These are a few of my favourite things.....well thrillers anyway lol!! (Top Ten Crime / Thriller Books)

Member Name: sparkymarky1973

Product:	Top Ten Crime / Thriller Books
Date:	27/11/08 (359 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Some great thrillers for you to pick from all the dross available on the market.

Disadvantages: Some of these are of my own personal taste, you may or may not agree with my choices

I'm quite a big fan of the crime/thriller genre but equally I find there is a lot of dross out there especially now in the wake of Asda etc selling cheap paperbacks and the success of novels such as Da Vinci Code of which there are literally hundreds of imitatons by now.....So how do you pick the chaff from the wheat?
Well maybe good ol' Sparky can help with some of his favourite crime/ thriller titles......

In no paticular order, may I suggest.....

1) Birdman and The Treatment both by Mo Hayder.

Jack Caffery is a detective torn between trying to track down a couple of murderous killers and trying to prove that his creepy neighbour had something to do with the disappearance of his brother back when they were young. Caffrey is convinced that his neighbour is a sick paedophile who had him murdered but increasingly finds his time consumed by a couple of paticulary nasty cases that launch Hayder's debut with a bang!! Both these novels come highly recommended and though there is a third novel in the series that was published this year, Ritual, it is not a patch on these first two Caffrey novels!

2) The Chemistry Of Death by Simon Beckett.

David Hunter is a local practitioner working in a small Norfolk village when he stumbles across a dead body left lying in the woods. During the course of the investigation, it turns out that before a personal tragedy, a few years back, that brought him to the village in the first place, he was a highly successful Forensic Pathologist. Reluctantly, Hunter finds himself becoming involved as more bodies turn up and it emerges that someone in the local area is a serial killer. This leads to a series of very sinister and treacherous events that make for a highly gripping and descriptive read. A cracking debut, this was one of my top choices from last year. A pity then that a sequel managed to ever-so-slightly disappoint!

3) Every Dead Thing by John Connolly.

Anyone who has read my reviews for a while knows I love the Charlie Parker series and it all began here.... Detective Charlie Parker returns from a night in a bar to discover his family brutally murdered and left on display. Leaving his badge behind, Parker goes on a personal vigilante quest for revenge and finds himself drawn into a mob war and hunting a serial killer known as The Travelling Man! This book is just the beginning of a dark and tummultous road that Parker begins to descend and with each further novel in the series, the plots just get darker and darker until even the reader starts to question how much is real and how much is in Parker's head!! If you like your crime thrillers with a heady rush of the supernatural, then this series is right up your street. Check out my Connolly reviews for more details!

4)The Poet by Michael Connolly.

No relation to John as far as I know, this is perhaps the best offering yet from this fellow successful crime writer who here spins a tale of Police suicides that slowly turn out to share a familiar pattern. Crime reporter, Jack McEvoy investigates the death of his brother and finds that there is more going on than at first meets the eye. Soon it becomes hard to determine who is the hunter and who is the hunted.... M.Connolly has written many very good thrillers in his time but this is easily one of his best and the plot grips you right from the start.....an excellent thriller! There is a sequel, The Narrows, that features Connolly's more regular character, Homicide Detective Harry Bosch but that story begins here.

5)Heartsick by Chelsea Cain.

At first this feels like one of those endless thrillers that publishers just seem to churn out at the moment for chain supermarkets to sell but actually this and sequel, Sweetheart, turn out to be pretty good! Serial killer, Gretchen Lowell, nearly killed Detective Archie Sheridan before his colleagues took her down but his kidnap results in an unhealthy obsession by Archie in one of the scariest examples of Stockholm Syndrome ever witnessed. When a female reporter looks to do a feature on Archie following his return to work after a lengthy sick-leave, he plots to use her to get Gretchen to reveal the locations of some of her victim's bodies. This ends up being the basis for what is one of the best debut thrillers to emerge in some time. See my reviews of Cain's work for more details...

6)Want To Play by P.J.Tracey

The first book to feature the Monkeywrench crew who end up becoming a crime busting version of the Mystery Machine (r.e: Scooby Doo), this is a pretty good debut thriller that is fast paced and relentless in action. Succeeding novels in the series are not quite so good until you reach the most recent Snowblind, but this first book sets everything up perfectly and is a highly original concept that has only been explored once briefly by Linda La Plante several years ago in her drama Killernet. A killer is using the template of a computer game to exact his own crimes and the team find themselves fighting to prove their innocence whilst hiding the secrets of their past. A highly gripping read that never ceases to thrill....

7) Death Du Jour by Kathy Reichs.

The first book in the Tempe Brennan series follows a highly successful forensic anthropologist as she investigates a complicated case of murder. These books tend to be heavy on detail and quite informative on forensic technique but Tempe is a far more believable and likeable character than Cornwell's Scarpetta who had some glory days but has now become a cliche.Also to be recommended is the way Reichs doesn't just have her character investigating serial-killer-of-the-month but also has her doing real forensic anthropologist work such as archelogical digs on mass graves and helping identify the dead in an airplane crash. Simply some of the best forensic science fiction begins right here...

8) Blindsighted by Karin Slaughter

An amazing debut that has some of the grisliest opening scenes I have ever read in it's first few pages. This is the novel that begins the Grant County series featuring her best loved characters of medical examiner Sara Linton and ex-husband police chief, Jeffrey Tolliver. Repercussions from this novel reverbate all through the rest of the series so this really is the best place to start and though these books are excellent, you might be advised to avoid her seperate novels as these are not nearly as gripping.

9) Dead Sleep by Greg Isles

When photo-journalist, Jordan Glass, sees a series of paintings of "Sleeping Women", she is disturbed to see that one of the women in the pictures is her twin who went missing, presumed murdered by a serial killer several years earlier. Glass teams up with the FBI to track down the anonymous artist in this skillful thriller which keeps you firmly on the edge of your seat all the way through. Though I have not read much else by this author, this novel struck me as being paticulary fine when I read it and is as well-crafted as it is tense with some especially fine moments. This is as much about the mystery as it is about tracking a killer and this makes it a rarity in a genre becoming deluged in bad serial kiiller fiction.

10) The Surgeon by Tess Geritsen

A recent addition to my collection, this series of novels, beginning here, feature tough Detective Jane Rizzoli and, in later books, medical examiner, Maura Isles. Though this and sequel, The Apprentice, are a little shaky, the potential is evident straight from the start and successive novels are a vast improvement. I am just starting The Mephisto Club soon and can't wait as this is an author who seems to excel with each new novel!! Watch out for her earlier work though as some of that is B-grade thriller material of the highest order; still readable but nowhere near as good as this series which has slowly began to surprise me with how good it has become.



Well, those are just a few of my recommendations of authors in the crime genre you might want to check out. Hope it helps you pick some winners in the future and please check out my reviews of some of these series I have mentioned for more details. I hope this has provided you with something of an overview of some of the better novels in this genre I have discovered....

Summary: A selection of some of the finest crime fiction around in my honest and frank opinion