Good fiction with realistic endings

The Odessa File

By Frederick Forsyth

A group of SS survivors is planning to carry out Hitler's "final solution" 20 years after his death.

Under the Beetle's Cellar

By Mary Willis Walker

Religious fanatics imprison a dozen school-aged hostages in their Texas compound.

Havana Bay

By Martin Cruz Smith

A novel about the murder of a Russian man in Cuba.

They hired him. They trusted him. Now they don't want justice--they want revenge.... For four years, Patrick had often wondered how it would feel if they caught him. Now he was terror-stricken. Practically naked and strapped down like an animal, he knew the next few hours would be insufferable.... Once he was a well-liked, well-paid young partner in a thriving Mississippi law firm. Then Patrick Lanigan stole ninety million dollars from his own firm--and ran for his life. For four years, he evaded men who were rich, powerful, and would stop at nothing to find him. Then, inevitably, on the edge of the Brazilian jungle, they finally tracked him down. Now Patrick is coming home. And in the Mississippi city where it all began, an extraordinary trial is about to begin. As prosecutors circle like sharks, as Patrick's lawyer prepares his defense, as Patrick's lover prays for his deliverance and his former partners wait for their revenge, another story is about to emerge. Because Patrick Lanigan, the most reviled white-collar criminal of his time, knows something that no one else in the world knows. He knows the truth....

Los Alamos

By Joseph Kanon

Near the end of World War II in Los Alamos, a town set in the shimmering New Mexico desert, an international team of scientists led by Robert Oppenheimer gathered together to build the world's most dangerous weapon--the atomic bomb. Author Joseph Kanon has crafted an ingenious and utterly absorbing thriller, a tale of espionage and love set against the most important undercover government project in America's history. Online promo. HC: Broadway. (Fiction--Espionage/Thriller) Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

Mystic River

By Dennis Lehane

When they were children, Sean Devine, Jimmy Marcus, and Dave Boyle were friends. But then a strange car drove up their street. One boy got in the car, two did not, and something terrible happened -- something that ended their friendship and changed all three boys forever. Twenty-five years later, Sean is a homicide detective. Jimmy is an ex-con. And Dave is trying to hold his marriage together and keep his demons at bay-demons that urge him to do horrific things. When Jimmy's daughter is found murdered, Sean is assigned to the case. His investigation brings him into serious conflict with Jimmy. And then there is Dave, who came home covered in someone else's blood the night Jimmy's daughter died. While Sean attempts to use the law to return peace and order to the neighborhood, Jimmy finds his need for vengeance pushing him ever closer to a moral abyss from which he won't be able to return. A tense and unnerving psychological thriller, Mystic River is also an epic novel of love, loyalty, faith, and family.

Deception

By John Altman

Unwittingly involved in insurance fraud, Hannah Gray leaps at the chance to take an Adriatic cruise, but after she befriends the wife of a scientist, she finds herself drawn into an intrigue that may cost her her life.

The Lieutenants

By W.E.B. Griffin

They were the young ones, the bright ones, the ones with the dreams. From the Nazi-prowled wastes of North Africa to the bloody corridors of Europe, they honorably answered the call. War–it was their duty, their job, their life. They marched off as boys and they came back–those who made it–as soldiers and professionals forged in the heat of battle...

A Place of Execution

By Val McDermid

Police Inspector George Bennet, who investigated the never-solved disappearance of thirteen-year-old Alison Carter from her cloistered village decades ago, finds shattering new evidence, leading writer Catherine Heathcote to investigate further.