Book tips from the BRIGITTE editorial team
Exciting thrillers that we can’t put down
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No matter where the temperatures are heading – a good book warms the soul. Here are our favorite crime thrillers.
Jean Hanff Korelitz – The Plot
A bestseller about a bestseller – it’s strange what Jean Hanff Korelitz has achieved with “The Plot”. The sixth novel by the 61-year-old was quite well received in the USA, and a TV series is being planned. The story is really good too: Jake Finch Bonner is a writer, but he hasn’t really come up with anything since his successful debut “Amazing”. He now teaches creative writing at a college in Vermont. And there he meets young Evan Parker, who tells him the sensational plot of the book he is currently working on. Parker dies a few years later, but his book… he never wrote. So Jake does. Lands the best-seller of the year, trundles through talk shows, sells the film rights to Spielberg, finds the woman of his dreams. And is afraid every day of being exposed. And indeed – one day he gets a message on his homepage: “You are a thief.” It’s not a classic crime thriller, but it’s still nail-biting – and incredibly entertaining.
Ü: Sabine Lohmann, 352 p., 16 eurosHeyne
Anne Holt – A Necessary Death
A quarter of a century ago, Anne Holt was Norway’s justice minister for a few months. The 63-year-old is still a political person. This is the second case of her new anti-heroine, lawyer Selma Falck, and it initially has to do with the death of her son-in-law, Sjalg Petterson. But behind the thriller lies a deep concern of Holt. Namely that social media can blow up democracies. Exciting and oppressive.
Ü: Gabriele Haefs, 448 p., 22 eurosatrium
Dolores Redondo – The North Side of the Heart
The Basque policewoman Amaia Salazar is actually only at the FBI headquarters in Quantico/Virginia for further training. But the young profiler is so brilliant at practice that top agent Andrew Dupree brings her on to his team on a case — a serial killer using natural disasters to make ritual murders of entire families look like accidents. Now, in August 2005, Hurricane Katrina is heading towards New Orleans… A breathtaking race against time and weather.
Ü: Anja Rüdiger, 640 p., 17 eurosbtb
Robert Galbraith – The Deep Black Heart
Joanne K. Rowling has experienced a real shit tornado over her attitude towards trans people on social media, including death threats. This experience feeds into Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott’s sixth case. They’re investigating the death of an animator who was threatened on Twitter. Remarkable how Rowling manages to never get bored on 1360 pages. By the way, trans people don’t show up.
Ü: Christoph Göhler/Kristof Kurz/Wulf Bergner, 1360 p., 26 eurosBlanvalet
Kristina Ohlsson – The dead in the storm
August Strindberg is not only the namesake of Sweden’s national poet, but one who wants to change his life – the wealth manager moves from Stockholm to the lonely western archipelago to open a second-hand shop. But it’s not just that there was a murder in his new house 30 years ago – on the day he arrived a woman went missing in Kungshamn… Everything we love about classic Swedish crime fiction is in this book. Great!
Ü: Susanne Dahmann, 544 p., 16 euroslimes