★ The Bullet Garden
After writing a trio of books about ex-Marine sniper Bob Lee Swagger, creator Stephen Hunter launched a second collection that includes Bob Lee’s father, Earl Swagger, who can be a Marine and a Medal of Honor recipient to boot. It’s been 20 years since Hunter’s final installment within the senior Swagger collection, nevertheless it comes roaring again this month with The Bullet Garden. The e-book serves as a prequel to the three Earl Swagger books that preceded it (Hot Springs, Pale Horse Coming and Havana), chronicling his adventures in France in the course of the days instantly following D-Day. Swagger spearheads a secret mission to monitor down and kill German snipers who’re systematically choosing off Allied troopers crossing the Normandy meadowlands (which the troops have nicknamed “bullet gardens”). A sniper himself, Swagger is a pure match for the job at hand, however even his legendary abilities might be sorely examined in this milieu. Fans of firearms historical past will discover heaps to like in The Bullet Garden, as will army technique buffs, however there’s really one thing for everybody: a budding romance; layers of duplicity and intrigue; and an omnipresent sense of the significance of working collectively for a higher trigger.
Encore in Death
J.D. Robb’s Encore in Death is the (are you prepared for this?) 56th entry within the wildly well-liked collection that includes Eve Dallas, a police detective in 2060s New York City who, by my calculations, must be celebrating her first birthday nearly now. Despite being set in a Blade Runner-esque way forward for androids, airboards (assume hoverboards) and the much-appreciated automated cooks, Robb’s mysteries don’t need to depend on sci-fi trappings to interact the reader. They are straight-up classically constructed whodunits. And this case incorporates a time-honored homicide weapon: cyanide. Just as A-list actor Eliza Lane takes the stage for an impromptu tune at her newest excessive society Manhattan social gathering, there’s a crash of glass, and Eliza’s husband, equally well-known actor Brant Fitzhugh, collapses to the ground—lifeless, with the scent of bitter almonds emanating from his lips. The preliminary pondering is that Eliza was the supposed sufferer, as Brant sipped from a poisoned cocktail he was holding for her, however because the investigation wears on, different potentialities current themselves. As the entire suspects have connections to the stage, there isn’t any scarcity of drama because the case unfolds. Robb is the pen identify of legendary romance creator Nora Roberts, and whereas that’s actually evident in her descriptions of her male leads (“Those sea-green eyes still made her heart sigh, even after a decade . . .”), the suspense can be there in spades.
The Sanctuary
Of all of the terrible methods to die, being vertically bisected by an industrial noticed just like the homicide sufferer in Katrine Engberg’s closing Kørner and Werner thriller, The Sanctuary, should rank proper up there on the high. The unidentified man’s left half turns up in {a partially} buried leather-based suitcase in a public park, and Copenhagen police detective Annette Werner is on the hunt for the killer. Clues lead to the distant island of Bornholm, an insular enclave the place everybody is aware of everybody else’s secrets and techniques, however no person appears disposed towards sharing any of that data with the police. Subplots abound: a lacking younger man, probably on the lam from the legislation, probably the sufferer within the suitcase; a zealous preacher who roundly rejects the biblical educating of turning the opposite cheek; a biographer whose scholarly go to to Bornholm to look at a deceased anthropologist’s letters is stirring up some previous, long-quiet ghosts; a rubbish bag full of cash that no person appears to have the opportunity (or keen) to account for. The id of the offender is a gigantic shock, however extra shocking nonetheless is the emotional closure Engberg brings to long-running storylines, leading to a really poignant second for followers of the collection as well as to a satisfying answer to the central thriller.
★ The Twyford Code
Narrative conventions are forged to the 4 winds in Janice Hallett’s spectacular second novel, The Twyford Code. The story consists of 200 fragmented voice transcriptions made by Steven “Smithy” Smith, a none-too-savvy cell phone person who has solely lately been launched from jail in England. At unfastened ends, he decides to examine the mysterious disappearance of his secondary faculty English trainer some 40 years again. Miss Iles (who usually humorously seems within the transcriptions as “missiles”) had one thing of an obsession with the youngsters’s books of 1 Edith Twyford, a personality loosely based mostly on real-life bestselling kids’s creator Enid Blyton. On a category discipline journey to Bournemouth to go to Twyford’s wartime house, “missiles” dropped off the map, by no means to be heard from once more. As Smith’s belated investigation proceeds, he turns into more and more obsessive about Twyford’s books as properly, uncovering what could also be hidden messages therein. State secrets and techniques, buried treasure, buried our bodies? The clues are all there, however it’s going to take a cannier puzzle-solving thoughts than mine to decipher them earlier than Hallett is prepared for the massive reveal. The Twyford Code is definitely one of many cleverest and most unique thriller novels in latest reminiscence, with an interesting foremost character, dialogue that grabs (and requires) your consideration and extra head-scratching suspense than another three books mixed.
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