Crime Thriller Book Log: Hurley, Hannah, Connelly & Khoury
The weekly onslaught of new books keeps coming, you lucky things.
There are some more out tomorrow. I don’t really know why novels are most often published on a Thursday. Let’s take a look – through the round window – at some of the week’s releases. They all feature protagonists who’ve been around the block more than once.
First up is Graham Hurley’s Touching Distance. That’s the cover, there. Someone’s aimed high, carelessly missing the fellow in the field, and hitting the photographer.
The blurb says it all rather nicely in a single sentence:
A sniper is turning the quiet Devon countryside into a killing ground. Jimmy Suttle is facing a case that could end his career. And his life.
Like a lot of novelists, Hurley’s lived a bit. He’s filmed the wrecks of the Titanic and the Bismark. And, like other writers, he collected plenty of rejection slips before getting the publishing deal. Graham writes from nine till six and then heads back to his desk in the evening - so, like all successful authors, he puts in the work. He’s got a rather good website that will tell you more about his writing process.
Touching Distance is the second novel in the Jimmy Suttle series, which is a spin-off from his dozen Joe Faraday books set in Portsmouth Major Crimes.
Hardcover and kindle. There, sorted.
Gods Of Guilt is the fifth Mickey Heller novel by Michael Connelly.
Good grief, the blurb is positively parsimonious this week:
Defense attorney Mickey Haller returns with a haunting case in the gripping new thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Michael Connelly.
Connelly is the author of the Harry Bosch series, of course, and Mickey Heller is the criminal defence attorney with the limo, I believe. They’re half-brothers, actually. What the blurb doesn’t tell you – because it’s intent on not telling you much at all – is that Bosch turns up in this novel. Connelly is one of those authors who loves to cross-pollinate his novels with all his different characters, which is always fun.
Hardcover and kindle, since you’re wondering.
That Rasputin - he was a card. I understand his tea parties were really something. In his latest Sean Reilly novel, Rasputin’s Shadow, Raymond Khoury weaves the smelly old fellow into one of his super-expansive global thrillers.
Thankfully, the blurb tell us a little bit more this time round:
On a cold, bleak day in 1916, a mining pit in Siberia turns into a bloodbath when its miners attack each other, savagely and ferociously. Minutes later, two men - a horrified scientist and Grigory Rasputin, trusted confidant of the tsar - hit a detonator, blowing up the mine to conceal all evidence of the carnage.
In the present day, FBI agent Sean Reilly is tasked with a new, disturbing case. A Russian embassy attaché seems to have committed suicide by jumping out of a fourth-floor window in Queens. The apartment’s owners, a retired high school teacher and his wife, have gone missing, while a faceless killer is roaming New York City, leaving a trail of death in his wake.
Joined by Russian FSB agent Larisa Tchoumitcheva, Reilly’s investigation into the old man’s identity will uncover a deadly search for a mysterious device whose origins reach back in time to the darkest days of the Cold War and to Imperial Russia and which, in the wrong hands, could have a devastating impact on the modern world.
Khoury’s journey to writing novels is another interesting one, you can find out about it here, but basically it went via Beirut to investment banking and writing for Spooks. Now he’s well successful.
Kindle, hardback.
Mari Hannah has written the fourth in her series about DCI Kate Daniels. It’s called Monument To Murder and it’s out tomorrow, like all the rest.
The blurb says:
When skeletal remains are found beneath the fortified walls of an ancient castle on Northumberland’s rugged coastline, DCI Kate Daniels calls on a forensic anthropologist to help identify the corpse. Meanwhile, newly widowed prison psychologist Emily McCann finds herself drawn into the fantasy of convicted sex offender, Walter Fearon.
As his mind games become more and more intense, is it possible that Daniels’ case has something to do with his murderous past? With his release imminent, what exactly does he have in mind for Emily? As Daniels encounters dead end after dead end and the body count rises, it soon becomes apparent that someone is hiding more than one deadly secret…
Since we’re linking to websites, Mari has one of those as well. And here it is. If you’re an aspiring author you may want to get yourself a little corner of the internet where you can share news about your wonderful books and events and suchlike. These days, it’s pretty much an essential tool for an author.
