Evil Water by Inger Wolf 
Genre: Crime Thriller 
Length: novel
Reviewer: Mark
Rating: 4 stars - A Recommended Read.

When the decomposing bodies of two  missing women are found buried in a pair of suitcases under a pile of stones,  Detective Inspector Daniel Trokic quickly anticipates that this investigation is  going to
be a tricky one and he is not wrong! With the discovery that both  women were bled to death by leeches comes a whole heap of other considerations  and complications. African Tribal Ceremonies, religious insanity and a rare  species of flower are all quickly linked to the investigation but how are all  these
different factors connected? When a third girl goes missing, Trokic knows  he is working against the clock but where does he go next when all his leads  appear to be a dead end?
 
I really liked this a lot and thought it a  highly competent European crime thriller with lots of nice twists and turns in  the plot. I found the writing style a little rough in places but this was no  doubt due more to the fact that it has been translated from the Dutch language  for a wider audience than in the actual writing itself. I liked the way that  nothing is really properly resolved until the last pages and though there might  be a few out there who might be able to piece all the clues together quicker  than me, still I was pleased that I personally wasn’t able to guess the true  culprit before they were revealed!
 
Hopefully this will be only the start of a  series that will go on to become equal or rival to Wallander as I thought it was every bit as skill full and entertaining. Certainly I was able to warm to the  characters and found the whole story very easy to get in to and involving. I  knocked a star off my rating because I think it just missed out on total  excellence but this is not a criticism, merely an observation and definitely 
Wolf is an author that I would like to see more of in the future as I didn’t  really think I got to know as much of Trokic and his team as I would have liked  in this opening novel.
 
If you like good, competent crime thrillers  with a tough, European edge, then this is for you. If you have never picked  up any foreign language authors before and the thought of reading something 
translated has always put you off, you should likewise give this a go. Much as  with many foreign language movies, you will be missing out if you don’t give  this a chance and that would be a crying shame as this is definitely worth  picking up!

Eden by David Holley and Jeremiah  Pinto 
Genre: Horror/ Adventure thriller 
Length: novel
Reviewer: Mark
Rating: 4 Stars - Recommended Read!

Whilst on an Orbital Space Plane travelling from London to New Zealand, Mia, one-half of a pair of twins, experiences a vision of impending disaster. Her reaction to what she sees is the deciding factor that dooms her parents but saves herself and her brother from certain death. When members of a terrorist cell activate a device capable of disrupting the controls of the Orbital Shuttle, the Plane is
torn in half; one section crash landing on a remote island just off the coast of mainland New Zealand, the other lost beneath the turbulent seas. Among the survivors is Noah, a former Special Forces soldier who has recently left the Armed Forces, and his strong-willed wife, Evelyn, who together unite to lead the
stranded passengers across a hazardous and perilous terrain in a bid to reach civilization and safety. Along the way, the survivors encounter tsunami, landslides and an erupting volcano that threatens to engulf the island in ash and molten lava. But even when they reach civilization, they quickly learn that
everything is not quite how they left it.....
 
This was an engrossing thriller, set in the near future, that quickly swept me up in its enthralling plot. I found the tale of Noah and his fellow survivors to be extremely fast-paced with lots of action and which wasted very little time before getting down to the main crux of the story with very little unnecessary
preamble. Though many elements of this novel were far from original (there was a T.V disaster movie in the Eighties, starring Lee Majors I believe, that featured an Orbital Space Plane almost crashing on its maiden flight and the whole stranded-on-an-island-miles-from-anywhere idea has been recently used in the popular cult T.V show, Lost). For me this didn’t matter as I thought the authors still managed to bring something new to the table. It is true that their editing needed work. Many questions are left unanswered, hopefully to be resolved in the next installment one hopes, and though the climax takes a bit of a different and quite unexpected turn, still I look forward to reading what happens next. It is difficult to talk about the ending without giving anything away but needless to say, the twist in direction that this novel takes almost makes its final act feel like a whole different novel altogether. Whether or not this entirely works I am not sure, and I strongly expect that there will be those who are left alienated by this novels ending, but personally, I thought it a clever twist that throws everything else that comes before it into a completely different ballpark.
 
Would I read future books by this author co-op partnership? This is a question I ask myself a lot when writing reviews, whether I would come back again for more, and here, my answer is a definite yes! Eden manages a very respectable and very strong four stars and a recommendation that if you are looking for something different with a lot of thrills, chills and spills then this book is definitely for you!

Basement level 5: Never scared by L.R.Wright
Genre: Thriller
Length: novel
Reviewer: Mark
Rating: 3 Stars - A Good Read.

Alexa Martinez is a Professional  assassin who has worked covertly in the past for the C.I.A but who is now fully  dedicated to putting her family first. So when attackers break in to her house  intending to do her harm, the first thing she does is to make sure her children  are safely
secured with her in an underground Safe Room; especially designed to  keep them well away from any possible threat. From her base of operations here,  several floors below ground, she then proceeds to try and discover who it is who  wants to do her and her immediate family harm. It is an investigation that will  take Alexa back into her past and cause her to examine loyalties as it quickly becomes apparent that not everyone around her is as trustworthy as she 
thought...
  
This was an okay kind of thriller that certainly kept things moving throughout and never slowed its pace but which was hampered, in my honest opinion, by a cast of all too easily forgettable 
characters. I found Alexa and her fellow family members to be slightly lacking in personality and for me, this made this book something of a struggle to complete. The constant flash-backs quickly became very annoying and often provided an unwelcome distraction from the main plot, this despite proving to be somewhat necessary to help explain the motives behind why everything was happening. For me though, despite their necessity, the flashbacks often just 
served to break up the flow and quickly became an intrusion that I would have preferred to circumvent.
 
Unlike some of the books I have read recently, either for review or for personal pleasure, I didn’t think this was particularly  badly written, it just wasn’t for me. I wasn't  able at all to
connect with  any of the characters and, as this was a very character driven book, this put me  at a great disadvantage. If you like high octane thrillers with plenty of  action, then you’ll probably find something here to enjoy but I am afraid to say  it really didn’t do a lot for me and just seemed to lack a bit of depth in my  opinion. I didn’t hate it but neither did I take much away from this book....and  I would have preferred a bit more style over substance if I
wanted to rate this  book any higher I’m afraid..

Curse of the twisted rose by Lee  Lackey 
Genre: Paranormal thriller 
Length: novel
Reviewer: Mark
Rating: 1 Star - Yeah, it was that bad.

Marlie Franklin is a Cop who is also  trained as a kick-boxer. As such, she doesn’t take any hassle from anyone and is  known for not taking prisoners when making arrests. But when a witch curses her  at the scene of a call she and her partner have responded to, she finds her life almost immediately turned completely around. Suddenly monsters are drawn towards 
her with the intent of taking her out and when one of these disguises itself as an Internal Affairs Detective, Franklin loses her badge. Forced to seek employment hundreds of miles away in the small town of Lockwood, Franklin must fight to keep her son safe as she comes to terms with the true nature of the curse and battles an ancient evil that lurks just below the surface of the town...
 
I wasn’t sure about this right from the start but decided to give it  a go as the plot did seem to show a little bit of promise. Unfortunately, for me, that promise was short-lived. This never really reaches anything near its potential. Marlie Franklin reads like a caricature of herself rather than a true and believable character and accepts too readily, for my liking, the paranormal events that seem to befall her in quick succession. She barely blinks an eye at creatures experimenting on humans at an abandoned petrol garage and her son is not much better. He seems to be much more worldly wise in magic and the paranormal than he initially lets on to his mother but that is no explanation  for how quickly he just accepts this new world he and his mother soon find themselves in. 
  
This book seems set in a world very much like  our own but separated by just a few heart-beats. But it is not a very credible world and I could find little about this book that I actually liked. As a thriller, it failed to captivate my interest and was more than a little bit of a let-down...

Quintana Roo, Yucatan by scott  harper
Genre: Adventure thriller
Length: novel
Reviewer: Mark Woods
Rating: 4 stars - Recommended Read!

Fresh from a troubled relationship  break-up, Rikki Breitenberg leads a expedition out into the deeps of the Mexican  Rainforest to investigate a recently discovered ruined Mayan temple. But with  the Mexican Government only giving them a limited time in which to explore  the ruins, the team soon begin to question whether their Guide is leading them  the right way. Left to fend for themselves at the site of a different temple,  after a harrowing and dangerous trek through uninhabited jungle, the team, lead  by Rikki, quickly learn that they have been placed in the hands of a Death Cult who intend to sacrifice them to their God. A startling and important discovery at the Temple could have ramifications for all the future of mankind and force us to take a fresh look at our origins.....but first, Rikki and her team must survive long enough to share the news of that which they have uncovered....and the odds are slowly starting to stack against them...
  
This was an interesting novel that started off really well. The description of the team’s trek through the Rainforest was so vivid and rich that I almost had to look around my room whilst reading to check and see if a jungle hadn’t sprung up all around me like something out of the 
classic children’s book! The various perils the Archaeological team face on their journey leave the reader literally gasping and there is a real sense of danger conveyed when the team first begin to suspect that they are being lead astray.
 
However, once the team reach their enforced destination, things do go a bit awry. The plot rapidly descends into a game of cat and mouse between the Archaeological team and their Mexican attackers and though this is all very thrilling, still one cannot help but feel that some of the charm and magic of the early chapters is lost. The big discovery that the team make, which I won’t reveal and spoil, never really takes the story anywhere and could well have been left out with no noticeable absence or decline in plot.  It almost feels as though its inclusion is there for the sake of it. That said, I DID really enjoy this and found the characters, for the most part, warming and believable. If you remove the whole “Big Discovery” angle then this is quite a thrilling modern-day adventure tale in the style of King Solomon’s Mines or Indiana Jones. There are enough twists and turns to keep the story moving along and it is quite an enjoyable read ~ however, the ending when it comes is a little unsatisfying and brings little closure to the story, leaving several questions remained unanswered.
 

Trial & Terror  by Adam Penenberg
Genre: Crime thriller
Length: novel
Reviewer: Mark  
Rating: 5 Stars - A Must Read!

Summer Neuwirth is a Public Defense lawyer  who puts her all into her work. So when she wins her first case, you would think  she would be overjoyed. Except Summer knows her client was guilty and that he is  starting to form an unhealthy obsession with her. As if that weren’t enough her  mother has disappeared without a trace, her new client is being uncooperative as  she becomes increasingly more likely to face Death Row and Summer herself is  being  haunted by shadows from her recent past when she was attacked and raped.  As Summer tries hard to uncover the truth behind her latest case, events begin  to spiral out of control and she soon finds her personal life quickly  overlapping into her work as the two become firmly entangled. Meanwhile her  former client simply refuses to leave her alone....

Every once in a while a truly great thriller comes along  that holds your attention and blows you away. This was just such a book!  Summer is an excellently devised character whose story
quickly pulls you in and  before you know it, you are hooked! This is a book that is difficult to
talk  about without giving anything away but suffice to say there are some great twists and turns here. The plot moves at a ferocious pace leading to a shockingly brilliant climax that even I didn’t see coming! At a time when thrillers have flooded the market and almost become ten a penny, it is  refreshing to find something that stands out from the crowd and returns the 
genre back to it’s roots! This really was a highly enjoyable read and one I would not hesitate to recommend!

GIVEAWAY: One winner will the Trial and Terror Ebook and another will get a book from our prize list! Comment below to enter.

Fresh squeezed by Bonnie Biafore and James Ewing 
Genre: comedy thriller  
Length: novel
Rating: 2 Stars - We didn't like it.

When Juice entered the Government’s  Witness Relocation Program and began his new life as Ted, the hapless Fishing  Guide, he picked the small community of Wanaduck because he thought it would be  quiet. He was wrong! After a giant plastic hotdog falls on him during a fishing  trip (don’t ask!) along with a dead body, he soon finds himself pulled into a  Police
investigation that uncovers a grand conspiracy that has implications for  the future of the whole town. A secret that certain people are prepared to  kill to protect! Before long, his identity is at risk......along with his  sanity.
  
Fresh Squeezed comes described as a cross between the likes of authors such as Carl Hiaasen, Elmore Leonard, and Tim  Dorsey but seeing as how I have never read any of these authors, I came in to  this not sure what to expect. What I got was an okay read that seemed a bit too  over-complicated and convoluted. High points for me included an incredibly  inept hit-man who comes to the town and his hilarious efforts to take out his  three intended targets.....low points included the length. For me, this book  started to drag on and out stayed its welcome and I found the over involved  plot a little too much at times!
 
Overall, this was an okay read but nothing to write home about. It had some very funny moments and Juice was quite engaging as a character but, as a whole, I was left  feeling a bit drained after wading through this novel and its  more-complicated-than-it-needed-to-be plot.

Ricochet by Sandra Brown
Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Romance
Novel (Hardcover – purchased)
TBR Reviewer: Christine
Rating: 3 Stars – We liked it.
Heat: 2 handcuffs - Flirty

Some of my favorite books are by Sandra Brown so I grabbed this without even reading the
blurb. This is a classic cop book, Hatcher has to solve a murder with twists and unexpected turns. Problem was, nothing was unexpected. There were no twist that I didn’t see way ahead of the scene. It was obvious how everything would go down and there was zero mystery. That said, it was still a well written story. Elise and Hatcher, even Deedee and the 'bad guys' were very in depth. The plot has been done before and I’m sorry to say this was rather boring. I did, however, finish the entire book.

I recommend some of my favorite books by Sandra Brown in Lieu of this one – Unspeakable, The Crush, Hello Darkness. Those were all spectacular reads!

The Hour Of Predators by Lane Stark
Genre: Crime thriller
Length: novel
Reviewer: Mark  
Rating: 4 Stars - Recommended Read

When two vicious and bloody ritualistic murders shock the  remote, isolated village of Bella Coola, Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman Marcus  Chao is sent out to investigate. All evidence point towards a young Native  American lad but as Chao delves deeper, he finds a web of bigotry, racism and  intrigue hiding below the surface of this tight knit community. Simultaneously  dealing with his ex-wife, who is helping with the case and with whom relations  are only now starting to rekindle, Chao begins wondering if perhaps this  time he has
bitten off more than he can chew....especially when the case begins  to focus around a local femme fatale!
  
I have had a  long affinity with the RCMP ever  since I first read and enjoyed Canadian author Michael Slade’s Special X novels,  but the presence of the Mounties in crime fiction has always seemed a little bit  scarce. With that in mind, I was looking forward to reading this and 
getting a different perspective of this highly organized Police force; arguably  one of the best in the world. Thankfully, I am pleased to report, that what  we get here is a highly competent and enjoyable thriller.
  
The plot keeps you guessing, the characters are well  developed and there is a lot here to really enjoy. This book seemed very well written and certainly had enough twists to keep even  the keenest mind guessing where it was going. Is there enough here to build a series around? I am not  sure but certainly this book had a lot of potential and was definitely good enough for me to give it a rating of four stars. Would I read more investigations by Marcus Chao  and his RCMP team? You know what, I think I probably would  because this is a rare thing; a crime thriller that actually manages to avoid  many of the usual conventions and offers a very unique and original story with  just the right amount of gripping twists and turns.

Giveaway: 1 Ebook - Comment below to enter!

Title: The dying of the light:end by Jason Kristopher
Genre: Horror thriller 
Length: novel
Reviewer: Mark
Rating: 5 Stars - A Must Read

Zombies are really big right now. With World War Z the movie coming out next year and Season 3 of The Walking Dead currently on a mid-season break, there are probably quite a few fans of the genre out there quite literally gagging for their latest fix. Well, wait no longer! The Dying Of The Light: End is the first part in a new Zombie trilogy by aspiring new author Jason Kristopher. This book offers everything the discerning Zombie fan could possibly want and a little bit more! 

Since around the time of the late 1800’s, when American soldiers found themselves being attacked by diseased Indian tribes feasting on the flesh of the living, the American government has been aware of the existence of the walking dead. Over the course of the intervening centuries, there have been random and sporadic further outbreaks all across America as lone hunters stumble across the odd infected undead straggler wandering loose amongst the woods but, for the most part, these rare incidences have been covered up and hidden from the public
eye. The undead virus is caused by Prions, similar in nature to those found in BSE or CJD, which cause their hosts to bite in an attempt to pass on the disease and spread the outbreak. A flaw in the virus’ programming is what causes the undead to continue to bite long after the disease has been spread and this is why they appear to feed but their basic nature is merely to pass on the infection. Now, a specialist Task Force has been created specifically to deal with the increasing threat of the undead as attacks begin to increase all across the U.S and neighboring borders. This is their story and this time around, Mankind is determined not to go down without a fight.....

This was a great book and a thrilling read that dealt with the whole Zombie outbreak idea through a series of totally different and original perspectives. The story begins with an outbreak in a small rural town then continues through with the creation of the new Task Force and the challenges they face as they try to keep everything they know under wraps from the general population. This novel is far different and much better written than at least 2/3 of the other Zombie fiction that is out there. For one, it just offers a more upbeat and fresh approach, almost as though Mankind actually has a chance of getting past this, whilst the majority of other Zombie fiction can often come across quite bleak. I simply loved the way the story progresses as it goes along. Without giving anything away, the decline of human civilization is much slower and gradual than is traditionally seen in other Zombie media, adding a rather nice injection of realism into the plot, and so the inevitable end when it comes is much more
  pleasing. I really liked this and cannot wait to read the next installment.

At times, there are shades of Jonathan Mayberry’s Patient Zero but, though I found Mayberry’s book ultimately a little bit disappointing, the same could not be said here! The momentum of this novel is constant and relentless and the story barely gives you time to breathe before it throws the next hurdle at you, catching you squarely in the face! I love Kristopher’s matter-of-fact style of writing, I love the world and characters he has created and more than that, I think he has the potential to be big, really big in the Indie authors market!

If you love Zombies then you are going to love this! It really is a very welcome shot of adrenaline for a genre that can often seem overwhelmed in fiction that is simply not very good. This, my friends, is how Zombie fiction deserves to be written!