FREE/BARGAIN — Mystery, Suspense & Thrillers

[Kieran Seymour]

The first three novels in James Patterson's Alex Cross series are Daily Deals at Amazon UK today. 99p each.

(1) Along Came a Spider
(2) Kiss the Girls
(3) Jack and Jill

[sufue]

Mrs Hudson and the Spirits' Curse is the first in the short two-book (you guessed it) Holmes & Hudson series by Martin Davies. It has dropped to $0.99 at Kindle US.

link: https://www.amazon.com/Hudson-Spirit...dp/B010NT7B9K/

Spoiler:

What if Baker Street’s most gifted resident wasn’t called Sherlock Holmes?
An evil stalks London, blown in from the tropics. Stories of cursed giant rats and malign spirits haunt the garrets of Limehouse. A group of merchants are, one by one, dying. The elementary choice to investigate these mysterious deaths is, of course, Holmes and Dr Watson.

Yet the unique gifts of their housekeeper, Mrs Hudson, and her orphaned assistant Flotsam, will be needed to solve the case. Can she do it all under the nose of Sherlock himself?

From the coal fire at Baker Street to the smog of Whitechapel and the jungles of Sumatra, from snake bites in grand hotels to midnight carriage chases at the docks, it's time for Mrs Hudson to step out of the shadows. Playfully breaking with convention, Martin Davies brings a fresh twist to classic Victorian mystery.

[GeoffR]

The Vanished by Danish authors Lotte and Søren Hammer is currently £0.98 or thereabouts at UK/Euro/Aus/NZ retailers. This is the third book in their Konrad Simonsen series.

[sufue]

The Shadow of the Wind is the first in the Cemetery of Forgotten Books series by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, translated from the Spanish by Lucia Graves. It has been nominated for/won several awards, including being a finalist for the 2010 Barry Award for Best Novel of the Decade. It has dropped to $1.99 at Kindle US.

link: https://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Wind-C...dp/B000OVLINI/

Spoiler:

"Gabriel García Márquez meets Umberto Eco meets Jorge Luis Borges for a sprawling magic show." --The New York Times Book Review

A New York Times Bestseller

Barcelona, 1945: A city slowly heals in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, and Daniel, an antiquarian book dealer’s son who mourns the loss of his mother, finds solace in a mysterious book entitled The Shadow of the Wind, by one Julián Carax. But when he sets out to find the author’s other works, he makes a shocking discovery: someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book Carax has written. In fact, Daniel may have the last of Carax’s books in existence. Soon Daniel’s seemingly innocent quest opens a door into one of Barcelona’s darkest secrets--an epic story of murder, madness, and doomed love.

“ Anyone who enjoys novels that are scary, erotic, touching, tragic and thrilling should rush right out to the nearest bookstore and pick up The Shadow of the Wind. Really, you should.” --Michael Dirda, The Washington Post

"Wonderous... masterful... The Shadow of the Wind is ultimately a love letter to literature, intended for readers as passionate about storytelling as its young hero." --Entertainment Weekly (Editor's Choice)

"One gorgeous read." --Stephen King

[sufue]

Something in the Air is the 20th in the John Putnam Thatcher series by Emma Lathen. It is a US Kindle Countdown deal at $0.99 for about 1/2 more day, before going up to $1.99 for an unknown amount of time. These ebook editions of Lathen's titles are sort of weird, including that the blurb starts out with "ePub version", which is clearly not the case on Kindle US. If you want to see more, this was discussed when these editions first started appearing in the "Books you gave up on ever being ebooks" thread (link) - just search on "Lathen". At very first glance, this one looks a little better than the early ones, though, although the "editor" of these editions makes him- or her-self much more visible up front than I like to see an editor. In any case, though, a classic series...and one of my favorite series of all time, especially since I started reading these while I was in business school, and it seemed like every time we covered a topic from letters of credit to franchising to deregulation, there was a relevant title in this series.

link: https://www.amazon.com/Something-Air...dp/B01N4EDW4U/

blurb from the weird ebook edition:

Spoiler:

ePub version. A discount airlines is considering going from a profitable commuter line to a major coast to coast airline, taking on the big guys. An internal fight breaks out, the Sloan is involved through a loan, and stock in a trust they manage, so John Putnam must get involved with his henchmen, Gabler as auditor and Trinkham as insighter. Great fun, deals with many pieties, so a must read.

much better blurb from Publishers Weekly:

Spoiler:

The latest mystery to feature John Thatcher of New York's Sloan Guaranty Trust is set mainly in Boston, headquarters of the commuter airline Sparrow Flyways. A product of airline deregulation, Sparrow is a nonunion operation surviving on horizontal management and project development teams. Mitchell Scovil, CEO and guiding figure of the founders, dreams of expansion, but a group of lower-level employees (and shareholders) is worried about their investment. When their arrogant spokesperson is murdered, the Sloan, holding 20% of unsalable Sparrow stock in a trust, becomes involved. While the redoubtable Everett Gabler examines the airlines books, Thatcher meets the various suspects, including a former partner now in line for the presidency at a large rival carrier, two other founders still at Sparrow and the energetic young woman who spearheads the employees' group. With characteristic humor (an employees' work stoppage backfires, tying up the entire Northeast corridor over Thanksgiving weekend) and in a clearly conveyed business context of takeovers and proxy fights, the pseudonymous authors, in their 21st mystery, can still keep readers guessing until the last pages. John Thatcher is as perceptive and charming as ever. Mystery Guild main selection, Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club alternates.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

[sufue]

Death in Holy Orders is the 11th in the much-awarded Adam Dalgliesh series by PD James. It has dropped to $1.99 at Kindle US.

link: https://www.amazon.com/Death-Holy-Or...dp/B000FC1HM8/

Spoiler:

From the award-winning master of literary crime fiction, a classic work rich in tense drama and psychological insight.

On the East Anglian seacoast, a small theological college hangs precariously on an eroding shoreline and an equally precarious future. When the body of a student is found buried in the sand, the boy’s influential father demands that Scotland Yard investigate. Enter Adam Dalgliesh, a detective who loves poetry, a man who has known loss and discovery. The son of a parson, and having spent many happy boyhood summers at the school, Dalgliesh is the perfect candidate to look for the truth in this remote, rarified community of the faithful–and the frightened. And when one death leads to another, Dalgliesh finds himself steeped in a world of good and evil, of stifled passions and hidden pasts, where someone has cause not just to commit one crime but to begin an unholy order of murder. . . .

[sufue]

Several of Robert Campbell's Jimmy Flannery series titles have been US Kindle Countdown deals in the last few months, and here's another one...

Sauce For The Goose is the ninth in the series and it's at $0.99 for about 6 1/2 more days.

link: https://www.amazon.com/Sauce-Goose-J...dp/B01M8MKMP6/

Spoiler:

*** EDGAR and ANTHONY AWARD WINNING AUTHOR of The Junkyard Dog ***

Jimmy Flannery, the new Democratic committeeman, never realized the extent of the political corruption in the city, but he quickly learns that no matter who does the dirty work, the Mafia, or "paid professionals," people who get in the way end up dead.

Now Robert Campbell's Edgar Award-winning sleuth, a Chicago sewer inspector and Democratic committeeman for the Twenty-seventh ward returns at the top of his game...

Thursday night's political science class is pulling in an unlikely crowd: the teacher's a slick lawyer who wears $400 shoes, and the worst student is a mob henchman who nods off as soon as the lecture begins. Not that Jimmy Flannery is one to judge. What's this idealistic sewer inspector, doing at night school anyway?

He's getting an education in the finer points of the Chicago machine, where politics, patronage, and organized crime shake hands. Jimmy--a decent guy in a dishonest world--is familiar with his town's mangled grammar, its dirty contract deals, and the strange disappearances of those who become a liability. But night school is fast becoming a crash course in crime. First one classmate--the mob figure--dies in a suspicious mugging, then the teacher, attorney Frank Vollmer, drops out of sight after promising Jimmy he'll take on a pro bono case.

Using his vast network of local connections both within and way outside the law, Jimmy weaves together a complicated picture that includes cheating spouses, suicide, and two disputed legacies. One involves a very well-off canine. The other, far more sinister, will determine who controls the city of Chicago.

I should probably also note that the first in the series, The Junkyard Dog, which won both an Edgar and an Anthony in 1987 (per SYKM), is a long term freebie, in case you want to give the series a try.

link: https://www.amazon.com/Junkyard-Jimm...dp/B0153KUVUK/

Spoiler:

***Edgar Award Winner*** - The Junkyard Dog -- Chicago is Jimmy Flannery's kind of town. A tough Irishman with street smarts, he's part of a political machine that runs on favors and friendships. Flannery's particular piece of the patronage is the 27th Ward, and anything that happens there is his business. Even murder.

So when an antiabortion demonstration ends with a bomb blast that kills a pretty young girl and an old woman, Flannery takes it personally. But someone's stonewalling the investigation, and Flannery's starting to wonder if the bombing was political, or as a cover-up for murder. Something smells rotten -- from the Gold Coast to the South Side. And when the killer goes after Flannery's lady love, Flannery doesn't just get mad -- he gets as mean as a junkyard dog -- on the scent of the dirty politics mixed with passion and revenge, a very deadly combination . . .

[GA Russell]

A Study in Terror - Ellery Queen - $1.99
https://www.amazon.com/Study-Terror-...dp/B00ZE9784S/

[sufue]

Early Bird's Monday afternoon "special delivery" is 7 Ellery Queen titles for $1.99, including the one listed by GA Russell above, at Kindle US (and usually elsewhere, including Kobo US, where Open Road is VIPable/couponable).

The seven titles are:

• The Roman Hat Mystery
• A Study in Terror
• The French Powder Mystery
• The Dragon's Teeth
• Calamity Town
• Death Spins the Platter
• The Last Woman in His Life

Link for them all at Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/gp/search/?se...&price=199-199

Good for the rest of today only.

Originally Posted by GA Russell

A Study in Terror - Ellery Queen - $1.99
https://www.amazon.com/Study-Terror-...dp/B00ZE9784S/

[disconnected]

Originally Posted by sufue

Something in the Air is the 20th in the John Putnam Thatcher series by Emma Lathen. It is a US Kindle Countdown deal at $0.99 for about 1/2 more day, before going up to $1.99 for an unknown amount of time. These ebook editions of Lathen's titles are sort of weird, including that the blurb starts out with "ePub version", which is clearly not the case on Kindle US. If you want to see more, this was discussed when these editions first started appearing in the "Books you gave up on ever being ebooks" thread (link) - just search on "Lathen". At very first glance, this one looks a little better than the early ones, though, although the "editor" of these editions makes him- or her-self much more visible up front than I like to see an editor. In any case, though, a classic series...and one of my favorite series of all time, especially since I started reading these while I was in business school, and it seemed like every time we covered a topic from letters of credit to franchising to deregulation, there was a relevant title in this series.

link: https://www.amazon.com/Something-Air...dp/B01N4EDW4U/

blurb from the weird ebook edition:

Spoiler:

ePub version. A discount airlines is considering going from a profitable commuter line to a major coast to coast airline, taking on the big guys. An internal fight breaks out, the Sloan is involved through a loan, and stock in a trust they manage, so John Putnam must get involved with his henchmen, Gabler as auditor and Trinkham as insighter. Great fun, deals with many pieties, so a must read.

much better blurb from Publishers Weekly:

I wish this series had been acquired by a reputable publisher. The original books always seemed so meticulously researched and written it's awful to see them treated like this. I bought this one book but I don't think I can bear to buy any more of them.

I googled this Deaver Brown person and found this on Smashwords --

"Deaver Brown is a Harvard College Magna graduate in History and a graduate of Harvard Business School. He has been a serial entrepreneur starting with the Umbroller stroller in the 1970s, American Power Conversion in the 1980s, Pride Retail Systems in the 1990s, and Simply Magazine and Products since then. He authored The Entrepreneurs Guide through Macmillan and Ballantine, which later formed the basis of the Simply Business series."

The man has no shame. You'd think he would have expended a little effort in preparing the books before putting his name (prominently) on them.

Edit -- He even seems to have added an additional title not written by the original authors as well as a short book about the "mysterious" authors; the content in the look-inside seems to have been taken directly from news articles written when Mary Jane Latsis died.

[Mort1997]

Free on Amazon UK - The Last Casualty by Andrew Leatham

Spoiler:

Belgium, 1917.

Wilf joined up at seventeen, wanting to do his bit.

But now he is broken by the death and human agony surrounding him. The smell of the rotting corpses, the vermin gnawing on the corpses in No Mans Land, has all been too much.

After a brief period of R and R, he knows he cannot return to the line, but off he is sent. When his courage falters, he’s charged with cowardice, court martialled, and shot at dawn.

Lancashire England, 1995.

Joanne Neally’s grandmother has died. While cleaning out her house, she finds the telegram that informed her family of the death of her great grandfather, simple and unpunctuated.

Regret to inform you Private 792163 Isherwood Wilfred 3rd Batt Pennine Fusiliers died of gunshot wounds Ypres August 22 1917

Joanne is moved to tears by the telegram, but it is the diary she finds next that will change her life forever, for Wilf Isherwood detailed his experiences at Passchendaele, one of the fiercest and bloodiest battles of the Great War. A battle that cost the lives of half a million men, and changed the landscape of Belgium forever.

Joanne, who is in an unhappy marriage, decides to clear Wilf’s name. It is obvious he was suffering from shell shock, and a pardon is in order.

As she enlists help from the local legion, she discovers a man at a care home who knew her great grandfather. The more he tells her about the horrors they saw, the more determined Joanne is to clear Wilf’s name.

But as her job and her marriage fall apart, everyone around her wonders about her loyalty to a man she never met, and how much she is willing to pay to clear his name.

UK
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Last-Casual...ndeavour+press

US
https://www.amazon.com/Last-Casualty...ndeavour+press

Au
https://www.amazon.com.au/Last-Casua...ndeavour+press

Can
https://www.amazon.ca/Last-Casualty-...ndeavour+press

[Mort1997]

Free on Amazon UK - Scotland Yard's First Cases by Joan Lock

Spoiler:

When Scotland Yard’s first detective branch was set up in 1842 crime was very different from today.

The favoured murder weapon was the cut-throat razor; carrying a pocket watch was dangerous; the most significant clue at a murder scene could be the whereabouts of a candlestick or hat; large households (family, servants and lodgers) complicated many a case and servants sometimes murdered their masters.

Detectives had few aids and suffered many disadvantages.

The bloody handprints found at two early murder scenes were of no help, there being no way of telling whether blood (or hair) was human or animal.

Fingerprinting was fifty years away, DNA profiling another hundred and photography was too new to help with identification.

The detectives had no transport and were expected to walk the first three miles on any enquiry before catching an omnibus or cab and trying to recoup the fares.

All reports had to be handwritten with a dip pen and ink and the only means of keeping contact with colleagues and disseminating information was by post, horseback or foot.

In spite of these handicaps and severe press criticism, the detectives achieved some significant successes.

UK
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Scotland-Ya...ndeavour+press

US
https://www.amazon.com/Scotland-Yard...ndeavour+press

Au
https://www.amazon.com.au/Scotland-Y...ndeavour+press

Can
https://www.amazon.ca/Scotland-Yards...ndeavour+press

[Mort1997]

Free on Amazon UK - An Intimate Obsession by Elizabeth McGregor

Spoiler:

When obsession becomes deadly…

Eve Ridges fears the worst when her father suddenly goes missing.

Suffering from Alzheimer’s, Bill Ridges is incredibly vulnerable, and a police investigation is soon under way.

Right by Eve’s side is her neighbour, Hugh Scott, who is determined to help Eve find her father – or so it seems.

For Hugh has secretly been in love with Eve for decades, and over the years his infatuation has only intensified. He has even planned their wedding and future life together – all unbeknownst to Eve.

And as far as Hugh’s concerned, Bill’s disappearance is the perfect opportunity for him and Eve to finally be together…

But Hugh’s carefully-laid plans are jeopardised when Eve finds solace in the arms of Jonathan Davies, a much younger man.

And when Hugh finally reveals his true feelings, he is met with rejection.

Humiliated, he begins to plot his revenge…

Caught in the crosshairs of Hugh’s revenge plot, will Eve escape unscathed?

And what really happened to Bill Ridges?

UK
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Intimate-Ob...ndeavour+press

US
https://www.amazon.com/Intimate-Obse...ndeavour+press

Au
https://www.amazon.com.au/Intimate-O...ndeavour+press

Can
https://www.amazon.ca/Intimate-Obses...ndeavour+press

[Mort1997]

Free on Amazon UK - The Bluebell Killer by Frances Lloyd

Spoiler:

A mutilated body was certainly not what the quiet, affluent town of Kings Richington expected to wake up to on a Sunday morning…

Crime, especially brutal murder, was not welcome or expected amongst such high-ranking residents as high court judges and MPs.

DI Jack Dawes is assigned the case.

Working alongside him are Detective Sergeant Malone, or “Bugsy” to his colleagues, and Detective Constable Pinkney, a fast-track graduate eager to get started in the fast-paced world of the police force.

He soon finds out paperwork makes up a larger part of the job than high-speed car chases, especially when their headless corpse provides the threesome with no leads.

Pressure from above to tread carefully around the privileged residents of Kings Richington makes the job harder and frustrating.

How can Jack infiltrate their closed-off circles?

The answer comes from his wife Corrie, who paves the way into the lesser-seen world of Kings Richington through her catering service, Coriander’s Cuisine, caterer to their dinner parties, as well as the eternally chic Madame Gloria De Vere’s Académie de Danse.

Yet the more Jack and his team find out about the notoriously private residents, the murkier the investigation becomes.

Behind the glamour lies a Kings Richington rarely seen, all connected mysteriously to the intriguing Académie de Danse.

As the corpses pile up and blackmail begins, Jack is determined to discover the truth about these people and their real origins.

But will he discover it in time?

UK
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bluebell-Ki...ndeavour+press

US
https://www.amazon.com/Bluebell-Kill...ndeavour+press

Au
https://www.amazon.com.au/Bluebell-K...ndeavour+press

Can
https://www.amazon.ca/Bluebell-Kille...ndeavour+press

[Mort1997]

Free on Amazon UK - A Crushing Blow (Anna McColl Mystery Book 3) by Penny Kline

Spoiler:

Psychologist and occasional police consultant Anna McColl needs a holiday...

But murder never takes a vacation…

A middle-aged man is found bludgeoned to death in nearby Leigh Woods and psychologist Anna McColl is shocked at the violence of the crime.

Little does she realize that she’s about to get involved in the case herself …

After delivering a set of psychology lectures, one of the attendees insists that Anna come around to his place and talk to his wife, Geraldine.

Geraldine lives near Leigh Woods and after the murder found that she was too terrified to leave her house, an acute case of agoraphobia.

Against her better judgement, Anna is drawn into Geraldine’s case.

She has no connection with the victim, so why has the incident affected her so profoundly?

Anna agrees to visit with Geraldine while she is on vacation from her regular practice, so only for two weeks.

If Geraldine isn’t cured in two weeks, she must find someone else to help her.

Will Anna be able to help Geraldine in such a short window?

Or will she find out that there is more to the murder in Leigh Woods than anyone thought?

UK
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Crushing-Bl...ndeavour+press

US
https://www.amazon.com/Crushing-Blow...ndeavour+press

Au
https://www.amazon.com.au/Crushing-B...ndeavour+press

Can
https://www.amazon.ca/Crushing-Blow-...ndeavour+press