Bookwormex - Book Reviews for Avid Readers - A List of our Mystery and Thriller Book Reviews

“The Guns of Navarone” by Alistair MacLean – Men of Iron

September 22, 2023

“The Guns of Navarone” by Alistair MacLean (Header image)

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

Short Summary

Alistair MacLean is perhaps one of the more cinematic authors out there, with his novels always being evocative and, as has been proven on numerous occasions, great for movie adaptations. The Guns of Navarone is arguably one of his better-known works across both literature and cinema, and it tells the story of a small group of saboteurs tasked with the seemingly pointless and impossible mission of destroying an artillery installation preventing the evacuation of 1200 British soldiers.

“The Angel’s Game” by Carlos Ruiz Zafon – Cutting a Deal with the Devil

August 30, 2023

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes

Short Summary

Carlos Ruiz Zafon has single-handedly put his beloved city of Barcelona on the map as the perfect setting for mysteries basking in the eternal lights of art, history, and literature. The Cemetery of Forgotten Books is, without a doubt, the series which best exemplifies the author’s adoration of his hometown as well as his literary prowess. In the second novel, titled The Angel’s Game, he takes us back in time to the 1920s and 1930s to meet a young pulp fiction writer whose life is about to change for both the worst, and the best.

“Jaws” by Peter Benchley – Man Versus Nature

July 28, 2023

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

Short Summary

Peter Benchley has left his mark on the worlds of literature, cinema, and ocean activism, but few of his works have withstood the test of time in the way Jaws has. The novel takes place on a seaside resort on the south shore of Long Island, where a giant killer shark begins to make minced meat of the swimmers. Despite political and personal conflicts swirling around them, three men decide to undertake the perilous journey to send the shark back to the depths it came from.

“The Secret History” by Donna Tartt – Lethal Academia

September 22, 2023January 11, 2023

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

Short Summary

Donna Tartt may not be the most prolific author out there, but her works have always carried profound meaning, and for many, The Secret History served as an introduction to a criminally-underrated writer. The story following Richard Papen, a young man who ends up in a liberal arts college and drawn to an exclusive group of classics students, eventually thrusting him dead-center into a murderous scheme.

“The Enigma of Room 622” by Joel Dicker – Swept out of Existence

January 5, 2023January 5, 2023

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

Short Summary

Joel Dicker has a real knack for coming up with unusual and enthralling mysteries for modern readers, and he does so once again with The Enigma of Room 622. The slightly metafictional story follows a writer named Joel, who retreats to a luxury resort in the Swiss Alps in hopes of healing and recovering from recent ordeals. Unfortunately for him, an old murder rearing its head all but thwarts his plan to finally get some much-needed peace and quiet.

“The Devil Takes You Home” by Gabino Iglesias – Landscape of a Ravaged Soul

December 21, 2022

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

Short Summary

Gabino Iglesias has recently become a must-read author for many people for his unusual and poignant storytelling abilities. In his most recent novel, The Devil Takes You Home, he tells the tale of Mario, a man forced to become a hit man due the expensive treatments required by his ill daughter. One day, tragedy strikes, and Mario decides to take on one last and lethal job: to hijack a cartel’s money shipment.

“The Twist of a Knife” by Anthony Horowitz – Misleading Accusations

November 30, 2022

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

Short Summary

Anthony Horowitz came up with one of the more creative literary ideas in recent memory with A Hawthorne and Horowitz Mystery series, inserting himself as a main character in his own novels. In the fourth book, The Twist of a Knife, Anthony Horowitz finds himself falsely accused of murder, forcing him to turn to Detective Hawthorne for help, despite the two being newly-estranged.

“Killers of a Certain Age” by Deanna Raybourn – A Melee of Assassins

June 6, 2023October 18, 2022

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

Short Summary

Deanna Raybourn does tend to stick to the historical genre for the most part, but her forays outside of it often bear some remarkable fruits, as is the case with Killers of a Certain Age. The novel tells the story of Billie, Mary Alice, Helen and Natalie, four assassins with over forty years of experience behind their backs. In a world where no one values their skills anymore, they find themselves targeted for termination by their own order, but needless to say, it turns out to be a huge mistake.

“A Trick of the Light” by Louise Penny – The Final Criticism

September 16, 2022

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

Short Summary

Louise Penny is something of a modern Agatha Christie, and Chief Inspector Armand Gamache her Montreal-based Poirot. In the seventh book of the series, titled A Trick of the Light, we follow Gamache as he heads out to a tiny village in Quebec to investigate the murder of a reviled art critic. Minds from all over the art world are gathered there, guaranteeing only one thing: nothing is as it seems.

“The Mercenary” by Paul Vidich – Untraceable Allegiances

April 21, 2022

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

Short Summary

Paul Vidich has a keen mind for weaving together complex and captivating espionage stories, and in The Mercenary he takes us towards the end of the Cold War, a time of uncertainty and shifting allegiances. The story follows a KGB agent who got his hands on some top secret weapons intelligence and is attempting to get exfiltrated by the CIA. They’ve taken up the task, but are cautious in their approach, fearing he might be playing a game a lot more complex than he’s letting on.

“True Crime Story” by Joseph Knox – All the Missing Girls

July 15, 2023March 10, 2022

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

Short Summary

Joseph Knox has taken the world of thrillers by storm with the first novel of the Aidan Waits Thriller series, and with True Crime Story he takes a side-step to write a standalone story. It follows the investigation conducted by a crime writer, the author himself, into a woman named Evenly Mitchell, who became obsessed with the disappearance of Zoe Nolan who, in 2011, walked out of her dorm room never to be seen again.

“The Shadow of the Wind” by Carlos Ruiz Zafon – Erasing an Existence

August 30, 2023February 16, 2022

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes

Short Summary

Carlos Ruiz Zafon, though he is sadly no longer with us, retains his title of the most successful contemporary Spanish author for good reason, his stories carrying the reader to places few authors could imagine. In The Shadow of the Wind, the first entry in The Cemetery of Forgotten Books series, Zafon tells the story of a young bookshop owner’s son in post-war Barcelona as he tries to unravel the tragic fate of Julian Carax, an author whose works someone has been systematically destroying.

“The Final Game” by Caimh McDonnell – The Greed Competition

November 23, 2021

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

Short Summary

Caimh McDonnell has always had the talent of dealing with death from a humorous perspective, and in The Final Game, his latest standalone novel, he returns to form with a plot centred on a recently-deceased woman, Dorothy Graham. Though she is gone from this world, she devised a competition for her relatives to engage in to determine who the inheritance will belong to, as well as having preemptively hired a detective agency to solve the mystery of her own murder.

“A Line to Kill” by Anthony Horowitz – Festival of Reckoning

July 7, 2023October 26, 2021

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

Short Summary

Anthony Horowitz has solved some serious crimes as Daniel Hawthorne’s sidekick in A Hawthorne and Horowitz Mystery series, and in the third book, A Line to Kill, they get embroiled in a murder mystery with a classic setup. The story has Daniel and Anthony staying at guests on an idyllic island off the coast of England for a literary festival, one harbouring a cold-blooded killer ready to set his plan in motion.

“Nine Days in Vegas” by Brian O’Sullivan – The Investigator’s Instinct

September 8, 2021

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

Brian O’Sullivan has put Quint Adler through three cases already, but only in this fourth one, titled Nine Days in Vegas, does he finally take up the official mantle of private investigator. His first case has him travelling to Sin City in search of Emmy Peters, a missing showgirl from a rich family, who also happened to be an aspiring novelist.

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