Books That Thrill

The first in Sue Grafton's long-running alphabetically titled detective series, A is for Alibi sets up some of the winning elements that have made her mysteries so popular. There's Kinsey Milhone, an admirably ballsy private investigator and former cop with a solitary life and a troubled romantic past. There's a picturesque setting, the quiet, elite town of Santa Theresa (a.k.a. Santa Barbara), in which everyone knows everyone else's secrets. And there's a... murder case — the poisoning of Laurence Fife, a prominent philandering lawyer — but a cold trail (it's been eight years since his wife Nikki was wrongly accused and jailed). At the behest of Nikki, now out on parole, Kinsey delves deeper into the case, and she finds a second unsolved murder with similar characteristics. Beyond that is a web of intriguingly interlinked characters, including a Las Vegas card shark, a handful of spurned lovers, a pothead brick-layer, Laurence's impossibly charming partner Charlie and his elegant dog-grooming ex-wife Gwen. As Kinsey begins to uncover the clues and connections, she finds herself more deeply entangled than she'd ever expected. Grafton's flair for dialogue, memorable characters and her ability to let readers in on the mystery-solving action make A is for Alibi a classic in the genre.

Like Sue Grafton's Kinsey Milhone, Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum is a heroine whose destiny is to star in a high-profile series of mystery books — now well into the double digits. But the hapless Plum is anything but a professional, and she lives in the decidedly non-elite city of Trenton, New Jersey. Unemployed and in major debt after being laid off from the local lingerie factory, she decides to take a job... with her cousin Vinnie's bail bonding office. Her first assignment: to find and capture Joe Morelli — the guy who popped her cherry on the floor of a cannoli bakery; also the guy she happened to later slam with her car when she "accidentally" lost control of it. Now a vice cop, Morelli has been implicated on a murder charge. With the promise of $10,000 and a few lessons in criminal nabbing from her colleague Ranger spurring her on, Plum sets out on her bounty-hunting mission. A cartoon-like chase with Morelli ensues, with brief interludes for car theft and stuffed cabbage dinners at Plum's parents' house. As Stephanie investigates further, she encounters a sociopathic boxer named Benito Ramirez and he promptly begins harassing her, making the dangers of her new job seem all too real. Evanovich's storytelling cruises on comic energy and halts for tense, fearful revelations. As the determined Stephanie pushes on, this well-crafted novel delivers major bangs for the bucks.

The epitome of the contemporary thriller, Michael Connelly's 20th book is set in a failing newsroom of The Los Angeles Times, circa 2009, where protagonist Jack McEvoy, a weathered crime reporter, is given his pink slip. Determined to write a Pulitzer-worthy story as revenge on his coldhearted employers, he decides to investigate the grisly murder of a woman whose body was stuffed into a car trunk, recently pinned on Alonzo Winslow, a... teenage gang member. McEvoy envisions a story that will reveal the relationship between class and crime, recreating how an unsympathetic environment could nurture a killer's impulses. Since he's been asked to train the young reporter who will be replacing him, he enlists her help on the story. An unwitting Google search plunges the two of them into a cyber trap set by the real killer, a sophisticated internet technician based hundreds of miles away. At the same time, Jack reviews police transcripts of Winslow's "confession," and realizes that he has never truly confessed to the crime. Meanwhile, another murder with an identical blueprint has sent an innocent man to jail in Las Vegas. As Jack connects the dots, he's being closely watched and his cunning opponent is always several steps ahead of him. Connelly's seamless transition between the minds of McEvoy and the murderer make for a gripping and fully believable voyage toward The Scarecrow's inevitable conclusion.

Dr. Kay Scarpetta is a chief medical examiner and a loner with a knack for zeroing in on criminal behavior but not much luck in the personal affairs department. When she's brought in to consult with the FBI on the murder investigation of an 11-year-old in North Carolina, she initially believes the killing is the work of Temple Gault, a serial murderer who has recently escaped from prison — and whose victims... she has examined before. Naturally, though, things are always more complicated than they seem, and Kay's suspicions grow when the local police chief is found hung — an ostensible case of autoerotic asphyxiation. Kay's beloved niece Lucy, interning at FBI's headquarters at Quantico, becomes embroiled in the intrigue when a romantic relationship with a coworker goes awry. Kay ultimately finds her answers at a decay research facility at the University of Tennessee, a.k.a. The Body Farm — a fascinating and gory detail culled from Cornwell's own experience as a forensic scientist. The Body Farm is full of ambiguous characters, obscure motives and enough shadowy suspense to make the titular facility seem like a benign refuge from the killer(s) at large.

Widowed forensic psychologist and homicide detective Alex Cross is busy trying to solve the brutal murders of an African-American family in Washington D.C.'s Southeast neighborhood when serial killer Gary Soneji kidnaps two children — the daughter of a film actress and the son of the Secretary of the Treasury Department — from a posh private school. The chief of police insists Cross and his partner, Sampson, take up the case. Cross, who... identifies more readily with the victims in Southeast, reluctantly agrees to take on the kidnapping and joins the increasingly frantic hunt for the missing children. The more he closes in on Gary Soneji, the less he knows about this mysterious and sinister character who seems to taunt the police by anticipating their every turn. At the same time, Cross finds himself in the clutches of a new love affair with Secret Service agent Jezzie Flanagan — a romance that serves as a nice distraction from the gruesome tasks of his job and allows him to move on emotionally after his wife's murder a few years back. Bodies pile up as Patterson's increasingly complicated plotline twists and turns, but Cross's curiosity about the human mind drives the story and his search for the truth further.

The third in a series of political thrillers starring CIA counterterrorism agent Mitch Rapp, Separation of Power begins as the CIA welcomes a new director, Irene Kennedy. Though she has the confidence and blessings of President Hayes, Kennedy's the target for many dissatisfied figures in Washington, including Senator Hank Clark, who would like to see her fail — or worse. Rapp, meanwhile, gets unwittingly drawn into the fray on a trip to... Italy when a former lover and accomplice, Donatella Rahn, is shot. Rapp begins to trace her would-be assassins and finds connections with Israel and the CIA. Kennedy, meanwhile, is fighting for her political life as she uncovers intelligence from the Israelis linking Saddam Hussein to nuclear weapons stored in a Baghdad hospital. Rapp is brought in to help the military stage an intervention, help Kennedy keep her job and serve up swift justice to the corrupt power dealers behind the scenes who have their next target stuck on his back. Flynn's conservative politics are on display as his hawkish characters seek to end terrorism at all costs but he paints a credible portrait of back-room dealings and ego trips gone psychotic in this complex, intricately plotted spy story.