The latest recommended thrillers

Fallen

by Karin Slaughter, Century, $39.99

It's hard to go wrong with a Karin Slaughter novel, and Fallen certainly doesn't disappoint.

Special agents Will Trent and Dr Sara Linton continue to dance around their inevitable romantic involvement, Will's partner, Faith Mitchell, is searching for her abducted mother Evelyn, and young gang members are falling like flies.

Evelyn Mitchell is a former police captain, specialising in narcotics, who has been taken from her ransacked home.

Will, Sara and the team try to find out whether corruption among the detectives or one of her enemies in drug circles is to blame for Evelyn's disappearance. The answer surprises everybody except Evelyn.

As usual, Slaughter's characterisations are spot on and her writing is tight and tense, pulling the reader from page to page. Her heroes are not perfect, but a wet, miserable weekend on the sofa with Fallen certainly is.

Crossfire

by Dick Francis and Felix Francis, Penguin, $26

Many good thrillers start with a war hero returning home to recuperate after being wounded in the line of duty, only to find themselves caught up in some sort of civilian adventure.

For Captain Thomas Forsyth, coming home to the horse-racing enclave of Lambourn is not his first choice but, with no life outside the army, it seems his only choice.

He has never got on well with his mother but quickly steps in to sort things out when her top horses start losing races mysteriously.

This is the last novel written by the father-and-son team; Dick Francis died while writing it last year.

However, former physics teacher Felix shares his father's love of horse racing and has been involved in researching and discussing plots and forensics for Francis novels most of his life.

Felix has completed Gamble, his first solo novel, so, fortunately, the dastardly deeds of the fictitious equine world look set to continue.

Shelter

by Harlan Coben, Hachette, $27.99

Mickey Bolitar is no ordinary 15-year-old boy. Not only is he a top-notch basketball player, an expert in martial arts and surprisingly resistant to peer pressure, he witnesses his father's death, helps his mother through rehab and, when his girlfriend of a couple of weeks goes missing, takes on the sleazy city underworld to save her. Yeah, right!

But then this isn't your normal Harlan Coben novel.

It is aimed specifically at young adults so the teen heroics make sense, even if they seem a bit far-fetched to the not-so-young adult reader. That said, it is no more unrealistic than an Andy McNab or Lee Childs novel.

Shelter is being marketed as "the first in an exciting series of young-adult thrillers", and the storyline develops in a way that sets Mickey up as an ongoing leading man.

Given the range of skills and the drama Mickey already has behind him, it will be interesting to see where Coben takes the character.