Category: Crime, Mystery, Thriller

New Scotland Yard, the headquarters of London’s Metropolitan Police, houses the notorious Black Museum, a unique collection of exhibits, photographs, and other items connected with some of the most famous crimes of the last century. Fifty of those crimes were murders and they are explored in detail in this compelling book. Gordon Honeycombe was given privileged access to its darkest secrets of the place that was renamed The Crime Museum. His book spans a hundred years of murder, manslaughter, and attempted assassinations and reveals the true facts behind some of the U.K.’s most notorious murder cases, including Jack the Ripper, Dr. Crippen, and the Krays.

( Courtesy of goodreads ;    608 pages    hardcover )

There are few authors who can weave nail-biting thrills, edge-of-your-seat drama, and romantic suspense as masterfully as Julie Garwood. Now she ratchets up the tension with Murder List, in which evil is on the hunt– and proves to be methodically organized and chillingly successful.

When Chicago detective Alec Buchanan is offered a prime position with the FBI, it is the perfect opportunity to leave the Windy City and follow in his brothers’ footsteps to the top echelons of law enforcement. But first he must complete one last assignment (and one that he is not too happy about): acting as a glorified bodyguard to hotel heiress Regan Hamilton Madison. The gorgeous exec has become entangled in some potentially deadly business. Someone has e-mailed her a graphic crime-scene photo–and the victim is no stranger.

Regan suspects that the trouble started when she agreed to help a journalist friend expose a shady self-help guru who preys on lonely, vulnerable women. In fact, the smooth-as-an-oil-slick Dr. Lawrence Shields may be responsible for the death of one of his devotees, which was ruled a suicide. Hoping to find some damning evidence, Regan attends a Shields seminar.

At the gathering, the doctor persuades his guests to partake in an innocent little “cleansing” exercise. He asks them to make a list of the people who have hurt or deceived them over the years, posing the question: Would your world be a better place if these people ceased to exist? Treating the exercise as a game, Regan plays along. After ten minutes, Shields instructs the participants to bring their sheets of paper to the fireplace and throw them into the flames. But Regan misses this part of the program when she exits the room to take a call–and barely escapes a menacing individual in the parking lot.

The experience is all but forgotten–until the first person on Regan’s list turns up dead. Shock turns to horror when other bodies from the list start to surface, as a harrowing tango of desire and death is set into motion. Now brutal murders seem to stalk her every move–and a growing attraction to Alec may compromise her safety, while stirring up tender emotions she thought she could no longer feel. Yet as the danger intensifies and a serial killer circles ever closer, Regan must discover who has turned her private revenge fantasies into grisly reality.

( Courtesy of GoodReads,  hardcover  405 pages )

On a bitter winter evening, during rush hour, a bomb explodes in a crowded train in the London underground. More than a hundred people are horrifically and senselessly slaughtered. In the absence of any terrorist claims come distressing unanswerable questions: Who planted the device? And why?

A few hours later in a Mayfair flat a young prostitute is murdered and an enigmatic message written in blood is left in her room… It is addressed to Frank Pagan, counter-terrorist specialist, who has been shunted aside by the political infighting at Special Branch, but is now brought back from exile to investigate the most terrifying case of his career.

Pagan, who moves in his own mysterious ways, who flaunts the rule-book and follows his own instincts, is plunged into a darkening puzzle more sinister than a bomb in an underground tunnel. He finds himself pitted against two old adversaries: the deranged terrorist Carlotta, a woman whose appetite for blood is matched only by Pagan’s hunger for justice – and the ghost of Jig, his most famous antagonist, whose death has given birth to new demons.

( from the Sleeve,  hardcover  416 pages )

Sam McCready is The Deceiver, one of the Secret Intelligence Service’s most unorthodox and most valued operatives, a legend in his own time. The end of the cold war has, however, strengthened the hand of the Whitehall mandarins, to whom he seems about as controllable as Genhis Khan, so Sam is to have his fate decided at a special hearing. As part of the proceedings, four of Sam’s key operations are reviewed: a clandestine mission into East Germany in 1985 to contact the top Russian spy General Pankratin; the second involving a KGB colonel who wants to defect – but is he genuine? An audacious Qaddafi-inspired plot to ship arms to the IRA; and the fourth when McCready presided over the aftermath of political murder and mayhem in the Caribbean

( Courtesy of Google Books,  hardcover 481 pages )

author of  Day Of The Jackal  and  The Negotiator

In his pulse-pounding thrillers, Earl Emerson takes readers into the heart of the world’s most dangerous profession, where the next alarm might bring sudden death. Based on stunning, actual events in the author’s life, this electrifying new novel is a frightening duel between a Seattle firefighter and a man who wants to burn him down. . . .

To a firefighter, there’s nothing worse than a nuisance arsonist. His multiple fires keep a station up at night, running in circles, and more vulnerable at the next “real” call. And in Seattle, Lt. Paul Wollf of the Station Six’s ladder truck hates a pyro more than most. Two decades before, an arsonist’s fire killed Wolff’s firefighter father, sending his mother into a spiral of depression and triggering a chain of events that left his brother in jail for murder and Wollf alone, seething in anger and isolation.

Already disciplined for punching out a superior officer, Wollf is now taking a young female firefighter under his wing. Despite the stationhouse leers and jokes, Wollf is only doing what comes naturally, helping out an underdog and bucking the system. But soon he and Cindy Rideout find themselves in a fierce political battle inside the department, just as a pyro starts to turn Seattle into his private little hell.

With fires springing up across the city, Wollf begins to see a pattern. The fires being set are coming closer and closer to Station Six. And when a crucial piece of evidence turns up, Wollf suspects the unthinkable: this pyro has turned him into a fiery target.

In Paul Wollf, Earl Emerson has created a hero on the brink. For when the pyro’s rampage puts Wollf in the public limelight, Wollf must choose between his burning rage and the chance to step back–for once–and see a shocking truth hidden beyond the heat.

( from the Sleeve,  hardcover 309 pages )

The novel begins with the discovery of Carolyn Polhemus dead in her apartment, the victim of what appears to be a sexual bondage encounter gone wrong, killed outright by a fatal blow to the skull with an unknown object. Rozat “Rusty” Sabich is a prosecutor and co-worker of Carolyn and is assigned her case by the district attorney. At the time he is also helping his friend and boss Raymond Horgan with his re-election campaign. If Horgan wins, Sabich will keep his job and if not, he will lose it. The case is further complicated by the fact that, unknown to the people around him, he had a brief affair with Polhemus that ended months before her murder.

Despite his obvious conflict of interest, Rusty is handling the investigation, while keeping the affair secret. He’s assisted by Dan “Lip” Lipramzer, a police officer who is investigating the details and evidence for Rusty. During the investigation, Rusty learns Horgan also had a brief relationship with Carolyn. The only person who knows of his affair is Rusty’s wife Barbara, and that has placed a strain on their marriage. Evidence surfaces that points the finger at Rusty and he is indicted for murder. He hires lawyer Alejandro “Sandy” Stern, an Argentinean who has been a frequent opponent over the years, to defend him.

The evidence against Rusty consists of a bar glass with his fingerprints, physical evidence, and calls from his home on the night of the murder. As the trial ensues, Rusty learns that the judge also had an affair with Polhemus and that he and Horgan took bribes from various suspects. Stern is able to discredit the expert forensic testimony and a key piece of evidence goes missing. The case is dismissed and it appears Rusty has gotten away with murder. However, later at home he discovers that his wife killed Polhemus out of vengeance.

Many of the minor characters in Presumed Innocent also appear in Turow’s later novels, which are all set in the fictional, Midwestern Kindle County. A sequel to Presumed Innocent, titled Innocent, was released on May 4, 2010 and continues the relationship between Rusty Sabich and Tommy Molto.

( Courtesy of Wikipedia,  paperback  498 pages )

Oz Blackstone didn’t go looking for fame: it jumped out of an alleyway and mugged him with a fist full of high denomination notes. Movie stardom, wealth, a successful marriage – Oz is standing on the brink of the Seriously Big Time and life just seems to keep lining up the cherries… He should have known it couldn’t stay that good for that long – don’t the juiciest fruit always go sour? The first sign of trouble appears when Oz finds his ex-wife Primavera Phillips, drenched in her own tears – her life in ruins, cheated out of her fortune and robbed of her baby boy, Tom, by his lying con-man father. What could Oz do but help? Maybe he should have called for help himself, or stuck to the game plan of looking after number one. Instead he set out on a voyage of dark intrigue and wild discovery that would turn his life upside down.

( from the sleeve,   371  pages )

The body of a beautiful senior from a strict fundamentalist Christian high school is found in a state forest. Policewoman Kate MacLean is assigned to investigate the murder, and the deeper she digs into the tight-lipped religious community, the more horrifying the mystery becomes, until more parishiooners’ bodies are found–and Kate, too, is running out of time.

( Courtesy of GoodReads,   386 pages )