The most recommended FBI books

Great follow-up novel in Sanford’s Prey Series concerning a serial female killer. Sanford leaves the reader from a previous prey novel, where the female serial killer escapes.  This leaves his readers with a desire to learn more….a continuing storyline…and he more than satisfies that with her return in Mortal Prey.

FBI Special Agent Maggie O’Dell is on the hunt for a serial killer who strikes at truck stops and rest areas. Ryder Creed, an injured vet suffering from PTSD, has returned home from Afghanistan without his bomb detection dog, and opened a company specializing in training rescues to become air scent dogs. Law enforcement laughs when Creed appears on the scene to aid O’Dell, accompanied by Grace, a Jack Russell terrier. The laughter ends when Grace locates bodies above and below ground as well as underwater.

As Creed and O’Dell work the case, Kava weaves in information about the differences in dogs tracking missing persons, finding cadavers, and sniffing out drugs, explosive devices, and even certain health conditions. This book launched her Creed series and is tightly written, suspenseful, and educational. Grace, Creed, and Maggie are exceptional characters and a joy to read. So good!

A novel about a young woman who worked on the atomic bomb and fell in love with one of the other scientists on the project who breaks her heart into a million pieces so she abandons her career and takes up as a shop-girl? Add in an FBI agent who is on the tail of the cad and wants her help in finding him? Count me in!

Fields is terrific at creating mood and the 1950s milieu. And the unexpected romance between Rosalind, the one-time scientist, and Charlie, the FBI agent, is both moving and immensely satisfying—these are two wounded souls who manage to find each other and by the end, you’re out of your chair and cheering.

In this novel, the US president needs a campaign issue, so he makes the Columbian cartels a “clear and present danger” and sends covert forces into that country.

I love that Clancy shows me two worlds that I don’t really know: the powerful American politicians who will do anything to stay in power and the inside workings of the Columbian cartels who deeply care about their families.

Published in 1989, Clancy dared to show US politicians eagerly using our military in covert missions to further their own political agenda and that they would also readily sacrifice those troops if it suited their political needs. In this way, he broke the glass ceiling that would later be followed by Brad Thor, Vince Flynn, and others. 

I loved the clever plot and subtle humor.

If you suspect that the federal government is broken, you will want to read this book. A lobbyist decides to try to climb to the top of his profession, and his imaginative and disturbing plan/scam kept me reading and laughing until the end. I enjoyed it immensely and am hoping Spees does it again.

Ellie is an Australian writer and we share the same publisher so I’ve got to know her a little. This is her first book set in the States (us antipodean writers need bigger readerships!) and I think she’s done great. I can’t even start to imagine the research that’s gone into it to make every fact right. And the blood! I love this book. I think it’s the perfect introduction for teenagers into the world of crime fiction. Go Ellie!

This is one of my favorite Laurel K. Hamilton books, Dead Ice is Anita Blake at her best, kicking ass and taking names, as a necromancer Anita can raise the dead but she is also a US Marshal with the highest kill count in the US. She deals with misogyny and bigotry for sleeping with the Vampire king—Jean Claude. The mystery is well written in this book but the fight scenes are great and the monsters are scary as heck, Anita comes off as complex as she deals with being engaged but still wanting to maintain her independence as a woman. This is one of LKH better books as she pens the double standards about how a woman is treated in the workplace by others for being good at her job versus a man- Anita has a high kill count and is looked down upon for being violent if it… show more.

This story about three restless college students at a liberal arts enclave in the southwestern desert who become embroiled in a protest to stop a pipeline reminded me of my days as a malcontent at the University of Colorado Boulder. When the FBI comes to town in pursuit of an alum wanted for “politically motivated crimes of property,” rumor has it that undercover agents are enrolled in classes, making the college dating scene that much stranger. The characters variously discover a passion for activism, the seduction of the unknown, and their own voices. This book is fun, interesting, and evocative. 

There is a partial myth, eagerly promoted by corporate interests and their lawyers, that federal prosecutors are frighteningly all-powerful and basically cannot be defeated. The veteran financial and legal reporter Eichenwald knows otherwise. The Informant, in contrast to the almost farcical (if enjoyable!) Stephen Soderbergh movie based on the book, lays out a textbook case of how prosecutors can blow an important case due to infighting, problems with unreliable informants, and clever high-priced defense lawyering that exploits every error that less-than-superb prosecutors might make. Here we have a tale of CEO-level officials at major global corporations caught on videotape flagrantly conspiring to violate antitrust laws and, in the end, almost no one ends up in prison. Eichenwald details the countless blunders by many Justice Department lawyers spread across several offices, and the clever maneuvering throughout by crack corporate defenders. He too, by the way, paints a fascinating portrait of… show more.

This jigsaw puzzle of a psychological thriller involves a world-class con artist. So, so cleverly done. I didn’t put all the pieces together until the very end, which took my breath away, literally! Most of the story is told via the diary of a naïve college dropout, who wants desperately to work for a fashion magazine. She wangles an internship with an important publication and reveals to the diary her growing admiration for one of the mag’s high-living senior editors. Memoranda and phone messages of other people reveal the authorities are suspicious of the editor, as the intern works merrily on. I wanted her to wake up! I unsuccessfully tried to telepathically communicate the danger signs to her, but no.