Archives de catégorie : Crime & Thrillers

CHAIN OF CAUSE de Kurt Ellis

A fast-paced blackly-comic thriller about a group of four friends who attempt to commit insurance fraud worth millions. This dark caper is for fans of In Bruges, Get Shorty and A Serious Man.

CHAIN OF CAUSE
by Kurt Ellis
Penguin Random House South Africa, April 2024
(via The Lennon-Ritchie Agency)

Fast paced blackly-comic thriller about a group of four friends who attempt to commit insurance fraud worth millions. Unfortunately, the friends make one mistake and poor decision after another putting them on a collision course with a relentless Ukrainian fraud investigator, a psychopathic American hitman, a ruthless local drug lord, and an Eastern European mobster.
Gabriel, passed over for promotion, decides to set up his own business. The business is a spectacular failure and he loses everything. Desperate and furious, he enlists his best friend Skellie, a conman, drug addict and drug dealer, to help him strike back at the institution that he feels has wronged him. Forced to enlist help on the inside, the mistakes come thick and fast and as the bodies pile up, Gabriel and Skellie do their best to make it out of their scheme alive.
A novel about injustices—historical, racial, gender, economic, and social—and an indictment of the practices in the financial industry in which Ellis has almost two decades of experience.

WGSA Muse Award winner Kurt Ellis is a screenwriter and novelist. Ellis is the author of the Johannesburg-set thrillers By Any Means (NB Publishing) and In the Midst of Wolves (Penguin Books). Winner of the Harry Oppen-heimer Creative Writing Award, Ellis has an MFA from the University of the Witwatersrand. Nominated for four 2021 WGSA Muse Awards, Ellis – a master at building tension through pacy plotting and nuanced characterization – won with his original pilot script Rainbow’s End.

HELL OF A COUNTRY de David Cornwell

In 1970s South Africa, desire and desperation have bloody consequences.

HELL OF A COUNTRY
by David Cornwell
(via The Lennon-Ritchie Agency)

Seventeen-year-old Lorraine van Niekerk despises the fact that her boss and lover, middle-aged André Bekker, won’t leave his hateful wife for her.
Driver Alfie Geemooi is horrified when he wakes up in Groote Schuur’s Non-White wing after a car crash with one leg missing.
Alfie and Lorraine’s lives intersect fatefully in André’s consultation rooms. André is an orthopaedic technician, and Lorraine can grant access to the prothesis Alfie so desperately needs.
But at a price.
HELL OF A COUNTRY is a fictionalised retelling of the Scissors Murder—a famous true-crime story from early 1970s South Africa. A pacy and poetic work told in the third person from multiple points of view, it focuses on the meeting-point between political machinery and personal desire, and uses the true-crime genre to tell a fresh and original story about South Africa’s turbulent past in a deeply human and engaging way.

David Cornwell’s debut novel, LIKE IT MATTERS, was published by Penguin Random House in South Africa to critical acclaim. The book was longlisted for the Sunday Times Fiction Prize and shortlisted for the 9mobile Award for Best African Fiction Debut. David’s short film, Die Onderspit, was developed as part of KykNET’s Silwerskermfees festival program. He also co-wrote a screenplay with Damon Galgut. David’s feature film Pou (Peacock) was shown at Idyllwild, the Buffalo International Festival, the Winter Film Awards, Razor Reel and at SA Horror Fest. Born in Grahamstown, he currently lives in Johannesburg.

THE INTERN de Michele Campbell

A young Harvard law student falls under the spell of a charismatic judge in this timely and thrilling novel about class, ambition, family and murder, from Michele Campbell, whose books have sold over 500,000 copies in the U.S. alone.

THE INTERN
by Michele Campbell
St. Martin’s Press, October 2023

Madison Rivera lands the internship of a lifetime working for Judge Kathryn Conroy. But Madison has a secret that could destroy her career. Her troubled younger brother Danny has been arrested, and Conroy is the judge on his case.
When Danny goes missing after accusing the judge of corruption, Madison’s quest for answers brings her deep into the judge’s glamorous world. Is Kathryn Conroy a mentor, a victim, or a criminal? Is she trying to help Madison or use her as a pawn? And why is somebody trying to kill her?
As the two women circle each other in a dangerous cat-and-mouse game, will they save each other, or will betrayal leave one of them dead?

A graduate of Harvard University and Stanford Law School, Michele Campbell worked at a prestigious Manhattan law firm before spending eight years fighting crime as a federal prosecutor in New York City. She is the author of She Was the Quiet One and It’s Always the Husband.

THE QUANTUM SOLUTION d’Eric Van Lustbader

Evan Ryder is back, and in deadly peril, in THE QUANTUM SOLUTION, the fourth heart-stopping installment of this enthralling series by master thriller writer and New York Times bestselling author Eric Van Lustbader.

THE QUANTUM SOLUTION
(Evan Ryder Series, Book 4)
by Eric Van Lustbader
Forge, May 2023
(via Aaron Priest Literary)

Evan Ryder is an extraordinary intelligence field agent now working for the security arm of Parachute, a private company and the world’s leader in the application of quantum technology. In the past, Ryder has done lethal battle in the modern global wars of power politics, extremist ideology, corrosive disinformation, and outrageous greed. But now she finds herself in a battle arena whose dangers, while less obvious, are greater than anything the world has seen before – the present and future war of weaponized quantum technology.
When an elite Russian scientist and the American Secretary of Defense die, at the same time half a world apart, of inexplicable sudden catastrophic brain damage, the world’s intelligence services realize that the quantum war has truly begun. Ryder and her long-time partner, Ben Butler, will risk their lives to discover who the true combatants are, racing against the doomsday scenario of all-out war between America and Russia.

Eric Van Lustbader is the author of many New York Times bestselling thrillers, including The Testament, First Daughter, Last Snow, and Blood Trust. Lustbader was chosen by Robert Ludlum’s estate to continue the Jason Bourne series. He and his wife live on the South Fork of Long Island.

THE ELEVATOR de Claire Cooper

A fast-paced thriller with a killer twist, for fans of The Lying Room by Nicci French and Those People by Louise Candlish.

THE ELEVATOR
by Claire Cooper
Bookouture, August 2023
(via Northbank Talent Management)

THE ELEVATOR follows two women trapped in a lift over one sweltering, claustrophobic day in a New York office building. Trying to rebuild her life after an incident at work, HR director Cerys transfers to a new role in her company’s New York office. On the day of an important meeting, she steps into the lift with Maeve, a woman she had noticed arguing with the receptionist in a British accent. A few seconds later, the electronic voice stutters, then stops, and the elevator grinds to a halt.
Unbeknown to Cerys, Maeve is driven by a dark secret which has brought her to New York, and she won’t leave until she gets what she wants. Could Cerys be the person she’s been looking for? As the hours tick by, one thing becomes clear – one of them might not make it out alive.

Claire Cooper grew up in a small village in south Wales before moving to London. She worked for the Civil Service for seventeen years before realising that she much preferred writing novels about psychotic killers to Ministerial speeches. She lives in London with her husband and two cats.