Thriller, thriller night…

Posted Feb 17, 2006 by Kevin Walker

Updated Feb 17, 2006 at 01:46 PM

Sorry for the Michael Jackson reference. There’s just no excuse. At any rate, that’s the cumbersome intro to today’s entry: a number of thrillers are hitting newstands now or soon. Among them are Kill Me by Stephen White, which already has been praised as a “thinking person’s thriller,” apparently centered on the notion that people can sign a contract that sets in stone the day they will die. Cheery!

Zero To The Bone is Robert Eversz latest in his crime series about ex-con turned tabloid photographer Nina Zero. This time Zero is actually opening an art show of her photographs of “Hollywood pulp scenes,” but things get derailed when Zero gets a package that contains a bondage video that may have ended in death. More cheeriness!!

The Bobbed Haired Bandit by Stephen Duncombe and Andrew Mattson is set in the Roaring 20s - the age of jazz, flappers and illegal booze - and involves a married couple who decide to start robbing corner stores in Brooklyn. This is based on a true story.

Danielle Steel also has a new one - The House - which involves a mysterious old San Francisco mansion being renovated by a no-nonsense attorney who, you guessed it, “cannot explain the force that draws her to the mansion and its history” (according to the book flap). Renovation and mystery!

Finally, yet another medical thriller will hit bookshelves in a few weeks. This one - Isolation Ward by Joshua Spanogle - h involves three homeless women in a Baltimore hospital who might be (here comes the thriller part) the victims of a lethal act of bioterrorism with possible global implications. Now there’s a REALLY cheery premise.

Of course, we don’t read thrillers to be cheered up, do we? That’s where those chicken soup books come in.

Happy reading.