Reading Ahead: April 2017, part 1

Fear not, spring is around the corner! And in the coming weeks, you'll see some hints of summer around here, as beach-read season is just on the horizon. In the meantime, an offering of suspense and thrillers to look forward to.

The Fix, by David Baldacci. Due out mid-April is the latest entry in Baldacci's best-selling Amos Decker series. Amos Decker witnesses a murder just outside FBI headquarters. A man shoots a woman execution-style on a crowded sidewalk, then turns the gun on himself. Even with Decker's extraordinary powers of observation and deduction, the killing is baffling. Decker and his team can find absolutely no connection between the shooter--a family man with a successful consulting business--and his victim, a schoolteacher. Nor is there a hint of any possible motive for the attack. 

Enter Harper Brown. An agent of the Defense Intelligence Agency, she orders Decker to back off the case. The murder is part of an open DIA investigation, one so classified that Decker and his team aren't cleared for it. But Decker's never been one to follow the rules, especially with the stakes so high. Forced into an uneasy alliance with Agent Brown, Decker remains laser focused on only one goal: solving the case before it's too late.

Also available in Large Print. 

One Perfect Lie, by Lisa Scottoline. On paper, Chris Brennan looks perfect. He's applying for a job as a high school government teacher, he's ready to step in as an assistant baseball coach, and his references are impeccable. But everything about Chris Brennan is a lie. This suburban crime story from veteran Scottoline finds Chris Brennan at the center of a tangled web of vulnerable high schoolers and their equally fragile families. Why is he here, what does he want, and and what is he willing to do to get it? 

The Burial Hour, by Jeffery Deaver. Deaver returns with a new novel featuring fan-favorite forensic detective Lincoln Rhymes. A businessman snatched from an Upper East Side street in broad daylight. A miniature hangman's noose left at the scene. A nine-year-old girl, the only witness to the crime. With a crime scene this puzzling, forensic expertise of the highest order is absolutely essential. Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs are called in to investigate. Soon the case takes a stranger turn: a recording surfaces of the victim being slowly hanged, his desperate gasps the backdrop to an eerie piece of music. The video is marked as the work of The Composer... 

Despite their best efforts, the suspect gets away. So when a similar kidnapping occurs on a dusty road outside Naples, Italy, Rhyme and Sachs don't hesitate to rejoin the hunt. But when success depends on international cooperation, is everyone as they really seem? If you've strayed away from Deaver in recent years, this is one to bring you back into the fold.