17-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
The Best New Thriller Novels
What would you do if your beloved, thoughtful husband inexplicably grabbed a gun, took some strangers hostage in a warehouse and instigated a tense standoff with the police? 'Tell my wife that I love her,' the husband, Luke, tells a police negotiator before shooting two of the hostages to death and escaping out the back, seemingly never to be seen again.
After this delectably unlikely opening, McAllister's latest domestic stress-fest, FAMOUS LAST WORDS (Morrow, 369 pp., $30), jumps ahead seven years. Luke has not been heard from all this time; the dead hostages have never been identified; and Luke's wife, Cam, a literary agent (and part-time narrator of the book), is trying to distract herself with Charlie, a nice guy she's dated a few times.
But she can't believe her once loving husband is gone for good, or that he's really an assassin. 'Sometimes, Cam thinks she sees him,' McAllister writes. There are strange happenings, like a cryptic text she receives consisting of a long string of numbers. Is Luke trying to communicate with her? And what about the clues being uncovered by the former police negotiator in the case, Niall, who has never gotten over what happened and still dreams of solving the mystery?
The pieces of the puzzle emerge slowly, but they come together very nicely. A bonus: the chance to read excerpts from a new thriller submitted by one of Cam's clients, which form part of the book. 'It's so delicious, the slide into make-believe,' McAllister writes, and she could be describing us as well as herself. 'She can almost feel it on her skin like a warm embrace.'
Binge thoroughly unsettled readers with his last book, 'Ascension,' an unusual account of a massive mountain that inexplicably appeared in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. In DISSOLUTION (Riverhead, 372 pp., $30), he messes with our heads once more. This chronology-hopping work of speculative fiction about time, memory and scientists run amok is suspenseful, provocative and surprisingly tender.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber? Log in.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
