Hello to new star duo’s knife-edge mystery: Gone Before Goodbye by Reese Witherspoon and
Gone Before Goodbye by Reese Witherspoon and Harlan Coben (Century £22, 352pp)
American Army combat surgeon Maggie McCabe is drawn into a sinister plan to provide a mysterious Russian oligarch with plastic surgery in his dacha outside Moscow in this first collaboration between Witherspoon and one of the world’s best-known thriller writers.
In despair and debt after losing her medical licence in the wake of a family tragedy, Maggie sets off to complete the operation.
But then her patient disappears and she is plunged into a race to save her life.
Enter a dashing CIA agent as her saviour. Intricate, with twists galore, it is glamorous yet packed with suspense. This unlikely partnership looks certain to go far.
Revenge of Odessa by Frederick Forsyth with Tony Kent (Bantam £22, 448pp)
In 1972, Forsyth published his second worldwide best-seller The Odessa File, and now – just months after his death in June at 86 – its sequel, written with criminal barrister Tony Kent, lands.
The secretive Nazi organisation Odessa that Forsyth described all those years ago has not gone – it has been in hiding, waiting to re-emerge.
Set in 2025, Georg Miller – grandson of the original hero who uncovered the old conspiracy – is a podcaster in Berlin who discovers that Odessa is using the influx of immigrants to force the far-Right back to power.
Opening with a gun attack at a football stadium, it displays all Forsyth’s political prescience and reminds us how clever he was at forecasting our dangerous future.
Dying Days is available now
Dying Days by Les Hinton (Whitefox £9.99, 336pp)
One of the most respected newspaper executives, trusted by Rupert Murdoch, Hinton turns his hand to fiction with this thrilling tale of an attempt to destabilise media by attacking major owner Lord Chatstone.
His Gloucestershire mansion is devastated by a bomb during a party for politicians and media moguls. The prime minister escapes but others are killed and injured.
The explosion is witnessed by two British reporters, who start to investigate.
Then another bomb goes off at a major media gathering in New York and a mysterious organisation claims credit.
Crammed with insider knowledge, and told with verve, it foretells the decline of newspapers but not of excellent reporters.