THRILLERS
SLOW BURN by Stephen Leather (Hodder £16.99, 400 pp)
SLOW BURN
by Stephen Leather (Hodder £16.99, 400 pp)
In the wake of the decision to allow 20-year-old Jihadi bride Shamima Begum back into this country to contest the retraction of her British citizenship, Leather’s latest full-throttle thriller could hardly be more topical.
His usual protagonist, Dan ‘Spider’ Shepherd — a former SAS man now working for MI5 — is asked to interview three young Jihadi brides who went to Syria as teenagers to join Isis, but now want to return. Would that be a threat to national security?
At the same time, Shepherd is to bring back the wife and son of a Syrian asylum seeker, who has information about an Isis cell planning a deadly terrorist attack on Britain.
The cell has access to nerve agent VX, which could turn any attack into a massacre. Packed with intricate detail on the intelligence services and written with Leather’s familiar gusto, it hurtles off the page, grabbing the reader by the throat.
![WRITTEN IN BLOOD by Chris Carter (Simon & Schuster £16.99, 400 pp)](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/07/23/20/31121538-8554363-image-a-54_1595534141231.jpg)
WRITTEN IN BLOOD by Chris Carter (Simon & Schuster £16.99, 400 pp)
WRITTEN IN BLOOD
by Chris Carter (Simon & Schuster £16.99, 400 pp)
The Brazilian-born, American-educated and now London-based Carter has developed into an exceptional thriller writer who fully deserves to be ranked alongside Jeffery Deaver. Here, his story opens with a Los Angeles-based female pickpocket, Angela Wood, who believes she is the very best in the business.
One evening, she steals the bag of a man sitting near her in a bar, but when she gets it back to her apartment she discovers it contains no money — only a diary detailing a string of murders.
Terrified, she drops it into the mailbox of a forensic scientist whose handbag she stole recently, only then to find herself interviewed by Detective Robert Hunter of LA’s Ultra-Violent Crimes Unit.
The serial killer wants his diary back and starts a hunt for Wood, while Hunter embarks on a chase to save her and find the killer. Wonderful storytelling, with a superbly drawn killer, it underlines exactly how good Carter has become.
NEVER FORGET
![NEVER FORGET by Michel Bussi (Weidenfeld £14.99, 400 pp)](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/07/23/20/31121534-8554363-image-a-56_1595534149086.jpg)
NEVER FORGET by Michel Bussi (Weidenfeld £14.99, 400 pp)
by Michel Bussi (Weidenfeld £14.99, 400 pp)
Written by the author of the magical Black Water Lilies, this is another haunting mystery. On an icy morning in February 2014, a young Frenchman with a prosthetic leg, Jamal Salaoui, sets out for a run along the coast near the small town of Yport in northern France.
On the edge of the 100-metre-high cliffs, he encounters a beautiful girl, shivering in a torn dress. ‘Don’t come any closer,’ she tells him, but he offers to pull her back from the edge with a red Burberry cashmere scarf he has just found, using it like a lifebelt.
For a moment, she appears to take it, then pulls away and falls from the cliff, ending on the beach below — but with the scarf wrapped round her neck.
So begins this tantalising story that wraps the reader in myriad enigmas — quite wonderful and utterly spellbinding.