Recommendations based on "Beware the Curves"

Amazon.com ReviewEditors' pick:Brings together two of the smartest, wittiest investigators—a knife-throwing circus runaway and a PI with MS."—Vannessa Cronin, Amazon Editor

Imagine a serial killer who has already struck a horrific number of times. A killer who discovers people's secrets - the deepest, darkest secrets we keep even from ourselves - and uses them to target and destroy his victims.The case begins with a shock, and the twists keep coming, when FBI Special Agent Smoky Barrett and her team investigate a murder brazenly committed on a flight from Texas to Virginia.Who will the next victim be? Everyone in the world has secrets.Even Smoky.

There is worse than dead. They took three days to find the girl: bound to her mother's mutilated corpse, shocked beyond speech. FBI agent Smoky Barrett, still reeling from a horrific tragedy of her own, knows that if there's one case she has to take, it's this. Because the girl's mother wasn't just another victim. She was Smoky's best friend. The killer's first mistake ? Or the first move in a sickening, deadly game ? The Shadow Man wants her to play...

Could this be the end for Heck? The Sunday Times bestseller returns with an unforgettable crime thriller. Fans of MJ Arlidge and Stuart MacBride won’t be able to put this down. Don’t let them catch you... A Deadly HuntDS ‘Heck’ Heckenburg has been tasked with retrieving one of the UK’s most wanted men. But the trail runs cold when Heck discovers a video tape showing the fugitive in a fight for his life. A fight he has no chance of winning. A Dangerous GameHeck realises that there’s another player in this game of cat and mouse, and this time, they’ve not just caught the prize: they’ve made sure no one else ever does. A Man Who Plays With FireHow far will Heck and his team go to protect some of the UK’s most brutal killers? And what price is he willing to pay?

Detective Carson Ryder faces a cunning and inventive adversary in this terrifying thriller from the bestselling author of Her Last Scream. Young men in Miami are being abducted and tortured after their drinks are spiked with a cocktail of drugs that leaves them unable to recall their ordeal. Despite this, Detective Carson Ryder knows the predator's name, height, age, colouring ... everything. It's impossible for the perpetrator to avoid detection. Yet he does. When Carson seeks answers from his brother, a wanted criminal intimate with twisted minds, Jeremy's odd behaviour sparks even more questions. With each abduction, the violence becomes more horrific, and it's only a short time until torture turns to murder. But how do you catch an invisible man?

New York Times bestselling author William Lashner returns with a brilliantly twisty tale that probes the dark side of the law -- and manUnlike the rest of you, I cheerfully admit to my own utter selfishness. I am self-made, self-absorbed, self-serving, self-referential, even self-deprecating, in a charming sort of way. In short, I am all the selfs except selfless. Yet every so often, I run across a force of nature that shakes my sublime self-centeredness to its very roots. Something that tears through the landscape like a tornado, leaving nothing but ruin and reexamination in its wake. Something like Bob.--Victor CarlA beautiful young woman is dead, her husband convicted of the murder. In seeking a new trial for the husband, defense attorney Victor Carl must confront not only a determined prosecutor and a police detective who might have set up his client, but also a strange little busybody named Bob.Bob has the aspiration, one could even say compulsion, to help those around him. And it usually works out well for all concerned, except when it ends in blood. But Victor doesn’t know that . . . yet.Thanks to Bob, Victor is suddenly dressing better, dating a stunning woman, and both his economic prospects and his teeth are gleaming. It’s all good, until Victor finds a troubling connection between Bob and the murdered wife. Is Bob a kind of saint or is this obsessive Good Samaritan, in reality, a murderer?Filled with the keen wit, deep poignancy, twisting suspense, and dark realism that has entranced readers, impressed reviewers, and made William Lashner’s previous novels bestsellers, Falls the Shadow is a riveting novel sure to leave readers eager for more.

In this holy mess of a case for the "perpetual bad boy" (New York Times) sleuths in the beloved Hap and Leonard series, PI Duo Hap and Leonard investigate the untimely death of a woman whose family stood much to gain from her passing. Minnie Polson is dead. Burned to a crisp in a fire so big and bad it had to be deliberate. The only thing worse is that Hap and Leonard could have prevented it. Maybe. Minnie had a feeling she was being targeted, shaken down by some shadowy force. However, when she'd solicited Hap & Leonard, all it took was one off color joke to turn her sour and she'd called them off the investigation. Wracked with a guilty conscience, the two PIs--along with Hap's fleet-footed wife, Brett--tuck in to the case. As they look closer, they dredge up troublesome facts: for one, Minnie's daughter, Alice, has recently vanished. She'd been hard up after her pet grooming business went under and was in line to collect a whopping insurance sum should anything happen to her mother. The same was due to Minnie's estranged husband, Al, whose kryptonite (beautiful, money-grubbing women) had left him with only a run-down mobile home. But did Minnie's foolish, cash-strapped family really have it in them to commit a crime this grisly? Or is there a larger, far more sinister scheme at work? Irreverent, wise-cracking, and full of atmosphere and bite, Sugar on the Bones is not to be missed.

One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 YearsStrictly speaking, Lew Archer is only supposed to dig up the dirt on a rich man's suspicious soon-to-be son-in-law. But in no time at all Archer is following a trail of corpses from the citrus belt to Mazatlan. And then there is the zebra-striped hearse and its crew of beautiful, sunburned surfers, whose path seems to keep crossing the son-in-law's—and Archer's—in a powerful, fast-paced novel of murder on the California coast.

A CLASSIC NOVEL BY THE MASTER OF HARD-BOILED CRIME, THE HIGH WINDOW IS RAYMOND CHANDLER'S THIRD STORY FEATURING LACONIC PI PHILIP MARLOWE. 'He lay crumpled on his back. Very lonely, very dead. The safe door was wide open. A metal drawer was pulled out. It was empty now. There may have been money in it once.'Los Angeles PI Philip Marlowe's on a case: his client, a dried-up husk of a woman, wants him to recover a rare gold coin called a Brasher Doubloon, missing from her late husband's collection. That's the simple part. It becomes more complicated when Marlowe finds that everyone who handles the coin suffers a run of very bad luck: they always end up dead. That's also unlucky for a private investigator, because leaving a trail of corpses around LA puts cops' noses seriously out of joint. If Marlowe doesn't wrap this one up fast, he's going to end up either in jail or in a wooden box in the ground . . . 'Chandler's books should be read and judged, not as escapist literature, but as works of art' W.H. Auden 'Chandler grips the mind from the first sentence' Daily Telegraph 'One of the greatest crime writers, who set standards others still try to attain' Sunday Times 'Chandler is an original stylist, creator of a character as immortal as Sherlock Holmes' Anthony Burgess

Yet another complex whodunit starring Donald Lamb, the pint-sized detective with the “big” brain and his outsized, money-loving business partner Bertha Cool. Beginning with an innocuous inquiry into a hocked pendent, the pace picks up fairly fast with an unexpected murder, the mysterious appearance of dazzling precious gems, and of all the unusual characters, a pet crow with a penchant for glittering objects. In almost “Bond” style, the scene shifts to Colombia with its twisting mountain roads, steamy jungles, gold and gem mines, and an inscrutable and menacing police chief. Unraveling tortuous plots is Donald’s specialty, and this one is no different. An exciting read, and for those used to Earle Stanley Gardener’s Perry Mason with his perspicacity and trained legal mind, Gardner in his A.A. Fair avatar, sketches his protagonist Donald Lamb very differently. Also trained as a lawyer and no less sharp-witted than Mason, yet a total contrast.