Earmark these killer thrillers for your hit list
Curl up with one of February’s criminally good new chillers
KILLER INTENT by Tony Kent Elliott & Thompson, £12.99
WHEN an assassin tries to shoot dead a former US president at a rally in Trafalgar Square, a chain of events is triggered which Britain’s security services seem powerless to stop.
The attack was watched by millions of people live on TV and jeopardises the “special relationship” between the UK and US. With political leaders scrambling to find scapegoats, military intelligence officer Major Joe Dempsey vows to track down the assassin, even if his mission is not officially sanctioned.
He starts to uncover a conspiracy to destabilise the peace accord in Northern Ireland and bring the UK government to its knees and realises he must face a shadowy figure from his past.
At the same time, Sarah Truman, a CNN reporter determined to get her headline, and Belfast-born criminal barrister Michael Devlin are running a parallel investigation.
When they realise they are in the path of a relentless killer, Dempsey faces a race against time to save them and prevent the conspiracy from changing our political landscape for ever.
Killer Intent is an astute, cleverly plotted and scarily plausible conspiracy thriller with plenty of twists leading to a well-judged finale.
In this debut novel Kent makes good use of his personal experiences as a top criminal barrister and champion amateur heavyweight boxer, creating a satisfying mix of skulduggery in the halls of power combined with authentic fight scenes.
But his greatest achievement is his rounded, well-developed lead characters in Dempsey and Devlin who hit the ground running in the first of a projected four-book series. JC
FORCE OF NATURE by Jane Harper Little, Brown, £12.99
FORCE Of Nature is Jane Harper’s eagerly awaited follow-up to her debut novel The Dry, an international bestseller that has won a string of awards.
When five women set off on a three-day trek into the Australian bushland on a corporate team-building exercise, little do they know that only four of them will make it out of the wilderness.
The fifth, Alice Russell, is a high-achiever with a spiky temper who seems to disappear without trace. This creates a problem for detectives Falk and Carmen. They have been building a money-laundering case against Alice’s boss and she is a key source of evidence.
The detectives were just about to nail the case with her final evidence. Has their investigation placed her in danger?
The story alternates between the investigators in the present and the colleagues a few days earlier as they begin their trek.
Harper’s writing style has no frills but it is clear and beautifully paced. It makes the bushland come alive and the sense of the wilderness closing in is tangible. Despite dark subject matter, the witty third-person narration offers moments of light relief, as when one of the women fantasises about hurting someone who annoys her: “Her counsellor had been right. Visualising what she wanted really did make her feel a lot better.”
Harper astutely observes the behaviour of the wealthy and her nuanced characters leap off the page with lines such as: “The frozen, tight-lipped argument of people conditioned not to make a scene.”
This thriller will make the hairs stand up on the back of your neck and leave you gripped to the final page. EA
NEED TO KNOW by Karen Cleveland Bantam Press, £12.99
CIA analyst Vivian Miller works long hours trying to uncover Russian sleeper agents while her husband cares for their four children.
Frustrated by a lack of progress in a long-running operation, Viv finally gets a breakthrough which could expose deep cover agents and their handlers on US soil.
When she accesses the computer of a potential Russian spy she excitedly clicks on a folder labelled “friends”. Her joy turns to horror when she sees that one of the five images in this folder shows her husband Matt.
As a trusted and experienced analyst Vivian has vowed to defend her country against all enemies, foreign and domestic. But she is now faced with a decision that could either shatter her marriage and family or see her lose the job she loves and potentially end up in prison.
Need To Know is an impressive debut from an author who worked for the CIA and uses her personal experiences to pose an interesting moral dilemma.
Universal Studios has snapped up the film rights for Charlize Theron to star in a big-screen
adaptation. It is an engaging, thoughtful domestic suspense thriller that builds to a satisfying finale with a twist.
It challenges the reader to put themselves in Viv’s shoes as she is torn between her head and her heart, although there are moments when her naivety is exasperating.
THE CONFESSION by Jo Spain Quercus, £12.99
WHEN a man arrives at a small-town police station claiming he has killed someone, the officers wonder whether he’s delusional. But minutes later they discover that Harry McNamara, a famously wealthy financier with a dodgy past, has been murdered in his own home in front of his wife. Since they have a man in custody covered in Harry’s blood this seems like an open-and-shut case but the man’s confession throws up more questions than answers.
He had never met Harry before and has no discernible motive to kill him. So The Confession is not a traditional whodunnit crime thriller but a whydunnit.
As the story inches forward Jo Spain dissects Harry McNamara’s past through the eyes of different characters such as his wife Julie who knew before she married him that he was trouble. “I ignored what everybody close was telling me. I ignored my own gut.”
We also explore the past of Harry’s apparent killer, JP Carney, who had a troubled upbringing living with a drunk, abusive father while his mother was in and out of a psychiatric institution.
A tangled web of connections between the characters emerges but Harry’s thoroughly unlikable personality makes it very difficult for the reader to care why he died.
And since the murder happens in the opening pages, the usual suspense of why and how the victim meets his end dissipates, making for a drawn-out story and an anti-climactic ending.
However, the whydunnit concept is refreshing and the plot is full of twists.