Latest news with #thrillers
Yahoo
18-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
4 Must-Watch Thrillers on Peacock Right Now (July 2025)
Peacock may have a high turnover rate for films, but it's still got a killer lineup of thrillers to watch this month. Most notable, Peacock will soon be the streaming home for Drop, a critically acclaimed thriller that debuted in theaters earlier this year. You can find that film alongside the rest of the Watch With Us team's picks for the must-watch thrillers on Peacock in July. Note that not all of these movies will be on Peacock after July 31, so watch them while you can. 6 Must-Watch Movies on Peacock Right Now (July 2025) 'Drop' (2025) Getting back into the dating scene is a nightmare for Violet Gates (Meghann Fahy) in Drop. After years of being a single widowed mother, Violet's young son, Toby (Jacob Robinson), and Violet's sister, Jen (Violett Beane), encourage her to go on a date with Henry Campbell (Brandon Sklenar), a man she met through a dating site. Although Violet's date with Henry starts well, she is harassed by strange and alarming messages on her phone that ultimately threaten the life of her son. And if Violet doesn't cooperate with Toby's captor and act against Henry then she may never see her son alive again. Drop will stream on Peacock on July 11. 'The Outfit' (2022) The Outfit takes place almost exclusively in the tailor shop of Leonard Burling (Mark Rylance) in 1956. Leonard's primary clientele is the Irish mob, as led by Roy Boyle (Simon Russell Beale) and his son, Richie (Dylan O'Brien). Despite his misgivings, Leonard even lets Richie's girlfriend, Mable Shaun (Zoey Deutch), work at the shop. If You Have to Watch 1 Peacock Movie in June 2025, Stream This 1 Now Things start to unravel when Richie shows up at the shop badly wounded alongside his top enforcer, Francis (Johnny Flynn). The Boyle family is convinced that they have a rat in the organization, and the proof is waiting in the shop. As Leonard soon discovers, that intel is also worth killing over. The Outfit is streaming on Peacock. 'Black Bag' (2025) Steven Soderbergh's spy thriller Black Bag features Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett as a pair of married MI6 operatives, George Woodhouse and Kathryn St. Jean. They're far from the only couple in MI6, but their relationship status hits some roadblocks after George is told there's a traitor in MI6. Someone close to George has leaked sensitive intel, and it's his job to determine who did it. Five people conceivably could be behind the leak, one of whom is his wife. As much as George would like to ignore that possibility, Kathryn's suspicious activities make her his No. 1 suspect. Black Bag is streaming on Peacock. 3 Underrated Thrillers You Should Watch in June 2025 'Memento' (2000) Before Christopher Nolan made his name directing the Dark Knight trilogy, his calling card in Hollywood was Memento. For his first trick, Nolan shows audiences the ending of Memento before they realize what it means. Then he lets the story unfold in two parallel narratives before catching up with the conclusion. The film revolves around Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce), a man who lost his wife and his ability to make new long-term memories due to a brutal attack. Now, Leonard's memories reset nearly every ten minutes, and he's not sure if he can trust the people around him, including Natalie (Carrie-Anne Moss) and Teddy (Joe Pantoliano). Everyone seems to take advantage of Leonard's condition, including Leonard himself. Memento is streaming on Peacock.
Vogue
16-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Vogue
The Lesson in Martin Cruz Smith's Arkady Renko Novels
What are these reading projects we set for ourselves? Acts of recompense? One began for me when an advance copy of Martin Cruz Smith's 2023 novel Independence Square hit my desk at Vogue. I felt a pang of something. My father had loved spy stories and police procedurals set in far-flung, wintery locations, and there had been at least one worn hardback in my family's house by Smith, a thick novel called Gorky Park that had drawn my attention as a boy (as all my dad's books did). Gorky Park's subject matter—murders in Moscow, the Cold War, the Soviet Union—were appealing points of reference for my father, a money manager who read thrillers at a steady clip and listened to them, too. After the markets closed, he'd come home from the office and sometimes linger in his car outside our house, letting his audiobook run. I valiantly read some of my dad's John le Carré in my early teenage years, some Robert Ludlum, some Frederick Forsyth, some Tom Clancy. But his copy of Gorky Park, with its forbidding heft, stayed on the shelf. So that spring of 2023—my father dead some 12 years from cancer—I whipped through Independence Square as if making up for lost time. The novel was a breeze, an investigation of a missing anti-Putin activist set between contemporary Moscow, Kyiv, and the Crimean peninsula, and it introduced me to Arkady Renko, an investigator in a prosecutor's office in Moscow. Renko has a querulous relationship to authority, and strikingly, in Independence Square, he begins to stumble and walk unsteadily. He's diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. Another pang: Parkinson's is the condition my mother has lived with for 30 years. An unlikely convergence had formed, private and galvanizing—my father and mother, long divorced, never fully reconciled, brought together in the pages of a Martin Cruz Smith thriller. As I said, reading projects are personal, and this one had begun in earnest. Over the course of the next 18 months, I would read every Arkady Renko novel; there are 11. I completed this task on a recent Sunday afternoon, devouring Hotel Ukraine, the final one, released just this month by Simon & Schuster. Five days later, news broke that Smith had died.
CBC
14-07-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Gorky Park, Havana Bay mystery author Martin Cruz Smith dead at 82
Martin Cruz Smith, the bestselling mystery novelist who engaged readers for decades with Gorky Park and other thrillers featuring Moscow investigator Arkady Renko, has died at age 82. Smith died Friday at a senior living community in San Rafael, Calif., "surrounded by those he loved," according to his publisher, Simon & Schuster. Smith revealed a decade ago that he had Parkinson's disease, and he gave the same condition to his protagonist. His 11th Renko book, Hotel Ukraine, was published this week and billed as his last. "My longevity is linked to Arkady's," he told Strand Magazine in 2023. "As long as he remains intelligent, humorous and romantic, so shall I." Smith was often praised for his storytelling and for his insights into modern Russia; he would speak of being interrogated at length by customs officials during his many trips there. The Associated Press called Hotel Ukraine a "gem" that "upholds Smith's reputation as a great craftsman of modern detective fiction with his sharply drawn, complex characters and a compelling plot." Beginnings as a journalist Smith's honours included being named a "grand master" by the Mystery Writers of America, winning the Hammett Prize for Havana Bay and a Gold Dagger award for Gorky Park. Born Martin William Smith in Reading, Pa., he studied creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania and started out as a journalist, including a brief stint at The Associated Press and at the Philadelphia Daily News. Success as an author arrived slowly. He had been a published novelist for more than a decade before he broke through in the early 1980s with Gorky Park. His novel came out when the Soviet Union and the Cold War were still very much alive and centred on Renko's investigation into the murders of three people whose bodies were found in the Moscow park that Smith used for the book's title. Gorky Park, cited by the New York Times as a reminder of "just how satisfying a smoothly turned thriller can be," topped the Times' fiction bestseller list and was later made into a movie starring William Hurt. WATCH | Trailer for 1983 film version of Gorky Park, based on Smith's bestselling novel: "Russia is a character in my Renko stories, always," Smith told Publishers Weekly in 2013. " Gorky Park may have been one of the first books to take a backdrop and make it into a character. It took me forever to write because of my need to get things right. You've got to knock down the issue of 'Does this guy know what he's talking about or not?'" Smith's other books include science fiction (The Indians Won), the westerns North to Dakota and Ride to Revenge and the Romano Grey mystery series. Besides "Martin Cruz Smith" — Cruz was his maternal grandmother's name — he also wrote under the pen names "Nick Carter" and "Simon Quinn." Inspired by his travels Smith's Renko books were inspired in part by his own travels and he would trace the region's history over the past 40 years, whether the Soviet Union's collapse (Red Square), the rise of Russian oligarchs (The Siberian Dilemma) or, in the novel Wolves Eats Dogs, the 1986 Chornobyl disaster. By the time he began working on his last novel, Russia had invaded Ukraine. The AP noted in its review of Hotel Ukraine that Smith had devised a backstory "pulled straight from recent headlines," referencing such world leaders as Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin of Russia and former president Joe Biden of the U.S.
New York Times
29-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
10 New Books We Recommend This Week
Every week, the critics and editors at the The New York Times Book Review pick the most interesting and notable new releases, from literary fiction and serious nonfiction to thrillers, romance novels, mysteries and everything in between. You can save the books you're most excited to read on a personal reading list, and find even more recommendations from our book experts. What Kind of Paradise In Brown's sixth (and best) novel, a father-daughter duo live off the grid in remotest Montana. Something isn't quite right in their tightly controlled world; Jane, a perspicacious teenager, begins to realize that her father isn't who he says he is. When she makes a courageous break for freedom, we find ourselves embedded in the early dot-com boom in San Francisco. If the Unabomber had a daughter, this could be her story. It will definitely make you think about our reliance on technology (especially if you're squinting at a screen). Read our review. Daughters of the Bamboo Grove: From China to America, a True Story of Abduction, Adoption, and Separated Twins In her entrancing, disturbing book, Demick traces the wildly divergent paths of a pair of twin girls born in China under the one-child rule. Their parents sent one of the babies to live with relatives, hoping she'd evade the scrutiny of authorities. Instead, she was kidnapped by a 'family planning' agency and adopted by Americans who were unaware of her origins. Demick's characters are richly drawn, and this story, reported over many years, delivers an emotional wallop. Read our review. Never Flinch King interweaves two story lines in his latest novel, which brings back the brilliant and eccentric investigator Holly Gibney. The first narrative begins with an anonymous letter threatening to kill '13 innocents and one guilty' as a bizarre act of retribution; the detective on the case turns to Holly for help. The second follows a feminist writer on a lecture circuit that has been disrupted by a violent stalker; who better to hire for protection than Holly? King raises the stakes — and the body count — as the twin plots converge. Read our review. Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin Paul Gauguin's boldly colored, formally inventive artwork inspired painters from Van Gogh and Picasso to the German Expressionists. In this terrific biography, Prideaux draws on recently discovered source material to deliver an enthralling account of an artist whose life was as inventive as his art. Read our review. Maggie; Or, A Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar Yee's delightful and quirky novel takes place during a pause — between divorce and marriage, sickness and health, the unknown and the status quo. The titular visit to a bar turns out not to be a setup for a joke, but a husband's admission to his wife that he's leaving her. Then our narrator — the soon-to-be-ex-wife — learns that she has cancer. She navigates both upheavals with dry humor, even finding it in her heart to write a most unexpected 'Guide to My Husband: A User's Manual.' (Comes out July 22) Read our review. Gingko Season This droll novel is about Penelope, a heartbroken 20-something working at a major museum in Philadelphia who meets a lab scientist and falls head over heels in love. It's an unremarkable setup propelled by Penelope's dry humor and populated with subtly drawn characters — the older couple she lives with; her opinionated college friends. Read our review. Murder in the Dollhouse: The Jennifer Dulos Story Dulos, a wealthy, blonde Connecticut mother of five, disappeared without a trace in the midst of a contested divorce in 2019. Her body has never been found; her husband, Fotis, a luxury home builder, died by suicide not long after he was charged with her murder. Cohen tells this tale with skill and care, downplaying its luridness while exploring our queasy fascination with it. In his hands, it becomes a larger story of wealth in modern America. Read our review. A Family Matter Lynch's moving and passionate novel unfolds from two sides of a divorce. First we see the wife's perspective from the early 1980s, when she's a young mother in love with another woman; four decades later, we get her ex-husband's view as he's receiving a cancer diagnosis. In the meantime, their only child believes her mother is dead until she finds evidence to the contrary. Now a young mother herself, she must piece together the puzzle of her own past. Read our review. The South Set over the course of one languid summer, this shimmering, sensual, psychologically rich novel follows the intertwining dramas of a Malaysian family grappling with expectations and personal secrets at their remote, run-down farm. At the center of the story is Jay, the family's young, queer son, who finds himself developing a tense friendship/possible romance with the farm manager's rebellious son. Read our review. Harmattan Season Noir meets fantasy in Onyebuchi's latest, about a chronically unlucky private eye who gets roped into a simmering war in French-colonized West Africa after a woman shows up bleeding at his house, mysteriously vanishes and then reappears floating in the sky, dead. Read our review.
