May’s Best New Thrillers

The City of Mirrors, by Justin Cronin
Cronin delivers a near-perfect finale for his award-winning, best-selling series. With eleven of the twelve Virals destroyed, it seems like humanity can finally breathe a sigh of relief and begin reclaiming the world—but Zero, the last Viral, remains in New York and has other plans. Cronin explores the world before the virus and the people directly responsible for the apocalypse, while also bringing together the characters we’ve come to love and pitting them into a satisfying, heartbreaking climax that will have readers white-knuckled as they read and completely satisfied when they’re done. The final book in the Passage trilogy rewards readers’ patience in a big way.

15th Affair, by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro
The Women’s Murder Club is back, and Patterson and long-time collaborator Paetro waste no time throwing as many curveballs into Lindsay Boxer’s life as possible. A beautiful blonde walks away from a brutal murder at a high-end hotel. Before Boxer can even begin to piece things together, all hell breaks loose: a plane crash sparks chaos in San Francisco, and her own husband Joe is not only linked to the mystery blonde—but goes missing. Gut-punched with the implications, Boxer has to struggle through and figure out what’s going on before it’s too late. The personal stakes and epic levels of chaos elevate the fifteenth entry in this series to new levels of tension and excitement as it hurtles to a thoroughly unexpected ending.

The Emperor’s Revenge, by Clive Cussler and Boyd Morrison
Cussler and Morrison bring us the eleventh Oregon Files story, once again mixing international skullduggery with historical notes that have epic, far-reaching repercussions. After an intricate bank heist during the Monaco Grand Prix leaves the company accounts empty, Juan Cabrillo has no choice but to pursue the dangerous criminals. This leads him and the crew into more than they bargained for as they discover the robbery was just the first step in a plot to decimate the world’s economies and kill millions—a plot that centers on a document stolen from Russia by Napoleon during his doomed invasion nearly three centuries ago. Fans will find everything they love here: a brisk story, exciting set pieces, and snappy dialog.

Beyond the Ice Limit, by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
The fourth Gideon Crew book from Preston and Child returns to 2001’s The Ice Limit for the sort of sci fi-inflected story fans love. Five years ago, a doomed expedition attempted to retrieve a huge meteorite off the coast of South America, but the ship and crew went down in a terrible storm. The object has since been revealed to be not a hunk of space rock, but a living thing that had embedded itself on the ocean floor—and is rapidly growing. Crew is tasked with destroying the organism before it destroys the world, but quickly discovers it’s much more cunning and clever than expected, making his task much more difficult—and much more exciting. With Preston and Child’s trademark plot twists and clever writing, this is an ideal way to tide yourself over until the next Pendergast novel.

Smoke, by Dan Vyleta
Imagine a world where your dark thoughts and sinful acts resulted in a physical mark—black smoke that pours uncontrollably from your body. In such a world, Vyleta imagines, the upper classes of Victorian England would maintain their position (and their power) by being visibly more pure than their lessers—and the children of the elite would be sent to posh schools to learn how to control their base impulses in order to limit the smoke. Thomas and Charlie meet at one such school, but their suddenly intertwined lives take a dark turn when an experience leads them to question everything they’ve been taught about the smoke, society, and their place in it. Filled with rich ideas and an ever-deepening fictional world, Smoke has endless supplies of imagination and twisty plotting.

The Fireman, by Joe Hill
Hill continues to carve out a unique place for himself with a new novel with a terrifying vision: a disease known as Dragonscale. Initially presenting as a skin deformity of beautiful filigrees, its later stages involve nothing less than spontaneous combustion. Heroine Harper works at a hospital dedicated to caring for the infected until the hospital burns down—and then she discovers she’s both infected and pregnant. Fleeing a husband that wants to terminate the pregnancy and join the Cremation Crews that hunt down and kill the infected on sight, Harper discovers a group of people who are learning to control Dragonscale and use the flames burning under their skin like a superpower. The story has a fierce beating heart in Harper, and never lets up or cuts corners, following its emotional apocalypse all the way to the end.

Blood Flag, by Steve Martini
The fourteenth Paul Madriani novels finds Madriani and partner Harry Hinds flush with cash after a settlement in a whistleblower case. Free to be choosy with their next case, they take on Emma Brauer, accused of euthanizing her elderly father. Her story quickly becomes a juicy mystery as the events directly preceding his death slowly come to light, involving a mysterious package delivered to the World War II veteran’s house, a burglary shortly afterwards, and Emma’s father’s instruction to remove certain items and hide them. As Madriani and Hinds dig in the mystery of the Nazi relic known as the Blood Flag, the case takes on bigger and bigger implications, with costs that strike much closer to home than they could have expected. The story develops into an intricate web of international operatives, interpersonal relationships with surprising payoffs, and fantastic character work and expertly built suspense.

Redemption Road, by John Hart
In a story torn from the headlines, white North Carolina police officer Elizabeth Black finds her life turned upside down when she comes across two black men sexually abusing a young girl and shoots them eighteen times. As her career slips into freefall, Black’s life is further complicated when her former lover and fellow former cop Adrian Wall is released from a brutal prison sentence for the murder of a woman left on the altar of the local church. When more bodies appear on the altar, Wall is the prime suspect—and both Wall and Black become fugitives as they desperately seek the key that will prove their dual mysteries and one and the same.

Before the Fall, by Noah Hawley
Hawley returns with a fifth novel that has a unique concept and execution: when a plane carrying 11 passengers goes down in the Atlantic Ocean, artist and recovering alcoholic Scott Burroughs saves a young boy’s life as the two become the only survivors. Burroughs’ life is sent into a tailspin, however, as the outsize media attention first paints him as a hero and then plunges him into misery, as anti-terrorist investigators relentlessly hound him. Hawley’s story is packed with mystery as the backgrounds of the other nine passengers are slowly doled out, and Burroughs’ desperation becomes palpable as the worldwide attention and grinding law enforcement processes push him to his limits. Readers will be hooked to the last word.

Shadow War, by Sean McFate and Bret Witter
McFate, a former elite paratrooper and military contractor, brings a serious sense of verisimilitude and realism to his debut thriller about ultra-competent military contractor Tom Locke. Although Locke and his team normally operate in North Africa, he’s tasked by his employer to take on a plot in Ukraine designed to launch a wealthy oligarch into power—and give his bosses access to lucrative Ukrainian oil fields. Locke’s competence and intelligence make this one of the more satisfying and clever thrillers on shelves right now, and smart readers will thrill at how his careful planning and deep experience pay off in ways both big and small. With cutting edge geopolitics and evocative detail, this is the first what will no doubt be a lengthy and successful series.