Genre: Thriller

Thrillers are characterized by fast pacing, frequent action, and resourceful heroes who must thwart the plans of more-powerful and better-equipped villains. Literary devices such as suspense, red herrings and cliffhangers are used extensively.

Thrillers often overlap with mystery stories, but are distinguished by the structure of their plots. In a thriller, the hero must thwart the plans of an enemy, rather than uncover a crime that has already happened. Thrillers also occur on a much grander scale: the crimes that must be prevented are serial or mass murder, terrorism, assassination, or the overthrow of governments. Jeopardy and violent confrontations are standard plot elements. While a mystery climaxes when the mystery is solved, a thriller climaxes when the hero finally defeats the villain, saving his own life and often the lives of others.

Cleaning the Gold

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Cleaning the Gold
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, Book # 8.5
HarperCollins
April 15th 2019
ebook
129
English
February 10, 2021 February 10, 2021
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Will Trent is undercover at Fort Knox. His assignment: to investigate a twenty-two-year-old murder. His suspect's name: Jack Reacher.

Jack Reacher is in Fort Knox on his own mission: to bring down a dangerous criminal ring operating at the heart of America's military. Except now Will Trent is on the scene.

But there's a bigger conspiracy at play - one that neither the special agent nor the ex-military cop could have anticipated. And the only option is for Jack Reacher and Will Trent to team up and play nicely. If they can...

About the Book

Will Trent is undercover to solve a murder case that took place years ago, while Jack Reacher is undercover to expose the plots of an army captain and his second.

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Blindsighted

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Blindsighted
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, Book # 1
Arrow
May 1st 2001
ebook
418
English
February 7, 2021 February 9, 2021
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In Blindsighted (book one of an anticipated three featuring Grant County, Georgia, pediatrician and coroner Dr. Sara Linton), first-time novelist Karin Slaughter comes out swinging in true medical examiner fashion. That is to say, covered with blood from the get-go.

Without warning, the body jerked violently, pitching forward and slamming Sara onto the floor. Blood spread out around both of them, and Sara instinctively clawed to get out from under the convulsing woman. With her feet and hands she groped for some kind of purchase on the slick bathroom floor. Finally, Sara managed to slide out from underneath her. She turned Sibyl over, cradling her head, trying to help her through the convulsions. Suddenly, the jerking stopped.

Sibyl is, or was, Sibyl Adams, a college professor who had the misfortune of being drugged, savagely raped, slashed, and left for dead in the toilet of the local diner, to be coincidentally discovered by Sara Linton. Coincidences don't stop there, and neither do the rapes and murders. The next is, unimaginably, still more gruesome than the first and it, too, is discovered by Dr. Linton. Police Chief Jeffrey Tolliver is Sara's ex-husband, and mercurial detective Lena Adams, another major player in the ensuing drama, was Sibyl's twin sister.

And the monster behind these increasingly more depraved acts? Suspects abound, from the diner's jack-of-all-trades, Will Harris, to Victim No. 2's boyfriend, to Jack Allen Wright who, a dozen years prior, raped Dr. Linton (that rape had been a secret until now). There are other possibilities, naturally, and it soon becomes apparent that Sara's an intended target.

About the Book

Blindsighted is the first book in the Grant County series in which one of the protagonists is Sara Linton. The series consists of 6 books, then Sara appears in Will Trent series from the third book (titled Undone) and from there she will remain a recurring character. This series should be read at least before Broken, (which is Will Trent’s fourth book) to avoid spoilers, but better read it before the third. Unfortunately I did the opposite, so I basically know how this series ends. But I don’t care, I’m going to read this series, anyway.

As mentioned, we are in a small county south of Atlanta where the paediatrician, Sara, has a double job as she is also the coroner in the area. On a Monday, the woman has an appointment with her sister in a restaurant and is involved in a murder. She finds Sibyl Adams, a university teacher, in the bathroom, brutally wounded in the abdomen with a knife. Sara tries to save her but it is too late, the woman dies in her arms. What makes the murder even more brutal is that the woman is blind. Grant County’s chief of police Jeffrey Tolliver investigates, he is Sara’s ex-husband and boss of the victim’s twin sister, Lena.

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The Kept Woman

Laura2 Comments on The Kept Woman
The Kept Woman
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, Book # 8
William Morrow
June 14th 2016
Hardcover
560
English
January 30, 2021 February 3, 2021
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A body is discovered in an empty Atlanta warehouse. It's the body of an ex-cop, and from the moment Special Agent Will Trent walks in he knows this could be the most devastating case of his career. Bloody footprints leading away from the scene reveal that another victim - a woman - has left the scene and vanished into thin air. And, worst of all, the warehouse belongs to the city's biggest, most politically-connected, most high-profile athlete - a local hero protected by the world's most expensive lawyers. A local hero Will has spent the last six months investigating on a brutal rape charge.

But for Will - and also for Dr Sara Linton, the GBI's newest medical examiner - the case is about to get even worse. Because an unexpected discovery at the scene reveals a personal link to Will's troubled past. The consequences will wreak havoc on his life and the lives of those he loves, those he works with, and those he pursues.

But Sara's scene-of-the-crime diagnosis is that they only have a few hours to find the missing woman before she bleeds out...

About the Book

:!: First of all, please pay attention for triggers because this book contains scene that may offend the sensibility of someone. The descriptions are often brutal, the language isn’t always nice and talks a lot about violence against women.

Eighth book in Will Trent’s series. Will is a peculiar character, suffering from dyslexia, with a rather painful past and at this moment in his life, he sees someone from his past returning to mess up his existence again.

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Silent Child

Laura4 Comments on Silent Child
Silent Child
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, Book # 1
Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
January 22nd 2017
eBook
413
English
July 2, 2020 August 7, 2020

In the summer of 2006, Emma Price watched helplessly as her six-year-old son's red coat was fished out of the River Ouse. It was the tragic story of the year - a little boy, Aiden, wandered away from school during a terrible flood, fell into the river, and drowned.

His body was never recovered.

Ten years later, Emma has finally rediscovered the joy in life. She's married, pregnant, and in control again...

... until Aiden returns.

Too traumatized to speak, he raises endless questions and answers none. Only his body tells the story of his decade-long disappearance. The historic broken bones and injuries cast a mere glimpse into the horrors Aiden has experienced. Aiden never drowned. Aiden was taken.

As Emma attempts to reconnect with her now teenage son, she must unmask the monster who took him away from her. But who, in their tiny village, could be capable of such a crime?

It's Aiden who has the answers, but he cannot tell the unspeakable.

This dark and disturbing psychological novel will appeal to fans of The Widow and The Butterfly Garden.

About the book

Silent Child is about a 6-year-old boy who is kidnapped and who after 10 years is suddenly found wandering through the woods of the village where he was born. The story is more about the mother and what she feels about having the first child at home with her after so long and the relationship with her husband, who she married a few years after the disappearance of her son. Not much is known about what happened to the child in these 10 years, there are only stories here and there and only at the end we discover what really happened that day.

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Black-Eyed Susans

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Black-Eyed Susans
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Ballantine Books
August 11th 2015
Hardcover
354
English
June 1, 2020 June 12, 2020

I am the star of screaming headlines and campfire ghost stories.
I am one of the four Black-Eyed Susans.
The lucky one.

As a sixteen-year-old, Tessa Cartwright was found in a Texas field, barely alive amid a scattering of bones, with only fragments of memory as to how she got there. Ever since, the press has pursued her as the lone surviving “Black-Eyed Susan,” the nickname given to the murder victims because of the yellow carpet of wildflowers that flourished above their shared grave. Tessa’s testimony about those tragic hours put a man on death row.

Now, almost two decades later, Tessa is an artist and single mother. In the desolate cold of February, she is shocked to discover a freshly planted patch of black-eyed susans—a summertime bloom—just outside her bedroom window. Terrified at the implications—that she sent the wrong man to prison and the real killer remains at large—Tessa turns to the lawyers working to exonerate the man awaiting execution. But the flowers alone are not proof enough, and the forensic investigation of the still-unidentified bones is progressing too slowly. An innocent life hangs in the balance. The legal team appeals to Tessa to undergo hypnosis to retrieve lost memories—and to share the drawings she produced as part of an experimental therapy shortly after her rescue.

What they don’t know is that Tessa and the scared, fragile girl she was have built a fortress of secrets. As the clock ticks toward the execution, Tessa fears for her sanity, but even more for the safety of her teenaged daughter. Is a serial killer still roaming free, taunting Tessa with a trail of clues? She has no choice but to confront old ghosts and lingering nightmares to finally discover what really happened that night.

Shocking, intense, and utterly original, Black-Eyed Susans is a dazzling psychological thriller, seamlessly weaving past and present in a searing tale of a young woman whose harrowing memories remain in a field of flowers—as a killer makes a chilling return to his garden.

About the book

Black-Eyed Susans is a book about a closed case, because it is a case that occurred in the past, with the criminal in prison, but for the main character it isn’t concluded at all, because she continues to find planted yellow daisies at her house. The attacker is on death row and now that she is an adult, Tessa, the protagonist, believes she has sent the wrong man to prison.

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