This week’s mystery books are heating up: from arson to asteroids to a hair-raising heist, where paranoia hangs as heavy as the tropical heat. These books won’t help you cool off in this summer’s heat, but they will keep you glued to the page.
Fireproof: A Maggie O’Dell Novel by Alex Kava
New York Times bestselling author Alex Kava returns in a blaze of glory with a gripping, action-packed thriller featuring special agent Maggie O’Dell,who is leading the search for a serial arsonist whose crimes threaten Maggie dangerously close to home. As the acts of arson become more brazen, Maggie’s professional and personal worlds begin to collide dangerously. The killer may be closer than she imagines.
The Last Policeman: A Novel by Ben Winters
What’s the point in solving murders if we’re all going to die soon, anyway? Detective Hank Palace has faced this question ever since asteroid 2011GV1 hovered into view. There’s no chance left. No hope. Just six precious months until impact. People all over the world are walking off the job—but not Hank Palace. He’s investigating a death by hanging in a city that sees a dozen suicides every week—except this one feels suspicious, and Palace is the only cop who cares.
White Shotgun: An FBI Special Agent Ana Grey Novel by April Smith
Even on leave from the FBI, Ana can’t kick old habits: when she witnesses a drive-by shooting at an Italian restaurant in London, she helps the injured and gives testimony to the police. Still, it comes as a shock when, soon after, the Bureau contacts her—not because they want her to investigate the shooting, but because they want her to investigate the half sister she never knew she had, Cecilia, who lives in Siena and is married to Nicosa, a coffee mogul with some suspicious connections.
Misterioso: A Crime Novel by Arne Dahl
The first novel in the gripping Intercrime series—considered one of Sweden’s best—a piercingly dark and absorbing detective thriller. Detective Paul Hjelm is dropped into an elite task-force assembled to find an elusive murderer with a sophisticated method. The killer breaks into the homes of Sweden’s high-profile business leaders at night, places two bullets in their heads with deadly precision, then removes the bullets from the walls—a ritual enacted to a rare bootleg recording of Thelonious Monk’s jazz classic “Misterioso.”
Thick as Thieves by Peter Spiegelman
Carr—ex-CIA—is the reluctant leader of an elite crew planning a robbery of such extraordinary proportions that it will leave them all set for life. Carr’s cohorts are seasoned pros, but they’re wound drum-tight: months before, the man who brought them together was killed in what Carr suspects was a setup. And there are other loose ends. Some of the intel they’re paying for is badly inaccurate, and one of the gang—lately, Carr’s lover—may have an agenda of her own. But his biggest problems are yet to come: few of his crew are what they seem to be, and even his own past will turn out to be built on a lie.
