I grabbed off the bargain pyramid, and as such, I wasn't expecting a whole lot from it: just a thriller to keep me going when I was moving house and had nothing hooked up or working right yet.  On that level, the book succeeded wonderfully: the tension is high, the villain stalks the heroine and a child mercilessly, and you twitch and jump and get skittish.
The basic premise is this:  A sociopathic pedophile has killed a childs mother and taken the child in order to prey on him better.  The child withdraws, becoming a voluntary mute, and a biter.  A woman who is an "Art Therapist" (a psychologist who uses the artwork of children to 'decode' their stress/troubles) then gets the boy's case, and ensuing thriller begins.
The heroine, Celia, is very well crafted, with depth and a personality that lines nicely with her career.  Moreover, she's not perfect - her marriage is on the rocks, she has doubts sometimes in her conclusions, and her job is unstable since the head of the hospital thinks what she does is a fraud and has no real psychological validity.  Likewise, Davy, the child, has a very rich character - he is surviving a level of awful abuse (and sometimes even the hints of what is happening to him are very painful to read), and his mind is as complex as it would be given the condition.
It's the villain where the complexity dies a little.  The pedophile character is cardboard and 1-dimensional, and you only get a random hint or two as to his background, motivation, or the like.  In most thrillers I've read, you get a detailed past from the villain, as he or she tries to validate what they're doing (an impossible task, but a quirk of most major sociopaths or the like).
Still, on the basis of making you jump and being a solid thriller, this is a good read: you'll twitch and gasp and hold the book white-knuckled.  Just don't expect literary depth from anyone in the book except the heroine and the child.
'Nathan
4288578
And adrenaline ride of a thriller, I read it on vacation in a day. The story set-up is good. Quinn's old apprentice, Nate, who's been working under Quinn's name, is set up by a mysterious bald man, along with a number of other operators in the black world of espionage. Nate is crafty and resourceful -- better than Quinn in many ways -- yet still he cannot elude his captors. Quinn and Orlando must follow the almost non-existent trail to learn what happened and if possible locate his whereabouts and save him. But Nate comes up with some clever strategies of his own as well.

I enjoyed this story. Like "The Destroyed," it contained frequent word-substitutions that a good copyeditor would have caught (e.g. when for went, thought for though). But the plotting was not sloppy, nor did it rely on Quinn and Company's magical abilities to pull off whatever they need to do without figuring out the details. The exception to this is Orlando, who has a quasi-mystical ability to hack into any computer system in record time to dig out whatever information is required. Ok, she's Super-Hacker. It's a device, but it doesn't get in the way (too much) of my willing suspension of disbelief. Unfortunately, the ending did.

Cliffhanger endings are a staple of many a series. But this one felt so contrived, so 'diablo-ex-machina' (so to speak), that it just wasn't credible. The main character fails to perform an action so basic to his profession that it's beyond inconceivable. Authors should not have to make their characters behave stupidly in order to create tension and advance a plot. Battles can do better.
1261498
Pendelton C. Wallace is a successful author and Im not, so any criticisms I make should be taken with a substantial pinch of salt.

A thriller with a difference: the bad guys aren't mobsters or terrorists but top business execs with too much of a yearning for power. And the good guys are a strange alliance of a computer nerd with an organisation that looks after battered women.

The action takes some time to get going, and youll just have to be patient because when things start happening they happen fast and explosively. The point-of-view character is Ted Higuera, a space cadet of a computer wizard who breaks the stereotype by being fit, active, and good-looking into the bargain.

At the outset, Ted is working for Justin McCormack, a convicted hacker who now works on the right side of the law by helping corporations to detect weaknesses in their data systems that would allow hackers to gain illegal entry.

Ted uses the knowledge and password cracking tools he acquires at McCormacks company, YTS Digital Security, to investigate killings and embezzlement at a Top 100 corporate.

Wallace provides a prescient preview of Google Glass together with a stunningly insightful explanation of why Glass never took off. The facial hardware is just too uncool. Steve Jobs would have made Glass look like Ray-Bans, only better. (Jobs, or Musk, would never have approved a driverless car project that looks like a golf cart on Valium.)

I like a hero to have some human quirks and Ted has an unusual one. He cooks like a champ. Again you will have to be patient while Ted shares every last detail of his boring recipes with the reader.

Teds back story is overdone. This book is the sequel to another thriller but the story is laid out in such detail that it becomes a spoiler. I don't need to read Book One in the series because I already know the whole plot, all the characters, and how it turns out.

Im fascinated with a highly skilled coder who wants to create a database using MS-Access. Its too lightweight and development would take too long. I would use Sequel with a VB front end.

Wallace writes well with considerable panache. Self-published books are notorious for typos and bad grammar but in the whole book I only noticed three or four.

Although justice is finally done, I wasn't too mad about the anticlimactic ending.

Well done Mr. Wallace. You kept me up way past my normal bedtime.
4134781
I enjoyed it for what it is.  An entertaining diversion that does not require a lot of time.  While not up to the standard of his previous books, the author still made it interesting with some surprises.
4965964
This is not an extremely tense thriller, nor is it filled with extreme mind-boggling suspense.  Well, maybe just a bit tense in places and some mind-boggling pages; however, it is an easy entertaining read with just enough mystery to cause the reader to keep turning pages to find out who-done-it. It is well edited, and has likeable characters.

The case of a teenager, in a Texas juvenile detention center, who is found with broken and badly burned legs and whose life is hanging by a thread, is a bit more complex than the cold case homicide of 60 years prior across the Atlantic in England.

The heroine, amateur sleuth, Ali Reynolds is very involved in trying to solve both cases, as is her fiance, B., and her good friend Sister Anselm. Ali is spending a few days in England with her ageing British born friend and employee, Leland Brooks, who is getting reacquainted with long estranged family members.  He discovers that his father's death, so long ago, was a homicide and was never solved. He asks Ali to investigate. She does, and lands herself into a bit of personal danger which has the prospect of becoming life threatening. As Ali follows the clues, the reader may be a bit surprised at the development and ending of this cold case.

B. is in Japan on business and believes the Texas teenager's accident was an attempted homicide.  Well, of course, in spite of the land and water between, Ali gets involved in this case as well, and the investigations become interesting indeed. Sister Anselm is the guardian angel for the badly injured teen.  Sister Anselm, sometimes called the Angel of Death because of her role as a patient advocate to seriously injured patients, is quite a colorful individual herself. Ali and B. are putting the puzzle pieces together while body counts are climbing for those trying to either help or steal from the teenager. He has a secret that could be worth mega bucks and somebody wants it badly enough to kill for what is not rightfully theirs.

Slowly and methodically things fall into place to find a satisfactory ending for everyone......the good guys, that is.
2909342
There is a lot to like about this thriller.  There is also a chunk of clunk to dislike...

The lead character is a real person.  He is not a secret agent, not a wonderfully trained semi-ninja.  He works at a non-profit.

The story involves the death of his step-father, a member of the secret service.  His mother and step-father are solid characters, interesting and well presented.

The opening is strong.  Excitement, drama, action, conflict, all there.

Why not five stars?  The lead character is a bit of a whiner, playing the victimized loner too much to be really likeable.  The action is sort of jumpy, with the lead charachter always running into his apartment and jumping out down the telephone pole.  This renders the narrative a bit ragged.

The main story, a possible case of corruption haunting and involving two Presidential candidates, seems made for a movie.  But the secret service involvement never quite makes sense.  The bad guys are superbly trained secret service agents, but they never seem capable of stopping our hero, or of besting him in a fight.

This is a nearly good novel, a near-miss, due to these problems.  But the author should be rewarded for trying to make a thriller about a real person with real skills.  Not a bad read, it kept my interest long enough to finish, just not a great or compelling read.  Call it Ludlum light.
906150
In THE SPY HOUSE Mathew Dunn develops a 'locked room' genre grafted to an espionage thriller plot. Stakes in resolving the puzzle couldn't be higher:  some interest is trying to drive Israel to go to war to stamp out HAMAS in the Middle East and there is a potential for a crisis to spiral out of control.  The 'spy house' is an ill-stared CIA forward post crammed with high-tech electronic intelligence gathering equipment.  The 'mastermind' of murder and mayhem' is a self-assured high-level former intelligence operative who uses the name THALES.  One secret in the book is just who is employing him.  Others include the possibility of highly placed moles.  Revenge looms increasingly larger as the body count rises.  Dunn's top character, Will Cochrane is smart, focused and a highly experienced killer.  In this outing, he is again matched against peers who are free-lancing in amoral operations.  Very little is revealed as the story unwinds; surprises (and there are a good few of them) come thick and fast at the end.  Pacing is fine in the 'page-turner' mode.
1056309
The Switch isJoseph Finder's 16th thriller. Like all the others I can recallI've read many of themthe novelpits an intelligent and capable upper-middle-class man against the powerful forces of government or a large corporation. In The Switch, an entrepreneur named Michael Tanner, founder and CEO of a small coffee wholesaler in Boston, finds himself facing off with the National Security Agency. Tanner is a reasonably believable character, as are the U.S. Senator and her Chief of Staff who are central figures in the story, but I find it difficult to fathom some of the decisions these characters make. They just don't seem to fit. And the NSA comes across as a caricature, not credible either.

The novel opens at LAX, where Tanner picks up the wrong MacBook at the tail end of the security lineand the U.S. Senator whose computer it is finds herself in possession of Tanner's. Unfortunately for all concerned, Senator Robbins' MacBook contains a folder full of higher-than-top-secret files from the NSA. If they're discovered, her plans to run for President will be dashed. In fact, her career in politics will certainly end, and she may even be prosecuted and sent toprison. To make matters much worse, these are not just any top-secret files: they describe a super secret program that will cause great damage to the NSA as well if they're made public. Robbins prevails on her Chief of Staff, Will Abbott, to track down the computer and retrieve it, which requires him to turn in succession to a hacker and a hitman. Clearly, Tanner'slife will never be the sameassuming he lives.

The two men are essentially mirror opposites. Tanner is both physically fit and an extrovert, admired and respected by all, though he is separated from his wife because he works too much. Abbott is an overweight introvert who is socially awkward; however, he is married and the father of an infant. The face-off between the two is thus predictable.

Joseph Finder is capable of much better work.
1528521
GUNMETAL GRAY is a well-written but formulaic thriller--professional assassin (Courtland Gentry, aka "the Gray Man") accepts a "mission impossible", but carries it off, because he's the best gol-darned assassin ever hired by the CIA or by any other world-class spy organization.  It's a long book (over 450 pages), with plenty of exciting, moderately believable, fight-to-the-death scenes.

The trouble is, when a main character is constantly fighting his way out of mortal peril, a novel can become tiresome.  Especially when, as with this novel, a gazillion lucky coincidences are needed to both extricate the character and to point him toward the location of his next big fight scene.  (No spoilers, but I'm thinking now about Courtland's second exit from the "dive bar", and about the "informer" he ran into while escaping--this happens about a third of the way through the book.)

In the novel, a young, top-level Chinese computer intelligence expert (Fan Jiang) goes on the run.  The Chinese, British, Americans, Russians, and every other world spy organization that hears about him is after him--the Chinese to kill him, the rest to capture him and mine his knowledge of Chinese intelligence operations.

Starting in Hong Kong, it's Courtland's job to capture Fan Jiang for the CIA, and also to extract Courtland's former British employer (Sir Donald Fitzroy) from the clutches of the murderous Chinese colonel (Dai Longhai) who is pursuing Fan Jiang.  The ongoing casualties are huge--Courtland personally contributes quite a few bodies, and the pursuers contribute many more.  There is a sprinkling of mercilous torture.

As thrillers go, this one is decent enough.  The plot has a lot of twists, and there is fairly constant action, plus liberal use of modern weapons and electronic surveillance equipment.
1477369
This somewhat successful thriller was written by someone too smart. All of his characters sound somewhat alike, all of them intelligent. The action kind of stops from time to time to "discuss" politics, banking, and the drug trade in an even handed (dull and repetitive) way. The author wants to be sure that you GET THE MESSAGE so each character takes a turn at the "MR. Exposition" role. I might have appreciated this story without such lofty moralizing.  In fact, I thought it was a little dull.
46731
Author Stowe Spivey crafts a mystery thriller in the tradition of the late Vince Flynn and the still very much alive Lee Child. However, Stowe's spare writing style conjures an older genre -- short, crisp sentences sentences of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Mickey Spillane. "Track the Lion" follows tough guy Kyle Harris, who at first starts out as a guy-next-door hero and evolves into something darker as the plot gets deeper. The initial moments of the book shift into high gear. The plot is hard to determine, and the reader just has to go along for the ride. Yet, this fast-paced action is packed with elements that must be digested as they will return in the last third of the adventure. Harris, as lead characters go, is likable and competent. Rarely does he exhibit the plot delaying stupidity or irrational flaws that many TV writers use to prolong a sequence or set up an entirely new conflict. Stowe sends Harris forward. He out thinks his enemies, using strong allies whose loyalties are unquestioned. The Italian master agent he befriends is especially interesting. But Harris is betrayed continually. The ending is powerful, and Harris strides forward almost as an anti-hero in an old western. He's a man, who despite his abilities and position as a top government agent, never knows whether he will end up with a bullet in his head the minute he goes around the next corner.
1290661
Released in 1966, Circus of Fear (also known as Circus of Terror and Psycho-Circus) has a misleading title: it implies a horror film. But this is really half-heist, half-detective thriller set against a circus background.  An unknown mastermind plans the perfect robbery, but one of his henchmen gets trigger happy and thereby places the entire gang in jeopardy.  Unexpected circumstances send at least a portion of the loot to Barbarini's Circus--where, it seems, more than one person is aware of its presence.  When a body turns up at the circus, Inspector Elliot (Leo Genn) begins an investigation and meets, among others, circus owner Barbarini (Anthony Newlands) and circus star The Great Gregor (Christopher Lee.)  It isn't long before more murders occur.  Is there more than one killer?  Is every one at the circus who they seem to be?

Circus of Fear is well acted--it even features a young Klaus Kinski in an early role--but the story is somewhat predictable and the scripting is full of holes and the cuting is quite bizarre.  And it's certainly no big budget affair.  Even so, Circus of Fear is mildly entertaining, the sort of movie that is fun to watch once.  Unfortunately, the film seems to be in the public domain, which means there are a lot of questionable prints out there.  The best of the lot--the one you want to look for--has both trailers and an audio commentary, all of them mildly enjoyable.  Avoid the rest.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer
2487539
German director Richard Eichberg's British crime thriller "Night Birds," starring Jack Raine and Muriel Angelus, boasts several lively scenes interspersed with loquacious expository dialogue scenes. You can tell that this is an early talkie because the actors rattle off lots of lines as if they were in a stage production. Nevertheless, this entertaining yarn about Scotland Yard Detective Sergeant Harry Cross (Jack Raine of "Rogue's March") and his investigation of an evening robbery by armed thieves dressed as gentlemen that crashed a lavish dinner party of the wealthy and affluent gets off to an energetic start. Afterward, the momentum slackens occasionally as scenarists Victor Kendall of "Atlantis" & Miles Malleson of "Thief of Bagdad" introduce the cops and the robbers as well as those involved with themwives and girlfriendsand they flesh out the narrative with characterization and intrigue. Two of the three criminals aren't very shrewd. One leaves his calling cardsmall throwing knives--that he doesn't retrieve from the scene of the crime, and he is the culprit who slew the doorman at the mansion. Meantime, aside from this murderous fiend, the identity of the criminal mastermind nicknamed 'Flash Jack' is the first thing that Cross must uncover. After Cross recovers a five pound note from the crime scene, he heads to a night club where gambling is permitted to launch his probe. He thinks that the hoodlums may be hanging out at a place named Charlo's. As it turns out, the owner of this club, Charlo Bianci (Franklyn Bellamy of "Member of the Jury"), is allowed to operate as long as he provides Scotland Yard with information about crimes. Cross warns Charlo that he is walking on thin ice because he has proved his worth as an informant. Later, Cross romances a go-between the criminal mastermind and the gang, Dolly Mooreland (Muriel Angelus of "Safari"), who dances at the casino. Dolly assures two of the criminals that she will have Cross wrapped around her finger in no time. At the same time, a competing detective, Deacon Lake (Jameson Thomas of "Mister Dynamite") snoops about not only the casino but also the crime. Furthermore, Lake persuades Cross' wife, Mary (Eve Gray of "Moulin Rouge"), so he can gain some insight into Cross' strategy. Already, Cross and his wife have had words about a strand of hair that she found on Cross' wardrobe that came from his flirtatious interviews with Dolly.

Although we don't see anybody die, Eichberg depicts some questionable acts that the censors might have objected to, such as our resourceful detective beating up a criminal out of sight and later the detective smashing out a window and then adhering tape to hold the shards after he scores the window with a knife. You know from the start who to cheer for because Eichberg and his writers paint Harry Cross with sympathetic strokes. The newlywed detective assures his wife that if he cracks this case that he might be able to buy them not only a house but also a motor car. He promises to get Mary some dresses, too. Meantime, he struggles to peel back the layers of deceit and get to the bottom of the crime and the identity of the notorious Flash Jack who has terrorized high society with his depredations. The production values are strong, and the cast is good. If you enjoy old-fashioned British mystery thrillers, this one is worth watching. The hero's Peter Pan efforts to thwart a crime during a show by springing into the balcony by means of wires attached to him is rather spectacular. Some of the dialogue is clever as well as naughty. The scene where Cross meets Dolly in her dressing room after a mouse terrifies her is fraught with sexual innuendo. Depending on your individual efforts at unmasking the criminal mastermind, you may find it either obvious or difficult. Altogether, despite it's obvious age, "Night Birds" is a lot of fun.