Get ready, because March is shaping up to be another special month for thriller fans everywhere.
While some readers may still be nursing a hangover from Don Winslow’s The Border, an instant classic and one of the best books of the year, there’s a number of thrillers set to bookstores in the coming weeks that pull readers out of their funk and back into the world of nonstop action and nail-biting suspense.
For starters, C.J. Box’s Joe Pickett series continued with Wolf Pack, which also returns fan-favorite character Nate Romanowski. There’s no question that over the years, Joe and Nate have seen just about everything together . . . but they’ve never faced a threat like this before. Full disclosure, Box is my favorite living author, and when I received my review copy last November, I started it with the intention of reading it slowly and dragging it out in hopes of savoring it. Instead, I blew right through it in less than four hours. I’ve read everything Box has ever written, so trust me when I say that this is his most explosive novel to date!
For readers seeking more action-oriented, headline-beating political and action thrillers, Joel C. Rosenberg’s The Persian Gamble is as good as it gets. Likewise, Harlan Coben returns with another masterful tale of physiological suspense, and Clive Cussler delivers one of his best Dirk Pitt novels in years. And that, is just the tip of the thriller iceberg. Find out more about those thrillers, and a few others, below.
Happy reading!
The Malta Exchange by Steve Berry
Release Date: March 5th (Minotaur)
The pope is dead. Soon, the cardinals will vote to name a new leader of the church, and one man, unbeknownst to outsiders, has schemed and manipulated his way to becoming the favorite.
Having been hired by the British MI6, former Justice Department agent turned freelance operator Cotton Malone heads to Malta in search of rumored secret letters between Winston Churchill and Benito Mussolini that supposedly disappeared in 1945. Malta, as Cotton is familiar with, has been at the center of a number of power grabs throughout history. What he doesn’t know, however, is that multiple leaders have sought to control the area for reasons far beyond the land itself.
As it turns out, a great secret lies within the land, something that many—including those inside the Catholic church—have desperately tried to keep hidden, and accidentally Cotton walks right into the middle of it all.
Meanwhile, Magellan Billet agent Luke Daniels is also in Malta and in search of Cardinal Kastor Cardinal Gallo, who recently left the Vatican rather abruptly. A secret non-believer who only uses his religion for power, Kastor has aligned himself perfectly to become the next pope, which is why Daniels (and others) find the timing of his traveling curious. His motive, as Cotton and Luke—who team up after Cotton’s mission goes sideways and the papers he’s after are stolen from him—eventually uncover, centers around a mysterious group known as the Knights of Malta.
While they’ve existed for over 900 years, little is known about the knights, their origin, and what their mission is in today’s world. It doesn’t take long, though, for Cotton to draw their attention—or the attention of the Secreti, a cabal of sorts within the Knights’ ranks—kicking off a race between multiple secret organizations, including a covert spy organization working for the Vatican, that’ll leave a trail of dead bodies in its wake.
With the fate of the papacy hanging in the balance, Cotton Malone must sidestep danger at every turn in order to figure out what secrets could possibly be so damning that a number of powerful and famous historical figures would have gone to such trouble to keep them hidden . . . and why so many people are willing to kill for them in the present day.
Ordinarily, you can have lots of historical elements, mystery, puzzles, misdirection, and suspense, or lots of action. It’s hard to combine them all, and even harder to do it well, but Berry bucks the trend with this one, delivering a story that reads like something you’d expect to find if Dan Brown and Brad Thor ever co-authored a thriller together.
The Malta Exchange has everything—including a lights-out twist two-thirds of the way through the story—that you could possibly want in a thriller, and Steve Berry knows how to keep fans up well past their bed times.
Her Father’s Secrets by Sara Blaedel
Release date: March 5th (Grand Central)
While Blaedel’s last novel detailed Jensen’s move from Denmark to Racine, Wisconsin following the death of her father—who left her a funeral home and a number of dark secrets to go with them—her latest offering focuses on the final funeral held at the home, and a murder investigation that might just be connected to the business in more ways than one.
Much like the last thirty years, Ilka continues to wonder why her father abandoned her decades ago, having never again reached out to her before his recent death. Only now, she’s also trying to run the failing business he left her, all the while meeting his new family and friends for the first time. Though she makes an effort to connect with her father’s second wife and their two daughters, they aren’t all too welcoming of Ilka, frequently giving her the cold shoulder and acting put off by her presence.
Though the funeral home is failing, Ilka finds the cash to put on the final viewing for a local woman who was murdered in her home, but things take a wild turn when she discovers letters proving that the dead woman had been blackmailing her father for nearly twenty years. Setting out to uncover the truth about her dad once and for all, Ilka begins sifting through his mysterious life, which, it turns out, is still riddled with dark secrets and dangerous enemies . . . and if she’s not careful, she could become the next casualty in a growing number of untimely and questionable deaths.
Blaedel, who knows her way around a mystery plot as well as anyone, does a fine job developing her heroine here. Ilka, now forty-years-old, is still adjusting to life in Wisconsin and struggling to meet people. She’s on Tinder and looking to connect with someone, anyone, but just can’t escape her father’s secrets, of which there are many. The pacing is steady, and Blaedel does a fine job hooking the reader early, delivering another page-turner that packs a wicked cliff-hanger ending that’ll have her readers begging for the next book.
Expertly written and deftly plotted, Her Father’s Secret is a wild, fun mystery that shows once again why Sara Blaedel is fast becoming one of the premier mystery writers in the game.
Cemetery Road by Greg Iles
Release date: March 5th (William Morrow)
In his first book since releasing the final chapter of his Natchez Burning trilogy, Greg Iles takes readers back to a small town in Mississippi for another tale about greed, betrayal, and just how far some people will go to keep their secrets hidden.
It might have just been some boyhood promise, but when Marshall McEwan swore he’d never return to his hometown of Bienville, Mississippi, he meant it. Leaving the small southern town in his rearview mirror, Marshall went on to become a successful, well-known journalist in Washington D.C., thriving as a reporter while making a name for himself on the national level. That is, after all, what he always wanted. Having grown up the son of a father who is revered by many in the south for his work running The Watchman, a local newspaper known for always getting to the bottom of things, Marshall wanted nothing more than to escape his old man’s shadow and make it as a journalist on his own.
Now, more than fifteen years later, he’s accomplished his mission, and then everything changes.
After learning that his father is no longer able to keep The Watchman afloat, both due to his age and a battle with alcoholism, Marshall returns home to take over the 150-year-old, family-owned paper in order to relieve his mother of the burden. Hoping to jump-start the news cycle, Marshall going looking for stories to report on, finding several, in particular, that stand out.
Buck, a local archeologist and all-around good guy who is well liked by the community, was recently found dead—his body beaten and dumped in the river. While following the murder investigation, Marshall also familiarises himself with other notable stories—the impending arrival of a Chinese-funded paper plant—and the recent announcement of a new bill that’s expected to pass and bring with it a billion dollars to Bienville thanks, in part, to a new interstate connection point that’ll finally put the small town on the map. Things really heat up, though, when Marshall begins investigating the dealings of the Poker Club, a secret group of powerful locals whose illegal dealings often go unreported, though their influence continues to grow.
Complicating matters is the fact that Jet, Marshall’s former lover who he hasn’t seen in well over a decade but still has deep feelings for, is now married to Paul Matheson, the heir to the Poker Club throne. An attorney, Jet is forced to defend her father-in-law, who stands accused of murdering his wife, against her own wishes. But after she and Marshall reconnect, the two begin secretly working together to figure out what, exactly, is going on. The story takes a dramatic turn when Marshall, following a trail of dead bodies, begins connecting things together, exposing a slew of corrupt individuals in high places—putting a target on his back like never before.
In an ironic twist, after leaving his hometown to chase big stories on his way to becoming a trusted reporter, Marshall McEwan eventually finds the biggest story of his career back in Mississippi . . . the question is, can he stay alive long enough to report on it?
Greg Iles does it again, offering up a compelling, double-dose of southern crime . . . and Cemetery Road is some of his finest work yet.
Wolf Pack by C.J. Box
Release date: March 12th (G.P. Putnam’s Sons)
When a herd of mule deer take off running from a high-tech drone, some of them dying in the process, Shell County game warden Katelyn Hamm tracks the small, unmanned aircraft towards Twelve Sleep County, which happens to be Joe Pickett’s district.
Joe, who was recently fired after clashing with the new governor, only to have his job saved by the former (and fan-favorite) governor, Spencer Rulon, shares Hamm’s outrage and begins asking around, seeing if any locals have encountered the drone before. Meanwhile, Joe and his wife, Marybeth, are still adjusting to life in their new home and the fact that it will soon be empty of all children. Lucy, the youngest of the three Pickett girls, is wrapping up her final year in high school and will soon leave the house like Sheridan and April before her. It’s just one of the many new things in Joe’s life, a list that also includes the low-tech game warden finally using Bluetooth and a humorous Kanye West reference. But things take a turn when Joe finally tracks down the owner of the drone and is then paid a surprise visit by two FBI agents who ask him to leave the aircraft’s operator alone.
The warning, which Joe takes issue with, is more of a command than a request, with little information–besides the fact that staying out of it could save the lives of countless people–passed to Joe and Katelyn Hamm.
In another plot thread, former special forces operator turned outlaw turned semi-law-abiding citizen, master falconer Nate Romanowski is still adjusting to life on the grid when he witnesses a pack of dangerous strangers pass through Wyoming. After some digging, Nate and Joe discover that the four-man team, which consists of one especially lethal woman, is actually a syndicate of the Sinaloa cartel.
As more wildlife continue to die at the hands of the untouchable drone operator, Joe refuses to sit on the sidelines, even if it means going against the FBI, putting him on a collision course with two angry agents and, worse, a team of assassins. Once again, he has his buddy Romanowski by his side, but for the first time, the duo realizes they may have taken on more than they can handle . . . and that’s before Joe discovers that someone he loves dearly might just be caught up in the middle of everything.
Reading Box’s new book each year and following Joe, Marybeth, Nate Romanowski, and others is similar to catching up with old friends you haven’t seen in a while. It’s a real treat, especially for longtime fans of the series. Nobody has ever developed a family the way Box has with the Picketts over the course of nineteen novels. Whereas most series are losing steam and becoming repetitive this deep into their run, Box continues to find brilliant new ways to shake things up. That includes a number of shocking revelations here.
Joe Pickett takes on his most dangerous adventure yet—one that’s complete with family drama, major twists, and a murderous team of assassins in the latest must-read novel from C.J. Box. Longtime readers of the series will finish this one stunned . . . as not everyone fans have come to love, make it out of Wolf Pack alive.
The Persian Gamble by Joel C. Rosenberg
Release date: March 12th (Tyndale)
Rosenberg opens his latest thriller just moments from where his previous book, The Kremlin Conspiracy, left off–with former Secret Service agent Marcus Ryker free-falling through the skies somewhere over Northwestern Russia after jumping out of a private Gulfstream IV.
While the first pages are dedicated to catching readers up to speed on the events from the last book, explaining why Ryker is parachuting into Russia alongside Oleg Kraskin, the story quickly shifts as the two characters go on the run in an effort to stop a nuclear war from breaking out across the globe.
Kraskin, a former attorney who became an advisor to his father-in-law, Russian President Aleksandr Ivanovich Luganov, never meant to marry into the nation’s leading crime family. At the time of his wedding, Luganov was the head of the FSB. Now he’s one of the most powerful men in the world, ready to wage war by invading several NATO nations.
Oleg, in an effort to stop the war before it gets started, becomes a double agent, slipping Ryker sensitive, top-secret information about his father-in-law’s plans. The story takes a shocking turn though when Ryker realizes the invasion is little more than a smokescreen designed to distract from President Luganov’s dealings with North Korea, who has managed to construct a long-range ballistic missile capable of striking the United States. Their goal is to hand off the missiles and nuclear warheads to Iran, who will fire the first shot, no doubt prompting a response in similar force that would kick off a nuclear holocaust unlike anything the world’s ever seen.
With Russian forces quickly closing in on them and all-out war threatening to forever change the world as we know it, Marcus and Oleg must evade the authorities long enough to connect the dots, identify all the players, and find a way to stop the madness before it’s too late.
With the fate of the world resting on their shoulders, the stakes couldn’t possibly be any higher . . . and Rosenberg dials up the suspense like never before, delivering his most heart-pounding story yet.
While much of the thriller world continues to pivot away from Islamic terrorism to focus on Russia, Rosenberg was one of the first to circle back around and identify them as the next big threat. Known for his uncanny ability to predict world events before they take place, a skill that prompted U.S. News & World Report to call him a “modern-day Nostradamus,” Rosenberg offers up a terrifying glimpse of where the conflict between Russia and the United States could be headed . . . and what it might look like when it gets there.
With his ripped-from-the-headlines approach and stunning ability to survey the geopolitical landscape, Joel C. Rosenberg continues to mix his unique blend of prophetic fiction and nonstop action unlike anyone else working today.
The Last Act by Brad Parks
Release Date: March 12th (Dutton)
When twenty-something-year-old struggling actor Tommy Jump, who hasn’t had any coveted jobs since he was a child, is approached by an old friend and offered $150,000 to play the critical role of Peter Goodrich, a high school teacher who was underwater on his mortgage and got caught robbing a bank, he can’t say yes fast enough. There’s just one catch.
The role isn’t for a movie or film production, and Hollywood ain’t funding his paycheck. The FBI is.
Danny Ruiz, now an FBI agent who went to school with Tommy way back in the day, sees his longtime friend as the perfect way to get close to a man named Mitchell Dupree. A banker caught laundering money for New Colima, one of the most vicious cartels in Mexico and a major supplier of crystal meth, Dupree is believed to have documents that could finally bring down New Colima’s untouchable leader, El Vio. But he ain’t talking, and instead of taking a deal, Mitch Dupree is currently sitting in a minimum-security West Virginia prison with his mouth shut to protect his family from El Vio and his men.
Motivated in part because his fiancée is pregnant with their first child and because the acting gigs have largely dried up now that he’s too old to play a kid on screen, Tommy agrees to spend six months undercover in the same prison as Dupree, where he’ll need to get close to the banker in hopes of coaxing him into disclosing the location of the sought-after documents the FBI is after. With the game set, Tommy (posing as Goodrich) pretends to plead guilty, then readies himself for the task at hand. Armed with the knowledge that the FBI will step in to remove him from the prison any time he feels his life is in danger, Jump walks into Morgantown Prison ready to deliver the best, most compelling performance of his life . . . only to quickly discover that nothing is quite what it seems and that one slip-up could cost him everything.
Brad Parks reached new levels of success a couple of years ago with his hit (ironically-titled) thriller, Say Nothing, a book everyone was talking about in 2017. That set the bar impossibly high for him moving forward, and while last year’s Closer Than You Know was good, it fell a tad short of the expectations set the year before. Now, Parks has rebounded in spectacular fashion, proving he’s far from a one-hit-wonder by delivering a devilishly good story with more twists and turns than Say Nothing, and enough edge-of-your-seat suspense to fill two books.
Run Away by Harlan Coben
Release Date: March 19th (Grand Central)
Simon Greene, a successful Wall Street moneyman, used to live a happy, full life. Now, he’s miserable, mourning the life decisions made by his daughter, Paige.
No longer the girl her family used to know, Paige recently quit college, turned away from her family, became a drug addict, and then dropped off the grid. One afternoon, Simon happens to see his daughter by chance, though he barely recognized her, panhandling in a remote part of Central Park. Taken aback, he approaches her and begs her to come home, desperately wanting to rescue his daughter from the life she’s chosen. Instead, Paige—who is strung out and belligerent—grabs her guitar and runs, causing Simon to follow and crash into her boyfriend, a junkie named Aaron. Fully believing that Aaron is somehow keeping his daughter against her will, Simon confronts him, and things quickly turn physical.
After punching Aaron in the face, an act that was caught on camera by other people in the park, Simon’s all but certain the druggie will press charges against him. Instead, Aaron turns up dead, and Simon becomes the prime suspect after the footage of their confrontation goes viral.
While the police are investigating Simon and his wife, Ingrid, the couple focuses on Paige and her whereabouts. Using Aaron’s murder scene as a starting point, they look for clues that might point to Paige, only to find themselves in a situation far more dangerous than they ever could have expected . . . where nothing is quite what it seems.
Coben, a true master of suspense, is known for producing nonstop twists and turns, and he delivers another nail-biting story here that’ll leave readers recovering from whiplash upon turning the final page. Aside from the storyline in New York, another plot thread follows a Chicago-based private investigator named Elena Ramirez, who is searching for another missing person. As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that both cases are connected, along with some mayhem going down in Boston and New Jersey, but Coben takes his time revealing how the pieces all fit together . . . setting up a final twist that’ll catch more than a few readers by surprise.
When it comes to misdirection and catching readers off guard, no one’s better than Harlan Coben. Fast-paced and helplessly entertaining, Run Away is everything his readers have come to expect and then some.
Treason by Rick Campbell
Release date: March 19th (St. Martin’s Press)
When a military coup results in an overthrow of the Russian president, the Kremlin launches a daring attack against the United States in this gripping new thriller from Rick Campbell.
Russian President Yuri Kalinin knows his military has a secret weapon, but after recent unsuccessful tests, he’s reluctant to use it. Doing so would certainly mean drawing America into a nuclear war, something he’s not anxious to do—which can’t be said for those around him. Others inside the Kremlin want to take back Ukraine and the Baltic States and are ready to deal with the fallout of invading the NATO nations, even if it means going toe-to-toe with the United States.
Back in America, the president, sensing trouble is on the horizon, tasks national security adviser Christine O’Connor with heading to Russia in order to negotiate a nuclear arms treaty directly with Kalinin. Instead, O’Connor finds herself caught in the middle of a military coup, when Kalinin’s chief of the general staff, Sergei Andropov, orchestrates an overthrow and has Kalinin removed from power. Hellbent on implementing the Zolotov option using their newly redesigned “secret weapon,” a sophisticated malware code, to render America’s B-2 bombers and ballistic missiles useless, Russia quickly invades the NATO countries while America’s forces are too wounded to mobilize.
Though their forces aren’t at full-strength, the United States refuses to sit back and do nothing, drawing up their own daring plan to hit back—one that involves sending SEAL team Commander Jack Harrison and his team into Russia to locate and secure Yuri Kalinin, who might be their best hope at preventing a full-scale, all-out nuclear war.
With the countdown to World War III rapidly approaching zero, it’s up to the United States military to once again answer the call before the world reaches the point of no return.
It’s hard to believe that Campbell, who didn’t release a book in 2018, has yet to crack the New York Times list. One knock I’ve seen on his stuff is that his books don’t necessarily have a defined, fleshed-out protagionist. In a world where Mitch Rapp, Scot Harvath, and Gabriel Allon dominate the genre, readers have no doubt shown a tendency to gravitate towards a series character. So, while Cambell sure feels like the heir to Clancy’s throne, poised to one day sit atop the military technothriller genre, he lacks a true Jack Ryan-like character. Still, some may be missing the bigger picture, as the military as a whole—and the brave men and women who make up the armed forces—are the stars here, and Campbell, a retired Navy commander, portrays them authentically.
Moreover, Campbell—whose smooth writing is on full display here—has shown a deep understanding of geopolitics over the years, and while all of his novels have been large in scope, none have been quite as big as Treason, which reads like a cross between Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October and the recently released Hunter Killer film, which stars Gerard Butler as a submarine captain charged with saving the Russian president in an effort to avoid a war. While the comparisons to that movie are rather striking, Campbell’s thriller adds more depth and soul to the story, and it offers a more complete look at what a potential showdown between Russia and the United States could look like. There’s also plenty of action, including a high-powered opening, sprinkled throughout.
While Larry Bond and David Poyer, both longtime veterans of the thriller genre, are still churning out top-notch stuff, nobody’s doing it better than Rick Campbell—who makes his return to the genre after a one-year hiatus felt in a big way . . . Treason is the must-read book of the year for military and technothriller enthusiasts.
Celtic Empire by Clive Cussler and Dirk Cussler
Release date: March 19th (G.P. Putnam’s Sons)
Follow 2016’s Odessa Sea, the Cusslers open their 25th Pitt adventure in Memphis Egypt, 1334 B.C.E., in which a ship carrying Princess Meritaten and other Egyptians desperately flee in hopes of escaping a deadly plague. Flash forward to the present day, U.N. scientists are investigating a number of deaths in El Salvador, when they themselves end up murdered. Likewise, an attack occurs along the Nile when tomb raiders destroy an archeological site.
Back in the states, a tanker sinks to the bottom of the Detroit River, promoting the president to task Dirk Pitt, Director of the National Underwater and Marine Agency, to figure out what’s going on. The story takes another turn when the diver assigned to investigate the tanker is killed, further pushing Pitt to consider that everything has to do with water samples—as he turns his attention to Evanna McKee, CEO of BioRem Global Limited, the company charged with using a new lab-engineered bacteria to clean up the multiple crash sites around the world.
While BioRem’s involvement in the chaos is all but certain, their motive is not. Things point back to Princess Meritaten, and rumor has it that she was carrying a secretive substance with her when she fled Egypt nearly 700 years ago, giving NUMA a potential lead to work with. But with the clock ticking, Dirk calls in everyone—including his children—to pitch in and lend a hand before it’s too late.
Cussler’s 25th Dirk Pitt novel has a little bit of everything that helped make the character, who the Associated Press once called the “oceanic answer to Indiana Jones,” a household name to begin with—including lots of cutting-edge science and plenty of action. While the set up may feel formulaic, there’s no need to re-invent the wheel, as Cussler has sold over 50 million books throughout his long career. Many of those readers know exactly what they want, and Cussler, for his part, gives it to ’em, serving up a fast-paced thriller that rarely takes its foot off the gas pedal. Sure, you might have to suspend your disbelief a bit, but those who do will have one heck of a fun time.
Celtic Empire is some of the best work between Clive and Dirk Cussler in years—proving that Dirk Pitt, one of the thriller genre’s premier heroes, has plenty more adventures left in him moving forward.
