Free and Bargain Mystery/Suspense/Thriller Ebooks October 2012

[NightBird]

The Taken by Inger Ash Wolfe is $2.16.

Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef is having a bad year. After major back surgery, she has no real option but to move into her ex-husband’s basement and suffer the humiliation of his new wife bringing her meals down on a tray. As if that weren’t enough, Hazel’s octogenarian mother secretly flushes Hazel’s stash of painkillers down the toilet.

It’s almost a relief when Hazel gets a call about a body fished up by tourists in one of the lakes near Port Dundas. But what raises the hair on the back of Micallef ’s neck is that the local paper has just published the first installment of a serialized story featuring such a scenario. Even before they head out to the lake with divers to recover the body, she and DC James Wingate, leading the police detachment in Micallef ’s absence, know they are being played. But it’s not clear who is pulling their strings and why, nor is what they find at the lake at all what they expected. It’s Micallef herself who is snared, caught up in a cryptic game devised by someone who knows how to taunt her into opening a cold case, someone who knows that nothing will stop her investigation.

The second novel featuring Hazel Micallef, “a compelling, unlikely hero” (EntertainmentWeekly), is a stunning and suspenseful exploration of the obsessive far reaches of love, confirming Inger Ash Wolfe as one of the best mystery writers today.

[NightBird]

I originally posted this in the Horror thread, but after reading it discovered it's really a suspense/thriller.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Animal-Hou...he+animal+hour by Andrew Klavan from Open Road.

Voices invade a young woman’s head, compelling her to kill.

When Nancy Kincaid comes into work, an unfamiliar woman tells her to leave. This is Nancy Kincaid’s office, the woman says, but you are not Nancy Kincaid. As Nancy protests, her memory grows fuzzy and her reason seems to slip away. None of her workmates recognize her, and she is distracted by a voice in her head that suggests she shoot them all.

Ejected from her office, she collects herself in the park. A homeless man pesters her, mumbling that at eight o’clock—the animal hour—there is someone she has to kill. Over and over she tells him to leave, until she finds the pistol in her purse. She kills the bum and sets off a whirlwind of insane violence that will not stop until the animal hour comes to pass.

The only criticism I have about this is the pacing is rather slow, i.e., chases are drawn out and go on forever. Otherwise, this is an unusual intriguing plot that comes together in the end very cleverly. Highly recommended. It is still $2.99 if anyone is interested.

[koland]

Originally Posted by NightBird

I originally posted this in the Horror thread, but after reading it discovered it's really a suspense/thriller.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Animal-Hou...he+animal+hour by Andrew Klavan from Open Road.



The only criticism I have about this is the pacing is rather slow, i.e., chases are drawn out and go on forever. Otherwise, this is an unusual intriguing plot that comes together in the end very cleverly. Highly recommended. It is still $2.99 if anyone is interested.

affiliate tag in link

[Dr. Drib]

Thank you . Link now corrected.



Don
(Moderator)

[NightBird]

Latter End by Patricia Wentworth per Open Road is $1.89. This is #11 in her Miss Silver series.

Miss Silver investigates an unhappy family whose brightest beauty has just been poisoned
Lois has always dreamed of being a Latter. The Latter brothers are both so attractive—nearly as handsome as their stately manor, Latter End. After she spoils her relationship with one brother, she succeeds with the other, winning his heart with her good looks and the sizeable fortune she had won in her first marriage. But even after they’ve wed, she never quite fits in with the family. Still, she hardly expects them to kill her.

But that’s just what the psychic Memnon warns her of: poison. She laughs it off and so does everyone else, but then, like clockwork, she is dead. The police call it murder. The weapon? Poison, of course. It is a tantalizing case, complicated by the bitterness that infests Latter End, and only the brilliant Maud Silver, once a governess, now a detective, is up to the challenge.

Re the Miss Silver series from Wikipedia:

Miss Silver is a retired governess who becomes a private detective. She works closely with Scotland Yard, especially Inspector Frank Abbott. She is fond of quoting the poet Tennyson. "Miss Silver is well known in the better circles of society, and she finds entree to the troubled households of the upper classes with little difficulty. In most of Miss Silver's cases there is a young couple whose romance seems ill fated because of the murder to be solved, but in Miss Silver's competent hands the case is solved, the young couple are exonerated, and all is right in this very traditional world."

Patricia Wentworth

[NightBird]

The Chiffon Scarf by Mignon Eberhart is $1.99 from Open Road.

B&N

A woman finds herself caught at the terrible intersection of love and business
Averill Blaine should have been married years ago, but Eden Shore stole her fiancé Noel’s heart. Eden, a fashion model, needed only a few weeks with Noel before he broke his engagement and proposed to her instead, but she never went through with the marriage. Years later, Averill has found a new fiancé, and nothing—not Eden, not even murder—will get in her way.

Eden goes to Averill’s wedding in hopes of seducing Noel once more. As the two couples circle warily, death intrudes—in the shape of a suspicious airplane crash that kills Averill’s uncle. He is an expert pilot, but no amount of skill can stop the flames that leap from his engine as he crests 15,000 feet. Still, Averill and Eden are determined to say “I do,” no matter how many die on their way to the altar.

The Book of Virtue by Ken Bruen is available for preorder from Open Road for $1.99, to be delivered 11/12.

With his hated father dead, a man’s life takes a dangerous turn

He doesn’t cry when his father, Frank, dies. The old man was an abusive, self-absorbed drunk, and when cancer takes him to his deathbed, his son is there to watch. At Frank’s final moment he leans over and whispers in his ear, letting the dying man know that he’s glad to see him go.

His only inheritance is a heavy, leather-bound book. He has never seen it before, and has trouble believing that his brutal, ignorant father ever touched something so beautiful. But the volume is well-thumbed, full of aphorisms and advice written in the dead man’s hand. Soon after he reads it, the son finds his life spiraling out of control. If he doesn’t want to follow Daddy to the grave, he had best heed the lessons of the book.

Scorcher by John Lutz, part of his Fred Carver series (#2), is $1.88 from Open Road. It was on sale for $2.99 last year.

A serial killer claims the life of Fred Carver’s eight-year-old son, sending the ex-cop on a mad hunt for vengeance

A year ago, Fred Carver was nothing but a disabled ex-cop whose career, marriage, and family were all little more than fading memories. But then, while working as a private detective, he met Edwina Talbot, and ten months of life together has made him happier than he has been in years. But fate does not let men like Fred Carver stay happy for long.

On the eve of a visit from his ex-wife and their two children, tragedy upends his new life. As if Florida in July weren’t hot enough, a madman is on a killing spree with a homemade flamethrower. After Fred’s eight-year-old son becomes the third victim, a man who has spent his life trying to catch murderers now has some killing to do of his own.

[sunnysmiles]

Only free on UK Amazon site for prime members

[NightBird]

The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum is $2.99, down from $6.99.

A teenage girl is held captive and brutally tortured by neighborhood children. Based on a true story, this shocking novel reveals the depravity of which we are all capable.

[NightBird]

Free CHINA TRADE (Lydia Chin and Bill Smith) #1 by S.J. Rozan.

Asian-American private investigator Lydia Chin knows New York City's Chinatown, its people, and its ways as no outsider ever could. So when the Chinatown Museum is robbed of a set of rare export porcelains, Lydia is hired to recover them quietly - a task that quickly proves more difficult than it at first appears. Maneuvering gently around the local gangs who control the streets of Chinatown, Lydia tackles an investigation that takes her - and her sometimes partner Bill Smith - far beyond the borders of Chinatown into the equally cryptic world of art and collecting, and upstart outer-borough gangs trying to gain a toe hold in the closed world of Chinatown.

Simple Simon (An Art Jefferson Thriller #3) by Ryne Douglas Pearson. Originally published by William Morrow and the basis for the movie Mercury Rising with Bruce Willis is free again.

Sixteen-year-old autistic savant Simon Lynch is a genius with numbers, capable of unraveling any mathematical problem placed before him. Distant and solitary, he lives in a private world that no one can understand or enter--until he solves the wrong puzzle. Now the brilliant, damaged boy has broken an unbreakable code, and rogue FBI Special Agent Art Jefferson is his only protection against a pathological government security apparatus and the world's most beautiful, deranged killer. For Simon knows secrets that no one must know--and for that he must die.

[melmac]

Originally Posted by NightBird

Free CHINA TRADE (Lydia Chin and Bill Smith) #1 by S.J. Rozan

Awww I only just recently brought this, always the way

[NightBird]

Originally Posted by melmac

Awww I only just recently brought this, always the way

Oh sorry. That happens to me all the time, too.

[NightBird]

A couple of repeat freebie legal thrillers from David Kessler - It started out quite simply.

Formerly NO WAY OUT

When Bethel Newton, a 19 year old white girl, accuses black TV talk-show host Elias Claymore of raping her, America is deeply divided. In his youth, Claymore was a Black power militant and convicted rapist who escaped from prison and fled to north Africa. But after undergoing a road-to-Damascus change, he came back to America to serve out his sentence, reinventing himself as a neoconservative, born-again Christian and pillar of the establishment.

Now, accused once again, publicly vilified and portrayed as a national pariah, Claymore turns to his friend Alex Sedaka for help. However Alex is pressured into sharing the defense with a law firm appointed by Claymore’s insurers and finds himself working with Andromeda (“Andi”) Phoenix, whose black lover Gene works at a rape crisis center. And when Andi makes an issue of the under-representation of African-Americans on the jury, she starts receiving anonymous threats and finds her lesbian relationship under an intense strain that stretches her divided loyalties to the limit.

Meanwhile Alex must battle his way through DNA evidence, jury tampering and malicious computer hacking. And while all this is going on, Alex’s on-again/off-again girlfriend - TV reporter Martine Yin - is covering the case and putting herself in danger...

Hello darkness, my old friend.

Previously published as MARKED MAN

SWITZERLAND - the Jungfrau Region: A young man, from an extremely wealthy and powerful Middle Eastern family, dies in a skiing accident. The incident is captured by a lone photographer who cannot believe what he has just seen.

SAN FRANCISCO: A few months later, two homeless men stagger into a bar. One of them leaves, but minutes later the other is stabbed by a one-legged homeless man - George Stone.

Arrested at the scene and charged with murder with special circumstances, Stone asks for Alex Sedaka to represent him. But Alex is met by a wall of evasiveness from his own client. Even the identity of the victim is a mystery - the only clue being a tattoo on the dead man's torso.

However, it soon becomes apparent that this is anything but a straightforward case of violence between homeless people. After all, how many homeless people have $2000 on them. And why would a homeless killer leave such a large sum on his victim? More significantly, why is the British Prime Minister taking such an interest in the murder of a homeless "John Doe" over five thousand miles away?

But when Homeland Security become involved and an attempt is made on the accused man's life, both Alex and the DA realize that matters are running out of control. And as powerful forces up the ante, Alex also has to face the fact that his client isn't the only one in danger. And the threat reaches all the way across the Atlantic from the most powerful family in the United Kingdom - leading to a stunning showdown!

Chester D. Campbell has another freebie from a different series - The Surest Poison (Sid Chance Mysteries).

Three seemingly unrelated murders crop up during the investigation of a decade-old chemical dump that plagues a rural community west of Nashville. PI Sid Chance, former National Parks ranger and small town police chief, takes the case and finds himself caught up in a whirlwind of lies, deceptions, and threats. Who is tailing and warning him to back off? Is the man responsible for the pollution dead or alive? When ex-cop friend Jaz LeMieux offers her help, she is awakened by an explosion behind her mansion. Is it related to the abduction of her employees’ grandson, or Sid’s case? As the tension mounts, Sid finds himself confronting the unsavory people responsible for his past troubles.

[NightBird]

Free thriller from Endeavor - Event Driven by Andrew Cartmel. #2 in his Rupert Hood series.

Meet Rupert Hood. Every day he joins the wage slaves commuting to Putney, in south-west London, to one more apparently dull job in a high street estate agents.

But the company is a front -- for the UK's intelligence service.

And Rupert Hood isn’t an estate agent. He’s a secret agent.

In the second of Andrew Cartmel's brilliant re-imaginings of the classic 1960s spy caper, Rupert Hood is thrown back into action -- and facing the deadliest challenge of his career.

Someone has been scavenging waste plutonium and using it to create a bomb.

A deadly terror attack is planned on the City of London -- one that could ruin the global financial system.

But who? And why?

Hunting down the terrorists means Rupert going undercover in one of the world's most sophisticated and wealthiest 'event-driven' hedge funds to learn more about the likely target.

But as Rupert gets to grips with the world of high finance, events are about to be driven out of control -- with catastrophic consequences.

And in a nerve-shredding chase he must confront the deadliest -- and strangest -- opponent of his life.

Special Dispensations by S.I. Wells is free from Stay Thirsty Press.

THE STORY - WHERE CANON LAW MEETS COMMON LAW

Religion and Politics - Chicago-style. When the Chicago Daily News accuses State’s Attorney Victor Pulaski of favoring the rich by disregarding the real story about the suicide of a society teenager, Chicago’s prosecutor unleashes his chief pit bull to dig up the dirt. “Fire Plug” O’Neill, the Senior Assistant State’s Attorney and a defense attorneys’ nightmare is ordered to track down the facts and apply the law in the finest Chicago tradition. Wielding the Grand Jury like a sledgehammer at a demolition party, O’Neill raises the ante on all of the suspects, including the Cardinal of Chicago and a prominent Bishop, until everyone reaches the boiling point in this high-stakes pursuit of the “truth.” Fans of television shows like "Law & Order," "Criminal Minds" and "Suits" will feel right at home with SPECIAL DISPENSATIONS' fast-paced action, fascinating cast of characters and finely-tuned twists and turns where Canon Law meets Common Law.

[sufue]

Originally Posted by NightBird

Oh sorry. That happens to me all the time, too.

At least it's from a great series. I especially like the one where Lydia and Bill go to Hong Kong (Reflecting the Sky???).