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Thrillers, Suspense & Mystery

Browse our collection of thrillers, suspense & mystery book reviews

In The Mountain

Dottie Lee (Atmosphere Press)

Reviewed by Yna Erdrich

Dottie Lee’s In the Mountain drops readers into a top-secret facility buried deep inside a mountain. After a catastrophic earthquake, the central Tube collapses, the glass shatters, and floors slide into the abyss, killing most of the staff and leaving a handful of survivors, including Trace, Paul, Pearl, and Joseph, who escape through an emergency exit into the suffocating darkness beyond the Wall. What follows is a struggle for survival as the...

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Into the Eye

James Houston Turner (Regis Books (an imprint of Ruby Rock Films))

Reviewed by Jeff Klune

James Houston Turner’s Into the Eye is a geopolitical thriller that introduces former KGB colonel Aleksandr Talanov, who is thrust into the heart of a diabolical human-trafficking network in central Africa. Tasked with the covert KTAC team, Talanov must locate and rescue Dr. Shawni Juma, a virologist who has uncovered evidence linking the brutal warlord Ojo Mutebi to the wealthy communist ideologue Istvan Szabo. When a rescue helicopter is betray...

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Trolling for Murder (A Vashon Island Mystery)

Charlotte Stuart (Colvos Publishing)

Reviewed by James Farlow

In Charlotte Stuart's Trolling for Murder, workplace investigator Lavender “Lew” Lewis discovers the body of Quin Armstrong at the base of Vashon Island's iconic Bird King Troll sculpture, a note declaring him “no friend of nature” taped to the wooden giant's pointing finger. When high school teacher Audrey Young becomes the prime suspect due to volatile confrontations about bullying, Lew digs into the victim's extensive list of enemies—from feud...

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The Matriarch Mission

Maxime Trencavel (Tail of the Bird Books)

Reviewed by Mariela M. Olsen

Maxime Trencavel’s The Matriarch Mission opens in 1913 Crimea, where thirteen-year-old Oksana Mangupli, a bookish Krymchak girl, follows her dying grandmother into a mystical cavern and encounters Asherah, an ancient divine feminine force. This meeting launches Oksana into a decades-spanning saga weaving through the Russian Revolution, Bolshevik terror, and World War II, as she follows her destiny as a woman of the “bump”—a genetic marker linking...

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Second Term

J.M. Adams (Oceanview Publishing)

Reviewed by James Farlow

Second Term by J.M. Adams is a propulsive political thriller that links two explosive timelines: the catastrophic 2012 Benghazi attack and a dystopian January 2029, where outgoing President Terrance Locke refuses to concede defeat and orchestrates a second, far deadlier Capitol insurrection to retain power. The narrative follows Cora Walker, a decorated covert operative code-named “Bronco” who survived Benghazi only to find herself battling domes...

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Bait - A Harper Jones Novel

Jeffrey Butler (Self)

Reviewed by John Grossman

In Jeffrey Butler's relentless thriller Bait, Detective Harper Jones of Wolf Hollow, North Carolina, hunts a car bomber when the ghosts of his past as a black-ops soldier come calling. Ten years ago, a mission to eliminate a Corsican arms dealer ended in disaster, leaving Harper believing his teammate and lover Josie was dead. Now, a vengeful crime syndicate, the mysterious Rosanera, has targeted Harper and his family, delivering a severed pig’s...

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Poison Pill (Dr. Mark Lin Medical Thrillers Book 3)

Anthony Lee (Independently Published)

Reviewed by Mitchell Grumby

In Poison Pill by Anthony Lee, Dr. Mark Lin, a hospitalist at Ivory Memorial Hospital, uncovers a lethal conspiracy linking two seemingly unrelated weight-loss treatments: the herbal supplement Motileaf and the pharmaceutical drug Naxipil. When patients, including a young man with bilateral kidney failure and a morbidly obese patient with sudden pulmonary hypertension, experience bizarre, organ damage, Lin traces the source to a sophisticate...

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The Prodigium

Thomas Steele (OEU Books)

Reviewed by Matthew Novak

The Prodigium by Thomas Steele is a psychological thriller with a labyrinthine plot, structured as a therapeutic dream journal divided into fourteen cantos. The story follows an unnamed, affluent narrator who discovers a disturbing photograph, depicting what appear to be the lifeless legs of an adolescent, on his wife's digital picture frame. Convinced this image reveals a hidden truth about his mysterious, Southern-born spouse (cryptically calle...

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What's Coming to You

Shivani Jai (Independent)

Reviewed by Mariela M. Olsen

In Shivani Jai's psychological thriller, What's Coming to You, Marilys Daniels falls for the charismatic Mason Goodridge and can’t believe it. Mason is everything any woman wants in a man. But she soon finds out that she is trapped in a marriage poisoned by his infidelity and her desperate desire for a family. Mari is pregnant when she discovers Mason's affair with her assistant Jeanine Alder, and their final confrontation turns deadly. Maso...

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Nikolai's Secret (The Ukraine Stories)

Matthew Fults (Tradecraft Werks Inc.)

Reviewed by Lisa Schwartz

Nikolai's Secret (The Ukraine Stories) by Matthew Fults is a Cold War thriller narrated by Nikolai Kovalenko, a Ukrainian electronics technician employed by the KGB-affiliated surveillance division of the Soviet Ministry of Communications. Spanning 1965 to 1983, the story traces Nikolai’s career from army conscription in Leningrad to a classified facility in Brovary, Ukraine, where he discovers a tape recording of a conversation between East Germ...

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