Tag Archives: Thriller

328F: Terrorist plot foiled by mismatched federal agents

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I listened to an audiobook from a library a couple years ago and have been searching for several years for it, but have been unable to find it. The library has torn itself apart trying to find it and I have physically gone through every audiobook but still can’t find it.

Here is what I remember:
The book starts out in Washington.  A terrorist plot is discovered by a female agent, FBI?, and is brought to the appropriate gov agency. The director knows that this is an extremist op and calls in a recently retired/parted CIA or some other black ops agent.  He has had his fill and is reluctant to take the mission but makes a deal that  this really will be his last mission.  He grudgingly accepts the mission and they are sent undercover to Europe/England to track down and kill the terrorist quietly. I think it was sanctioned by the President. He is an “off the books” guy and is not tied down by following the law while the female agent is by the books. She slowly learns what it takes to accomplish their mission and slowly warms to the guy. They have to use fake names, fake credits, and stay off the grid while tracking the terrorist, as I think the terrorists found out about it and began tracking them. I remember they try to buy some guns from some Eastern European gangsters and get into a shootout in a London garage when the deal goes bad. He has to use his contacts to get around and to track terrorists. I know they rented a seedy hotel room and he went out to get food and a burner phone and someone came to attack them while she was alone. They had to deal with the underworld trying to get info on the terrorist. I think the book ends when they catch-up with the terrorist attack around the London eye(ferris wheel?). The terrorist may have been a suicide bomber with a dirty bomb, but can’t remember for sure..
For some reason I thought it was written by a female author but I have searched every female action/suspense writer and have not found it.  All I listen to is spy/action novels and the title must have popped out when scanning the titles but it wasn’t obvious.

325F: Disappearing Girlfriend’s Sister Turns Out To Be The Missing Woman

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I recently read a book, it was a “psychological thriller”.  Basically there was a guy from Ireland (calling him Shane) who had moved to England and stayed with a male friend. Shane got a girlfriend who was lost in London and he took her under his wing. They eventually went away together and on the way back, they stopped at a rest stop and he told the police she went missing while he was in the rest stop bathroom.

Shane was initially questioned as she was never found but never charged with her murder.  The London flatmate eventually suggests that they put a bench out in honor of the missing girl. The girls sister shows at this event.  Eventually Shane and the missing girl’s sister connect and become engaged.  Once it becomes announced in the paper, odd things start to happen, including the leaving of the small inside of a Russian nesting doll all over the place for Shane and fiancee to find.

Eventually, we find that the fiancee is actually the missing girl and that her sister had actually died years ago by her abusive dad in some small, hard to get to island town.

Any idea what this book is?

307N: Expat parents killed in Africa

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Published pre 2006, probably UK author.

In the prologue, a UK expat family is somewhere in Africa, and the parents are suddenly killed, I think in a helicopter crash that turns out not to be an accident.  The children sounded interesting, but they aren’t very relevant to the rest of the story.

The rest of the story focuses on a single male protagonist, in his 30s or 40s, probably the brother of the woman who was killed.  He is drawn into some international conspiracy, is at some physical peril, and solves things.

I thought it was by Sam Llewellyn but I can’t find it on his website.  It has that kind of feel – like Sam Llewellyn or Dick Francis or the Canadian Jon Evans, a likeable but lonely amateur accidentally falling into a crime network.

In the mass market paperback edition I read in Canada in the late 1990s or early 2000s, the cover might have had a silhouette of a tree on a yellowish sky, and the title might have been Under the (some variety of exotic) Tree.

273A: A thrilling debut

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Looking for a book by a first time author, Harvard grad. Outstanding effort. I believe it was a political or medical thriller. A car (limo or cab) explodes in an assassination attempt but there’s no debris, just vapor or dust. That’s one scene, not sure it’s the actual plot. Late 1990s.