Cigarettes often appear as props in crime thrillers, both in the hands of detectives and the villains they’re tracking down. Here, though, they play a different role. Philadelphia journalist Martin Muntor is dying from cancer and his deathwish is to take down Big Tobacco. Anyone who gets in his way, beware. However the tobacco companies have other ideas and their investigator, Tommy Rhoads, is out to crush Muntor’s mission like a smoldering butt under his heel.
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Ooo. Here’s one that’s topical. Someone has murdered the reporter at the heart of the recent celebrity phone hacking scandal and murder squad detective Liv Paxton has to find out who did it. However, this isn’t a simple case of revenge, nor is it a random killing. The reporter was tortured and interrogated professionally before they died. And, the murders have claimed another victim. Organised crime, Russian oligarchs, media magnates, and an author who has herself worked on Fleet Street and launched magazines – all for the price of an ebook.
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Robert Rand has written about family sagas in the past, but With Mother’s Approval is the beginning of a new series featuring the detectives Allie and Jeremy Branson. They operate in King County, Washington, and when the Seattle police department drops the ball on a case involving a dozen missing women the Bransons are called in. Is the paedophile Daniel Monroe the culprit, or is there more to this case than meets the eye?
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If you like espionage thrillers with the possibility of armageddon just a few steps away, try this one published by Ohio-based indie Swallow Press. Ex-CIA man Lucius Burling is working at the consulate in Shanghai when it appears that a Chinese dissident is planning to sell his country’s nuclear secrets. Is this the CIA moving behind the scenes to help the dissident? Could nuclear weapons end up in the wrong hands? Will China’s internal security crush the dissident plot? It’s been likened to Graham Greene and John LeCarre.
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This author has written a handful of self-published books, and here we take a trip to the Hawaiian island of Kauai with his private detective character Karl Standt. The retired NYPD man arrives to investigate the case of a Amanda Wilcox, a young activist who has disappeared while out paddle-boarding. The local police seem to have botched things and there whiff of ham and pineapple is replaced with the scent of corruption. His reporter girlfriend, and a hacker, are there to assist Standt on his quest.
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Nope, it’s not part of the on-going Kevin Bacon joke. However self-publishing author John Bobo – a former state prosecutor – has written a funny and cutting tale that examines America’s criminal justice system in detail. Hero Jack Henley is a prosecutor by day but by night he’s looking at ways of using the law to make sure dangerous criminals serve their terms. Why? Because his fiancee was killed by a man released early. Digging deeper he finds out more than he bargained for about crime and retribution…
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Technology comes to the fore in James Raven’s latest thriller. Here we have a nasty piece of work who spies on women through their webcams, and blackmails anybody who reveals their intimate secrets to him. He calls himself the Slave Master and his last victim has been brutally murdered. So, his next target is the female cop in charge of the investigation. On top of writing for print and for TV, the author is also an accomplished magician and has been prolific with ebook releases in the last couple of years.
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Independent publisher Cutting Edge Press released this book in September. In the assassination game, there’s no ambiguity. You get in there, you kill, you leave without trace. But when Hex arrives to kill a microbiologist suspected of trading secrets, he arrives to find the job’s already been done for him. And when he tries to slip away he bumps into the woman’s teenage son, but instead of killing the boy he runs. Somehow finding his conscience, Hex then sets out to find whoever killed the boy’s mother.
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We’re back to the evil uses of online technology with the latest from lawyer-turned-author Pamela Samuels Young. Anybody’s Daughter sees a 13-year-old girl kidnapped when she goes out after arranging to meet her boyfriend on Facebook. The girl is thrust into the world of human sex trafficking, a topic the author has researched in-depth. Her uncle, a man named Dre, has his own criminal past, but he sets out looking in every corner of Los Angeles to find her and ‘The Shepherd’, the criminal mastermind behind the operation.
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This one has an interesting premise – we’re so reliant on our eyesight that sometimes we ignore our other senses. However Gloria Rank hasn’t let blindness hold her back and is now a successful radio host. When her sister Anna has her identity stolen and finds a dead body on her doorstep, Anna turns to Gloria for help. She needs all the help she can get, but will she be able to use all her senses to save her life, and maybe Gloria’s as well.
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