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What the Night Knows by Dean Koontz

Publishers Weekly –

In this less than suspenseful supernatural thriller from Koontz (Breathless), 14-year-old Billy Lucas's inexplicable slaughter of his entire family awakens the fears of homicide detective John Calvino, who as a child was the sole survivor of a similar family massacre. Though Calvino slayed the fiend who did the deed, he has always worried that the killings were demonic in nature and that the evil spirit responsible would return and harm his wife and three children. Sure enough, after Calvino visits the psychiatric ward where Lucas is held, something starts to haunt every member of his close-knit clan, though improbably and conveniently they all fail to share this disturbing development with each other. The detective believes he has a deadline to thwart the force bent on repeating the earlier murders. The terror level never reaches that of similarly themed works such as the movie Fallen. Clunky prose (e.g., Andy Tane, a cop, "is figuratively and literally a horse") doesn't help.

Dead Zero (Bob Lee Swagger Series #7) by Stephen Hunter

Publishers Weekly –

Several months after the betrayal of a covert operation in Afghanistan leaves a Marine sniper team dead, the target of that mission, top Taliban commander Ibrahim Zarzi (aka "the Beheader"), changes sides, in bestseller Hunter's stellar seventh Bob Lee Swagger thriller (after I, Sniper). Zarzi travels to the U.S., where he meets the president and key congressional leaders and offers the State Department its best chance at achieving a stable, reliable Afghan government. Meanwhile, a Marine radio operator receives a message from Gunnery Sgt. Ray Cruz (aka "the Cruise Missile"), one of the snipers believed to have been killed. Cruz has returned stateside to continue the mission. The FBI calls in retired Marine sniper ace Bob Lee Swagger to help find Cruz before he blows off the Beheader's head, but someone is following "Bob the Nailer" to get to Cruz first. Solid characterization complements the tight, fast-moving plot.

Three Seconds by Anders Roslund and Borge Hellstrom

Publishers Weekly –

Ex-con Piet Hoffmann, who for the past nine years has led a double life as a family man and a police snitch infiltrating the Stockholm drug world, takes on his most dangerous assignment yet in Roslund and Hellström's thrilling follow-up to Box 21. Hoffmann must go undercover at Aspsås, a maximum security prison, and take control of the methamphetamine sales so the police can dismantle the spread of drugs from the inside out. The murder of a man during one of Hoffmann's preliminary meetings with the members of Wojtek, the local Polish mafia, threatens the entire plan and puts Det. Supt. Ewert Grens, the returning hero from Box, on the case. Once Hoffmann steps inside the prison walls all hell breaks loose, and he's forced to fend for himself when it appears that everyone on either side of the law wants him dead. The authors ratchet the suspense beautifully right up to the final, inevitable confrontation.

The Outlaws (Presidential Agent Series #6) by W. E. B. Griffin and William E. Butterworth IV

Publishers Weekly –

In Griffin and Butterworth's long and exceedingly detailed sixth presidential agent thriller (after Black Ops), the U.S. president has ordered Lt. Col. Carlos "Charley" Castillo to disband his secret organization, the Office of Organizational Analysis, and to "fall off the face of the earth." When the president dies of a ruptured aorta, Charley elects instead to reorganize his outfit. He soon becomes entangled in intrigue involving several barrels of virulent biological weaponry and a demand from Vladimir Putin to return the two Russian spies who defected in Black Ops. The new U.S. president, who hates Charley's guts, wants to turn him over to Putin along with the two defectors. Charley and his intrepid gang engage in meticulous planning, fill in the backstory, banter among themselves, and fly around in exotic planes. Series fans who love these characters will find the novel fulfilling; newcomers and those expecting a big payoff will be disappointed.