Honor roll:Barry Award for Best Thriller
From AwardAnnals
Each of these books has been nominated for a Barry Award for Best Thriller. They are ranked by honors received.
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The Finder: A Novel
Jin Li is a beautiful, driven young woman who happens to run one dangerous little operation. Manhattan corporations hire her for a simple but delicate task: to destroy the reams of highly classified documents they produce each day. But little do they know that she has been funneling their secrets to her brother, Chen, in Shanghai, and that together they’ve been gaming the international markets, and making a pile of cash. When someone at the Good Pharma corporation, whose stock is plummeting, uncovers the scheme, two of Jin Li’s workers die a grisly death, and Jin is on the run. Her brother extorts Jin’s old flame Ray Grant—an ex-firefighter with a disturbing 9/11 past—to track her down. He’ll have to comb every strata of New York, from the brutal Mexican mafia to the greed-fueled penthouse billionaires of Wall Street, to find her.
An intricate tale of avarice, corruption, and power, Colin Harrison’s masterful new thriller is a “brilliantly executed novel” (The Baltimore Sun).
The Watchman: A Joe Pike Novel
Joe Pike—the ex-cop, ex-Marine, exmercenary from Robert Crais’s superb PI Elvis Cole novels—headlines the explosive action of this page-turning New York Times bestseller.
A wild-living young heiress slams into trouble in the L.A. night—the kind of trouble even her money can’t shut down. After her Aston Martin collides with a mysterious car, Larkin Conner Barkley attempts to help the accident victims—and becomes the sole witness in a federal investigation. Whisking her out of her Beverly Hills world is Joe Pike, hired to shield Larkin Barkley from a relentless team of killers. But when a chain of lies and betrayals tightens around them, Pike drops off the grid and follows his own rules for survival: strike fast, hit hard, hunt down the hunters….
Meet Jonathan Quinn: a freelance operative with a take-no-prisoners style and the heart of a loner. His job? Professional “cleaner.” Nothing too violent, just disposing of bodies, doing a little cleanup if necessary. But in Brett Battles’s electrifying debut novel, Quinn’s latest assignment will change everything, igniting a harrowing journey of violence, betrayal, and revenge.
The job seemed simple enough: investigating a suspicious case of arson. But when a dead body turns up where it doesn’t belong—and Quinn’s handlers at “the Office” turn strangely silent—he knows he’s in over his head. With only a handful of clues, Quinn scrambles for cover, struggling to find out why someone wants him dead…and if it’s linked to a larger attempt to wipe out the Office.
Quinn’s only hope may be Orlando, a woman from his past who’s reluctant to help but who may hold the key to solving the case. Suddenly the two are prying into old crimes, crisscrossing continents, struggling to stay alive long enough to unbury the truth. But as the hunt intensifies, Quinn is stunned…
The sins of the past reverberate into the present, in an extraordinary novel by the new master of international suspense.
It was an ordinary-looking photograph. Just the portrait of a man. But the very sight of it chilled Allon to the bone.
Art restorer and sometime spy Gabriel Allon is sent to Vienna to authenticate a painting, but the real object of his search becomes something else entirely: to find out the truth about the photograph that has turned his world upside down. It is the face of the unnamed man who brutalized his mother in the last days of World War II, during the Death March from Auschwitz. But is it really the same one? If so, who is he? How did he escape punishment? Where is he now?
Fueled by an intensity he has not felt in years, Allon cautiously begins to investigate; but with each layer that is stripped away, the greater the evil that is revealed, a web stretching across sixty years and thousands of lives. Soon, the quest for one monster becomes the quest for many. And the monsters are stirring…
Rich with sharply etched characters and prose, and a plot of astonishing intricacy, this is an uncommonly intelligent thriller by one of our very best writers.
Paranoia: A Novel
Adam Cassidy is twenty-six and a low level employee at a high-tech corporation who hates his job. When he manipulates the system to do something nice for a friend, he finds himself charged with a crime. Corporate Security gives him a choice: prison—or become a spy in the headquarters of their chief competitor, Trion Systems.
They train him. They feed him inside information. Now, at Trion, he’s a star, skyrocketing to the top. He finds he has talents he never knew he possessed. He’s rich, drives a Porsche, lives in a fabulous apartment, and works directly for the CEO. He’s dating the girl of his dreams.
His life is perfect. And all he has to do to keep it that way is betray everyone he cares about and everything he believes in.
But when he tries to break off from his controllers, he finds he’s in way over his head, trapped in a world in which nothing is as it seems and no one can really be trusted.
And then the real nightmare begins…
From the writer whose novels have been called “thrilling” (New York Times) and “dazzling” (USA Today) comes an electrifying…
Brett Battles won rave reviews for his debut novel, The Cleaner, which introduced hero Jonathan Quinn. A freelance operative and professional “cleaner,” Quinn knows better than to get emotionally involved in any of his jobs. But in this superb powerhouse of suspense, Quinn’s latest job is different. A friend and old colleague has been murdered. A woman has gone missing. And for Jonathan Quinn, this time it’s personal.
Anonymity. Trust. Professionalism. In his world, Jonathan Quinn has a few rules. He’ll get rid of bodies that have to disappear; nothing ever gets traced back to him. But when Quinn is called to a busy Los Angeles port where a shipping container has just come in from the sea, it’s clear his rules have been violated. Inside the crate is a dead man—a man who once saved Quinn’s life. And while no one knows how CIA agent Steven Markoff died, Quinn has to do more than clean. He has to find Markoff’s girlfriend, Jenny. To tell her that Markoff is dead. To find out why—and why someone sent Markoff’s body to him.
Until a week ago, Jenny Fuentes was an…
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.
Nick Conover is the CEO of a major corporation, a local boy made good, and once the most admired man in a company town. But that was before the layoffs. When a faceless stalker menaces his family, Nick, a single father of two since the recent death of his wife, finds that the gated community they live in is no protection at all. He decides to take action, a tragedy ensues– and immediately his life spirals out of control…
At work, Nick begins to uncover a conspiracy against him, involving some of his closest colleagues. He doesn’t know who he can trust—including the brilliant, troubled new woman in his life. Meanwhile, his actions are being probed by a homicide detective named Audrey Rhimes, a relentless investigator with a strong sense of morality — and her own, very personal reason for pursuing Nick Conover.
With everything he cares about in the balance, Nick discovers strengths he never knew he had. His enemies don’t realize how hard he’ll fight to save his company. And nobody knows how far he’ll go to protect his family.
Rain Storm: A John Rain Thriller
In Rain Storm, Rain has fled to Brazil to escape the killing business and the enemies who have been encircling him. But his knack for making death seem to have been of “natural causes” and his ability to operate unnoticed in Asia continue to create unwelcome demand for his services. His old employer, the CIA, persuades him to take on a high-risk assignment: a ruthless arms dealer supplying criminal groups throughout Southeast Asia.
The upside? Financial, of course, along with the continued chimera of moral redemption. But first, Rain must survive the downside: a second assassin homing in on the target; the target’s consort-an alluring woman named Delilah with an agenda of her own; and the possibility that the entire mission is nothing but an elaborate setup. From the gorgeous beaches of Rio to the glitzy casinos of Macao to the gritty back streets of Hong Kong and Kowloon, Rain becomes a reluctant player in an international game far deadlier and more insidious than he has ever encountered before.
Collision: A Novel
The international bestseller returns with his most ambitious, multidimensional, and tightly crafted thriller yet, a breakout achievement featuring his hallmark blend of ordinary people in extraordinary danger.
Collision is the story of two men living very different lives—one, a successful corporate consultant who is mourning the murder of his new bride; the other, a former CIA agent known only as “Pilgrim,” whose current assignment for a fringe espionage agency is so treacherous he doesn’t trust even his own boss. When they are thrown together in a violent, unexpected event, the two men realize that they’ve been framed in an elaborate setup. Unsure who to trust and who may just be trying to draw them into the open, the unlikely partners have no choice but to work together. But with everything at stake, Ben has no idea that Pilgrim is harboring some shocking secrets of his own—secrets that will soon force Ben to confront just how blurred the line has become between best friends and bitter enemies.
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