July is, without question, the very best month of the year for thriller fans, and it’s not even close. Seriously, you could argue there are more must-read books coming out any one week this month than the entire month of May!
It’s finally warming up, and all the biggest stars are set to drop new books in time for beach season—including new offerings from Mark Greaney, Stephen Hunter, Ben Coes, Matthew Betley, J. Todd Scott, and many more.
Check out this list of my favorite thrillers set to come out, headlined by Daniel Silva’s 19th Gabriel Allon novel, a top contender for best thriller of the year. Happy reading!
Almost Midnight by Paul Doiron
Release Date: July 2 (Minotaur Books)
Just as his vacation is wrapping up, Maine Warden Investigator Mike Bowditch is pulled from the river he’s been fly fishing on when his old pal Billy Cronk, who is currently doing time in the Maine Penitentiary for killing a man who once attacked him and Bowditch years back, suddenly reaches out.
A military combat veteran with solid instincts and a touch of paranoia, Cronk tells Mike that he needs a favor—which involves checking into a female prison guard named Dawn Richie, who recently transferred from another corrections facility. With no coherent reason to suspect anything, Mike nearly discards the request from Billy, until he finds out that Richie was attacked in the prison and narrowly saved by Cronk. Unsure whether the attack has to do with Dawn making fast enemies in her new work environment or is something carried over from her last job, Mike starts digging around.
Meanwhile, another call sparks Mike’s interest when he learns that Shadow, a hybrid wolf-dog that he saved nearly three years ago, has been shot with an arrow and is barely alive. Following a risky surgery, Mike finds the animal clinging to life, but his prognosis isn’t good. Filled with anger and heartache, Bowditch vows to investigate the crime on his own time—but gets nowhere fast when every path leads to a closed door, giving him very little to go on.
As the two plot threads begin to play out, they suddenly become intertwined in ways he never could have guessed, and when Mike discovers that Cronk’s family has been threatened, all bets are off as he sets out to get to the bottom of whatever’s going on, no matter where it leads.
From game warden to his recent promotion to warden investigator, Paul Doiron has brilliantly developed his protagonist over the course of nine previous books. Readers have followed Bowditch’s career path, romantic relationships, and plenty of family drama, but here, with his tenth book, Doiron puts his star character up against a danger unlike anything he’s ever encountered. The cherry on top is Doiron’s ability to continue mixing smart plots with vibrant descriptions that help transport readers into the Maine wilderness, where they’ll stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Mike, feeling every ounce of heart-thumping suspense along the way.
Fast-paced and filled with a number of solid twists that’ll keep readers turning pages well into the night, Paul Doiron’s Almost Midnight is some of his best work to date.
The Chain by Adrian McKinty
Release Date: July 9th (Mulholland Books)
It’s called The Chain, and by the time you know you’re part of the game, it’s already too late.
While on her way to a checkup with her doctor, cancer survivor and single mother Rachel Klein receives a phone call from a panicked stranger, who informs her that she’s just abducted Rachel’s teenage daughter, Kylie, from her Plum Island bus stop—and that the only way to get her back is to pay a ransom, kidnap another child, and then call their parents and convince them to abduct another kid.
They’re now both links in a sick and twisted game, and there’s no way out.
Running to the police in forbidden and will have dire consequences. In fact, contacting any form of authority will result in your child—in Rachel’s case, Kylie—being killed. If the chain is broken, everyone dies.
Those are the rules.
So, with the help of her brother-in-law, Pete, a former Marine who has a drug problem, Rachel frantically tries to come up with the money, then, desperate to win Kylie’s freedom, claims the next victim of The Chain. However, she quickly realizes that she will forever be connected to the evil game, and that she’s no longer the person she was before her phone rang that fateful morning. Juggling the stress and everything thrust upon her with other bad news on the medical front, Rachel makes a bold decision.
Though she knows she’s being followed and watched by whoever is forcing innocent people into this hellish reality, Rachel is determined to not only break free of the chain . . . but to destroy it once and for all.
McKinty presents his brilliantly horrific story in a way that’s almost too real for comfort. Readers will feel every ounce of panic, desperation, fear, hopelessness, and anger that plagues Rachel as she faces a moral conundrum unlike anything else: how far would you go to save your child, and at what cost to other innocent people? McKinty’s ability to navigate that fine line makes for a riveting reading experience unlike anything else currently sitting on bookstore shelves.
Every parents’ worst nightmare just became a reality in Adrian McKinty’s latest nail-biting thriller . . . The Chain is not to be missed.
The Shameless by Ace Atkins
Release Date: July 9th (G.P. Putnam’s Sons)
While he should be knee-deep in the honeymoon phase after his recent marriage to his longtime girlfriend, ER nurse Maggie Powers, Quinn Colson finds himself surrounded by controversy as he struggles to put out the fires that seem to be burning all around Tibbehah County.
There’s Jimmy Vardaman, a shady politician who represents all that is wrong with politics in general. Fannie Hathcock, a recurring villain, continues to run prostitutes and control the region’s drug trade through ties she maintains to the “Dixie Mafia,” though she has her own issues in this one—which Quinn inevitably gets sucked into. But none of those problems prove to be as dire as the situation surrounding Brandon Taylor, who went wandering into the woods at fifteen years old, only to be found dead from an apparent suicide in 1997.
Unhappy with the way the investigation was handled two decades prior, Shaina, Brandon’s sister, invites two freelance journalists from New York to travel south and help her shine a national spotlight on her brother’s cold case. Enter Tashi Coleman and her “producer” Jessica Torres, the duo behind a semi-popular podcast called Thin Air, who aren’t afraid to raise a little hell if it means getting one step closer to uncovering the truth and, of course, attracting viewers.
For Quinn, the already delicate situation is made infinitely worse by the fact that it was his now-disgraced uncle, Hamp Beckett, who ruled that the kill shot was self-inflicted—and theories begin to circulate that Hamp did so to protect a number of powerful, corrupt individuals. From what, exactly, Quinn doesn’t know, but as he begins re-visiting the past, it doesn’t take him long to realize that doing so will land him in the cross-hairs of some major players who would just as well prefer the mystery stay buried forever . . . even if it means adding a few more bodies to the mix.
At first glance, it almost seems like Atkins may have tried to mix too many storylines this time around—several of which weren’t yet touched on—but he somehow manages to thread them all together in a way that not only makes sense but adds a sense of urgency to the plot. Without a single dull page to be found and zero “fluff,” Atkins’ latest moves at a steady clip, touching on a number of timely issues, including human trafficking, corrupt politicians, “fake news,” drugs, and even immigration (Quinn’s sister, Caddy, is a former drug addict who now runs a shelter for abused women and immigrants). Through it all, Atkins continues to develop his series protagonist, along with his growing family, and never fails to capture the Mississippi setting in a way that only he and fellow bestselling author Gregg Iles seem to be able to pull off.
The New Girl by Daniel Silva
Release Date: July 16th
Opening in Geneva, Silva’s 19th Allon novel introduces Jihan—the mysterious new girl at a very exclusive boarding school—who arrives each day via a motorcade fit for a king. Her classmates wonder about her past, as do her teachers, but it’s not until she vanishes one afternoon that her true identity is revealed.
Jihan, it turns out, is the daughter of Khalid bin Mohammed, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. Once known as a social reformer who set out to modernize his religiously intolerant country, Khalid bin Mohammed—or KBM for short—has since become a controversial figure for all the wrong reasons due to his role in the killing of a journalist named Omar Nawwaf.
Now, with few friends to turn to, the distraught crown prince seeks out former CIA officer turned art curator Sarah Bancroft, who he’d hired as an unofficial advisor of sorts when purchasing various works of art in the past. Longtime readers of the Allon series will recall Bancroft’s—who first appeared in Silva’s 2007 Barry Award-winning novel The Messenger, before returning in other books throughout the years—close relationship with Gabriel and his wife, Chiara, something KBM was fully aware of, and counting on, when he reached out to her.
After her calls go unanswered, Bancroft travels from New York to Tel Aviv, where she presents Gabriel with an interesting opportunity. Soon thereafter, Gabriel meets with KBM, who vows to continue his crusade to break the bond between the Saudi Kingdom and radical Islam—sparking an unlikely alliance, as Allon agrees to help find and recover his daughter. However, though things initially seemed straightforward enough, Gabriell quickly realizes they are anything but, as KBM receives impossible demands from his daughter’s kidnappers—which is nothing compared to the shocking endgame Allon uncovers.
It’s crazy to think that Silva could ever top himself after last year’s The Other Woman, but he does with this one. The New Girl is one of his fastest moving thrillers yet and features a number of perfectly-timed twists that constantly raise the stakes, forcing Allon, who is under steady duress, to adjust on the fly with only several days to connect all the dots and take action before it’s too late. Without giving away the meat of the plot, it’s one of Silva’s most timely, ripped-from-the-headlines stories to date—and as his work is prone to do, at times, even reads a bit too close for comfort.
Daniel Silva is America’s answer to John le Carre . . . and The New Girl is one of his most impressive novels to date.
Red Metal by Mark Greaney and Hunter Rip Rawlings IV
Release Date: July 16th (Berkley)
Best known for his Gray Man series, New York Times bestseller Mark Greaney shows yet again why he’s one of the most talented, versatile, and dominant writers in the genre today with Red Metal (co-authored with Lt. Col. H. Ripley Rawlings), a brilliant standalone that offers a realistic glimpse at what World War III might look like in the near future.
Seeking to restore their reputation as a superpower, a desperate Russia launches a daring plan to take back several Rare Earth mineral mines in Africa, igniting a new world war in the process.
Not that long ago, Russia held the coveted mines, which produce the needed material to effectively own the world’s high-tech sector for generations to come. Since they lost control, special forces commander Col. Yuri Borbikov has been hellbent on taking them back, even going as far as to draw up a plan he calls Operation Red Metal—which basically amounts to an attack in Europe designed to severely limit AFRICOM, the United States’ Africa Command stationed in Germany, while simultaneously hitting one of the mines in Kenya. All they need now is to wait for the right moment to strike.
In Asia, the Chinese government launches a plan to assassinate a high-profile politician in Taiwan—a country that has grown tired of having their independence threatened and are finally ready to fight back. America takes note, and, with those events momentarily distracting them from what the Russians are up to, Red Metal is quickly approved by the Russian president—catching NATO, who didn’t think the sleeping bear would awaken quite yet, by surprise—and all hell suddenly breaks loose as battles rage and blood spills around the globe.
Over the course of the week-long war, readers follow a deep, diverse cast of characters from all sides of the conflict, including Marine Lieutenant Colonel Dan Connolly, a battle-tested soldier who leaves his air-conditioned office at the Pentagon to head to Africa; Shank, an A-10 Warthog pilot who’s sure to be a fan favorite thanks to his sick skills and laugh-out-loud one-liners; Pascal, an aging French spy who becomes a valuable player; and Paulina, a scene-stealing Polish militia member who’s a far cry from the other warriors mentioned, having originally joined the militia to help save up money—but ultimately finds herself in the middle of the war, determined to help defend her homeland from Russia.
Other characters emerge too, and Greaney and Rawlings do a fine job representing all kinds of different people from various backgrounds, while explaining the war from their perspective. It’s an impressive feat to be sure, as are the co-authors’ abilities to make their 650-plus page novel read like something half that size. Don’t let the page count or the book’s thickness fool you, Red Metal is a fast-paced thriller featuring nonstop action and a little something for everyone. Whether you’re craving big, large-scale land battles, beautifully choreographed air raids, powerful naval attacks, or simple hand-to-hand combat, this book has it all and then some.
Think Red Storm Rising but ten times faster, with more action and Greaney’s familiar, smooth style. Red Metal is one of the best military thrillers of the last three decades and may very well be the gold-standard in the genre moving forward.
Rules of War by Matthew Betley
Release Date: July 16th (Atria/Emily Bestler Books)
In the aftermath of the events that played out in Field of Valor, the director of the NSA is dead, and Joshua Baker, the United States’ vice president, is missing. A traitor to his country, finding Baker is the number one priority for Task Force Ares, an elite unit within the FBI, and former Marine Logan West leads the manhunt.
While his BFF and right-hand man John Quick recovers from a serious gunshot wound, it’s former CIA agent Cole Matthews who accompanies Logan this time around, as the duo heads to an Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas. Unbeknownst to Logan, though, someone is after him—which complicates matters significantly.
Chief Inspector Santiago Rojas of Bolivian National Intelligence has been tasked with finding and bringing Logan back to Venezuela. A widower, Rojas also has a sick child dying of cancer—her treatment contingent on his ability to produce Logan to his superiors. To save her, he’ll do anything, but after a brief encounter with Logan and Cole, the tables are turned yet again when the trio—Santiago, Logan, and Cole—are ambushed in Rojas’ hotel room and forced to fight their way out of the building.
Logan, who has always laid it all on the line, runnin’ and gunnin’ with the best of ’em, carries himself a bit differently in this one. Now an expected father, his perspective has changed. Empathetic to Rojas’ situation, he agrees to go to Venezuela so the man can secure the medical treatment for his daughter—and in doing so, finally connects the dots, revealing the real conspiracy playing out behind the scenes. With all the players finally unmasked, Logan West sets his sights on the former VP and everyone else who’s helped him along the way, and in doing so, opens the biggest can of whoop-ass Betley’s readers have seen yet.
A former Marine himself, action and quick-witted dialogue have been Matthew Betley’s calling card throughout his writing career. And while the action and laugh-out-loud-funny one-liners are plentiful, he doesn’t receive enough credit for his ability to manipulate readers’ emotions. After showing flashes of such skill in Field of Valor, Betley—like everything else he does—takes it to the next level here, revealing a masterful touch in his handling of emotionally-charged scenes and a smooth prose to go with it. Rest assured, he’s no one-trick pony, and Betley, like his alter-ego protagonist, lays it all on the line here.
Told with blazing speed, Rules of War is another fun, timely, action-filled thriller from Matthew Betley—who packs more gunfights and daring sequences into his books than anyone else in the business.
This Side of the Night by J. Todd Scott
Release Date: July 16th (G.P. Putnam’s Sons)
Mirroring the real-life tragedy from 2014 when a group of Mexican students was gunned down, Scott opens his third book with a busload of student protestors being savagely murdered in the Mexican borderlands at the hands of the vicious Nemesio cartel. When the shooting stops, several are dead, and more than a dozen are unaccounted for.
For Fox Uno, leader of the Nemesio cartel, killing is just a part of a business. And when Deputy Danny Ford, an Iraqi war veteran who now works under Cherry, finds five bodies floating in the Rio Grande—Chris and company all suspect Uno is behind the murders. Things become further complicated, though, when Uno is forced to flee Mexico due to a coup attempt orchestrated by rival gangs and his son, Martino, who wants desperately to claim the throne to his father’s empire.
Escaping to Murfee, Texas, Uno plans to visit his niece, Amé Reynosa—who just so happens to be another one of Cherry’s deputies. That relationship sets off alarm bells with El Paso DEA agent Joe Garrison, who is in Big Bend County after following his own leads. Garrison and Cherry are forced to work together as part of a joint task force of sorts, though they don’t necessarily see eye-to-eye on everything. One thing they do agree on, however, is that Nemesio hitmen are working with someone in the states to bring Uno down, likely members of the local law enforcement.
With a trail of dead bodies leading from Mexico to West Texas and no end to the violence in sight, it’s up to Chris Cherry to yet again to find a way to restore the balance before things become any more out of hand . . . and more innocent people die.
After three gripping and expertly-plotted books, J. Todd Scott deserves to be recognized alongside other greats such as Craig Johnson, Ace Atkins, and Don Winslow—who might just be the most accurate comparison out of authors currently working in the genre. Whereas Winslow has received praise (and rightfully so) for his epic Cartel trilogy, Scott’s has mostly flown under the radar, though they’re every bit as rich with detail, character development, stimulating visuals, and been-there-done-that authenticity. A veteran federal agent who knows this world inside and out, Scott has lived the life he’s now writing about, and that realism bleeds through each and every page, creating a powerful reading experience that is both informative and highly entertaining.
True Believer by Jack Carr
Release Date: July 30th (Atria/Emily Bestler Books)
After being held up by the Department of Defense’s Office of Prepublication and Security Review for over six months, former Navy SEAL turned top-notch thriller author Jack Carr’s highly-anticipated second thriller, True Believer, is finally set to storm its way into bookstores.
Following the explosive events of The Terminal List (2018), James Reece is the most wanted domestic terrorist on the United States’ watch list. Once a Navy SEAL commander, Reece previously uncovered a conspiracy that reached the highest levels of the American government, one that he set about exposing—which cost him everything he loved and cared about: his wife, their daughter, his teammates, and his career.
With nothing more to lose, Reece set out for revenge. After compiling a lengthy list of everyone and anyone who had a hand in the death of his family and his team, the highly trained, highly lethal commando went to work—crossing off every name on his list in the process.
Now, Reece is a broken man. Still dealing with a tumor that’s spidered its way into his brain, James finds himself alone on Bitter Harvest, a forty-eight-foot Beneteau Oceanis, bobbing his way across the Atlantic Ocean. Struggling to cope with everything that’s happened over the past several months, Reece stays off the grid, makes peace with his medical diagnosis, and spends the next four months slowly making his way to Mozambique, Africa, where he’s taken in by Rich Hastings, the uncle of James’ estranged best friend and former SEAL teammate, who runs a Safaris camp near Niassa.
Eventually, though he was careful and doing his best to lay low, Reece and some other members of Hastings’ crew have a run-in with some armed poachers, forcing Reece to flip the switch he’d spent the better part of a year trying to turn off. And when word travels that a badass nobody in the middle of the jungle threw down with some poachers, it doesn’t take long for Uncle Sam to track Reece down—only, instead of handcuffs, they’ve come knocking with an offer.
Unbeknownst to Reece, who hasn’t paid any attention to the news, a series of devastating terrorist attacks have rocked the Western world. It’s believed that the man behind the attacks is Mohammed “Mo” Farooq, an Iraqi commander who was once trained by American forces in the region. As it turns out, everyone who had a hand in dealing with Mo back in Iraq is now dead, except for Reece, who is offered a presidential pardon and a new job with the CIA in exchange for tracking him down and putting an end to the attacks.
Though he’s initially reluctant, Reece accepts the offer and heads out to complete his mission, which seems straightforward enough. Instead, all hell breaks loose, as he quickly discovers that things aren’t what they first seemed. Unsure whom he can trust, Reece travels around the globe chasing terrorists and, in the process, unearths another conspiracy that could set the world on fire . . . unless he can stop it.
Few authors over the last few decades have taken the genre by storm the way Jack Carr has. After releasing one of the best debut political thrillers in recent memory, Carr follows that up with another winner. The plotting is tight with plenty of surprises along the way, the pacing is relentless, and Carr even finds time for a decent amount of character development, on top of mixing in a few laugh-out-loud one-liners. Lots of new characters have been compared to Vince Flynn’s Mitch Rapp, but James Reece is one of the very few who actually deserves such praise.
He’s only two books in, but you can already count on one hand the number of authors still seated slightly above Jack Carr at the top of the genre.
The Russian by Ben Coes
Release Date: July 30th (St. Martin’s Press)
New York Times bestselling author Ben Coes kicks off a new spinoff series starring Rob Tacoma—who proves to be every bit as formidable as Dewey Andreas, and then some.
For Rob Tacoma, it’s personal. A former Navy SEAL and vital member of the CIA’s Special Operations Group, Tacoma was originally raised by his grandparents following the death of his parents, who were murdered at the hands of a couple of Russian mafia thugs. Now, he’s given a shot at retribution when the president of the United States issues a top-secret executive order designed to hit back at the Russians.
Decades prior, after the fall of the Soviet Union, a wave of criminals made their way to America, where they’re now thriving—acting like kings of the violent underworld they helped build, their reach is a scary reality for all who oppose them, a point that’s proven when two powerful politicians are assassinated on the same night. Senator John O’Flaherty, known as the “Lion” of the Senate among his peers, was shot once in the head, while Governor Nick Black of Florida, the Democratic frontrunner for the upcoming presidential election, was poisoned. All clues point to the Russian mob being behind the high-profile killings, prompting President J.P. Dellenbaugh to take action.
Realizing that the enemy has invaded the United States, forcing America to fight back without its best soldiers and operators in the game, Dallenbaugh issues Executive Order 12-4b3, assembling a hit team of skilled men and women who are tasked with going into the shadows, infiltrating the crime world, and punching back against the mob. While Billy Cosgrove, head of the CIA’s Special Operations Group, is handpicked to head-up the team, Coll tabs Rob Tacoma, who is busy running RISCON, the private security team he founded and co-operates with his partner, Katie Foxx, to be his second in command.
Eager to spill Russian blood, Tacoma jumps at the chance provided him, but before their operation even gets off the ground, Cosgrove is murdered—his death a direct warning to everyone else involved. With the mafia onto them, Rob must find a way to track down the mob boss behind the trio of killings and make him pay before anyone else dies . . .
Ben Coes has made a living walking the literary line somewhere between John le Carre and Vince Flynn, constantly churning out high-octane, critically-acclaimed thrillers year after year. This time around, he’s left his comfort zone as a writer to wade into far more noir-like waters, producing a darker story that, while it flashes familiar themes and characters, is quite unlike anything he’s ever done before. That risk pays off in a big way, as The Russian is some of his strongest work to date and a far cry from the over-played, worn-out plotlines being trotted out by some of the genre’s other top writers.
Think Clear and Present Danger meets John Wick . . . Ben Coes has outdone himself yet again.
Game of Snipers by Stephen Hunter
Release Date: July 30th (G.P. Putnam’s Sons)
Until now, when it comes to the long gun, Bob Lee Swagger’s unique set of skills has gone unmatched on the battlefield. That changes, though, when a man his equal in every way sets his sights on Swagger—who is determined to help a woman in desperate pursuit of exacting justice for her fallen son.
It all started when Janet McDowell arrived unannounced at Swagger’s Cascade, Idaho ranch, and asked him to help her track down the man who killed her son. More than a decade prior, Lance Corporal Thomas McDowell was shot and killed while in Baghdad, and Janet has spent the years since furiously trying to track down the man who pulled the trigger. Risking everything, including her life, Janet has visited the Mid-East—where she was beaten and raped, talked to soldiers who served with her son, and followed every clue she could uncover.
Quitting her job and spending every waking moment pouring over the details she’s compiled has left her lonely and broke. Sustained by loans from family and friends, Janet’s obsessions lead to her being shunned by the CIA and Pentagon, who dismiss her as a crazed, heart-broken mother with an ax to grind, but no actionable intel. What they don’t know, however, is that Janet has indeed found the man who killed Tommy—a legendary gunman known only as “Juba the Sniper,” and she wants Swagger to travel to a small town in southern Syria and repay the favor by putting a bullet in him from a mile away.
Though he feels for Janet and wants to help, Swagger is initially reluctant to hop behind the scope and do her dirty work, citing her motive as revenge, making the killing murder and not merely a casualty of war. Instead, he travels to Tel Aviv, where he meets with a contact inside the Mossad, and passes the info to them. As it turns out, the Israelis want Juba bad, but they’re more interested in bringing him in for questioning in relation to several past incidents. The more Swagger learns about the sniper, the more he realizes his involvement may be necessary—and though he’s now in his seventies, the Nailer suits up once again to see the job through.
Right from the get-go, almost nothing goes according to plan, and Swagger quickly realizes there’s more to Juba and his past than he or Janet originally thought. Worse, the killer might have another target in play, and it’s up to Bob Lee to put the rest of the clues together in time to stop him before it’s too late . . .
While all of Hunter’s books have been strong, this one’s on another level. Compared to G-Man, Game of Snipers has double to action, twice the suspense, and a faster plot than anything he’s written in the last decade. Swagger is getting older, but he’s far from over the hill. Thanks to a new hip and toned muscles from playing cowboy on his ranch all day every day, the Nailer is still able to run and gun when needed—and he uses every bit of his experience and skills here. The story, which starts fast and accelerates harder with each page, is engaging and filled with twists. Flashback scenes show the true evil of the sniper Swaggers takes on, but it’s the promise of a bigger, more high-stakes reveal that makes this one impossible to put down.
In Bob Lee Swagger’s case, older just means more experienced, and he’s still one of the most badass characters in the genre.
