Recommended Reading — Crime and Intellectual Thrillers

The Queen of the South, Arturo Perez-Reverte — Sets the standard in intellectual thrillers. A story of betrayal, love and intrigue in the world of drug trafficking in Mexico, Spain, Gibraltar and Morocco. The archetypal Hispanic heroine as protagonist.Translated from the Spanish.

The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafon — A mystery-come-murder thriller set in 1945's Barcelona. An innocent quest for an author's books discovers that someone has been systematically destroying every copy of his work. But why? And who? An investigative hunt that leads to murder and madness in a literary style that creeps up on you.

Havana Best Friends, Jose Latour — Against a backdrop of atmospheric Cuba, crime fiction at its best. As the good guys, bad guys fight it out and it's more challenge to get out of Cuba than obtain a fortune in diamonds. Murder, deceit, paranoia. An example of Cuba's crime fiction, not available in English until recently.

Restless, William Boyd — A spy thriller partly set during World War II (1939-1945) with the consequences of a secret life coming to the fore years later. Eva Delectorskaya, a Russian emigrant living in Paris, is recruited by the British Secret Service. She is trained to be a spy and trust no one. Since the war, Eva changed her name and has a new life. When someone tries to kill her, she recruits her daughter for one more assignment. Paranoia, moral accommodations. A mother her daughter didn’t know at all. A story of a new life. A more readable follow up to the John le Carré genre.

In the Woods, Tanya French — Irish writer Tana French's first novel (Also, The Likeness, her second novel) creates compelling insights into crime detection. Almost literary in style. The opening lines of In the Woods provide a flavor.

"What I warn you to remember is that I am a detective. Our relationship with truth is fundamental but cracked, refracting confusingly like fragmented glass. It is the core of our careers, the endgame of every move we make, and we pursue it with strategies painstakingly constructed with lies and concealment and every variation on deception. The truth is the most desirable woman in the world and we are the most jealous of lovers, reflexively denying anyone else the slightest glimpse of her. We betray her routinely, spending hours and days stupor-like in lies...."

What follows is a challenging psychological detection story that breaks the standard mould.