Category: Thriller

Underground Airlines by Ben H Winters

As a young Asian girl with shallow roots in Virginia and a voracious reading appetite, I was absolutely seduced by Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With The Wind. Once I settled permanently in America, moving north over the course of a decade from Virginia to DC to Maryland, widening my circle of colleagues and friends, and becoming …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/09/11/underground-airlines-by-ben-h-winters-2/

Love Me to Death (Lucy Kincaid #1) by Allison Brennan

Due diligence for work! I didn’t like this quite as much as I enjoyed the Max Revere books I’ve read so far, most likely because there is So Much Backstory alluded to here that it doesn’t feel like the start of a series but the continuation of some other book I can’t quite figure out. …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/07/09/love-me-to-death-lucy-kincaid-1-by-allison-brennan/

Notorious (Max Revere Novels, #1) by Allison Brennan

Honestly, I picked this up for due diligence for work but if it’s anything to go by, this will be an assignment I absolutely adore! I had so many Veronica Mars flashbacks when reading this book: smart, sassy lead investigates the death of her high school best friend and discovers secrets and lies amidst her …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/07/05/notorious-max-revere-novels-1-by-allison-brennan/

Celine: A Novel by Peter Heller

I always love an older female crime solver, and Celine is hopefully the first in a series featuring such a heroine, loosely based on the author’s mother, who was also a blue blood debutante turned private investigator, handling primarily cases of family reunion. Hired by a beautiful middle-aged woman to investigate the disappearance of her …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/06/22/celine-a-novel-by-peter-heller/

Amberlough by Lara Elena Donnelly

As far as fantasy novels go, this has a great setting and characters (with one exception that I’ll get to in a minute) and above all atmosphere. Essentially an alternate world take on Weimar Berlin before the fascists’ rise to power, it depicts life lived on a razor’s age, hedonism in the maw of societal …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/05/28/amberlough-by-lara-elena-donnelly/

The Hunt For Red October by Tom Clancy

Jesus, Mary and Joseph, that took forever to read. Which isn’t the reason I’ve been away from here for so long, for which I tender my apologies: work has been extra busy recently, and I only read this to keep up with Ingress Book Club. But to the book! I expected much better, tbh. I …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/07/10/the-hunt-for-red-october-by-tom-clancy/

CyberStorm by Matthew Mather

At its heart, CyberStorm is a book about how the human condition unravels under intense external pressure. Here, the external pressure is a record-breaking blizzard that strikes Manhattan as the Internet, and the many essential services it controls, fall victim to mysterious cyber attacks (which are actually very cleverly explained in the book’s denouement.) There …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/02/29/cyberstorm-by-matthew-mather/

Disclaimer by Renee Knight

About halfway through this book, I hated everyone involved (with the great exception of Catherine,) including, and this is saying something, the author. But I’m glad I gritted my teeth and got to the end, because it was well worth it. In Disclaimer, people are awful to each other because they seek to assuage their …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/11/29/disclaimer-by-renee-knight/

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein

So you get to the one part in the book (and anyone who’s read it will know what I’m talking about) and you stop, stunned. And you go back and you read the last part over again. And if you’re me, and essentially a British schoolgirl at your core, like Maddy you burst into uncontrollable …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/11/06/code-name-verity-by-elizabeth-wein/

The Girl On The Train by Paula Hawkins

I think I would have liked this book more were it not marketed as the next Gone Girl. On its own, it’s a decent mystery novel with an excellent framing device, but I was expecting something far more diabolical and cautionary than the “don’t marry a psychopath” takeaway which, while good advice, is also fairly …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/09/01/the-girl-on-the-train-by-paula-hawkins/