Recommendations based on "Hired Killer"

Homicide Detective Alex Cross teams up with his wife to beat a D. C. criminal at his own game.Washington, DC, has never been more dangerous. After shots pierce the tranquil nighttime calm of Rock Creek Park, a man is dead: what looks at first like road rage might be something much more sinister. But Alex has only just begun asking questions when he's called across town to investigate a new murder, one that hits close to home: his former boss and the beloved mentor of Alex's wife, Bree.Now there's a killer on the loose, a long list of possible suspects, a city in panic, and nobody in charge of the besieged police force. . . until Bree gets tapped for the job.As Bree scrambles to find her footing and close two high-profile cases, new violence stuns the capital. What should be a time for her to rely on Alex for support and cooperation is instead a moment of crisis in their marriage as well as their city when their investigative instincts clash and their relationship reaches a breaking point.And the fiendish mind behind all the violence has appointed himself judge, jury, and executioner, with a terrifying master plan he's only begun to put in motion. To beat him at his own game, Alex and Bree must take the law back into their own hands before he puts them both out of commission . . . permanently.

The Chill of Night is James Hayman's second instalment in his McCabe and Savage series. A frozen corpse means a big headache for Detective Michael McCabe Lainie Goff thinks she has it all. A glamorous young Portland attorney with the brains and looks to match her ambitions, she's on the fast-track to a partnership. Until one cold winter night she discovers that her belief in her ability to handle any situation was misplaced. Now she's just a frozen corpse in the boot of a car at the end of Portland Fish Pier. And a problem for homicide detective Michael McCabe. Luckily for McCabe, there's a witness. A mentally disturbed young woman named Abby Quinn saw what happened to Lainie. Unfortunately, Abby mysteriously goes missing the very same night. With a victim who'd known more than her share of bad guys, a list of suspects that seems to get longer and longer and his only witness missing, McCabe has got his work cut out. But it's only a matter of time before the killer strikes again . . . Following the success of the first instalment The Cutting, The Chill of Night continues to follow Detective McCabe as he solves Portland's crimes. Fans of Harlan Coben and Michael Connelly will be hooked. Praise for James Hayman:'A stunning debut that gripped me from first page to last. A thriller of a thriller!' Tess Gerritsen 'Supremely accomplished storytelling' Daily Mail'Taut, suspenseful . . . every bit as dark and sinister as Lehane and Connelly' Richard Montanari James Hayman spent more than twenty years as a senior creative director at one of New York's largest advertising agencies. He and his wife now live in Portland, Maine. This is his third novel.

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?

The cruel and bizarre slaying of a beautiful teen leads Detective Decker into the dark heart of an exotic subculture: the seamy, sometimes violent world of Southern California's rootless, affluent youth. But even the confession of a disturbed kid with cold "killer eyes" cannot soothe Decker's inner torment. For he knows in his gut this crime goes much deeper and higher than anyone expects -- and that true justice, brutal and complete, has yet to be done.

In the most suspenseful installment of the New York Times nestselling Body Farm series to date, forensic anthropologist Dr. Bill Brockton investigates a bizarre murder—and confronts a deadly enemy he thought he’d put behind bars for good. Forensic anthropologist Bill Brockton has spent twenty-five years solving brutal murders—but none so bizarre and merciless as his latest case: A ravaged set of skeletal remains is found chained to a tree on a remote mountainside. As Brockton and his assistant Miranda dig deeper, they uncover warning signs of a deadly eruption of hatred and violence. But the shocking case is only the beginning of Brockton’s trials. Mid-case, the unthinkable happens: The deadliest criminal Brockton has ever foiled—the sadistic serial killer Nick Satterfield—escapes from prison, bent on vengeance. But simply killing Brockton isn’t enough. Satterfield wants to make him suffer first, by destroying everything he holds dear: Brockton’s son, daughter-in-law, grandsons; even Miranda, his longtime graduate assistant, now on the verge of completing her Ph.D. and launching a forensic career of her own. The dangers from all directions force Brockton to question two things on which he’s based his entire career—the justice system, and the quality of mercy—and to wonder: can the two co-exist? If not, which will Brockton choose in his ultimate moment of truth?

The next in the bestselling series of psychological thrillers featuring Carson Ryder, the detective with a unique perspective on serial killers Soon after witnessing the escape of violent psychopath Bobby Crayline from prison, Alabaman detective Carson Ryder takes a rare break in the mountains. But his vacation is interrupted when an anonymous phone call summons him to the scene of a grisly murder. With more savage killings, and the heavy-handed FBI only inflaming the situation, Ryder and local detective Donna Cherry sift through the increasingly bizarre clues. Is there more than one killer on the loose? And how does Carson's clinically insane brother, Jeremy, now on the run, fit into the picture? It is down to Ryder to unearth horrors from the past that others believe should remain buried...

The deadliest weapon . . . is man Top NATO representatives meet in Kiev to forge a new alliance . . . Powerful elements within a newly resurgent Russia decide the alliance must be stopped at all costs . . . The warriors of Dreamland have moved on. Some, like Breanna and Zen Stockard, to positions of power and influence; others, like Danny Freah and Nuri Lupo, into Whiplash, a cutting-edge combination of brain and brawn. Tasked by the President to handle the country's most deadly and sensitive jobs, the elite SpecWarfare unit marries muscle to technological prowess. But can even Whiplash stand up to a covert Russian army of genetically enhanced assassins known only as the Wolves? The stories about them sound like sheer fantasy: the killers are said to be nearly invisible and virtually unstoppable, endowed with super-human strength and endurance. But when Danny Freah and company discover they do exist, Danny stumbles on an even darker and deadlier secret: One Wolf, the most ferocious of all, comes from the heart of Dreamland itself. And Danny saw him die more than a decade before.

Sometime after midnight, on a moonless October night turned harsh by a fine, windswept rain, one of the men I liked least in the world was murdered in a field near Bedford, just south of the city....The detectives went looking for suspects--- people whose histories with Jefferson were adversarial and hostile. At the top of that list, they found me. So begins A Welcome Grave, the third novel by award-winning mystery writer Michael Koryta, featuring private investigator Lincoln Perry. Once a rising star on the Cleveland police force, Perry ended his career when he left one of the city's prominent attorneys, Alex Jefferson, bleeding in the parking lot of his country club---retribution for his affair with Perry's fiancée. Now Jefferson is dead, the victim of a brutal murder, and his widow has called upon Perry for a favor he knows he shouldn't accept but can't turn down: to find Jefferson's estranged son, partial beneficiary of the dead man's fortune. The case is simple enough, a routine "locate," and he'll be paid plenty of money for the work. The encounter should be simple, too: a brief exchange of information and maybe an empty condolence before Perry gets back into his truck and returns home. Instead, he's loaded into a police car and taken to a rural jail while Jefferson's son is zipped into a body bag. Perry soon learns that Jefferson's millions are the target of a thirst for revenge that hasn't been satisfied by blood. As a pair of deadly assailants push deep into the investigator's life, they bring with them police from two states who are determined to see Perry in jail. Building on the skill that prompted the Toronto Sun to call him "one of America's best young mystery writers," Michael Koryta makes A Welcome Grave an intense exploration of the lengths to which a desperate man is forced to go in order to clear his name and solve a crime. This is a thrilling new book that justifies the critical acclaim and solidifies his role as an emerging talent among today's top writers. Praise for Michael Koryta A WELCOME GRAVE "For a while now, Michael Koryta has been called one of the rising young talents in crime fiction. I say enough of that. A Welcome Grave proves the promise. Koryta is one of the best of the best, plain and simple. With stories like this, his Lincoln Perry is going to be around for a long, long time."---Michael Connelly, author of The Overlook and the bestselling Harry Bosch series "With the publication of A Welcome Grave, it's time to stop referring to Michael Koryta as a boy wonder and just focus on the sheer wonder of his storytelling. Koryta knows how to put his characters---and his readers---into an ever-tightening vise of twists, turns, and conspiracies, but it's his empathy that makes his work stand out. This is a nuanced, mature novel that proves both the depth of Koryta's talent and the vitality of the PI genre."--- Laura Lippman, Edgar Award winner and author of No Good Deeds "In the last few years, new writing talent has entered all subgenres of crime fiction. One of the names at the top of the list is Michael Koryta. He is a breath of fresh air, his writing is clear and concise, and his observations on the darkness of the human condition show how the PI novel is one of the finest forms in all of fiction writing. Mr. Koryta is on his way to being a master of the PI novel, sacred ground indeed."---Richard Katz, Mystery One Bookstore SORROW'S ANTHEM "Sorrow's Anthem is no sophomore slump."---The Washington Post "Koryta displays the maturity of a writer with several novels under his belt, and his plot percolates with crisp dialogue that might impress Chandler himself."---Booklist (starred review) TONIGHT I SAID GOODBYE "Say hello to a new crime talent."---Chicago Tribune "[Koryta] has produced what few thought possible---an incredibly fresh PI novel when the subgenre had been long declared fatigued...Koryta emerges fully formed in his first effort."---The Baltimore Sun

An American general is captured in the Middle East by terrorists who threaten to behead him within days. One strange fact: moments before he is rendered unconscious during the attack, the general notices that his captors speak American English. What’s going on?     Gunnery Sgt. Kyle Swanson, a top Marine sniper, is vacationing on a yacht in the Mediterranean when he receives orders to mount a top secret mission to rescue the general. But as the Marines prepare to land in the Syrian desert, they fall victim to a terrible accident. Swanson, the only survivor, then discovers they were also flying into an ambush. How did the enemy have details of a mission known only to a few top American government officials?     Swanson takes off across the desert alone to find the captured general and realizes he is fighting a particularly ruthless and dangerous enemy: American mercenaries working for a very-high-level group of U.S. officials with ties to the White House itself, part of a clandestine conspiracy whose hidden goal is nothing less than total control of the American military. Their sworn enemy is the captured general whose fate now rests in Swanson’s hands.     Filled with the kind of action that author Jack Coughlin lived during his career as a Marine sniper, Kill Zone marks the debut of an extraordinary new series.