Recommendations based on "The Ax"

Instant New York Times Bestseller!“The final shattering installment in a gangland trilogy to equal The Godfather. If you like Scarface and Goodfellas, this is where it’s at.” — Stephen King“City in Ruins is Don Winslow showing the rest of us how it’s done. Winslow has saved the best for last.” — James Patterson“The Godfather for our generation.” — Adrian McKintyFrom New York Times bestselling author Don Winslow comes City in Ruins – his epic, genre-defining crime masterpiece . . . and the final novel of Winslow’s extraordinary career.Sometimes you have to become what you hate to protect what you love.Danny Ryan is rich.Beyond his wildest dreams rich.The former dock worker, Irish mob soldier and fugitive from the law is now a respected businessman – a Las Vegas casino mogul and billionaire silent partner in a group that owns two lavish hotels. Finally, Danny has it all: a beautiful house, a child he adores, a woman he might even fall in love with.Life is good.But then Danny reaches too far.When he tries to buy an old hotel on a prime piece of real estate with plans to build his dream resort, he triggers a war against Las Vegas power brokers, a powerful FBI agent bent on revenge and a rival casino owner with dark connections of his own.Danny thought he had buried his past, but now it reaches up to him from the grave to pull him down. Old enemies surface, and when they come for Danny they vow to take everything – not only his empire, not just his life, but all that he holds dear, including his son.To save his life and everything he loves, Danny must become the ruthless fighter he once was – and never wanted to be again.Ranging from the gritty back rooms of Providence, RI to the power corridors of Washington, DC and Wall Street to the golden casinos of Las Vegas, City in Ruins is an epic crime novel of love and hate, ambition and desperation, vengeance and compassion.

Still grieving over the accidental death of an innocent child caught in crossfire, Matthew Scudder privately takes on the case of a mass-murder victim and begins a search for a phantom psychotic killer. Reissue.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • THE BLOCKBUSTER JACK REACHER SERIES THAT INSPIRED TWO MAJOR MOTION PICTURES AND THE STREAMING SERIES REACHER“A perfect example of Lee Child’s talent . . . This is not just a good story; it is a story with a purpose and a message.”—Huffington PostReacher takes a stroll through a small Wisconsin town and sees a class ring in a pawn shop window: West Point 2005. A tough year to graduate: Iraq, then Afghanistan. The ring is tiny, for a woman, and it has her initials engraved on the inside. Reacher wonders what unlucky circumstance made her give up something she earned over four hard years. He decides to find out. And find the woman. And return her ring. Why not?So begins a harrowing journey that takes Reacher through the upper Midwest, from a lowlife bar on the sad side of small town to a dirt-blown crossroads in the middle of nowhere, encountering bikers, cops, crooks, muscle, and a missing persons PI who wears a suit and a tie in the Wyoming wilderness.The deeper Reacher digs, and the more he learns, the more dangerous the terrain becomes. Turns out the ring was just a small link in a far darker chain. Powerful forces are guarding a vast criminal enterprise. Some lines should never be crossed. But then, neither should Reacher.

Detective Alex Cross arrests renowned plastic surgeon Elijah Creem for sleeping with teenage girls. Now, his life ruined, Creem is out of jail, and he's made sure that no one will recognize him--by giving himself a new face. A young woman is found hanging from a sixth-floor window, and Alex is called to the scene. The victim recently gave birth, but the baby is nowhere to be found. Before Alex can begin searching for the missing newborn and killer, he's called to investigate a second crime. All of Washington, D.C., is in a panic, and when a third body is discovered, rumours of three serial killers send the city into an all-out frenzy. Alex's investigations are going nowhere, and he's too focused on the cases to notice that someone has been watching him--and will stop at nothing until he's dead.

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.

Powerfully told, elegantly wrought, George P. Pelecanos's The Big Blowdown is a knockout.Washington DC, 1946. For Joey Recevo and Pete Karras, two kids from one of Washington's rougher neighborhoods, the easiest work to find after the War is all criminal---providing a little muscle for a local boss. But Karris is soft on his fellow immigrants, and the boss can't let his mob get soft, so one of his boys gives Karras a painful lesson. Three years later, it's the same mob that figures big Nick Stefanos's grill needs protection---and this decision will once again bring Joey and Pete face-to-face. In this final confrontation, the two of them will find the meaning of friendship, the heart of honor, and the cost of both.

The Seattle that Beau knew as a young policeman is disappearing. The city is awash in the aromas emanating from a glut of coffee bars, the neighborhood outside his condo building has sprouted gallery upon gallery, and even his long cherished diner has evolved into a trendy eatery for local hipsters. But the glam is strictly surface, for the grit under the city's fingernails is caked with blood. Beau and his new partner Sue Danielson, a struggling single parent, are assigned the murder of an elderly woman torched to death in her bed. As their investigation proceeds, Beau and Sue become embroiled in a perilous series of events that will leave them and their case shattered -- and for Beau nothing will ever be the same again.

A lawyer's race to reveal a wrongful conviction collides with the dark shadow of a murder in his own home in this propulsive and perfectly-plotted thriller from "one of our best crime writers at the top of his game" (William Kent Krueger, New York Times bestselling author). When Boady Sanden first receives the case of Elijah Matthews, he's certain there's not much he can do. Elijah, who believes himself to be a prophet, has been locked up in a psychiatric hospital for the past four years, convicted of brutally murdering the pastor of a megachurch. But as a law professor working for the Innocence Project, Boady agrees to look into Elijah's file. When he does, he is alarmed to find threads that lead back to the death of his colleague and friend, Ben Pruitt, a man shot to death four years earlier in Boady's own home. Ben's daughter, Emma, has lived with Boady and Boady's wife Dee ever since that awful night. Now fourteen years old, Emma has been growing distant, and soon makes a fateful choice that takes her far from the safety of her godparents. Desperate to bring her home, and to free an innocent man, Boady must do all he can to investigate Elijah's case while fighting to save the family he has deeply come to love. Written with energy, propulsion, and his characteristic pathos and insight, Eskens delivers another pitch-perfect legal thriller that reveals a twisted murder and explores faith, love, family, and redemption along the way. "Ambitious, absorbing, and deeply satisfying."―Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "Eskens brilliantly combines legal and personal drama." ―Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Superb . . . another Eskens novel to be savored." ―South Florida Sun-Sentinel

The maestro of pulse-pounding suspense delivers an explosive new white-knuckle thriller featuring deputy U.S. Marshal Tim Rackley -- a lawman driven by honor, morality, and a thirst for justice. The leader of one of the country's most violent biker gangs, Den Laurey should have been behind bars. But thanks to a daring escape on an L.A. freeway, several deputy marshals are dead and Laurey is riding free. Rackley, back on the Service's warrant squad, is in hot pursuit of the outlaw and his ruthless gang -- with a media whirlwind and the entire Los Angeles law-enforcement community driving him.Just when Laurey is within his grasp, circumstances force Rackley to let him go -- with devastating results. A few miles up the road, a sheriff's deputy is attacked: Tim's pregnant wife, Dray. Driven by guilt, Tim vows to hunt Laurey down -- a search that will lead him into a dark world of deception and lies, a world of criminals and undercover cops, drugs and mutilation. And the key to the violent puzzle lies in the discarded corpses of women -- women for whom Tim must seek justice when no one else will. With the stakes rising, Tim must unravel a horrifying secret and confront a deadly terror that reaches from the back alleys of Mexico to the poppy fields of Afghanistan ... and threatens to explode on the dark streets of L.A.

Recalls Harlan Coben - though for my money Jackson is the better writer' GuardianI can help you, Cal. I can help you solve the murder of Cindy Mellish.' A grisly murder in a shabby New York bookstore seems to hold a special significance for Detective Callum Doyle: the victim's been marked with a message that could have been left specially for him. But why? Then the sinister phone calls start. Doyle is told more deaths are planned but the caller will give him clues - on condition he keeps them to himself. So begins his dilemma. If he turns the offer down he will have nothing to go on. But if he accepts and gets it wrong, he will have concealed knowledge that could have stopped a killer. As more deaths follow, increasingly vicious and apparently random, the pressure on Doyle to find a link becomes unbearable. Does he continue to gamble with people's lives? Or must he sacrifice everything to defeat a ruthless and manipulative enemy? Furiously fast-paced, totally unpredictable and unforgettable, this is a masterpiece from the acclaimed author of Pariah.