Thrillers

Richard Haywood, a Californian high school's coolest kid, secretly teams up with another rich kid in his class, brilliant nerd Justin 'Bonaparte' Pendleton, whose erudition, specially in forensic matters, allows them to plan elaborately perfect murders, just for the kick, for which they set up Richard's marijuana supplier, their school's janitor Ray Feathers, as a psychotic serial killer. The case is assigned to detectives Cassie 'the hyena' Mayweather, who carries a sequoia-size chip on the shoulder from her previous life, and her brilliant new partner, Sam Kennedy, who just transferred from the vice squad; they can work together very well, and even fit romantically, but fall out over different professional attitudes towards the investigation, which Captain Rod Cody and her understandably vindictive abused ex, Assistant D.A. Al Swanson, soon ban her from when she disobeys instructions and hand to him. When the plotting boys both dig class-mate Lisa Mills, their unnatural bond comes under stress- will it break, allowing the hard-pressed police to bring them down?

Happily married Michael and Karen Carr call the police after a failed robbery in their Los Angeles home. Before long, Officer Pete Davis arrives and helps arrange the installation of a new security system, taking extra interest in the couple's case. As a result, the grateful Carrs invite Pete over for dinner, and as one thing leads to another, they strike up an unexpected friendship. However, as the lonely policeman develops an intense fixation on the Carrs, Pete's take on friendship turns into a dangerous obsession. What happens when the cure is worse than the disease?

On the day of his daughter's (

Quadriplegic ex-cop Lincoln Rhyme was looking forward to his assisted suicide when he got the news: some sicko was abducting people in a taxi and leaving them to die in particularly sadistic ways. With time counting down between each abduction and possible death, Rhyme recruits rather-unwilling Amelia Donaghy, haunted by her cop father's suicide and thinking she's next, into working the crime scenes to track down the killer.

Chicago advertising executive Charles 'Chaz' Schine is mentally worn down by his useless teacher wife Deanna and their equally ingrate daughter Amy, whose bad diabetes requires experimental, uncovered treatment that would exhaust their life savings. When foxy investment adviser Lucinda Harris volunteers to pay his ticket when he arrive son the commuter train without cash, they soon start an affair. Taking her to a tacky hotel, they are held at gunpoint by thug 'Frenchie' LaRoche, who rapes her having knocked Chaz down, robs their wallets and calls him afterward, blackmailing a small fortune not to tell his wife. Paying through equally abusive Dexter only incurs more demands and abuse, until Chaz brings along ex con office mail boy Winston Boyko, who promises to scare away, but is shot by LaRoche, leaving Chaz to deal with the corpse, police detective Church being a friend of Winston's. Only when bled dry, Chaz finds out Lucinda is a stolen identity, part of an elaborate setup. His ill-planned vengeance, as lawyer friend Jerry sees no legal way without timely complaints from him and Lucinda, starts a cycle of bloodshed and other unpleasant surprises for most involved.

Alex Cross, a Washington D.C. cop and forensic psychologist learns that his niece who is going to college in North Carolina is missing. So he goes there and learns that the police think she's among the victims of someone who kidnaps young girls and holds them captive and kills them who dubs himself Cassanova after the great lover. Later Kate, one of his victims, escapes and tries to help Cross find his niece.

Earl Brooks is a highly respected businessman and was recently named Portland's Man of the Year. He hides a terrible secret however: he is a serial killer known as the Thumbprint Killer. He has been attending AA meetings and has kept his addiction to killing under control for two years now but his alter ego, Marshall, has re-appeared and is pushing him to kill again. When he does kill a couple while they are making love, he is seen and photographed by someone who also has his own death and murder fetish. In a parallel story, the police detective investigating the murder is having problems of her own. She is going through a messy divorce and a violent criminal who had vowed revenge some years before has escaped from prison and is after her.

An intertwined drama about the United States' war on drugs, seen through the eyes of a once conservative judge, now newly-appointed drug czar, his heroin-addicted daughter, two DEA agents, a jailed drug kingpin's wife, and a Mexican cop who begins to question his boss's motives.

Frank Keller is a New York detective investigating a case of a serial killer who finds the victims through the lonely hearts column in newspapers. Keller falls in love with Helen, the main suspect in the case.

John Berlin, a big-city cop from Los Angeles, moves to a small-town police force and immediately finds himself investigating a murder. Using theories rejected by his colleagues John meets a young blind woman named Helena, who he is attracted to. Meanwhile, a serial killer is on the loose and only John knows it.

A small, seemingly innocuous plastic reel of film leads surveillance specialist Tom Welles down an increasingly dark and frightening path. With the help of the streetwise Max, Welles relentlessly follows a bizarre trail of evidence to determine the fate of a complete stranger. As his work turns into obsession, he drifts farther and farther away from his wife, family and simple life as a small-town private eye.

Having recently been named educator of the year, Sam Lombardo is the well-liked guidance counselor and sailing instructor at Blue Bay High School on the Florida coast just outside Miami. The student body of the school is largely comprised of the offspring of the country club set, and while he helps any student he can, he especially tries to mentor those who are disadvantaged, such as Jimmy Leach who would not have been able to afford being in the sailing program otherwise, and tough Suzie Toller, a proverbial swamp girl who he's helped through a few scrapes with the law in the absence of any parents, Suzie living with her streetwise grandmother Ruby at an alligator sideshow zoo. Although not socioeconomically part of that country club set himself, he nonetheless has ingratiated himself within it, he having slept with a good number of the country club maidens, he currently settled into a relationship with Barbara Baxter, the well-off daughter of high powered lawyer Tom Baxter. Sam's world comes crashing down around him when student Kelly Van Ryan, who has made it quite clear to her classmates she is sexually attracted to him and who is the daughter of one of his former bed mates, sexually provocative widow and socially powerful Sandra Van Ryan, accuses him of raping her. Already in trouble in that no one can fight and win against the Van Ryans in Blue Bay, Sam, whose career is ruined regardless of his guilt or innocence in never being able to recover from such accusations, gets into even more problems when Suzie quickly thereafter comes forward also accusing him of previously raping her, her story similar to Kelly's. The likelihood of Kelly and Suzie colluding together to manufacture similar stories is remote as it is well known that they have always detested each other. Having now become persona non grata among that country club set, Sam is forced to hire sleazy storefront lawyer Ken Bowden to defend him. Blue Bay Police Detective Ray Duquette of the Sex Crimes Division, he investigating with his partner Gloria Perez, goes against her advice and that of DA Bryce Hunter by delving into sensitive areas in believing that not all associated with the case are as they appear on the surface.

After escaping death by the skin of his teeth while on the hunt for the elusive madman, Dr Hannibal Lecter, the now-retired and emotionally scarred FBI agent, Will Graham, finds himself back in action. Reluctantly, as yet another monstrous serial killer known as "The Tooth Fairy" terrorises Baltimore, Graham turns to Lecter, the evil mastermind who's been under lock and key for three long years, to lend a hand in this challenging and time-sensitive case. But, to delve deep into the demented mind of a killer, one must first face his inner demons, and Will already knows that his insane imprisoned assistant is a gifted manipulator. Can Graham find the horrifying Red Dragon in time before another family suffers?

As children, Lorenzo Carcaterra - Shakes to his friends - Michael Sullivan, Tommy Marcano, and John Reilly were inseparable. They grew up in Hell's Kitchen, a far from perfect neighborhood, one filled as Shakes says with scams and shake downs, but one where the rules were known and easily understood by its residents. The one adult who they admired was Father Bobby Carelli, who understood them as kids more than most adults and more than he himself would like to admit. In 1967, their lives would change forever when a typical teenage prank went wrong which led to the four of them being sentenced to various terms at Wilkinson Home for Boys, a reformatory. There, they were physically, emotionally and sexually abused primarily by Sean Nokes, the predatory lead guard of their cell block, and fellow guards Ralph Ferguson, Henry Addison, and Adam Styler, although there were other decent figures of authority at the home, including a few other guards. Their time at the home affected the four, not all who were able to emerge from the experience to regroup their lives. In their want to forget about the experience, they made a vow not to talk about it either between themselves or with others. Fast forward thirteen years, with Tommy and Johnny being career criminals, Michael an assistant district attorney and Shakes a newspaper writer, their friendship on the surface more loose than it was when they were children. When Tommy and John unexpectedly spot Nokes at a local restaurant, it leads to Shakes and Michael banding together to exact revenge not only on Nokes but all four of the guards who abused them. Michael had long mapped out a plan even before Tommy and John saw Nokes, but that sighting and its aftermath alters the plan. Beyond the precarious position Tommy and John place themselves into, Michael has the most to lose even if the plan succeeds. Most of the plan implementation is left to Shakes who has to enlist the machine of Hell's Kitchen, including mob boss King Benny, and their childhood friend, social worker Carol Martinez, who currently is John's girlfriend. Beyond co-opting aging lawyer Danny Snyder, who admits he may not be the best choice as an alcoholic who is no longer near the top of his game, the plan is threatened by a key piece, the need for an unreproachable figure to perjure him or herself, that person who Michael and Shakes hopes will be Father Bobby. Father Bobby, even if he knew of the abuse, may not be able to do his friends this enormous favor of an illegal nature, he who has to balance the morality of the situation in his own mind in deciding what to do.

After the murder of his beloved wife, Danny Parker is set adrift in a world where nothing is as it seems. On his journey he befriends slacker Jimmy the Finn and becomes involved in rescuing his neighbor Colette from her own demons. Danny is antagonized by undercover narcotics agents and sadistic dealer Pooh-Bear.

Jake Vig leads a small Los Angeles based team of grifters, each member who has his specific role in each con: Jake is the main man, Miles the adversary, Big Al the scared innocent bystander, and Gordo the dead shooting victim. He also has in his pockets crooked LAPD detectives Lloyd Whitworth and Omar Manzano who basically play themselves as needed. Beyond getting the money, the basic goal of each con is to ensure the mark is so scared by what has happened - usually being an accomplice in a "murder" - that he won't come back looking for the money. Jake learns the hard way that their latest mark, Louis Dolby, who they fleeced for $150,000, was carrying money for a criminal named King, who takes a no prisoners approach in getting even, he who knows who stole his money. Instead of returning the $150,000 to King, money which he no longer has anyway, Jake convinces King to parlay that money and a bit more into a bigger con against a mark of King's choice, that person being banker Morgan Price, a second generation mobster. The total take for this con is to be $5 million. Beyond co-opting a couple of inside people for this con, King wants one of his own men inserted - Lupus - and Jake also enlists the work of a female pickpocket he recently ran across named Lily, to who he is attracted. During the process, a small wrinkle occurs when they learn that Special Agent Gunther Butan with the US Customs Agency, an old adversary of Jake's, is currently after him, which means they either have to call off the international mission or watch more carefully their movements, with Jake not to be the one to carry any money across the border. But with a group of con artists working for the first time with new players, a question becomes are there any inside cons at play, especially in this case where Jake has more of a personal stake than usual.

Jimmy the Saint's business is videotaping the terminally-ill, so that they will be around to give 'Afterlife Advice' to their survivors. He hasn't been doing too well lately and has had to turn to loan-sharks to accomodate his failing business, as well as his expensive personal tastes. When an evil gangster-overlord buys up his note and demands a favor of Jimmy, in exchange for the interest that he can't afford, Jimmy capitulates. Jimmy is to scare someone for the gangster-overlord--really rough them up. Without giving too much away (spoiler), the scene goes down badly and Jimmy and his crew all end up with contracts on their heads for their trouble.

Recently divorced Meg Altman and her daughter Sarah have bought a new home in New York. On their tour around the mansion, they come across the panic room. A room so secure, that no one can get in. When three burglars break in, Meg makes a move to the panic room. But all her troubles don't stop there. The criminals know where she is, and what they require the most in the house is in that very room.