Recommendations based on "Ratings Game"

Still grieving over the accidental death of an innocent child caught in crossfire, Matthew Scudder privately takes on the case of a mass-murder victim and begins a search for a phantom psychotic killer. Reissue.

Detective Carson Ryder's reputation is on the line when a sociopathic serial killer embarks on a personal vendetta, constructing his crimes to hit Carson's weak spot.He's coming to get you...After a humiliating encounter with a cop, Romanian immigrant Gregory Nieves launches a vendetta against the Mobile Police Department, Alabama. Nieves can't fight a department, so he selects one man who symbolizes all men in blue: Carson Ryder, the MPD's specialist in bizarre and twisted crimes.Carson has never seen a killing spree like this one: Nothing connects the victims, the murder weapon is always different, and the horrific crime scenes are devoid of evidence. It almost seems he's being taunted. Even laughed at.Carson doesn't know it yet, but he is caught up in a sadistic game of life and death. And there can only be one victor...

The series that started it all! In this powerful follow-up to his action-packed thriller The Kill Clause, Gregg Hurwitz, the new maestro of pulse-pounding suspense, ratchets up the excitement with another sensational page-turner featuring Tim Rackley, a driven lawman motivated by honor, morality, and a deep sense of justice. Called back into the fold of the U.S. Marshals Service, Tim is tasked with retrieving Leah Henning, the daughter of a powerful Hollywood producer, from a mind-control cult. As Tim wends his way deep undercover into an insidious operation called The Program, he confronts a brand of mind-warping manipulation beyond his worst expectations. Tim becomes enmeshed with a diverse band of characters—from the charismatic, messianic leader T. D. Betters to a cult reject burnout to the intelligent yet highly vulnerable Leah herself—and finds himself caught in a shadowy landscape of lies, manipulation, and terror. At stake: innocent minds—maybe even his own.

The Number One bestseller from the award-winning Stuart MacBride. The seventh DS Logan McRae thriller is a gripping page-turner in which fame and fortune crash head-on with crime and punishment. No suspects. No clues. No rest for the wicked. 'You will raise money for the safe return of Alison and Jenny McGregor. If you raise enough money within fourteen days they will be released. If not, Jenny will be killed.' Alison and Jenny McGregor - Aberdeen's own mother-daughter singing sensation - are through to the semi-finals of TV smash-hit Britain's Next Big Star. They're in all the gossip magazines, they've got millions of YouTube hits, everyone loves them. But their reality-TV dream has turned into a real-life nightmare. The ransom demand appears in all the papers, on the TV, and the internet, telling the nation to dig deep if they want to keep Alison and Jenny alive. The media want action; the public displays of grief and anger are reaching fever-pitch. Time is running out, but DS Logan McRae and his colleagues have nothing to go on: the kidnappers haven't left a single piece of forensic evidence. The investigation is going nowhere. It looks as if the price of fame just got a lot higher...

In Murder One, bestselling author William Bernhardt thrusts idealistic Tulsa, Oklahoma, attorney Ben Kincaid into the most controversial courtroom challenge of his career . . . an explosive murder case that Kincaid will confront not only as a lawyer--but as a defendant.The crime is remarkably heinous: veteran police detective Joe McNaughton is found savagely slain, mutilated, and hung from a public fountain in downtown Tulsa. Scrawled across his chest in blood is the word FAITHLESS. The accused is a tabloid reporter's dream: stunning, nineteen-year-old Keri Dalcanton, a stripper involved in a kinky affair with the married McNaughton . . . and now cast by media, police, and public alike as a vengeful woman scorned. Powerful circumstantial evidence and the prosecution's deftly orchestrated attacks on the defendant's character have Kincaid's client all but convicted. Until a major technical blunder by overzealous cops overturns the case--and sets Keri Dalcanton free. Amid a firestorm of outrage, Ben maintains his client's innocence. But angry comrades of the victim are convinced otherwise--and vow to see "justice" done, by any means necessary.When a police raid on his office uncovers the bloody murder weapon, Ben gets a first-hand taste of the infamous Blue Squeeze. And as a new trial of Keri Dalcanton is launched, Ben faces his own day in court, charged with conspiracy and murder. What follows is a breathlessly twisting battle of legal wits--and lethal surprises--in which no holds are barred, no secrets are left unexposed, and ultimately, nothing is what it seems.With Murder One, the author of Silent Justice and Dark Justice breaks loose and surpasses his own acclaimed reputation for legal thrillers that are "engrossing" (Associated Press), "throat-grabbing" (New York Daily News), and "richly drawn" (Chicago Tribune). This is William Bernhardt's electrifying entrée into the front ranks of crime fiction.

The versatile mystery novelist Bill Crider has created a pantheon of marvelous characters, but none is more real, warm, and thoroughly delightful than Sheriff Dan Rhodes of Claflin County, Texas.In his sixth adventure, Rhodes is confronted with what seems at first to be a suicide: the body of a man newly arrived in the county is found hanged in the dilapidated building he has taken over for his business. Simon Graham was a rare-book dealer. If it seems unlikely to find such an arcane entrepreneur in this extremely rural and sparsely populated part of Texas, it becomes less strange when it turns out that Graham was more con man than bibliophile.The presumed suicide begins to look more and more like murder when several newcomers swoop down on the scene and try to beat out one another to find a reputedly valuable rare book that Graham was rumored to have among his collection of hardly worthwhile items.Although Rhodes's two attenuated and eccentric jailhouse employees have gone overboard for the magic of the department's new computer, the steady, if put-upon, Rhodes and his clear-eyed observations of human nature have invariably been more useful to the solution of a crime - and that is still true in the case of the hanged book dealer.

Manhattan prosecutor Butch Karp is back - playing the game he both loves and hates by rules he knows are made to be broken. Karp's game is convicting killers, and he brings to it all his mean street smarts and hard-won wisdom in the often perverse ways of the New York City judicial system. And his very pregnant wife-partner Marlene Ciampi is out there taking risks and following leads even the cops are not eager to track. But now Karp is into another city game as well. Marion Simmons, star forward of the New York Hustlers pro basketball team, has been found in his Caddy Coupe de Ville with two bullets in his head. It's up to Karp to see if it's really the open-and-shut case of a drug kill that the city's big brass and behind-the-scenes power brokers desperately claim it is. Trouble is, Karp has just resigned his job as chief of the Criminal Courts Bureau because he suspects the D.A. and some other movers and shakers of New York law enforcement of conspiring to destroy a case for political reasons. But Karp, committed to the investigation, can't let go and continues on as a free-lancer. So it doesn't take long before he and Marlene are tangled in a maze of lies - and every foul move in the book - to muddy the terrible truth about the savage death of Simmons. Also on the case is Harry Bello, a burnt-out cop whose best days are a thousand bottles in the past, and a list of suspects that include a Jamaican mobster who literally likes to take apart his enemies, a pair of out-of-town hit men who unstintingly do what they do best, a high society blonde beauty with a taste for black athletes, and a line-up of city big guns and big shots playing together as an all-star terror team. As Karp andMarlene move into the middle of a money-and-murder game, even they realize that blowing the whistle may be the last breath either of them will ever take. Robert K. Tanenbaum has been hailed as a master writer of crime thrillers. With this exciting, lightning-paced, suspenseful nove

A high-voltage thriller, this is the story of the "Hotel Ripper" who stalks New York's nightside and the retired cop named Edward X. Delaney who must stop him.

An Atlantic voyage. A family at war. A secret worth killing over.Reporter Jack Parlabane thrives on chasing stories in unlikely places, and where could be less likely than a fan convention on a cruise liner celebrating a contentious Sixties TV series? But unlike the media family exploiting their show's renewed relevance, he's not there to stoke controversy: he's there to solve a murder.Already in deep water with his employer, Jack desperately needs a win, and solving this decades-old mystery could be it. Problem is, he's in the middle of the Atlantic, and someone onboard has already killed once to keep their secret.And that's not even the tricky part. No, the tricky part is definitely the dead body locked in a stateroom with him, covered in his blood. Now Jack has to solve two murders, otherwise the only way he's getting off this ship is in handcuffs - or in a body bag.Quite Ugly One Evening is a zeitgesty locked-room mystery that sees the return of rogue journalist Jack Parlabane thirty years after his first appearance in Quite Ugly One Morning. Praise for Chris Brookmyre:'Chris Brookmyre is a genius' - Richard Osman'In the pantheon of great crime writers' - Elly Griffiths'There's nothing he can't do' - Mick Herron'Chris Brookmyre is a storytelling mastermind' - Chris Whitaker

In this New York Times bestseller, two killers-one operating in America, one in Europe-believe Alex Cross is the only worthy opponent in the deadly game each has planned.Gary Soneji, a dying prison escapee, is looking for revenge on Cross, while another insane killer is pursued by Thomas Augustine Pierce-a brilliant and relentless detective who may even be better than Cross. As the bodies pile up, and Cross is nearly murdered in his own home, the game of cat and mouse leads to one final trap. . .The body count is high, the tension the highest, and the two killers on the loose are watching every move their pursuers make. Who is the cat, and who is the mouse? What and where is the final trap? And who survives?