FREE/BARGAIN — Mystery, Suspense & Thrillers

[GA Russell]

Popular Detective Magazine
January, 1948, issue

includes

I'll Take That Rap (novelet)
by Robert Leslie Bellem

and

Santa Thumbs a Ride (short story)
by Johnston McCulley

$1.99

https://www.radioarchives.com/Popula...48_p/re525.htm

[Cactus Chef]

The Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson is $1 in the US (Kobo, Amazon)

Discover the books that changed the way the world reads crime - Stieg Larsson's phenomenal global blockbuster, the Millennium Trilogy

"As vivid as bloodstains on snow" Lee Child

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo**:** Forty years ago, Harriet Vanger disappeared from a family gathering on the island owned by the powerful Vanger clan. Her uncle employs disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist and tattooed hacker Lisbeth Salander to investigate. When the pair link Harriet's disappearance to a number of grotesque murders, they begin to unravel a dark family history...

The Girl Who Played With Fire: Lisbeth Salander is now a wanted woman, on the run from the police. Mikael Blomkvist, editor-in-chief of Millennium magazine, is trying to prove her innocence. Yet Salander is more avenging angel than helpless victim. She may be an expert at staying out of sight - but she has ways of tracking down her most elusive enemies.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest: Salander is plotting her final revenge - against the man who tried to kill her, and against the government institutions that very nearly destroyed her life. With the help of journalist Mikael Blomkvist and his researchers at Millennium magazine, Salander is ready to fight to the end.

"So much more than a thriller, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a dazzling novel of big ideas" Harlan Coben

"What a cracking novel! I haven't read such a stunning thriller debut for years" Minette Walters

[rrrlakin]

Originally Posted by Cactus Chef

The Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson is $1 in the US (Kobo, Amazon)

The Kobo link looks good. The Amazon link returns nonsense,

RRR

[salty-horse]

Originally Posted by rrrlakin

The Kobo link looks good. The Amazon link returns nonsense

It's not nonsense - it's an empty search result, because Amazon doesn't have that bundle.

[Cactus Chef]

Originally Posted by salty-horse

It's not nonsense - it's an empty search result, because Amazon doesn't have that bundle.

As someone on another forum mentioned, Amazon used to have that bundle, you can see an old reference to it here, but it has since been delisted. My guess is the publishers changed.

Interestingly I went back through my Kobo emails and found that I originally bought this bundle in August 2023, for that same "sale" price of $0.99. I wonder if the original publisher knew they were about to lose the rights and put the book on sale, and Kobo forgot to remove that listing.

[ZodWallop]

The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril by Paul Malmont is $2 at Amazon and Kobo US.

The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril is a thrilling debut novel that casts the rivalry between two of pulp fiction's most revered writers into its own saga, which bursts from the pages with blood, cruelty, fear, mystery, vengeance, courageous heroes, evil villains, dames in distress, secret identities, disguises, global schemes, hideous deaths, beautiful psychics, superweapons, cliff-hanging escapes, and other outrageous pulp lies that are all completely true.

Return to 1937, when America is turning to the pulps for relief from the Depression, and meet Walter Gibson, the mind behind The Shadow, and his rival for the top-selling spot on the nation's newsstands, Lester Dent, creator of Doc Savage. The murder of Gibson's friend H. P. Lovecraft -- victim of a mysterious death that literally makes the skin crawl -- is about to bring these two writers face to face with a peril sprung from the pulps.

The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril is at once a valentine to an old-fashioned genre as well as a modern, meta-literary examination of the classic hero pulp. From the palaces and battlefields of warlord-plagued China to the seedy waterfronts of Providence, Rhode Island; from frozen seas and cursed islands to the dizzying and labyrinthine alleys and tunnels of lower Manhattan, Dent and Gibson, joined by the young pulp writer L. Ron Hubbard and a host of colorful characters, finally step out from behind the shadows of their creations to take part in a heroic journey far greater than any story they have imagined as they race to stop a madman destined to create a new empire born of, and based in, pure, gaseous evil.

The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril is a swashbuckling romantic tale of writers and writing, magic and love, marriage and fatherhood, and ambition and loss that weaves the true lives of its real-life characters into a fictional epic.

[sufue]

Payback in Death is no longer the most recent in the series, but it is $1.99 right now in the US.

Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BQGJ182N
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/payback-in-death-1

Originally Posted by sufue

Payback in Death is the 57th and most recent (until a new one comes out early next year) in JD Robb's Eve Dallas/In Death series. It's £0.99 right now in the UK.

Kindle UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0BQDPWPGX
Kobo UK: https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/pay...er-in-death-57

[ZodWallop]

The Ax by Donald E. Westlake is $2 at Amazon and Kobo. This is not his usual comedic crime caper.

The multi-award-winning, widely-acclaimed mystery master Donald E. Westlake delivers a masterpiece with this brilliant, laser-sharp tale of the deadly consequences of corporate downsizing.

Burke Devore is a middle-aged manager at a paper company when the cost-cutting ax falls, and he is laid off. Eighteen months later and still unemployed, he puts a new spin on his job search -- with agonizing care, Devore finds the seven men in the surrounding area who could take the job that rightfully should be his, and systematically kills them. Transforming himself from mild-mannered middle manager to ruthless murderer, he discovers skills he never knew he had -- and that come to him far too easily.

[ZodWallop]

Assumed Identity by David Morrell is $2 at Amazon and Kobo. Morrell is a terrific thriller author who deserves to be more widely known.

Brendan Buchanan is an undercover intelligence operative who has impersonated more than 200 people in the last eight years. But now his multi-personality occupation threatens to destroy him.

[sufue]

This Friday's Joffe free book is a mystery, Who Cares if They Die, which is the first in the Dean Matheson series by Wendy Dranfield.* *It's still free right now, as of Saturday, and is usually free through the weekend.* *But still better to grab it now if you want it.**

Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CK4S5BYS
Kindle UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CK4S5BYS

Spoiler:

A Jane Doe hanging in Maple Valley’s woods.

Officer Dean Matheson stands shivering against the cold night, trying not to look too closely at the gruesome scene before him.

The medical examiner says it’s a case of suicide. But the fact that the victim isn't wearing any shoes and there’s a stepladder placed beneath her makes Dean suspicious.

Then another body turns up.

Women are dying. Outcasts that no one would miss.

Dean believes a twisted serial killer is roaming the streets of Maple Valley, hiding in plain sight.

But he’s in over his head, and now he’s put a target on his own back. Trapped in a vicious game of cat-and-mouse with a killer who seems to know his every flaw.

Dean must face his own demons if he has any chance of unearthing the disturbing truth. Before more women pay the price . . .

[salty-horse]

Secret Identity by Alex Segura is $3 in the US (Kobo, Amazon)
A sequel was released late last year. Recommended by Silvia Moreno-Garcia.

From Anthony Award-winning writer Alex Segura comes Secret Identity, a rollicking literary mystery set in the world of comic books.

It’s 1975 and the comic book industry is struggling, but Carmen Valdez doesn’t care. She’s an assistant at Triumph Comics, which doesn’t have the creative zeal of Marvel nor the buttoned-up efficiency of DC, but it doesn’t matter. Carmen is tantalizingly close to fulfilling her dream of writing a superhero book.

That dream is nearly a reality when one of the Triumph writers enlists her help to create a new character, which they call “The Lethal Lynx,” Triumph's first female hero. But her colleague is acting strangely and asking to keep her involvement a secret. And then he’s found dead, with all of their scripts turned into the publisher without her name. Carmen is desperate to piece together what happened to him, to hang on to her piece of the Lynx, which turns out to be a runaway hit. But that’s complicated by a surprise visitor from her home in Miami, a tenacious cop who is piecing everything together too quickly for Carmen, and the tangled web of secrets and resentments among the passionate eccentrics who write comics for a living.

Alex Segura uses his expertise as a comics creator as well as his unabashed love of noir fiction to create a truly one-of-a-kind novel--hard-edged and bright-eyed, gritty and dangerous, and utterly absorbing.

[sufue]

This month's Kindle US First Reads free book list includes what appears to be a stand-alone thriller by Robert Bailey, The Boomerang. I've read and liked all four books in Bailey's McMurtrie/Drake series, even though I'm usually not much on legal thrillers, but haven't read any of his other books. Note that you have to have Prime to participate in the First Reads program, and the April list is only good for two more days, so grab it while you can if you want it.

Kindle US First Reads: https://www.amazon.com/firstreads

Spoiler:

John Grisham meets Yellowstone in a gripping political thriller by Wall Street Journal bestselling author Robert Bailey, as one man fights for family against a government with a shattering secret.

The president of the United States has terminal cancer. Chief of Staff Eli James, his faithful consigliere and best friend, is one of the few who know. But just as the president’s condition mysteriously improves, Eli’s hit with another blow: his daughter has cancer too.

Hell-bent on helping her, Eli turns to Big Pharma’s top lobbyist for advice, but their encounter yields more questions than answers. As he races along a twisted trail to the truth, he stumbles upon a devastating cover-up worth billions of dollars—and millions of lives.

Armed with this deadly secret, Eli goes rogue, fleeing with his family out west. To keep them safe, he forms an uneasy alliance with land baron Nester “the Beast” Sanchez, known for his ruthless power tactics. An epic showdown brews, and it’s the state versus one desperate citizen, willing to risk everything to save his daughter. Can Eli broker a truce with his once allies? Or will there be war in the desert?

Note there is also a bonus short story available via the same webpage: The One That Got Away by Mike Gayle, which is a short story romance.

[sufue]

If you waited, Owls Don’t Blink is now $0.99 in the US. And it's still discountable at Kobo US, although Partners22 doesn't work anymore. (Sigh!)

The links below are still good...

Originally Posted by sufue

Two Bertha Cool/Donald Lam books by Erle Stanley Gardner are $1.99 right now in the US, both about 1/4 of the way through the series. And they are both discountable at Kobo US (coupon code "Partners22" is still working for 40% off).

Owls Don’t Blink, #6
Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09VSLTJDK
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/owls-don-t-blink-1

{edited other book}

[sufue]

Skeleton Man is the seventeenth in the Leaphorn and Chee series by Tony Hillerman. It's $1.99 right now in the US. It doesn't go on sale very often, so if you want it, grab it!

Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FC2MFO
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/skeleton-man

OTOH, the first book in the series, The Blessing Way, goes on sale more often, and it's on sale again right now as well for $1.99. But since I was posting Skeleton Man, I figured I'd post this again now too.

Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FC10VQ
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-blessing-way

[sufue]

And.....

Four books in Anne Hillerman's continuation of her father's series are also on sale at the moment.

Song of the Lion, #21 overall, $1.99
Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01IMYCWSS
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/song-of-the-lion

Cave of Bones, #22, $1.99
Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071KYZBT5
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/cave-of-bones

The Sacred Bridge, #25, $0.99
Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0995YGVXW
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-sacred-bridge

The Way of the Bear, #26, $0.99
Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B71NTJZV
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-way-of-the-bear

I've enjoyed all of the continuation books that I've read, which is most, but not quite all of them. There is more emphasis on Jim Chee and Bernie Manuelito (who wasn't a major character in the original series), but very much a similar feel.