A boy is kidnapped, and fourteen months after the case goes cold, his parents turn to Frank Behr, ex cop, now PI, who lost his own son years earlier. Levien combines the sense of tragic loss and self blame in a wonderful debut thriller that has all the elements of great mystery and edge-of-the-seat suspense. Levien is certainly in the ranks of up-and-coming crime writers.

This is a modern Robin Hood tale in the guise of a modern, wickedly suspenseful thriller. Allison Murietta, claiming to be a descendant of a 19^th century outlaw, Juaquin Murietta, is a thief who gives much of her take to worthy causes. But when she happens on a gang massacre, her career, her family, and her life are severely threatened. T. Jefferson Parker has a knack for developing exceptionally unique characters and plots that are edgy, original and immensely entertaining. This is one of his best.

This story focuses on Jason Palmer, recently returned from a tour in Iraq, Finding no peace at home, he harbors some terrible secrets of the war, making his transition back to real life almost impossible. And shortly after returning, his brother, Michael, the owner of a local pub, and who had been working to stem gang violence in the neighborhood, is murdered, and the Michael’s 9 year old son, who was a witness, shows up at Jason’s door. This is a fast-paced, intricate story of urban violence and corruption, told by a great young story teller. Reminiscent of the best of Dennis Lehane, SJ Rozan and George Pelecanos, in the way the picture of urban America is evoked, At the City’s Edge will grab you and refuse to let go.

FBI Agent Ana Gray is chosen to infiltrate a radical animal rights / terrorist group that is believed to be responsible for the death of another agent. The group is led by Julius Emerson Phelps, who is as charismatic as he is crazy, but it’s when his real identity, that of a former agent gone bad, is uncovered that things really heat up and you begin to realize that you’re getting answers to questions you never thought to ask. This book is written with a raw, personal intensity that gives it a weight and significance beyond the plot itself. Smith’s characters on both sides of the law are very real, as are the conflicts that haunt them. Ana is all too aware of the limits of her skills but all she ever wanted was to have the kind of job she now has. Now that she has it, however, she understands the expression ‘be careful what you wish for.’ This is a great book and a great series.

Laura Lipmann is a Baltimore writer best known for her series featuring reporter Tess Monaghan. What the Dead Know is her third stand alone, and very different from anything she’s written before.

This story opens with a woman driving into Baltimore, and it’s clear to the reader that while she once lived there, she hadn’t been back in a very long time. Just as she enters the city, she’s in a car accident in which she sideswipes an SUV, which goes down an embankment, probably injuring the passengers. Her own car is wrecked, and she flees the accident on foot. She’s picked up by a cop and taken to the hospital, where she says she is Heather Bethany, one of the two Bethany girls who disappeared from a Baltimore mall thirty years earlier, never to be seen again until now. The case was never closed, and now needs to be re-opened. And although she has some details about the Bethany family right, there are holes in her story, and she refuses to say much about what really happened to her, except to say she saw her sister, Sunny, murdered. Det. Kevin Infante is brought in to investigate her claim, but because of the inaccuracies and gaps in her story, and her refusal to say more about what really happened, he is very skeptical.

The story smoothly alternates between present day and flashbacks to the Bethany family and slowly reveals a complex family history filled with intimate and realistic character portraits. And the further into the story and the investigation we get, the clearer the picture becomes about what really happened to the Bethany girls, and what the impact of their disappearance was on their family.

This is a marvelous story, heartbreaking at times, wonderfully insightful, always suspenseful and beautifully written. In her acknowledgments, Laura says that the book was inspired by the real-life case that she remembers well of two girls, Shelia and Katherine Lyon who disappeared from Wheaton Plaza in Baltimore in March of 1975, a case that was also never solved. This is one of those books that could easily be sold as literary fiction, since much of the book focuses not on any investigation, but on a single family dealing with crisis.

Robert Crais’s series featuring Elvis Cole is probably one of the best of the smart-ass detective series of the last twenty years. And anyone who has read an Elvis Cole novel knows hat his partner, Joe Pike, is truly one of the most enigmatic and scary good guys in the genre. Joe rarely speaks, and when he does, it’s usually in two or three word sentences, but his presence and his power is always an important part of the series. Crais’s new book, The Watchman, is a Joe Pike novel, with Joe in the lead, and Elvis lending a hand.

Pikes takes on the job of protecting Lakin Barkley, a fabulously wealthy jet-setter type who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. On a late night joy-ride, she crashes into a Mercedes with three passengers. One flees on foot, while the others simply drive away. The one on foot turns out to be a man wanted by the FBI, and thought not to be in the country. After she reports the accident, there are attempts on her life, and Joe is hired to guard her, but no matter where they hide, the bad guys find them. So he now has two jobs - protect Larkin, and find out who is trying to kill them, and eliminate the problem.

There are a lot of high-octane thriller writers out there, but few reach the intensity and style of Robert Crais. He effortlessly glides through stunning twists and turns and breakneck pacing, while still delivering an intelligent plot that makes sense, and characters we want to keep learning about. Joe Pike was always someone who existed in the shadows of the Elvis Cole books. And now that he’s out, I suspect he’ll stay out.

Blunt is a Canadian Writers whose main character is detective John Cardinal from Ontario. In previous books, we have seen John struggle to help his wife, Catherine, a talented photographer, deal with her depression. But at the outset of this book, Catherine commits suicide by jumping off a building. There is no question that it’s suicide - she left a note in her own handwriting. But John isn’t convinced, partly because Catherine was feeling much better of late, and partly because he was so much in love with her, he simply can’t believe it. And contrary to department rules he starts looking into it, starting with her psychiatrist, a Dr. Frederick Bell.

At the same time, his partner on the force, Lise Delorme, is searching for a pedophile who is plastering the internet with pictures of his victims. While digging more deeply into his wife’s death, he’s ordered to assist Lise in her investigation. Simultaneously, there is a growing number of suicides in this tiny Ontario town.

Blunt suggests who the bad guy is early on, and soon after that, reveals it with certainty, but even then, it’s a shock. And the perfection of the crimes, as well as the killer’s motives are painted by Blunt in convincing ways, hooking you in from the beginning. Blunt won the silver dagger, the highest award in Canada,, and it’s easy to see why. His writing is superb and his characters are wonderfully sympathetic and realistic. There is a foundation of intense sadness and tragedy that could bog down lesser writers. Cardinal’s love for his wife is so real that we find ourselves truly affected by his overwhelimg sense of loss. But through all this, Blunt creates a level of suspense and excitement that is a joy to read, and a climax that will hold you breathless.

Peter Abrahams writes stand alone psychological thrillers that are exquisitely crafted books in which the main characters are usually trying to rediscover their place in the world because their assumptions have all be shot to hell. His books generally do not depend on chases and explosions to build tension, but rather focus on the individual’s struggles to deal with new realities.

Nerve Damage is about Roy Valois, a Vermont sculptor who is nationally known for his larger than life sculptures using scrap metal and junk parts. Roy’s wife Delia had been an economist with the Hobbes Institute, a think tank in specializing in third world economic issues and while on a mission to Honduras fifteen years earlier, she was killed in a helicopter crash. Roy still mourns her death, but never questioned that it was an accident.

Now he has just learned that he has contracted a rare disease related to asbestos exposure. and he has only four months to live. He finds out that newspapers like the New York Times have on file pre-prepared obituaries of famous people like Roy. So Roy and computer savvy friend hack the Times computers and Roy soon finds his own obituary. But there is a minor mistake in it related to his wife. It says that she was employed by the United Nations, not the Hobbes Institute. The mistake gnaws at Roy, who simply wants the record set straight before he actually dies and the obit is published. But the more he looks into it, the wierder it gets, and eventually he learns that everything he thought about his wife was a lie, and he sets out to learn the truth and why she hid it from him. The suspense is non stop, as Roy races against his own clock to piece together his life and come to some understanding about his wife and himself. The writing is once again superb and controlled, and the book has characters that matter, and a plot that keeps you thinking for a long time to come.

Thomas Cook has been writing crime fiction for a long time- over 20 books, and been winner of multiple awards for best novel. What distinguishes him as a writer is certainly his style of writing. He is a literary master, writing prose you want to hang on to and re-read. His books are all stand alones, and are stories which are deeply emotional and penetrating. There is always a crime element in his books, but the crimes often seem secondary to the motives and psychology that drive the characters.

The Cloud of Unknowing opens with an interview between the narrator and a detective that seems to suggest that there was a crime, although you don’t know if this is so, and if it is, what the crime was. The interview alternates with a first person narrative of Dave Sears whose father was a raving paranoid schizophrenic His sister, Diana’s child, Jason, also severely schizophrenic, had recently drowned in a pond, and although the ruling on the death was that it was accidental, Diana believes it’s murder, and Dave worries that she is being driven insane by her obsession with this belief.

The mystery surrounding the boy’s death almost takes a back seat to Diana’s obsession, her growing friendship with Dave’s own teenage daughter, Dave’s attempts to help her through the crisis, and what the interview with the detective is really about.

This book is about madness through several generations, and the efforts of one man to shield his family and understand his own potential for mental illness at the same time. It is truly haunting, and although there is not much violence, this is as much a page turner as you could wish for. And as I said, the writing is simply magnificent with sentences that you want to read out loud just to hear them.

ECHO PARK by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown $26.99). L.A. Detective Harry Bosch finds out that he may have overlooked a crucial clue in a murder thirteen years ago, resulting in the killer going free and killing eight other people. Now Bosch has to reconstruct the old case and solve the new one at the same time. Police procedurals don't come any better than this: smart plotting, engrossing characters, crisp writing, immensely suspenseful. Connelly is simply at the top of the list of crime novelists working today. ~ Neil

THE WRONG MAN by John Katzenbach (Random House $25.95). Ashley Freeman, a young art-history- grad student in Boston, is being stalked by Michael O'Connell, a dangerously deluded, but very intelligent low-life. Out of this basic premise, Katzenbach weaves a nightmarish story, exploring obsession, fear, loyalty, and love with characters you won't soon forget. And just when the book reaches a feverish pitch, it changes course, and the tension cycle begins anew. This is a brilliantly told story that seems to define the genre of psychological suspense. One of the best thrillers of the year. Un-put-downable. ~ Neil 

SHARP OBJECTS by Gillian Flynn (Crown $24.00). If you want to scare someone with a book this holiday season, consider Sharp Objects. This is a stunning debut novel that redefines the meaning of "dysfunctional." Camille Preaker, a Chicago crime reporter, is on assignment in her hometown of Wind Gap, Missouri, to cover the murders of two young girls. Camille is as authentic and sympathetic a character as I've read this year, but as we meet her mother, stepfather, half sister and friends, we enter a strange world that begins with creepy, and ends with terrifying. A blistering, totally engrossing first novel by an author who is clearly at the beginning of a great career. ~ Neil

THE SECOND MOUSE by Archer Mayor (Warner $24.99). Joe Gunther’s investigation of the apparent suicide of a sad young woman intersects with a crime spree by three crooks in eastern Vermont. As always, Mayor gives us a smart, intriguing plot, insightful descriptions of places we know about, and a writing style that is as smooth and controlled as Joe himself. Any fan of crime fiction who hasn’t read Archer Mayor is missing one of the best in the business. ~ Neil  

SNOW BLIND by P.J. Tracy (Penguin $24.95). The remarkable mother-daughter writing team of P.J. and Tracy Lambrecht, aka P.J. Tracy has produced another wonderful book in the Monkeewrench series. When the bodies of two cops are found frozen in snowmen at a Minneapolis snowman-building contest, the cops are led to northern Minnesota and a safe-house fortress to find the killer. Full of surprises, humor, great dialogue, and some of the most original and unusual characters in crime fiction. What a great series. ~ Neil

THUNDERSTRUCK by Erik Larson (Random House $25.95). Erik Larson is the master of the non-fiction thriller. Thunderstruck is a study of the Edwardian era, populated with real life characters whose lives intersect at the critical moment. Dr. H. H. Crippen murders his wife in a horrific fashion, capturing the popular imagination, and escapes with his other woman aboard a vessel crossing the Atlantic. This occurs as Guglielmo Marconi is perfecting his wireless communication invention, bringing an end to what would be called the era of the “great hush.” Crippen and Marconi become players in the same drama, culminating in a thrilling nautical chase made possible by the new invention. Larson's portraits come alive, as do the earliest years of the 20th century. The crime, the invention, and the period detail are all beautifully rendered and will not be soon forgotten.