FREE/BARGAIN — Mystery, Suspense & Thrillers

[cc_in_oh]

I've never tried tenor gin - does it make a good martini?

Originally Posted by sufue

Ooooh, me too! I really like that series, especially the part in one book where Francesca? someone? feeds an older boy tenor gin to help him sing a bit longer before his imminent voice change!

I had a few of these from when they were "Ostara Publishing", but hardly ever went on sale - now they are "Joffe Ostara", and on sale. I hope that bodes well for a couple of other Ostara authors I like. And at $0.99 for all, I don't care that I already had a few...

[sufue]

I have no idea - but a shot sure helped the nearing-puberty star of the boys' choir hit his high notes one last time...

For some reason, that scene has stuck in my mind for literally decades...

Originally Posted by cc_in_oh

I've never tried tenor gin - does it make a good martini?

[nabsltd]

In a "Westlake-adjacent" vein:

The Damsel, by Richard Stark (a pen name for Donald Westlake)

$1.99 at Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007NKMZYE/

Spoiler:

Escaping from the pages of the master crime writer’s acclaimed Parker novels, Alan Grofield—a fast-talking actor-thief—has an adventure of his own across Mexico.

[sufue]

I've mentioned a time or twenty or two hundred that Sarah Caudwell's too-short series featuring that Oxford don of unspecified gender, Hilary Tamar, is my favorite mystery series - at least most of the time. (It occasionally trades off with Catherine Aird's Sloan/Crosby books, either of Michael Pearce's series, and/or David Wishart's Covinus books, depending on my mood, but mostly it's this one...) This is a love-it-or-hate-it series, though, primarily depending, I think, on whether you like the bone-dry, understated humor.

However, the four books in the series have been pretty inconsistently available in e-book over the years, so it's nice to see that Bantam has now come out with new e-editions, and the first one, Thus Was Adonis Murdered, is on sale at the moment for $1.99, as part of Kindle US's "Plot Twist" sale, good through Sept 3. And it's matched at Kobo US.

Sadly, the new blurb doesn't do it justice, and, in fact, gets some plot elements just plain wrong, so I'm skipping the blurb.

Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0593598733
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/thu...nis-murdered-3

[issybird]

Originally Posted by sufue

Sadly, the new blurb doesn't do it justice, and, in fact, gets some plot elements just plain wrong, so I'm skipping the blurb.

I already own the ebook (and listened to the audiobook in the pool this summer, so it's fresh in my memory), but I couldn't resist looking. That blurb is appalling. Would it have been so damned hard to get someone who'd actually read it to vet the blurb before going wide with it?

The audiobook was well done and made the most of the essential funniness of Tamar's commentary,

Spoiler:

but of course the major element of uncertainty was necessarily scotched in narration.

[nabsltd]

$1.99:
Jimmy the Kid (Dortmunder #3)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005UK7U5I
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/jimmy-the-kid

Why Me? (Dortmunder #5)
https://www.amazon.com//dp/B005UK7TH2

The Road to Ruin (Dortmunder #11)
https://www.amazon.com//dp/B001E7IE10
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-road-to-ruin-1

What's So Funny? (Dortmunder #13)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0010SKURE
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/what-s-so-funny

Thieves' Dozen (Dortmunder short stories)
https://www.amazon.com//dp/B001I3BQT2
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/thieves-dozen

The Fugitive Pigeon (comic crime)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CMQXZFJ/
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-fugitive-pigeon

Cops and Robbers (comic crime)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CMQXZFJ
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/cops-and-robbers-8

$2.99:
The Spy in the Ointment
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CML2KF5

Spoiler:

The three-time Edgar Award–winning Grand Master of Mystery serves up a dangerous case of mistaken identity in “the best spy comedy I have ever read” (The New York Times).

Dancing Aztecs (comic crime) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005UK7TMC
The Scared Stiff https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00D668HW8

Spoiler:

A couple’s insurance scam could turn a faked death into a real one, in this witty crime thriller by the Edgar Award–winning author of the Dortmunder novels.

[ZodWallop]

Woo wee! It's a wealth of Westlake!

Call Me A Cab by Donald Westlake is $1.99 at Amazon, B&N and Kobo US. This is a Hard Case Crime book:

The final unpublished novel by MWA Grandmaster – a wild, romantic road trip across America by taxi cab – demonstrates why this beloved author is so fondly remembered and so dearly missed.

DONALD E. WESTLAKE

GOES OFF THE BEATEN PATH

In 1977, one of the world’s finest crime novelists turned his pen to suspense of a very different sort – and the results have never been published, until now.

Fans of mystery fiction have often pondered whether it would be possible to write a suspense novel without any crime at all, and in CALL ME A CAB the masterful Donald E. Westlake answered the question in his inimitable style. You won’t find any crime in these pages – but what you will find is a wonderful suspense story, about a New York City taxi driver hired to drive a beautiful woman all the way across America, from Manhattan to Los Angeles, where the biggest decision of her life is waiting to be made. From Pennsylvania to Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, Utah, Arizona and Nevada on the way to California, the characters’ odyssey takes them through uncharted territory – on the map and in their lives. It’s Westlake at his witty, thought-provoking best, and it proves that a page-turner doesn’t need to have a bomb set to go off at the end of it in order to keep sparks flying every step of the way.

[ZodWallop]

Speaking of Hard Case Crime, a couple of other titles are on sale for $1.99:

So Many Doors by Oakley Hall (I'm more familiar with Hall from his western, Warlock) Amazon, B&N, Kobo US

The legendary lost crime novel from Pulitzer Prize finalist Oakley Hall, instructor of Ann Rice, Amy Tan, Richard Ford, and Michael Chabon, who calls SO MANY DOORS "Beautiful, powerful, even masterful."

It begins on Death Row, with a condemned man refusing the services of the lawyer assigned to defend him. It begins with a beautiful woman dead, murdered - Vassilia Caroline Baird, known to all simply as V. That's where this extraordinary novel begins. But the story it tells begins years earlier, on a struggling farm in the shadow of the Great Depression and among the brawling "cat skinners" of Southern California, driving graders and bulldozers to tame the American West. And the story that unfolds, in the masterful hands of acclaimed author Oakley Hall, is a lyrical outpouring of hunger and grief, of jealousy and corruption, of raw sexual yearning and the tragedy of the destroyed lives it leaves in its wake. Unpublished for more than half a century, So Many Doors is Hall's masterpiece, an excoriating vision of human nature at its most brutal, and one of the most powerful books you will ever read.

Are Snakes Necessary? by Brian De Palma, Susan Lehman Amazon, B&N, Kobo US

FROM THE DIRECTOR OF SCARFACE AND DRESSED TO KILL --
A FEMALE REVENGE STORY

When the beautiful young videographer offered to join his campaign, Senator Lee Rogers should've known better. But saying no would have taken a stronger man than Rogers, with his ailing wife and his robust libido. Enter Barton Brock, the senator's fixer. He's already gotten rid of one troublesome young woman -- how hard could this new one turn out to be?

Pursued from Washington D.C. to the streets of Paris, 18-year-old Fanny Cours knows her reputation and budding career are on the line. But what she doesn't realize is that her life might be as well...

[Tarana]

56 Days by Catherine Ryan Howard $3.95 at Downpour.com

Today's Daily Steel from Downpour.com
Thriller that was on a lot of recommended lists in 2021.

https://www.downpour.com/56-days?utm...2023&sp=488478

56 DAYS AGO
Ciara and Oliver meet in a supermarket queue in Dublin and start dating the same week COVID-19 reaches Irish shores.

35 DAYS AGO
When lockdown threatens to keep them apart, Oliver suggests they move in together. Ciara sees a unique opportunity for a relationship to flourish without the scrutiny of family and friends. Oliver sees a chance to hide who—and what—he really is.

TODAY
Detectives arrive at Oliver’s apartment to discover a decomposing body inside.

Can they determine what really happened, or has lockdown created an opportunity for someone to commit the perfect crime?

[ZodWallop]

Demolition Angel by Robert Crais is $2.99 at Amazon, B&N and Kobo US

Carol Starkey is struggling to pick up the pieces of her former life as L.A.’s finest bomb squad technician. Fueled with liberal doses of alcohol and Tagamet, she’s doing time as a Detective-2 with LAPD’s Criminal Conspiracy Section. Three years have passed since the event that still haunts her: a detonation that killed her partner and lover, scarred her body and soul, and ended her career as a bomb tech.

When a seemingly innocuous bomb call explodes into a charred murder scene, Carol catches the case and embarks on an investigation of a series of explosions that reveal chilling intentions. The bombs are designed expressly to kill bomb technicians. Now, as the one tech who survived the deadliest of blasts, Carol is in for the most perilous fight of her life...

[DuskyRose]

Deleted, False alarms. : }

[Tarana]

All at Amazon, Kobo and B&N and probably others.

The Searcher By Tana French $1.99
NPR book of the year for 2020
Crime

When a retired American cop starts over in an isolated Irish village, a missing person case reveals something dark simmering beneath his new home’s idyllic surface…

Quietly in Their Sleep By Donna Leon $1.99
Crime

When Commissario Guido Brunetti probes a suspicious series of deaths at a convent in Venice, his investigation entangles him in a killer’s deadly web…

The Blinds By Adam Sternbergh $1.99
Thriller- I don't know this author but the blurb sounded interesting

Everyone in a lonely Texas town has had their memories wiped — along with the knowledge of the crimes they’ve committed and the new identities they’ve been given. But despite this clean slate, sheriff Calvin Cooper still struggles to keep the peace… “Witty, electrifying, vivid, and thoroughly original” (Dennis Lehane).

Solo By Jack Higgins $1.99
Thriller - WW2

When the world’s top assassin kills Colonel Asa Morgan’s daughter, a father’s thirst for vengeance sparks a riveting duel to the death… “Higgins is the master” (Tom Clancy).

[sufue]

Agatha Christie's 4:50 from Paddington, apa What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw!, apa Murder She Said, is on sale in the US for $1.99. This is one of my favorite Miss Marple books, mostly because I really love Lucy's character.

Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FC1PLQ
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/4-50-from-paddington

Spoiler:

In Agatha Christie’s classic mystery 4:50 From Paddington, a woman in one train witnesses a murder occurring in another passing one…and only Miss Marple believes her story.

For an instant the two trains ran side by side. In that frozen moment, Elspeth McGillicuddy stared helplessly out of her carriage window as a man tightened his grip around a woman's throat. The body crumpled. Then the other train drew away. But who, apart from Mrs. McGillicuddy's friend Jane Marple, would take her story seriously? After all, there are no other witnesses, no suspects, and no case -- for there is no corpse, and no one is missing.

Miss Marple asks her highly efficient and intelligent young friend Lucy Eyelesbarrow to infiltrate the Crackenthorpe family, who seem to be at the heart of the mystery, and help unmask a murderer.

Note: Publisher William Morrow is part of Harper Collins, so this may or may not have been edited for sensitive issues...

[Tarana]

The Godfather By Mario Puzo $1.99 Amazon, Kobo and B&N
Crime

Cross posted to fiction. This was a good book even before the movie.

[SomeSteve]

Donald E. Westlake returns to this thread with two novels.

Memory (from Hard Case Crime) is $1.99 at Kobo US and Amazon US.

This book was published posthumously, and is the basis for the upcoming film The Actor starring André Holland (source: Wikipedia). Apparently the book is also being reissued as The Actor: "Coming soon from Titan ... The Actor by Donald E. Westlake ... **NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE ... Donald E. Westlake's lost masterpiece MEMORY, adapted for the screen as THE ACTOR.... Pre-order this eBook ... Available Jan 23, 2024 ... Price: $9.99 USD" (Kobo).

https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/memory-7

https://www.amazon.com/Memory-Hard-C...dp/B005O0ZU7E/


Murder Among Children (The Mitchell Tobin Mysteries Book 2) is likewise $1.99 at Kobo US and Amazon US.

https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/murder-among-children

https://www.amazon.com/Murder-Among-...dp/B00D668GSS/