2017 historical thriller, second of its series. After a planned expedition has to be abandoned, Veronica Speedwell and her undeclared beau Stoker are bored in London, and easily lured into investigating a Bohemian murder…
1958 collection of two novellas. A man convicted of murder summons those who have wronged him to meet him post-mortem at "The Assize of the Dying"; and the novelist husband of "Aunt Helen" explains in detail how he could be murdered, then turns up dead. (Later republished as by Ellis Peters.)
2015 historical thriller, first in a series. Veronica is a foundling, now in 1887 left alone in the world by the death of her "aunt". But soon her house is ransacked and a benefactor is murdered…
1903 thriller. On a sailing trip in the Baltic and points nearby, two young men discover a German plot.
1944 psychological thriller, dir. George Cukor, Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman: IMDb / allmovie. Is she going mad?
1940 psychological thriller, dir. Thorold Dickinson, Anton Walbrook, Diana Wynyard: IMDb / allmovie. Is she going mad?
2009 thriller, third of this ongoing series; translated from the original German by Rachel Ward. A woman disappears soon after her eighteenth birthday; her boyfriend employs Nea to find her.
2012 collection of short stories (published between 1958 and 1992) with murder, or at least attempted murder, as a theme.
2011 thriller, second of this ongoing series; translated from the original German by Rachel Ward. A new client brings Nea a complicated multi-stage puzzle…
1952 thriller. Punch, Phyllida, Peter and Mab are on a European trekking holiday, before they have to go back to school or work. They meet a pleasant old man on the train, but later find him murderously attacked. And then things start to get odd. (Later republished as by Ellis Peters.)
2011 thriller, first of an ongoing series; translated from the original German by Rachel Ward. Nea Fox is a private investigator, going in undercover to a weekend gathering in a house said to be haunted. It's all going to get much more complicated.
1980 collection of short stories (written between 1940 and 1980) with murder as a theme.
2010 mystery/thriller, fifth in its series. Georgiana Rannoch, 34th in line to the throne, finds herself in Nice with a mission to recover the Queen's "borrowed" snuffbox.
2019 thriller, thirteenth and as of this writing last in the series about Charlie (Charlotte) Fox, former soldier and currently private bodyguard. After stumbling into an ambush aimed at someone else, Charlie quickly jumps from unemployed into a new bodyguarding gig. With an arms dealer, but you can't have everything, right?
2010 mystery/thriller, fourth in its series. Georgiana Rannoch, 34th in line to the throne, is sent to the wedding of Maria Theresa of Romania to Prince Nicholas of Bulgaria (after all she was at school with "Fatty Matty").
1989 late Cold War naval/espionage thriller. The captain of the nuclear attack submarine Truculent, sent north to join a large NATO exercise, has dropped out of communication. But what's he planning to do?
2009 mystery/thriller, third in its series. Georgiana Rannoch, 34th in line to the throne, travels to Scotland to try to find out who's trying to arrange "accidents" for various of the Royal Family…
2008 mystery/thriller, second in its series. It's still 1932, and Queen Mary is determined to separate her son Edward from That Simpson Woman. Enter Georgiana, 34th in line to the throne, who can be invited to host a Bavarian princess, eighteen and just out of the convent, and throw her into the path of the prince…
2021 contemporary thriller with fantastic elements. DC Constance Fairchild was taking time off in rural Wales to recover, when the plague happened and she decided to wait it out. But as usual, trouble comes looking for her.
1930 thriller. The Saint and Roger Conway work again to prevent Rayt Marius from plunging Europe into (highly profitable for him) war. Vt The Avenging Saint.
2019 contemporary thriller. After the events of the last book, DC Constance Fairchild is on suspension and hounded by the press. But she's a born copper, so when a man turns up by her bins, mutilated and barely alive, she can't keep out of it…
1988 thriller/action, dir. John McTiernan, Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman; IMDb / allmovie.
2017 thriller, twelfth in the series about Charlie (Charlotte) Fox, former soldier and currently private bodyguard. Charlie's in Iraq, on the trail of whoever tortured an ex-soldier to death – because there's a chance it might be her old lover Sean.
2021 thriller/mystery, dir. Jaume Colette-Sara, Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt; IMDb / allmovie. In 1916, Dr Lily Houghton travels up the Amazon in search of a tree that could revolutionise medicine…
2012 thriller novelette, prequel to the series Her Royal Spyness. "Georgie", cousin to the king but really of no importance, is coming to the end of her Season with no offers. She doesn't particularly fancy Prince Otto of Prussia, but going to a Halloween Ball (an American innovation) should be harmless enough…
2013 thriller, eleventh in the series about Charlie (Charlotte) Fox, former soldier and currently private bodyguard. Charlie's in Colombia, helping a disaster relief crew after an earthquake. Not really her thing? No, but her employer is also concerned about the rumours of large-scale thefts that seem to be following this team around the world, and the previous security guy has just mysteriously died…
1974 thriller. A huge shark seems to have taken up residence off the tourist beaches at Amity, Long Island…
1936 thriller. Iris Carr is a poor little rich girl travelling by train from "a remote corner of Europe" back to England via Trieste. She talks with a Miss Froy, who's briefly amusing. Then after a short rest she discovers that Miss Froy is no longer there, and everyone claims that she has never existed… Vt, and loosely filmed in 1938 as, The Lady Vanishes.
1907 thud and blunder. Herbert Wrayson finds a young lady rifling the desk in his flat. It turns out that she was after the fellow upstairs. But later that man turns up murdered…
1919 boys' adventure. Martin Hamer's airship design is stolen (and covertly constructed), along with the niece of Mortimer Carne, the industrial magnate whom the inventor had hoped to get to build the thing. Clearly the thing to do is build another airship and track him down.
1930 thriller. The Saint and Pat Holm stumble across a weapon so terrible it cannot be allowed to exist, even in the hands of the British government. Vt The Saint Closes the Case.
1987 Cold War espionage thriller. The upgrade to Polaris warheads, to get them through a new generation of Soviet defences, is one of the most closely-guarded of British secrets. Then one of the pages is found in a rubbish bin on Parliament Hill…
2019, dir. Mike Mitchell/Trisha Gum, Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks: IMDb / allmovie
The peace of Brickville is shattered by invaders from Duplo.
1923 historical thriller, set in the rebellion of 1745. Alastair Maclean is carrying messages to England and getting promises of support for his Prince. But it seems that one of his fellow couriers may be a traitor to the Cause.
2020 thriller/mystery, dir. Harry Bradbeer, Millie Bobby Brown, Henry Cavill; IMDb / allmovie.
On the morning of her sixteenth birthday, Enola Holmes finds that her mother has disappeared without a word. But since she's the younger sister of Mycroft and Sherlock, she doesn't wait to see what will happen next. On the way to London, she runs into someone fleeing from his own problems…
2018 contemporary thriller, first in a new series. DC Constance Fairchild goes to a meeting with an undercover officer, only to find he's been tortured and shot. And her superiors are determined to prove that she's the corrupt cop who did it.
2012 thriller, tenth in the series about Charlie (Charlotte) Fox, former soldier and currently private bodyguard. Charlie's on a new assignment, guarding an old client while he goes on a fundraising trip for a friend's charity. But she's not sure she can trust either her partner or her fellow bodyguards… Spoilers for earlier books in the series.
2019 thriller, dir. Elizabeth Banks, Kristen Stewart, Naomi Scott; IMDb / allmovie.
The Townsend Agency is a covert international force for justice. Now they have to prevent a new technology from being turned into a universal assassination tool.
1989 thriller, first in the long series dealing with police detective Lucas Davenport. Someone is raping and murdering women in Minneapolis, but unlike your typical serial killer this one is smart…
Contemporary thriller novella, introduction to the John Milton series. Milton is an assassin for the British government, in North Korea to deliver a "message" to the controllers of their hacking teams.
1976 thriller or romantic suspense. After the death of her father, Bryony Ashley returns to Ashley Court; the place is going to ruin for lack of income, and it won't be hers anyway, but there's still business to take care of. But her father tried to leave her a warning…
1968 thriller, short novella. The children's novelist Cora Gresham has decided to set her latest pirate story in Lanzarote, so she'll have to visit, and her secretary Perdita West has to make the arrangements. But the house that would be the ideal writing retreat is already occupied.
1922 thriller. James Meredith is found guilty of murdering his romantic rival, and sentenced to prison. But there's a question of inheritance, and a hasty marriage leaves an outsider in danger. vt The Destroying Angel.
2008 thriller film, dir. Danny Lerner, Stephen Baldwin, Vanessa Johansson: IMDb / allmovie. A shark is killing divers in Venice, but we can't let the word get out or the tourists will be scared off. US vt Sharks in Venice.
2007 mystery/thriller, first in its series. In 1932, Lady Victoria Georgiana Charlotte Eugenie ("Georgie"), thirty-fourth in line to the throne, is desperate to get away from her brother's frozen castle in Scotland, and unwilling to be married off to Prince Siegfried of Romania, but is without funds of her own, so she travels to London to try to make her own way in life. Things rapidly become excessively complicated.
2012… hard to categorise, but I think "contemporary thriller" comes closest. Unemployed web designer Clay Jannon gets a job at a bookshop… which turns out to be distinctly Odd.
1926 Ruritanian romance, originally serialised in 1914-1915. Travelling in the tiny kingdom of Lutha, between Austria and Serbia, American tourist Barney Custer finds himself mistaken for the young king, who's been confined for years with a mysterious ailment, and rapidly becomes mixed up in adventure.
1937 thriller. Caroline Watts, not wanting to be a burden on her married sister, takes up a post as games mistress at a minor school for girls, but soon runs up against the horrid Matron Miss Yaxley-Moore, who seems to have the Head under her thumb. Was the previous games mistress's death really misadventure?
1936 thriller, inter-war thud-and-blunder, last novel dealing with Richard Hannay and Sandy Arbuthnot. Hannay is feeling old and stale, not helped by seeing an old firebrand friend settled in suburban domesticity, when an old promise leads to adventure one more time.
Naval technothriller, second in the series dealing with Captain Amanda Garrett and the USS Cunningham. As a Chinese civil war turns one-sided, US forces intervene to prevent nuclear holocaust.
1967 mystery/thriller or romantic suspense. On holiday in Syria and the Lebanon, Christy Mansel runs into her cousin Charles. They decide to drop in on their great-aunt "Lady" Harriet, who's been doing the Lady Hester Stanhope thing and living in the local style in a remote palace. But when Christy steals a march on Charles and goes on her own, she discovers a rather more disturbing situation than she expected…
1929 thriller, inter-war thud-and-blunder. In South America, Sandy Arbuthnot and Archie Roylance find themselves involved in fomenting a revolution, but not in the usual way.
2015 Norwegian disaster film, dir. Roar Uthaug, Kristoffer Joner, Ane Dahl Torp: IMDb / allmovie. The Åkerneset mountain overlooks the tourist village of Geiranger, but a landslide could cause a tidal wave along the fjord. It's going to. vt The Wave.
2005 mystery/thriller, first in a series. Dr Anya Crichton is a forensic pathologist (divorced, ex-husband has custody of the kid) trying to build a freelance practice as an expert witness. But several victims she examines have some unexpected findings in common.
1899 thriller, collection of short stories from 1898 with new material. A. J. Raffles, prominent society man and cricketer, leads a double life as a burglar.
1968 classic English detective fiction; nineteenth and last of Allingham's novels of Albert Campion, finished after her death by her husband. A hamlet on the Essex marshes is keeping secrets, and apparently some of them are worth murdering for.
1965 classic English detective fiction; eighteenth of Allingham's novels of Albert Campion. Someone seems to be developing mechanically-assisted telepathy, but what does it have to do with Campion's nephew?
1963 classic English detective fiction; seventeenth of Allingham's novels of Albert Campion. Timothy Kinnit learns, on the eve of his elopement, that he was adopted, and tries to find out more about his parentage; then he becomes a suspect in a suspicious death and a housebreaking.
1919 thriller, third of Buchan's books about Richard Hannay; wartime thud-and-blunder. Hannay has to go undercover among the pacifists and conscientious objectors to root out a German agent.
1958 classic English detective fiction; sixteenth of Allingham's novels of Albert Campion. Several crimes seem to be vaguely related to a shabby-respectable area in west London, but how can it all be put together? US vtt Tether's End and Ten Were Missing.
1965 mystery/thriller or romantic suspense. Vanessa March, married two years, had a fight with her husband Lewis just before he left on a business trip to Stockholm. But then he shows up on a newsreel about a circus fire in Austria… with his arm round a blonde.
2016 noir thriller, 10 episodes. A forensic neuropsychiatrist finds himself getting in way, way over his head.
1957 thriller/war story. The island of Navarone, off the Turkish coast, contains a set of naval guns in a rock fortress that can't be effectively bombed, surrounded by a massive occupation force. Two sabotage missions have failed, one by boat, one by parachute. It's time for the third.
1955 thriller/war story, MacLean's first novel. Ulysses, a heavily-modified Dido-class cruiser, has been worked nearly to death on the Arctic convoys, but in spite of that, and of an arguable mutiny among the men, she's sent out for one more run.
1964 mystery/thriller or romantic suspense. After the play that was to be her Big Break closed in disgrace, Lucy Waring goes to visit her married sister in Corfu. But why would anyone shoot at the dolphin that comes into their bay?
1915 thriller; first of Buchan's books about Richard Hannay. Bored in London, Hannay invites his worried neighbour into his flat, and soon finds both the authorities and a cunning group of terrorists against him.
2016 seinen manga adaptation, 12 episodes: AniDB, vtt "Erased" and "The Town Without Me". Fujinuma Satoru sometimes slips back in time to just before a life-threatening accident, which lets him try to correct it. When his mother is murdered, he finds himself thrown back to eighteen years earlier, when he was in elementary school and someone was killing his classmates.
1930 thriller, second of the Saint series. In three loosely-linked novellas, the Saint takes on a succession of criminals.
1916 thriller; second of Buchan's books about Richard Hannay. Richard Hannay and Sandy Arbuthnot are convalescing from wounds received at the Battle of Loos when word comes from Sir Walter Bullivant of the Foreign Office: the Germans have some kind of trump-card with which they're planning to set the Moslem world on fire.
2006 psychological thriller. After a highly public series of tragic incidents, Antonia Weston goes to Cheshire to stay in a cottage near a small market town, hoping for anonymity and peace. But she soon experiences a series of events which seem to be echoing the past she's trying to forget.
1962; mystery/thriller or romantic suspense. Nicola Ferris, on holiday from her job at the British Embassy in Athens, has been looking forward to getting away from it all in an obscure corner of Crete. But a day of random wandering brings her into contact with two men, one of them badly injured.
1961; mystery/thriller or romantic suspense. Mary Grey has no particular prospects, but she's a dead ringer for Annabel Winslow, the heir to the small farm of Whitescar, who's been missing for eight years. Con Winslow, who's been running the place as Annabel's grandfather gradually declines, sees a chance to pull a Brat Farrar, produce the "missing heir", and get the place whether or not it's willed to him. But Mary has her own plans.
2008 alternate-history suspense/thriller, last in the "Small Change" trilogy. In the fascist Britain of 1960, former Inspector Carmichael still runs the Watch, the secret police charged with rounding up Jews, Communists, and other undesirables; his adopted niece, Elvira, is looking forward to her début.
2007 alternate-history suspense/thriller, second in the "Small Change" trilogy. Eight years after the "peace with honour" of 1941, as Mark Normanby's new government is cracking down on Jewish communist terrorists, a bomb goes off in a Hampstead suburb. Inspector Carmichael, compromised but useful to his political masters, investigates.
1959; mystery/thriller or romantic suspense. Camilla Haven, on holiday in Athens, is lamenting that nothing ever happens to her. Then a stranger brings her "the car for Delphi", for "Monsieur Simon", for which someone has apparently already paid the deposit, and tells her that it's a matter of life and death…
1999 thriller. On board the International Space Station, a microbiological experiment has gone wrong. Dr Emma Watson tries to keep the rest of the crew, and herself, alive in an increasingly challenging environment. (Nothing to do with the 2013 film of the same name.)
1958; mystery/thriller or romantic suspense. Linda Martin gets a job as governess to the young Comte de Valmy, at his château in the French Alps. But why did her employer seem so keen that she not be able to speak any French?
2013 thriller, third in Brookmyre's Glasgow crime series. Jasmine Sharp's protector, the vanished and reappeared gang enforcer Glen Fallan, is arrested for the murder of his old enemy Stevie Fullerton; DS Catherine McLeod is happy to see Fallan put away, but wants to do this by the book, and there are disturbing inconsistencies.
2001 espionage thriller. Caroline Carmichael, CIA intelligence analyst, thought she'd lost her husband in a plane bombing. Until he showed up in a photo of the people who had just kidnapped the Vice-President of the USA during a terrorist attack in Berlin.
1957; mystery/thriller or romantic suspense. Jennifer Silver goes to the Pyrenées to visit her widowed cousin, who's staying in a convent and thinking about taking orders. But when she arrives, she finds her cousin has suddenly died and been buried. Or has she?
2011 thriller: five short stories about Charlie (Charlotte) Fox, former soldier and current private bodyguard.
1956; mystery/thriller or romantic suspense. In 1953, the fashion model Gianetta Drury has over-worked herself, and leaves London just before the Coronation to spend some time in a remote hotel on Skye. But it's not the peaceful retreat she'd hoped for.
2014; 19th book of Jack Reacher. Some bad man has had a long range shot at the chief man of France, but few men are good enough to have a go, and Jack put one of them in clink some years back. So some spies bring him on board to help catch the bad man, and be bait.
Ninth thriller in the series about Charlie (Charlotte) Fox, former soldier and current private bodyguard. Children of the super-rich are being kidnapped in the Hamptons, and Charlie is hired by the mother of one of the potential victims. But it's all more complex than it looks.
Some people may review the new Star Wars trailer. I find this one more interesting.
1992; romantic suspense. Catherine Weaver is a makeup artist for low-budget films who's driving to visit her pregnant friend on a rainy night, when she hits Victor Holland who's just stumbled onto the road having been shot. Then things start moving.
In a small village by the Devon coast, a very strange fellow has moved into the old pill-box on the cliff. Excitement ensues.
In an attempt to get details of the latest Chinese missile submarine, an American attack boat is sent in to shadow her. Spoilers.
Eighth thriller in the series about Charlie (Charlotte) Fox, former soldier and current private bodyguard. A man's son joined a cult, and later got killed; he went in to find out what had been so tempting, and decided to stay. Now Charlie's on the team that's getting him out. But it's all rather more complicated than it looks…
1954; mystery/thriller or romantic suspense; first published novel by Mary Stewart. Charity Selborne is on holiday in Provence, and meets young David Shelley and his stepmother Loraine Bristol. Somewhere in the background is David's father, recently acquitted of the grisly murder of his best friend, and believed by many to be mad…
Seventh thriller in the series about Charlie (Charlotte) Fox, former soldier and current private bodyguard. Charlie's estranged father turns up unexpectedly in the USA, and seems to be bent on professional self-destruction under the eyes of the media. Why?
Naval technothriller. Argentine troops invade key locations in Antarctica, and the only force in a position to do anything about it is a new US Navy destroyer.
1932, dir. Ernest B. Schoedsack, Joel McCrea, Fay Wray: IMDb / allmovie. Also known as The Hounds of Zaroff for its British release.
A famous hunter is shipwrecked, then makes it to the shore of a supposedly deserted island. But his host has plans for him.
Short story. An expert hunter, washed overboard from his ship, makes it to an island where his host explains how he makes hunting a real challenge: his prey is human beings.
Fourth of Buchan's books about Richard Hannay; 1920s thud-and-blunder.
Sixth thriller in the series about Charlie (Charlotte) Fox, former soldier and currently private bodyguard. Charlie guards a woman whose ex-boyfriend is causing trouble after a lottery win, but it soon becomes more complicated than that.
Airliners over the Atlantic are being shot down by submarine-launched missiles. How can this be stopped? Spoilers.
In the mid 2000s, China tries to buy seven Kilo-class diesel submarines from Russia. The Americans aim to prevent this. Meanwhile, something odd is going on at Kerguelen Island.
In a now-alternate 2002, a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier suddenly disappears at sea, apparently in a nuclear accident. What happened?
Third of the "Dickson McCunn" novels: superior thud and blunder. The affairs of Evallonia, the mitteleuropan country that provided motivations in Castle Gay, are now in the foreground, as forces gather round the potential restoration of its monarchy.
2005, dir. Ben Rekhi, Christopher Masterson, Ajay Naidu: IMDb / allmovie
After a presumed terrorist attack pollutes the water supply of Los Angeles, three groups of people do their best to keep going as society collapses.
2014, dir. Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks: IMDb / allmovie
In a world where… one man must… and it's all made of Lego.
The USSR launches a limited nuclear strike against the USA. Things get worse.
2013, dir. Dean Parisot, Bruce Willis, Mary-Louise Parker: IMDb / allmovie
Frank Moses, former CIA special operator, is still retired, and trying to be domestic; but once again the past just won't leave him alone.
Twenty years after the Second World War, a crippled veteran travels to the Pacific to try to find out what happened to his family during the evacuation of Singapore.
2011, dir. Steven Soderbergh, Gina Carano, Michael Angarano: IMDb / allmovie
An agent betrayed and framed by her boss sets about taking him down.
Late in the Second World War, the crew of a midget submarine gets into trouble off the Italian coast.
Second of the Dickson McCunn novels, though he has only a minor part in most of it. Two of the former Gorbals Die-Hards, Dougie and (no longer Wee) Jaikie, go off on a walking holiday, and get involved with a kidnapped press baron and two separate lots of Sinister Foreigners.
Jerry Mitchell, aboard an Ohio SSGN, goes on a mission to extract two Iranians with knowledge of the nuclear weapons programme from that country. Mild spoilers will follow.
In the 1950s, retired MTB commander Philip Vivian gets into trouble while struggling to run a small yacht charter business.
Some time after the events of Dangerous Ground, Jerry Mitchell heads north again in USS Seawolf. Mild spoilers will follow.
1996, dir. Jan de Bont, Helen Hunt, Bill Paxton: IMDb / allmovie
A team of atmospheric scientists chases tornadoes. Action ensues.
A Los Angeles-class submarine, USS Memphis, goes on an intelligence-gathering mission off Novaya Zemlya.
In 1997, an Improved Los Angeles-class attack submarine, USS Cheyenne, joins the war against China.
After the total nuclear war, the captain of a missile destroyer leads his crew through the irradiated world and towards a new life.
I am going to talk about plot details, so if you care about not knowing that sort of thing you probably shouldn't read this review.
Three men find themselves successful, but un-challenged, and bored with their lives. They decide to take on a challenge: they will poach from well-defended estates in Scotland, and warn the owners that they're coming, by sending letters over the name "John Macnab".