Annal:2007 Barry Award for Best Thriller
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Barry Award in the year 2007. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
- 2007 Barry-Thriller winner
- Score: 10.57
Gabriel Allon, art restorer and spy, is about to face the greatest challenge of his life. An al-Qaeda suspect is killed in London, and photographs are found on his computer—photographs that lead Israeli intelligence to suspect that al-Qaeda is planning one of its most audacious attacks ever, straight at the heart of the Vatican.
In the days and weeks to come, Allon and his colleagues will find themselves in a deadly duel of wits against one of the most dangerous men in the world—a hunt that will take them across Europe to the Caribbean and back. But for them, there may simply not be enough of anything: enough time, enough facts, enough luck.
All Allon can do is set his trap—and hope that he is not the one caught in it.
Cold Kill: A Dan Shepherd Mystery
- 2007 Barry-Thriller nominee
- Score: 6.57
A trawler in the North Sea is in trouble. Its cargo: hundreds of illegal immigrants. Dan Shepherd is sent to lead the rescue operation, and then to investigate the tragedy. What he finds is a counterfeit currency ring and a huge people-trafficking network. But the web reaches wider still, and as his investigation deepens, he discovers that the criminal proceeds are destined to finance the greatest terrorist attack of all.
Former SAS trooper Dan Shepherd, now a detective in an elite undercover squad, is at the center of these hard-hitting, high-action thrillers from Stephen Leather. Scalpel-sharp suspense and as gritty as the genre gets.
The Foreign Correspondent: A Novel
- 2007 Barry-Thriller nominee
- Score: 6.57
Paris, a winter night in 1938: a murder/suicide at a discreet lovers’ hotel. But this is no romantic traged–it is the work of the OVRA, Mussolini’s fascist secret police, and is meant to eliminate the editor of Liberazione, a clandestine émigré newspaper. Carlo Weisz, who has fled from Trieste and secured a job as a foreign correspondent with the Reuters bureau, becomes the new editor.
Weisz is, at that moment, in Spain, reporting on the last campaign of the Spanish civil war. But as soon as he returns to Paris, he is pursued by the French Sûreté, by agents of the OVRA, and by officers of the British Secret Intelligence Service. In the desperate politics of Europe on the edge of war, a foreign correspondent is a pawn, worth surveillance, or blackmail, or murder.
- 2007 Barry-Thriller nominee
- Score: 6.57
We’ve all been there. A loved one or a dear friend becomes desperately ill or is tragically injured. Someone—maybe even you—says, “If that ever happens to me, I wish someone would just…kill me.”
What if you could choose when to die? But once you decide, you can’t change your mind. Ever. No matter what.
Welcome to the next step in the evolution of suspense fiction, to an in-your-face/what-would-you-do? topical thriller. Kill Me is a brilliantly conceived roller-coaster ride that zeros in on some of the most contentious issues of our time, the human yearning for connection between the choices we make about our lives and deaths.
Killer Instinct: A Novel
- 2007 Barry-Thriller nominee
- Score: 6.57
Jason Steadman is a thirty-year-old sales executive. He’s a witty, charismatic guy who’s well liked at the office, but he lacks the “killer instinct” necessary to move up the corporate ladder. But all that will change one evening when Jason meets Kurt Semko, a former Special Forces officer just back from Iraq.
Soon, good things start to happen for Jason—and bad things start to happen to Jasons rivals. Only too late does Jason discover that his friend Kurt has been secretly paving his path to the top by the most “efficient”—and ruthless—means available. After all, Kurt says, “Business is war, right?”
When Jason tries to put a stop to it, he finds that his new best friend has become the most dangerous enemy imaginable. And now it’s far more than just his career that lies in the balance.
- 2007 Barry-Thriller nominee
- Score: 6.57
John Meron, a happily married father of two, who’s never been in trouble, receives a phone call that will change his life forever. His friend, Jack Calley, a high-flying city lawyer, is screaming down the phone for help. As Meron listens, Calley is murdered. His last words, spoken to his killer, are the first two lines of Meron’s address.
Confused and terrified, Meron scoops up his children and hurries out of the house. Just in time. Within minutes a car pulls up outside and three men get out. It’s clear that they’re coming for him. He’s being hunted and he has no idea why. And with his wife missing, an unidentified corpse in her office, and the police after him for murder, his life’s about to get one hell of a lot worse.
