Recommendations and Readalikes

The Bodies Left Behind

Author: Deaver, Jeffery
Format: Hardcover
Type: Novel
Page Count: 368pp.
Pub. Date: November 2008
Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Winner of the 2009 ITW Thriller Award for the Best Thriller of the Year

When a night-time call to 911 from a secluded Wisconsin vacation house is cut short, off-duty deputy Brynn McKenzie leaves her husband and son at the dinner table and drives up to Lake Mondac to investigate. Was it a misdial or an aborted crime report?

Brynn stumbles onto a scene of true horror and narrowly escapes from two professional criminals. She and a terrified visitor to the weekend house, Michelle, flee into the woods in a race for their lives. As different as night and day, and stripped of modern-day resources, Brynn, a tough deputy with a difficult past, and Michelle, a pampered city girl, must overcome their natural reluctance to trust each other and learn to use their wits and courage to survive the relentless pursuit.

The deputy’s disappearance spurs both her troubled son and her new husband to action, while the incident sets in motion Brynn’s loyal fellow deputies and elements from Milwaukee’s underside. These various forces race along inexorably toward the novel’s gritty and stunning conclusion.

The Bodies Left Behind is an epic cat-and-mouse chase, told nearly in real-time, and is filled with Deaver’s patented twists and turns, where nothing is what it seems, and death lingers just around the next curve on a deserted path deep in the midnight forest.

Child 44

Author: Smith, Tom Rob
Format: Hardcover
Type: Novel
Page Count: 448pp.
Pub. Date: April 2008
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Winner of the 2009 ITW Thriller Award for the Best First Novel

A propulsive, relentless page-turner.

A terrifying evocation of a paranoid world where no one can be trusted.

A surprising, unexpected story of love and family, of hope and resilience.

Child 44 is a thriller unlike any you have ever read.

“There is no crime.”

Stalin’s Soviet Union strives to be a paradise for its workers, providing for all of their needs. One of its fundamental pillars is that its citizens live free from the fear of ordinary crime and criminals.

But in this society, millions do live in fear . . . of the State. Death is a whisper away. The mere suspicion of ideological disloyalty — owning a book from the decadent West, the wrong word at the wrong time — sends millions of innocents into the Gulags or to their executions. Defending the system from its citizens is the MGB, the State Security Force. And no MGB officer is more courageous, conscientious, or idealistic than Leo Demidov.

A war hero with a beautiful wife, Leo lives in relative luxury in Moscow, even providing a decent apartment for his parents. His only ambition has been to serve his country. For this greater good, he has arrested and interrogated.

Then the impossible happens. A different kind of criminal — a murderer — is on the loose, killing at will. At the same time, Leo finds himself demoted and denounced by his enemies, his world turned upside down, and every belief he’s ever held shattered. The only way to save his life and the lives of his family is to uncover this criminal. But in a society that is officially paradise, it’s a crime against the State to suggest that a murderer — much less a serial killer — is in their midst. Exiled from his home, with only his wife, Raisa, remaining at his side, Leo must confront the vast resources and reach of the MBG to find and stop a criminal that the State won’t admit even exists.

“The Edge of Seventeen”

Author: Sokoloff, Alexandra
Format: Print Anthology
Type: Short Story
Pub. Date: August 2008
Published in: The Darker Mask

Winner of the 2009 ITW Thriller Award for the Best Short Story

“The Edge of Seventeen” is a short story by Alexandra Sokoloff published in the anthology called The Darker Mask edited by Gary Phillips and Christopher Chambers.