Thriller

Upcoming: 138 MAIN STREET by Gavin Bell (Gallery/Scout, Simon & Schuster)

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Next month, Gallery/Scout Press is due to publish 138 Main Street by Gavin Bell. I just found out today that Gavin Bell is the real name of the author Mason Cross, whose Carter Blake series is one of my favourites. He has also written two novels as Alex Knight (although, I inexplicably haven’t had a chance to read those, yet, despite owning them).

I was particularly drawn to the intriguing, original premise; so, combined with how much I’ve enjoyed the author’s previous books, this naturally became one of my (suddenly) most-anticipated novels of the year. Here’s the synopsis…

AN ADDRESS TO DIE FOR…

There’s a killer on the loose. And he’s targeting one specific address—138 Main Street. The problem? There are over 7,000 Main Streets in the USA. And the police and FBI have no clue which one will be next.

For FBI Special Agent Ben Walker and his rookie colleague, Officer Zoe Hill, the pressure to solve the case is unimaginable. There aren’t enough police officers to cover every house, and vigilante residents are attacking anyone who rings their doorbell. Main Street might be one of America’s most popular addresses, but for those living at number 138, it comes down to fight or flight.

Then a manuscript is sent to the New York Times, purporting to be the manifesto of the “Main Street Killer” and demanding radical social change. As the effect of the terror campaign takes hold across the nation, Walker and Hill find themselves in a race against time to stop the killer. But with their target always several steps ahead, and almost 3,800,000 square miles of ground to cover, they’ll have to find him first…

Gavin Bell’s 138 Main Street is due to be published by Gallery/Scout Press in North America, on June 2nd. UK readers, however, are in luck: it was published today, by Simon & Schuster.

Also on CR: Reviews of The Killing Season, The Samaritan, The Time to Kill/Winterlong, and Don’t Look For Me

Follow the Author: Website, Goodreads, Instagram, BlueSky

Civilian Reader is… 20yrs Old. WTF? Anyway, Here’s the First Review I Wrote…

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Twenty years ago today, I posted my first fiction review on Civilian Reader. That is… pretty wild.

Before creating CR, I’d been reviewing music for my own fanzine that I’d been running for about four years. I first put that together using Microsoft Publisher, and printed, stapled, and mailed it out to the handful of subscribers I had. After I discovered this thing called “blogging”, while studying journalism, I shifted everything online. (It’s just so much easier, quicker, and cheaper — no more multipacks of printer ink!)

I wanted to do something to mark the occasion, and more than just the one post marking the milestone, and have been mulling this ever since I noticed we were coming up to the 20th anniversary. I’m still not entirely sure what I want to do, so I’ll have to keep thinking about (hopefully) interesting and related things to do. I am currently toying with revisiting early books I read and reviewed for the website, and taking a look at “Before Civilian Reader” books that I love and think deserve a little more attention. (Basically, it’ll be an excuse to re-read some older favourites.) I’m hesitant to make any concrete plans, though, as I invariably don’t follow through on “reading plans” or “reading goals” for a variety of reasons.

The first book review I ever wrote was for Richard Morgan’s Market Forces, for my university paper. It was a good book, and I thought I wrote a pretty good (albeit too-long-for-print) review, which was then butchered for publication. What went to press stripped out the discussion of what actually made the novel interesting and worth reading. So, I decided to create my own space to review books. Continue reading →

Excerpt: TWO TRUTHS AND A LIE by Mark Stevens (Thomas & Mercer)

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Next month, Thomas & Mercer are due to publish Two Truths and a Lie by Mark Stevens, the second novel in the author’s Flynn Martin series of thrillers. To mark the occasion, and give readers a short taste of the new book, we have an excerpt to share with our readers. Here’s the synopsis:

Reporter Flynn Martin gets ensnared in a copycat killer’s game where winning means solving a crime—and losing could cost her everything.

Lambasted for a tragedy caught live on camera, then lauded for her help capturing the elusive PDQ, a serial killer, Flynn Martin’s career has reached new heights. But now, the TV journalist and mother has much further to fall. And someone wants to push her over the edge.

PDQ is behind bars, for life and then some, but someone on the outside has picked up the killer’s mantle. Flynn is neck-deep in an investigation when the copycat emerges, targeting her sources and delivering cryptic messages. It’s clear that Flynn’s stories are getting deadlier. This one proves no exception.

A family of four has gone missing, leaving behind ties to New Hope Church more tangled than they appear. The dangerous web rivals the threat in Flynn’s personal life. And it’s up to her to unravel each knot.

Scandal. Conspiracy. Murder. Flynn hardly knows where to begin—and if her stalker has their way, she might not live to see the end.

Continue reading →

Upcoming: THE LAST SHOT by Vaseem Khan (Hodder & Stoughton)

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Early next year, Hodder & Stoughton are due to publish the seventh novel in Vaseem Khan‘s excellent Malabar House series, The Last Shot. I’m currently reading (and very much enjoying) the fifth novel in the series, City of Destruction, and should easily be caught up before this latest novel releases. Really looking forward to it. Here’s the synopsis:

Bombay, 1952. When once legendary British film producer, Richard Boorman, working in India’s film capital, Bombay, is found murdered, shot dead, his body stuffed into the trunk of his car, Persis, India’s first female police detective, is tasked to find his killer.

Working with Archie Blackfinch, a forensic scientist from the Metropolitan Police service in London, she delves into the case, and soon discovers that Boorman’s activities in India may not have been confined to the silver screen.

As the investigation progresses, Persis finds herself drawn into a web of danger and deceit, and to a meeting with a man of such unmitigated evil that his very existence has been stricken from history.

In India’s city of dreams, it is sometimes nightmares that prevail…

Vaseem Khan’s The Last Shot is due to be published by Hodder & Stoughton, on January 7th, 2027.

Follow the Author: Website, Goodreads, Instagram, BlueSky

Quick Review: MY NAME WAS GERRY SASS by Tiffany Hanssen (Atlantic Crime)

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A hitman’s daughter seeks answers and revenge following the death of her father

Gerry Sass is not who he appears to be. On the surface, he is the proud owner of a local country music station outside of Mystic, Iowa. Beneath it, he’s a mob-connected hitman-for-hire who launders money through the station WIOA.

One morning in 1986, his life of crime catches up to him when two men march him out into the woods and shoot him in the back of the head. Plunged into purgatory, he’s doomed to a painful examination of his life. Unbeknownst to the assassins, Gerry’s closest friend, a Catholic priest named Father Dan, witnesses his execution yet does nothing to stop it.

Meanwhile, Gerry’s daughter, Early, jumps into his prized Mustang with a thirst for revenge. On her adrenaline-fueled hunt, she comes to realize that she’s more like Gerry than she ever chose to admit.

In Hanssen’s debut novel, readers will meet three engaging and compelling primary characters: Gerry and Early Sass, and Father Dan. The story opens with Gerry’s death, and unfolds across each of their perspectives, and dips into different timelines as well. The author’s prose quickly pulled me into the story, and I blitzed through it in just a couple of sittings. Continue reading →

Aldis Hodge Returns in CROSS Season 2 Next Week!

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Next week, Amazon Prime will start “airing” the second seasons of their excellent Cross series. The latest adaptation of James Patterson’s mega-selling Alex Cross series of novels, it’s also probably the best. I’ll always have a soft-spot for the Morgan Freeman-starring movie adaptations of Kiss the Girls and Along Came a Spider, but this latest version works much better. Continue reading →

Excerpt: THE FRIEND OF THE FAMILY by Dean Koontz (Thomas & Mercer)

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Today, we have an excerpt from The Friend of the Family, the latest novel from Dean Koontz. The latest novel from one of the most prolific and popular suspense authors working today, it was recently published by Thomas & Mercer. Here’s the synopsis:

A girl liberated from a carnival sideshow discovers her mysterious purpose…

The human “oddities” in the Museum of the Strange are less wondrous than the gawking rubes had been promised. But Alida is something else. The real thing. Traveling Depression-era America from carnival midways to speakeasies, Alida is resigned to an exploited and lonely life on the road as the museum’s golden ticket. Until she’s rescued by two compassionate strangers.

Franklin and Loretta Fairchild see in Alida a gifted and uncannily well-read girl in need of a loving touch and a family. With the openhearted couple and their three precociously imaginative children, Alida finds it. Yet despite everyone’s overwhelming generosity and acceptance, Alida knows she is still a very different kind of girl. Her dreams bear that out. They’re vivid, unsettling, and threatening. Alida fears that they’re also warnings. And that it’s the Fairchilds who may need rescue from a bad, bad world.

Alida will do anything to help those she now holds nearest and dearest. Empowered with a purpose to vanquish evil, she will not fail her family.

Continue reading →

Upcoming: THE LAST MANDARIN by Louise Penny & Mellissa Fung (Minotaur / Hodder & Stoughton)

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In May, Minotaur Books (North America) and Hodder & Stoughton (UK) are due to publish a new collaboration between Louise Penny (author of the internationally best-selling Inspector Gamache series) and award-winning journalist Mellissa Fung: The Last Mandarin. I’ve only read one of Penny’s novels — State of Terror, co-authored with Hilly Clinton — and I’m really interested in reading The Last Mandarin (as well as starting the Gamache series, hopefully soon). Pitched as a thriller “about the precarious balance of power across the world, and within a family. And what happens when both break down.” Here’s the synopsis:

Global politics become personal for two unlikely heroines. Alice Li, a first-generation Chinese-American, is an erstwhile food blogger who has lived in the shadow of her mother, Vivien Li. A Chinese dissident who escaped China after Tiananmen Square, Vivien is now a globally recognized human rights activist and passionate advocate for a free and democratic China.

When security and fire alarms go off simultaneously all around the world, setting off a panic, the signal is traced back to China. As world leaders scramble to respond, Vivien and Alice are called to the White House in hopes Madame Li can decode the Chinese intentions.

While it makes some sense that the President would turn to Vivien, since she regularly advises world leaders on the actions of today’s Chinese government, what isn’t clear is why they’d want to talk to Alice.

After looking at the evidence, Vivien says that the only thing worse than the Chinese government being behind it, is if they are not. It would mean, she explains, that some clandestine element within China is calling the shots. That the President of China has lost control. And an unstable China cannot be good for anyone.

Or perhaps that’s exactly what the shrewd old politician wants everyone to think.

Caught up in the chaos, Vivien and Alice are uniquely placed to stop the next, cataclysmic attack. But there are forces deep within both the American and Chinese governments intent on stopping mother and daughter. The estranged pair, who excels at misunderstanding each other, must figure out how to work together.

The increasingly frantic search for answers takes the women from the Oval Office to an office building in Akron, Ohio, from the noodle shops of Hong Kong to the necropolis of the first emperor. Along the way they must decode an old legend, and an old language invented by women, for women.

Louise Penny & Melissa Fung’s The Last Mandarin is due to be published by Minotaur Books in North America and Hodder & Stoughton in the UK, on May 12th.

Also on CR: Review of State of Terror

Follow the Author (Penny): Website, Goodreads, Instagram
Follow the Author (Fung): Website, Goodreads

Upcoming: ICARUS 17 by Charles Cumming (Mysterious Press / Hemlock Press)

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Great news: Icarus 17, the fourth novel in Charles Cumming‘s Box 88 series, is due out this summer! Also, unlike many of the author’s other novels, it’ll be getting a simultaneous release in the UK and North America.

I’ve been a fan of Cumming’s novels since Typhoon (2009), which I definitely recommend to all fans of the genre. This latest series, following the missions of Lachlan Kite has been particularly good — each of the novels so far has been excellent, exploring the long-term consequences of past missions and decisions. Must-reads, in my opinion, for all fans of espionage fiction.

Here’s the synopsis for Icarus 17:

Master spy Lachlan Kite heads to Athens, Greece, after an old flame asks for help locating her missing son.

A threat to the lives of his wife and daughter in London forces elite intelligence agent Lachlan Kite to move his family to safety. Meanwhile Kite’s former girlfriend, Martha Raine, comes to him with a plea for help. Her twenty-year-old son, Max, has vanished without trace in Greece. Can Kite help to find him?

Analysts at Anglo-American intelligence agency BOX 88 discover that Max was in a relationship with an Israeli woman, Jessica Morrow, who has links to the Mossad. Morrow is being hunted by a ruthless criminal gang. Fearing the worst, Kite and Martha set out for Athens in a desperate attempt to locate Max and Jessica.

This is easily one of my most-anticipated novels of the year.

Charles Cumming’s Icarus 17 is due to be published by Mysterious Press in North America (July 7th) and Hemlock Press in the UK (July 2nd).

Also on CR: Reviews of Box 88, Judas 62, Kennedy 35, Typhoon, The Trinity Six, A Foreign Country, A Colder War, and The Man Between

Follow the Author: Website, Goodreads, Instagram

Upcoming: REVENGE PREY by John Sandford (G. P. Putnam’s Sons)

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Next year, Lucas Davenport returns in Revenge Prey, the 36th novel in John Sandford‘s Prey series, which has long been one of my favourite series — I’ve been reading and thoroughly enjoying Sandford’s novels since 2004, and recently started re-reading some of his earlier novels (for example, the Kidd series and Dead Watch). This is easily one of my most-anticipated 2026 novels. Here’s the synopsis:

Lucas Davenport must track down a ruthless Russian hit team…

Leonard Summers — not his real name — is on the run. A former high-ranking Russian intelligence officer who defected to the U.S. after providing critical information about Russian spies in U.S. government service, Leonard,  his wife Martha, and son Bernard have spent the past year holed up in a CIA facility near Washington. After the CIA makes a deal with the U.S. Marshal Service’s Witness Protection Program (WPP), Leonard’s family is transported to Minneapolis. The plan is to hide them in a wooded Minneapolis suburb that resembles their former home and dacha near Moscow.

The Summers are received at their destination by Lucas Davenport and fellow marshal Shelly White. Unbeknownst to them, the WPP group has been tracked by a Russian hit team. And while nobody in the WPP has ever been attacked… Leonard might be the first victim. As shots are fired and enemies dodged, Lucas must move quickly to uncover where the leak is coming from, before the hit team can strike again.

John Sandford’s Revenge Prey is due to be published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons in North America on April 7th, 2026. (No UK publisher at the time of writing — perhaps Simon & Schuster, who have published most of the previous Prey novels to date.) The publisher has kindly already sent me a DRC of the novel, so I’ll be reading it very soon.

Also on CR: Reviews of Phantom Prey, Wicked Prey, Storm Prey, Buried Prey, Stolen Prey, Silken Prey, Field of Prey, Golden Prey, Neon Prey, Masked Prey, Righteous Prey Judgement Prey, Toxic Prey, Lethal Prey, Dark of the Moon, The Investigator, and Dark Angel

Follow the Author: Website, Goodreads, Instagram, BlueSky