Only The Dead By Jack Carr

Jack Carr is not one to shy away from exploring the darker psyche of prey and predator, and Only The Dead is a prime example of how Carr continues to get darker and better as the series progresses. 

After the harrowing ending of In The Blood, James Reece is biding his time in prison, holding onto his fleeting sanity, just long enough for the promise of revenge. Grabbing the first opportunity he gets, Reece sets off on a warpath against those behind the conspiracy. As he digs deep, he realizes it’s the same cabal of powerful forces in the shadows his father had faced. Motivated by a grueling bloodlust, desire to keep his loved ones safe, and quest for justice, Reece barrels down a dark road, one that significantly alters the hero we have come to love through the books.

Only The Dead is an exciting departure from the previous books in the series, serving as a cathartic resolution for the long-running plot about Reece’s father as well as for all the demons that Reece has accumulated so far in his violent adventures. Carr pushes his protagonist to his breaking point as he struggles to reconcile the voices in head, scaring those around him as the demons begin to manifest physically. At the same time, his darker mindset pushes him harder than ever in his war, carving up his antagonists with all sorts of melee weapons and stitching up the rest with generous bursts of gunfire. 

Carr’s depictions of action are in a wholly separate league in the thrillerverse. Whereas many action sequences sparkle with cinematic tinge to them, the action in Only The Dead is rather messy, visceral, and brutally realistic. Reece dispatches his enemies with the most utterly devastating and gut-wrenching wounds with tomahawks, stiletto blades, improvised weapons, and trusty firearms in artistic sequences of unbridled violence that showcase the true nature of bloodshed where the bad guys, pumped full of adrenaline and wearing bulletproof armor, take a rather long time to die even when Reece has gone to work on their limbs and other body parts with blades and bullets. There is a brilliant action sequence in a Russian bathhouse that harkens the cinematic vibe of John Wick combat, but even more grounded with Carr’s detailed and unflinching descriptions of hardcore combat. The bloody action sequences alone are worth the price of admission.

Only the Dead is also a fantastic foray into a more conspiracy-centric storyline that gives the narrative a much more espionage-laden vibe than its predecessors.  James Reece acts more like a spy than a soldier here, uncovering clues towards a grand scheme of a group pulling the strings from behind the scenes, with members in the most exclusive clubs. 

In true Carr style, you’ll come for the action and you’ll stay for the fascinating historical tidbits that make you more knowledgeable by the time you reach the final page. There is so much to enjoy in this one and I can definitely attest to Only The Dead surpassing In the Blood as my favorite James Reece thriller. I wasn’t sure I would finish this book in a day but somehow, I did because once you begin, you are totally immersed in the gripping storytelling and wild action. Jack Carr continues to get exponentially better at his craft.

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Forgotten War By Don Bentley

Forgotten War is Don Bentley’s masterpiece so far. Not only does he up his game in the action department, but he cleverly entwines the adrenaline with the emotional receptors that make Forgotten War the grandest yet most personal Matt Drake mission yet.

Matt Drake’s tranquility is shattered once again when his best friend, Frodo, is arrested for a murder he supposedly committed in Afghanistan in 2011. With Afghanistan falling under Taliban control and the arrest details redacted, Drake has to work the case on his own, his leads taking him back to where it all started. At the same time, Drake’s in-laws come to him seeking help in rescuing his wife’s cousin who traveled to Afghanistan for a wedding and is now trapped in the country in the midst of chaos and evacuation. With the whole world flying out of the fallen country, it’s gonna take Drake more than a few miracles to work his way in there and successfully pull off two different missions, but both equally important.

Don Bentley outdoes himself with the action sequences. They’re best described as beautiful symphonies of precise and calculated aggression with the uncertain chaos of Murphy’s Laws. Drake finds himself manning all sorts of weapons in his engagements, varying from the close quarters MP5 to the thumping demonic DShK heavy machine gun depending on the mission parameters. Each shootout puts you in the driver’s seat with Drake so you feel the adrenaline course through your bloodstream, with descriptions so vivid and crisp you can’t help but read each action sequence again and again to relive their sheer awesomeness and badassness. 

Yet, it’s how Don Bentley ties the kinetic nature to the heart of the narrative that fully cements Forgotten War as one of the finest action thrillers. While Drake has undoubtedly faced personal stakes in his missions before, none of them have felt as poignant. Fall of Afghanistan, Frodo’s arrest, and a young girl trapped; all factors brilliantly highlight Drake’s psyche in unique aspects. Drake’s sentiments about Afghanistan echo those of servicemen and servicewomen who’ve served in the country and now feel disillusioned and he finds some solace in the shared strength of his fellow soldiers despite all that has gone wrong. In addition to his quest to exonerate his best friend and confidant, he also undertakes the unofficial and desperate mission to rescue his wife’s cousin. As Drake’s about to become a father, the barbaric concept of a helpless child stuck in a lawless land rubs him the worst possible way and it’s this feeling that Don Bentley captures so eloquently that one can’t help but wholeheartedly support Drake’s craziest plans so far in the face of evil for the pursuit of justice.

The Forgotten War is a multi-layered thriller that puts as much emphasis on the action as it does on the characters that drive the action forward. Timely, emotionally-charged, and breathtaking, it has everything going for it to be on my top 3 list for 2023 and I’m not even worried that the year hasn’t even started yet.

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City Of Dreams By Don Winslow

Don Winslow beautifully expands his hauntingly dark crime saga with a thriller that packs all sorts of punches. You’re going to need a strong stomach for this one. 

City of Dreams picks up where City on Fire ended, with our protagonist Danny Ryan on the run from the mafia and the cops after a heist gone wrong. Negotiating a truce between him and all those after him for the sake of protecting his young son, he tries to go legit in the world of Hollywood. But that’s the funny thing about crime, once it settles its hooks in, it follows you around. Soon, Danny finds himself in love again, up against new foes, and facing new challenges that define a new era in his life of pain and chaos. 

Winslow writes his characters with a heavy hand of suffering and flaws that reflect the best and worst of humanity. His descriptions have a magical quality to them as every chapter comes to life in vivid brushstrokes of conflicting emotions and terrifying realizations. You genuinely start to feel for the characters as Winslow puts them through the worst situations possible, making you root for them instinctively with a passionate stake in finding out what happens to them. City of Dreams is more of a character-driven narrative that progresses by emphasizing Ryan’s transformative journey into a man we’d only seen glimpses of in the first book.

The locations in City of Dreams take on lives and personalities of their own, from dusty and anxious motel rooms to the equally anxiety-inducing but also exotic darkness of Hollywood-esque landscapes with dark secrets brewing in the shadows. You can’t help but feel the palpable energy of the intense scenes in iconic backdrops, sometimes so much so that it takes a while to take it all in.

What Don Winslow has so masterfully done is differentiate City of Dreams from City on Fire in terms of tone, setting, and characters while maintaining the vibrancy of intense writing that is the trademark of a genuine Winslow. One can only wonder what trouble he has cooked up in his next and final thriller. If only time could move faster.

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The Instructor By T.R. Hendricks

The Instructor is a hard-boiled action thriller that holds back no punches in its endeavor to entertain readers with sincere storytelling that emphasizes the plight of humans today in the face of lost identities and philosophical conundrums. I still can’t believe it’s a debut because it reads like one penned by a veteran author.

Derek Harrington spends his days teaching wilderness survival skills to Wall Street guys and gals looking for an adventure, having learned from the best as a retired Marine Force Recon and SERE instructor. When an enigmatic student offers him $20,000 to instruct a private group for 30 days in upstate New York, he feels a strong tug in his heart to make quick money for his family. However, there’s more to the group than meets the eye and soon Derek finds himself embroiled in an undercover operation to infiltrate the group led by a seemingly harmless but ultimately ruthless leader with no regard for anything but his own people. It quickly becomes a race against time as Derek tries to ward off suspicions during his undercover operation, lest they realize they’ve got an infiltrator among their ranks.

T.R. Hendricks yields no compromises on the unrelenting action to the bass of the thumping narrative buzzing at light-speed. There’s no wasted moment as the story quickly gets Derek in the crosshairs of a megalomaniac and it’s during the most dangerous of times for Derek that we get to know him so closely, not just by his words, but by his actions and his predicaments. On the surface, Derek seems prone to anger owing to his PTSD, but as the narrative progresses, we begin to explore his psyche with a newfound respect for his battles against the demons in his head. T.R. Hendricks humanizes his protagonist with all the vulnerabilities that elevate a protagonist to a hero.

This character development works in harmony with the aggressive action sequences that attest to Derek’s brilliant tactician mind as he must battle the very foes he helped train. T.R. Hendricks proves himself capable of writing tactical shootouts that capture the kinetic essence of precise movements grounded in the chaotic energy of battlegrounds.

The Instructor is one heck of an enjoyable debut that will have you preordering the sequel without hesitation. After finishing the book, you’ll find it impossible to think ‘badass’ without picturing Derek Harrington’s rugged charisma.

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Double Or Nothing By Kim Sherwood

Double or Nothing is a bold new take on the world of James Bond with fresh-faced protagonists paired up with returning characters from Ian Fleming’s work.

When 007 goes missing and is presumed dead by the MI6 at large, the fate of his discovery and the safety of the larger world fall to three new 00’s, the very best and brightest of the modern MI6 with license to kill. Each with their own personal connection either to Bond or the mission, find themselves on parallel roads when a tech billionaire claims to be able to prevent the climate crisis. This enigmatic and potentially world-altering claim sends the three 00’s on globetrotting assignments with exotic dangers awaiting them. The plot thickens when the disappearance of James Bond appears to have some connection with the tech billionaire and it’s only the beginning of the unrelenting twists and turns that keep you on your toes.

Kim Sherwood weaves together missions and characters running in tandem to achieve a singular goal without any of them realizing the bigger picture till the opportune moment, which makes for a very twisty narrative that hits you unexpectedly throughout its length. Even though James Bond is present in spirit and memory of the characters as the story progresses, the focus is undeniably on the new protagonists that come from diverse backgrounds equipped with distinctive and inclusive personalities to match the modern climate. A far cry from the suave and unflinching demeanor of Bond, these new 00’s grapple with the morality and lasting emotions of their actions in profound manners that shape them further as the new generation of spies and assassins.

In addition to the cerebral nature of the narrative, Kim Sherwood augments the story with well-placed crisp action sequences that match the wild, raw, and exotic vibes of Double or Nothing. From stealth incursions to brutal fisticuffs, all the way to a very Bond-like vehicular combat, there’s plenty of excitement to go around for readers who prefer their spy stories with a dash of cinematic action.

The world-building styled prose requires some getting used to for those who are more interested in fast-paced storytelling but ultimately, Double or Nothing is a rewarding spy thriller with a sinister overtone that will surely carry over to the next book after that terrifying cliffhanger.

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Blind Spots By Thomas Mullen

Thomas Mullen has pulled off a dangerously awesome mesh of genres in which he gels gut-wrenching horror with inquisitive and action-packed storytelling in a science-fiction setting to create one of 2023’s most distinctive reads. 

Homicide detective Mark Owens lives in a world like ours, except for an unexplainable world altering event that made every person on Earth go blind almost immediately, an event referred to as The Blinding. Now people go about their lives with technology implanted in their minds that allows them to see once again. If the worst was somehow thought to be over, a new murderer comes to town. The only problem is, those left alive swear they saw only a black blur where they should have clearly seen a person. How is it that the murderer can tap into the vision feeds so easily? It rattles all that Owens has come to depend upon after losing his sight, and leads him on a quest to uncover a conspiracy buried beneath the dark veneer of surveillance and disinformation.

Blind Spots is a powerful thriller that rallies readers with resonating sentiments about all sorts of ideas, from the philosophical connotations of natural sight, all the way to the dangerous age of information-gathering through an uneasy number of means as we experience today. Thomas Mullen demonstrates an exuberant brilliance as he builds and populates a haunting dystopian world that grounds readers with how plausible the events following The Blinding seem, taking into account political, socio-economic, and all sorts of factors that influence human behavior as it is today. I was mesmerized and frightened as Mullen explains what could very well happen in such a devastating event and how we could become even more hopelessly dependent on technology that we may not be able to even trust ourselves.

As Mark Owens brings along the readers for uncovering a dark conspiracy, there’s never a dull moment. From constantly exciting unfolding of twists to gritty action, you can’t find a good place to put the book down because each new chapter brings along a revelation that rejuvenates your desire to keep reading. Whether it’s cool car chases, pulse-pounding shootouts, or the feral nature of not knowing whether you’re rooting for a good guy or not, Blind Spots is a powerhouse of a thriller that has something for every reader to take away an experience that’s one to remember. This book helped me get through a very, very long international flight and even as I did my best to slow down and savor it over the entire flight, I was flipping through the pages fast enough to become a fire hazard.  It’s a dangerously addictive read indeed.

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The Guilty One By Bill Schweigart

The Guilty One is a mind-churning psychological crime thriller that plays as much with your emotions as it does with your head as Bill Schweigart takes you through a razor-sharp balance between reality and insanity.

Cal Farrell is a sort of celebrity in Alexandria when he is hailed by the public as the hero cop who stopped and gunned down an active shooter. Cal wishes he could relish in this celebration but he can’t seem to remember what exactly happened in those scary moments. As he works with a psychologist to tap into his memories, he comes across a vicious killer whose body count keeps ramping up in his city. With patterns and clues that draw Cal in closer in his hunt for the killer, things begin to add up and not in his favor. The narrative becomes a dangerous and unhinged game of cat and mouse but it’s not clear if Cal is the hunter or the hunted and it all comes down to what he cannot remember.

Bill Schweigart sparks a relatable protagonist in Cal Farrell. As a protagonist, he embodies the best qualities we would seek in ourselves; brave in the face of danger, committed to being a better person despite the darkness he has seen, and a smooth player. However, the narrative is a rather sinister one at that as Schweigart weaves through parallel lines of storytelling, both focused intimately on Cal, and keeps readers hesitant of who Cal truly is. The crime solving aspect tugs at all fans of realistic and gritty thrillers but there is an added nuance of psychological that beckons you to be circumspect of Cal. Avoiding the careless mishap of giving away the punchline too soon, Schweigart keeps the suspicions bouncing around different characters, giving us a taste of the unfiltered paranoia Cal feels when he can't even trust himself to be truly good.

The Guilty One is uninhibited in its dangerous thrills and kickass action that channels the raw power of hard-hitting action sequences of Jack Reacher books. It is truly an immersive experience as we get onboard this adventure with Cal Farrell and shoot across the pages with our predictions, wary of the dangers that may befall the protagonist not only from others but from himself. The Guilty One represents the best kind of thrillers, the ones that leave you fulfilled and enriched both as thriller fans and as general readers.

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Robert Ludlum's The Treadstone Rendition By Joshua Hood

Just when I thought Joshua Hood had perfected the Treadstone series, he shatters the illusion with a riveting and timely action-driven narrative that radically alters the game for his protagonist Adam Hayes once more.

The Treadstone Rendition sees Adam Hayes pulled back into the fold of violence when he has to repay an old debt to a friend stuck in Afghanistan. With rogue CIA forces chasing his afghan friend and his family, Hayes needs to get into a country where everything is falling apart and US forces are pulling out. Without nearly close enough to having the right resources, Hayes makes it up he goes, dodging bullets, missiles, and drones.

There’s no mistaking that Joshua Hood has a lot more planned for Adam Hayes. The Treadstone Rendition is a more personal narrative than the previous two books in the series, building up to a Faustian bargain once again just when Hayes thought he could have a simple life with his family. While this could have easily been a simple transitioning narrative to get Hayes back in the fold of espionage, Joshua Hood makes it a hard-hitting and memorable read with non-stop action that’s written with a keen eye for realistically harrowing consequences. The action sequences indeed bear the mark of Hood’s excellence with fast-paced vivid gunfights and chaotic combat with tactical awareness and technical authenticity, the combination of which makes for breathtaking explosive moments of pure bliss. However, it’s the subtle focus on the emotional drive that supercharges the entire reading experience to amazing heights and complements the action. 

The Treadstone Rendition is a shining example of thrillers that you can’t help but devour in a single day because the action ratchets up by the pages. 

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Wolf Trap By Connor Sullivan

Connor Sullivan writes an intriguing take on the future of energy and politics wrapped up in a mirage of subterfuges and double crosses and paced with breakneck action in Wolf Trap.

Brian Rhome is a former Ground Branch paramilitary officer who, after a disastrous tragic mission, spends his days in the icy wilderness contemplating suicide as means of reckoning. When a new energy initiative spearheaded by US and Saudi Arabia goes awry in the worst possible way, leading to facility meltdowns, foul play is suspected with a suspected Iranian officer involved. Rhome is offered an outlet for his grief in the form of a new mission to settle a debt once and for all and in turn help stop another global catastrophe orchestrated by high-ranking members of the US   Government in cahoots with those in the Saudi Royal family.

The narrative is poised with the energy of a Red Bull fueled rampage that keeps the story simmering throughout for an explosive finale. There’s a bit of everything, from cutthroat espionage and politics to all-out kinetic operations with crisp and fast action sequences, all of which drive forward a timely storyline centered around the plausible danger of a not-so-distant future that tackles the monopoly of fossil fueled energy with renewable sources. While the depiction of all the involved parties may not be as rooted in realism as those in more cerebral espionage thrillers, the emphasis remains on an adrenaline-pumping ride spearheaded by a grieving and raging protagonist who quickly becomes a fan favorite operator on the path for retribution. 

With twists and turns that will keep you reading late past your bedtime and a healthy dose of action, Wolf Trap is a thriller that fans of the genre will enjoy the heck out of. 

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Deep Fake By Ward Larsen

Deep Fake is a mind-churning jaw-dropping mixture of Cold War era thrillers and cutthroat political narratives that serve as meaningful and thoughtful commentaries about the world we find ourselves in today. Ward Larsen stretches out to a different sort of thriller than his David Slaton action-packed adventures and proves that he has both the emotional and intellectual intelligence to tackle different sub genres within the thrillerverse.

When a junior congressman, Bryce Ridgeway, puts his life at risk to stop a suicide bomber, he’s immediately regaled as a public hero and jettisoned off to the political races for a shot at the presidency. The moments of relief and celebration for the Ridgeway family start falling apart when Sarah Ridgeway notices peculiarities in her husband’s demeanor. She reaches out to a friend, a research scientist, whose groundbreaking work opens the door for unsettling revelations about an audaciously horrific conspiracy. Is the man in the spotlight truly her husband?

There’s a delicate balance between narratives that are wonderfully delightful but ridiculously impossible and those that seem eerily probable. Ward Larsen walks the pitch perfect line in a scary armament of modern technology that’s not only in use today but the implications of which are still not feared widely by society at large. Larsen’s grasp on up-and-coming technology is commendable and perhaps best describes the threat posed by unregulated technology in both politics and espionage when those who are relentless in their pursuit of a bold idea get their hands on something so powerful and damaging to a world that basically runs on 0’s and 1’s. 

While grappling with the scary modern-day voodoo that is technology, Larsen doesn’t lose sight of the effects of such threats on the very human characters that are first and foremost in the narrative. Sarah’s dilemma of discovering the dark side about her “husband” feels so genuine that it crosses over into unsettling territory even for a reader who knows this isn’t actually happening. Her unofficial investigation with her best friend leads her down a turmoil path that rivets and twists like a formula-one race track. You don’t get a moment of breather as Ward Larsen takes you on a roller coaster of a thriller.

Deep Fake is as good as it gets for smart political thrillers that keep you engrossed in the pages and offer a fresh narrative and perspective. There’s a great aerial combat sequence in the climax that stands out as one of the most intense finales I have read so far. Leave it to Ward Larsen to deliver nail-biting action on both the ground and in the air. 

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Beast Three Six By Jason Kasper

Jason Kasper brings the heat in Beast Three Six, packing tenacious action and kickass heroes you’d want to save you if you ever got yourself in a jam. 

After the harrowing ending of Narco Assassins, David Rivers and his team are on the hunt for those that escaped their grasps with weapons of mass destruction. Their directive gets trickier when a senator’s daughter is abducted by a Filipino terrorist who had crossed paths with the team once before. When the terrorist explicitly demands a meeting with Rivers, the timeline on their mission accelerates as the team finds a nefarious plot brewing under the pretense of a hostage situation. It’s up to the team to rescue the hostage while preventing a large-scale cleansing in Libya with the weapons they failed to secure the first time around.

Jason Kasper brings the action to life with characters that feel so authentic that we have no trouble imagining them running around the globe saving us from all the unsavory bad guys hiding in the shadows. Even acting as expendable assets with no clear oversight, the team led by David Rivers is one of courage and honor while staying pragmatic about the parameters of the mission. The action sequences are rendered in crisp and clear images in your mind with way too many badass moments to count on one hand alone. With a sense of righting a wrong on a more personal scale, the action is tinged with an emotional vendetta that makes the team even more unpredictable in its mission to destroy its enemy by taking bold risks to get the job done.

Beast Three Six is an adrenaline-fueled tactical adventure that continues to show why Jason Kasper is one of the best military action thriller writers of this generation, mashing tactical and technical authenticity to achieve a symphony of hard-hitting violence for the sake of good. 

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Red London By Alma Katsu

Alma Katsu continues to shine as an extraordinary spy author presenting the most believable and nail-bitingly intense stories in step with the geopolitics straight out of the headlines.

CIA agent Lyndsey Duncan is assigned to the London office where she is tasked with handling a newly turned Russian asset. When an attack on a Russian oligarch and his family in their London home makes sparky headlines, her MI6 counterpart and former flame asks her help in going undercover with the oligarch’s wife to find out why the Kremlin would brazenly attempt an assassination on foreign soil. Lyndsey agrees to step into the battlefield of spies and assassins to figure out what the newest Russian despot has in store for the world. Undercover stories have never felt so intense and anxiety-inducing.

Red London elevates the cerebral espionage aspect that readers loved so much in Red Widow. Lyndsey’s greatest assets are her smarts in outwitting her opponents and disarming them intellectually rather than with brute force. The emphasis on tradecraft has never felt more poignant and necessary and helps achieve the perfect balance between old school cerebral tales and modern day fast-paced thrillers. You never know what’s going to happen in the next sentence let alone the next page. This unpredictability stems from complex and dynamic characters with multi-layered motivations that make them remarkably lifelike. The impending feeling of doom stays in the air as you flip through the pages, rooting desperately for Lyndsey as she makes some difficult decisions to accomplish what she must.  

Alma Katsu keeps you engaged and hooked from the inception to the conclusion, ending on such a scary cliffhanger that you can’t help but tense up thinking about what will come next. Katsu is setting up this universe splendidly with a plethora of interconnected narratives and subplots to pay off with a bang. I can’t wait to read where Lyndsey Duncan finds herself next, especially after that haunting last sentence. 

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Antimatter Blues By Edward Ashton

Edward Ashton is my new favorite author when it comes to the ingenious world of science-fiction stories in a thrilling and chilling voice.

Antimatter Blues is a worthy follow-up to the soon-to-be-seen-in-cinemas Mickey7. Mickey Barnes establishes a shaky peacetime with the inhabitants of the alien world known as Niflheim when he gives them a nuclear weapon as peace offering much to the dismay of human colony’s Commander Marshall. All is fine with the world for a while, before winter comes along and the existing nuclear reactor starts malfunctioning. With a plausible threat of losing power and freezing to death, Barnes must go back into the danger zone and retrieve the peace offering. It’s only then he realizes the repercussions of what he did to secure his freedom the first time; he may not make it out alive a second time.

Antimatter Blues is the awesome embodiment of how science fiction can be blended with thriller elements to create something exotic and exciting. In Barnes’s quest to retrieve the nuclear weapon, he and his team face off against scary spider-like aliens in descriptive and artistic action sequences reminiscent of those in Robert A Heinlein’s Starship Troopers with futuristic weapons that are quite cool to visualize.

The action works so well because it’s led by characters that you actually root for. The first person POV centered on Mickey Barnes is mind-blowingly written with a mix of sarcasm and confidence in the face of grave danger. The realistic dialogues and thought processes of Barnes are fierce enough to put you in his shoes until someone taps you on your shoulder to snap you out of the experience, which is quite annoying at times. Even better are the interactions with the alien race. Barnes forms unlikely alliances with a representative of the alien clan and forges a bond that ironically teaches Barnes (and us) what it means to be a human.

Strap in for an edge-of-your-seat breathtaking journey across the universe with a story so amazingly atypical and thought-provoking that you will want to take at least a 3-day break from everything to process the entire book in all its glory.

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The Mazatlan Showdown By Patrick Weill

The Mazatlan Showdown is what the doctor recommends if you’re in need of a high-adrenaline dose from explosive shootouts, car chases, underwater combat, and general chaos. Patrick Weill begins his new series with an exciting entry.

Jeff Walker is a champion surfer with a chip on his shoulder to confront the murderer of his father and bring him to justice. He has no idea how violently his wish may come true as he witnesses a shooting and when he swims out to the crime scene, he finds himself in a sticky mess that leads right back to the killer Walker has been waiting to get his hands on all his life. Walker, along with his friends including the devastatingly formidable Park, lead their own investigation into uncovering a major smuggling ring but soon enough, they may dig a hole too deep for them to climb out.

Patrick Weill imbues The Mazatlan Showdown with a sort of 80’s vibe that invokes a free-spirited adventure set against the backdrop of sunny beaches, guns, and fast cars and bikes. Walker and Park complement each other as protagonists with Walker’s inexperience with combat matched by Park’s subtle nature shaped by years of discipline in practicing violence against enemy combatants, much like the old-school buddy-action stories that are always a delight to absorb. Each character brings something different to the table and each gets sucked into a myriad of trouble until the last explosive showdown.

Packed with double crosses, gruesome violence that make you cringe expecting the worst to happen to the good guys, and hardcore vendetta-fueled carnage, it easily envelopes you into the world of heartbreak and action. If you’re looking for a thriller to get lost in easily, The Mazatlan Showdown is a safe choice and one that you won’t regret.

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What Have We Done By Alex Finlay

Alex Finlay dazzles readers once again with a twisty as heck thriller that tackles everything from coming-of-the-age dilemmas to harrowing secrets and gruesome action in What Have We Done.

Told from multiple perspectives of seemingly ordinary people living out their lives when each and every one is targeted for termination by a masked assassin wielding a very unorthodox weapon. From pop stars to stay-at-home moms, each character shares a chilling past together that has brought violence to their doorstep once again. In order to get to the heart of the mystery, they must come together again and put aside their differences. It all goes back to their time in the orphanage, from where they all emerged alive but broken.

What Have We Done imbues a sinister and eerie tone of unpredictability and distrust as it tells the one big narrative from the POVs of the characters. Each character has his/her distinctive charms and quirks that create a compelling page turner as the prose and the story stay fresh and active no matter what.  Even with a large roster of characters and the back and forth between past and present, the narrative never gets confusing or too much to unpack. Alex Finlay is a bona fide master of entwining multiple layers of storytelling with a practiced finesse that meets the highest of expectations. 

With such a domestic vibe, I was pleasantly surprised to read hard-hitting fast-paced action written in crisp bursts of adrenaline and surety of technical prowess. With one of the characters doubling as a highly trained and lethal assassin, the action sequences were wonderfully handled as bouts between formidable adversaries that will please those looking for an action-packed and adventurous read interspersed with high suspense and dark mystery.

Can’t get enough of stay-up-all-night-skip-work-tomorrow thrillers? What Have We Done is exactly the kind of thriller that you can sacrifice your sleep for and still be happy through the next day because it is just that scrumptious to devour in one sitting.

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Death Watch By Stona Fitch

Death Watch is a fascinating commentary on the societal schisms that spring forth for the silliest of reasons with the most disastrous circumstances. Stona Fitch writes a clever narrative that pulls you in with the first-person POV immersive experience.

You’re put in the shoes of an ad-campaign manager, Coe Vessel, who is tasked with promoting an eccentric provocateur’s latest creation; a watch that has the ability to kill its wearer. Desperate to land the lucrative contract, Coe and his team market the watch as the must-have modern accessory that serves to both embrace the fashion-wealth statement of the capitalist world as well as a rebuttal against its fast-paced nature. What’s thought of as a nifty marketing trick to attract sales ends up actually killing whoever wears the watch. What’s worse, is that Coe has the first ever death watch on his wrist too.

Stona Fitch presents a satirical and dark horror narrative that extends beyond the reading experience to make you think deeply about the society that now prevails, dominating our mindsets and choices with all that we do. Fitch’s clever approach of using a first person POV helps with actively pondering over the all-consuming nature of the amalgamation of the capitalistic and artistic world we’ve come to be in. It’s a rather unsettling experience when the narrative starts to feel like something you are personally experiencing.

Death Watch is an exciting high-stakes concept with a cautionary tone that carries palpable tension amplified by the plight of the characters so closely aligned with our own culture. It reads like a fast-paced thriller and yet it doesn’t just fall into that purview but rather utilizes the high-octane power of a well-crafted and suspenseful thriller to convey timely subliminal messages for readers to understand and in the best case, work towards the prevention of such pervasion. 

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The Kind Worth Saving By Peter Swanson

If there is anyone I trust to write a wacky psychological thriller with dark and devious characters with no clear idea of whether they’re good or bad, it’s Peter Swanson. In his traditional style, he has concocted another jarring tale of murder and betrayal in The Kind Worth Saving.

Henry Kimball is a private eye who is hired by a woman he once taught as a high school teacher to confirm her suspicions about her husband committing adultery. A simple investigation that turns horribly dark when he becomes a witness to a murder of two individuals. With his instincts nagging at him, he takes a deeper look into her student, Joan, where incongruities start surfacing. Known for his obsessions getting the best of him, Kimball sets down another rabbit hole but he may not get out of this one alive.

Peter Swanson is unbelievably adept at crafting plot twists within plot twists and linking them in a manner that doesn’t lose your attention even a tiny bit. There is a sinister twang to his prose that seeps into you as much as it does into the characters and opens you up to consider darkly intriguing possibilities about the whodunit narrative, almost like you are untangling the web of mystery with Henry Kimball. Personally, there’s another character I loved even more than Kimball and that is Lily Kinter, the mastermind from Swanson’s The Kind Worth Killing. If you haven’t read it, you’ll best enjoy this one after reading its predecessor as the dynamic of Kimball and Kinter follows very closely from its events. Lily Kinter compliments Kimball as a dark knight willing to go to depths that Kimball’s white knight can’t possibly fathom in order to truly crack this case open without any official jurisdiction, given that Lily mirrors Joan so closely they might as well have been the same persons, except for a few nuances which are highlighted brilliantly by Peter Swanson to present a nerve wrecking battle of wits between two murderers.

Clever, dangerous, and addictive, The Kind Worth Saving is one doozy of a thriller that pairs you with genuine characters and palpable circumstances that will keep you coming back for more. Peter Swanson continues to impress with his ingenious affairs of double crosses and murders.

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Net Force: Moving Target By Jerome Preisler

Jerome Preisler ushers in the future of espionage and action with Net Force: Moving Target. It’s not the Tom Clancy thrillers we’ve grown up with, but it certainly has its own charm.

The narrative focuses on Kali Alcazar, a former member of Net Force team who’s now hunted by bio-enhanced Russian assassins as she navigates through the underground world of Paris to rescue a loved one. At the same time, the Net Force team is gearing up to storm a heavily armed fortress to capture a dangerous hacker who’s got a few tricks up his sleeve for his guests.

What’s most distinctive about this thriller is the integration of bio-tech into operators to aid them in the lethal art of hunting their prey. Jerome Preisler adds not-so-distant futuristic tech into the mix that augment the nature of the threats and the overall story with a Blade Runner-esque vibe, painting a dangerous picture of the next generation of combat. Preisler’s ability to immerse readers into the futuristic world by breaking down the action in vivid strokes of punches, kicks, and gunshots with bio-enhanced precision is worth the price of admission alone as you feel every strike that’s inflicted on the characters. 

While the intriguing characters with nebulous drives and unsuspecting change of plans at the last moment keep you hooked until the culmination, it’s best read in chronological order of Net Force series by Jerome Preisler as the fast-paced narrative that drops you right into the middle of the action leaves little room for proper introduction of the series. That said, Net Force: Moving Target shows that this is a series for thriller fans to check out pronto.

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Dempsey By Andrews & Wilson

Brian Andrews and Jeffery Wilson once again prove the excellence of their writing as they give us one of their most action-packed and boldest thrillers. Dempsey is my favorite of their Tier One/Team Ember series.

Set after the traumatizing events of Red Specter, we see the badass titular protagonist in a Russian gulag, missing from the face of the planet and missed dearly by his team. Under a carefully constructed guise, he is working undercover to accomplish what will be his most important mission yet; to assassinate the despotic and aggressive Russian president after his attempts to kickstart World War 3 by killing innocents. It will take the collective effort of Dempsey and his team of compatriots to pull this off, even if they have to do it from different parts of the world at once.

While Andrews and Wilson have always retained an emotional resonance in their action-packed stories, Dempsey is be the most personal one yet. The authors hone in on Dempsey’s predicaments of retaining his sanity and cover, both of which seem to progressively become mutually exclusive as he serves his time in the prison where he cannot let his guard down for even a second. In the course of the narrative, his spycraft becomes more and more polished as he reluctantly partners up the Russian spymaster in his mission, a partnership that puts him on edge as he learns to navigate the perilous game of trusting foes for a shared cause, after which there is no telling what may happen.

In addition to high emotional stakes, the narrative is rife with crisp and scrumptious action sequences that rival the best we could see on the big screen and in literature. From smooth trigger pulls to bullets whizzing past, the authentic and powerful combat sequences will put a smile on your face as you visualize the badass protagonists dish it out with the bad guys in the most realistically badass ways one could fathom.

Dempsey is a shining beacon of high-class writing in the thriller genre and it’s bound to go on the best of 2023 action-thriller list.

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(Note: most indie bookstores can fulfill an order as quickly as larger retailers. Please consider contacting them for your next purchase.)

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Murder By The Book
Once Upon A Crime
The Book Dragon
The Poisoned Pen

Burner By Mark Greaney

The Gray Man is back more formidable than ever this time around with an ax to grind. We get our butt-kicking, Glock-toting, unstoppable assassin with a new flavor to mix things up.

Burner packs the classic Greaney gut-punch of putting Court Gentry through the wringer in the backdrop of an uber-current socio-political climate. With Russia’s atrocities against the Ukraine ramping, Gentry puts his skills to a higher cause by taking out material investments of Russian oligarchs trying to protect their assets from being seized. When he gets roped into another CIA off-the-books directive to find Alex Velesky, a Ukrainian Swiss banker, who seems to be in possession of information that everyone from the Russian mafia to the CIA wish to extract for their own agendas. What Gentry does not know is the vital nature of this information such that it exposes a vast criminal conspiracy set in the heart of Russia-Ukraine conflict. Sadly, Gentry also does not know that pursuing this mission will put him in the crosshairs of his estranged love, Zoya Zakharova, and not in the happy way he keeps daydreaming about.

Just when I seem to think The Gray Man series has reached its peak, Mark Greaney blasts along to prove otherwise. Burner is packed with unbelievably gorgeous and extravagant action sequences. I don’t mean unbelievable in a bad way. True to his form, Greaney keeps a tactically and technically realistic purview of the action but it’s all just so awesome. I must have read each shootout and hand-to-hand combat sequence at least twice because the details are so vivid and neat to picturize while you’re reading through the pages with dangerous amounts of adrenaline coursing through your bloodstream. Its no secret that The Gray Man is more John McClane than James Bond, and we get a wonderful depiction of it in unorthodox moments of Gray Man-badassery.

12 books in and yet, Mark Greaney still keeps the Gray Man series fresh and the readers on their toes with a constantly evolving protagonist. As globetrotting as Burner is, it’s still a very empathetic story that keeps an imperative focus on Gentry as he wrestles with his purpose after all he has been through. The ending opens up a new chapter for Court and Zoya, one that britches away from the previous close calls to create a more meaningful next step for the two lovebirds. I cannot wait for the next Gray Man adventure!

Grand and cinematic, Burner is Greaney’s best work yet. The only downside is the terrifying long wait after you finish Burner in a few days and then yearn for what may come next from the master of action and espionage.

Follow Kashif on Twitter or contact him via the site.

Purchase Burner
(Note: most indie bookstores can fulfill an order as quickly as larger retailers. Please consider contacting them for your next purchase.)

Barrington Books
Chapter 2 Books
Murder By The Book
Once Upon A Crime
The Book Dragon
The Poisoned Pen

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