The discovery of a hidden mine leads several criminal groups to collide in this high-stakes thriller.

Capt. KD Thorne and Warrant Officer Jeffrey Blunt of the National Defense Agency are assigned to find a would-be thief who tried to steal a rare metal found in the mountains between Chile and Bolivia. The metal is hafnium, used to make nuclear reactor control rods, and it’s very attractive to several crime rings who want to steal it and sell it to fund their various schemes. After checking a lead or two, Thorne and Blunt soon wend their way to Jerry Davis, who’s tied to a gang looking to fund terrorists in an effort to gin up support for racist immigration laws in the U.S. and Europe (it seems the immigrants will be blamed for the terrorists’ attacks). Meanwhile, residents of Agua Dulce, a village outside of the mine, weigh the pros and cons of mining the metal themselves or outsourcing the dirty, dangerous work to strangers who may disrupt their community. CIA undercover agent Dr. Cora Rodriguez is trying to work with the locals to help them navigate their decision-making process while also obtaining mining rights for the American government. As the conspiracies surrounding the hafnium multiply and tensions rise, the conflict soon threatens all involved, including civilians. King continues the KD Thorne series with another installment overflowing with plot twists and action. We also see KD view her ex-husband, Frank, in a new light. In this thriller full of high-level clashes between countries, criminal groups, and government agents, following a storyline about two people falling in love a second time is a welcome reprieve. Lastly, the battles unfold in tight, evocative prose: “The airbags boomed. Two men in tactical gear jumped out of the Suburban with submachine guns as KD and Blunt crawled out a shattered window on the passenger’s side of the Explorer.”

A global thriller with capable heroes and intriguing villains.

In King’s 10th crime novel in his Travelers series, the heroes are always one step ahead of their often inept adversaries.

Randy and Jodi Sutton (whose names are both aliases) are professional grifters in Putney, Ohio, with plans to blackmail a vulnerable prosecuting attorney, Terry Brighton. For this, they reluctantly enlist Brighton’s regular escort, college student Chrissie Makarova, who’s involved in sex work only so she can afford special extras for her mother, who’s in a nursing home. Things quickly fall apart, which sets the tone for this fast-moving tale. Brighton fights back against the Suttons’ plan with the help of a compromised FBI agent named Joe Smith, who’s very good at what he does. The rest of the plot brings in additional bad guys, hair’s-breadth escapes, and technological wizardry. At one point, the action moves from Ohio to Chicago for a diamonds-and-cash heist, which turns out just as difficult as the blackmailing scheme. It’s no spoiler to say that Randy and Jodi eventually end up miles away from the scenes of their crimes, having survived yet again, luxuriating in a hot tub and planning their next caper; the novel’s appeal is in how they get away. King has been telling tales of these characters for a while and he knows how to deliver punchy, clipped dialogue: “She’s an escort. She’s already in the game—just not our game.” He’s also has created a classic husband-and-wife team whom readers will love to watch in action; they’re are vaguely Robin Hood–like figures in that they steal from the morally compromised, although the poor will have to wait until the Suttons get their cut. Some of the action strains credulity, but that’s part of the fun, as are the nailbiter escapes. Randi and Jodi’s job isn’t for the faint of heart, which is why this cool duo—who never, ever panic—is so good at it.

A notably entertaining caper that will keep readers hooked on King’s books.

In this novel, a National Defense Agency operative races to pull the plug on a team of hackers extorting power plants.

“Computer geek” Ronny Wolstein is in deep debt to Presser, who finances his scams. That means he’s got a problem. But he also has a solution: installing ransomware in several hydroelectric power plants, which will cause catastrophic destruction until the powers that be meet his payment demands. He works with two former high school “besties” who are in as dire financial straits as he is. Engineering guru David Owens’ daughter requires expensive medical treatments. Shirley Chen, providing security, is a “horribly disfigured” veteran. The money from Wolstein’s plan will pay for her plastic surgery. The trio preys on unwilling accomplices who are as vulnerable as they are, such as Kenneth Cramer, a plant worker with a gambling problem that causes him to be delinquent on his child support payments, threatening his visitation privileges. After two devastating ransomware attacks, Capt. KD Thorne of the National Defense Agency and her partner, Warrant Officer Jeffrey Blunt, are brought in to stop the hackers. Thorne carries baggage of a different type, but it’s no less burdensome. She struggles to reconcile “the stupid things she’d done after her husband had left her.” Though the two appear to be in “a good place,” they are still divorced. This is the third Thorne procedural (as in the grand Columbo tradition, readers are clued in to Wolstein and company’s doings and follow anxiously as Thorne and Blunt get ever closer to him and Presser). Generic title aside, this novel is a briskly enjoyable read. Chen’s character is particularly well written and psychologically attuned. She is desperate to “fit in” and not be “a freak show who could only attract pervs who wanted to kiss her scars while they fucked her or take her from behind so they wouldn’t have to look at her.” Series fans invested in Thorne’s fraught relationship with her ex-husband will welcome progress on that front. In addition, King deftly builds anticipation for a fourth volume.

The author ups the ante in this entertaining thriller series outing starring a troubled hero.

The National Defense Agency investigates murder and corruption in this Midwestern noir.

Early one morning, Grace Abernathy walks her dog in Mercy Creek, Iowa. She lets the collie off his leash in Peterbo County Park, and he begins sniffing around some maintenance sheds. In a poorly covered grave, the dog finds five bodies. The victims are a local group of friends—Pat Green, Susan Grisel, Mike Belmont, PhilipRichards,and Billy Cannon—who worked for R&G Construction. When media outlets report on the mass grave, Henry Granger, CEO of R&G, grows concerned. His company, which trucks guns and drugs along Interstate-35 toward Mexico, had been trying to eliminate a mole. Granger answers to Mr. Juarez in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, who must now be reassured that his American partners are competent. The murder victims included an undercover FBI agent. The National Defense Agency sends Capt. KD Thorne and Warrant Officer Jeffery Blunt to run a “parallel investigation” of Mercy Creek’s law enforcement and discover corruption. When the agents arrive, Sheriff James Crowder cooperates fully despite being on Granger’s payroll. The sheriff’s son, Jimmy, was the only member of the group of friends working for R&G left alive. Jimmy suspects a coverup and only wants justice. Can Thorne and Blunt use him to expose Mercy Creek’s violent underside? This second volume of King’s KD Thorne series is a ballet of tension and rough justice. A journalistic lens captures small-town America’s downward slide, as the economically vulnerable Mercy Creek needs R&G’s warehouse to survive. Thrilling escalation begins as Granger tries to apply pressure to the determined agents. Thorne is barely fazed when his goons kidnap and torture her, describing it as being “rode hard, put away wet.” Blunt, a Black agent, feels an extra touch of horror when a deputy pulls over the protagonists’ car. Knowing it’s a setup, he tells Thorne: “I’m going to do my best to keep from being killed.” In the final third, morally gray characters deliver satisfying moments, and the author’s winning agents go big to prove they can’t be trifled with. A sweet closing scene brings these action heroes back down to Earth.

A trim, gripping, casually brutal small-town epic.

In this novel, a canister of a lethal nerve agent has been stolen from a government repository in Arizona—can a hero and her associates get to the bottom of this before the bad guys do what bad guys do?

Katherine Denise “KD” Thorne is in a bad way. She has burned bridges with the United States Army and NASA and with her ex-husband, Frank. And she is drinking too much. But she is still tough, as readers see early on when, although tipsy, she dispatches three mixed martial arts creeps in short order. Her old colleague Blunt puts her on to an opening with a shadowy government agency, and they are assigned the nerve gas case. The case involves the company that produced both the agent and an antidote, which it wants to demonstrate in real-life circumstances. The company plans to sell the canister to hokey White supremacist group the Patriot Alliance—though the band is not quite as harmless as it seems. Just when the plot seems straightforward, everything changes. It becomes clear that most of these actors are playing a double, if not a triple, game. People—mostly the bad guys—get betrayed and killed right and left. Finally, there is a showdown in a boondocks in Italy involving KD and her allies. King is an experienced writer, and it shows. He keeps the enjoyable story moving briskly, and he has the patter down pat. The procedures matter more than the characters, but some, like Blunt, who is big and cool, are appealing. He and KD make a very engaging team. There are grace notes here, intriguing diversions, such as a shady player’s paranoia about his wife’s fidelity, and the three MMA palookas who appear again, gluttons for punishment. This is the first installment of King’s KD Thorne series, and it looks promising—readers will hope the author features Blunt in the sequel. And will KD and Frank get back together? King so far has kept readers on tenterhooks about that.

A thriller that offers an undeniably entertaining way to spend an afternoon at the beach.

This ninth installment finds the series’ leads in a deep thicket of revenge after a simple scam goes wrong.

Philip and Carrie Benson, aka The Travelers, are longtime grifters currently living in a suburban home outside Denver, Colorado, with a hacker named Merlin Jimenez. Their latest scam is a website called Death Becomes You. People can pay $5,000 in bitcoin for the Bensons to whack someone—however, they don’t actually commit the murder. When a potential client asks for crime reporter Robin Simons to die in what seems like an overdose, the scammers become suspicious that the FBI has found them. Researching the client turns up Dr. John Pollock, a dentist in Cornwell, Indiana. The Travelers raise their fee to $12,000, which Pollock pays. They don’t know that Pollock uses his dental office to sell OxyContin pills provided by drug lord Dylan Anderson. Anderson, annoyed that Pollock would try to kill the reporter sniffing around their business on his own, plans to eliminate the Bensons. The hit man creates collateral damage before the Bensons take him down. Philip and Carrie then visit Cornwell to exact revenge and scoop up enough cash for their next vacation. King’s smoothly executed and addictive series returns, offering cinematic action and a high body count. This time, the plot twist involves a ring of sex traffickers. What begins as genuine concern for a teen named Gypsy escalates into war against a powerful thug and his crew. Dark humor prevails, as when the Travelers find the shabby apartment of their targets and Philip notes, “When they say crime doesn’t pay, they were talking about these two.” The violence is never glamorized (“He shifted his weight, heard the shot as he felt the bullet explode through his back into his gut”). The finale suggests the Travelers may have more vigilantism in their future.

This exceptionally violent, well-conceived series continues to explore the moral gray zone.

This eighth volume of the Travelers series sees the con artist couple attempting to score diamonds while avoiding a showdown between White nationalists and the FBI.

Danny and Genie Briggs are enjoying a retreat in the Florida Keys; at least, those are the grifters’ current names as they prepare a fresh heist. Through a connection, they learn that the Orange Hill Cartel ships $10 million in diamonds twice a year, smuggling them out of Mumbai via stateside Hashemi Wholesale Carpets & Arts. The second-generation Indian American Hashemi siblings—married Zander and recently widowed Nadia—only dabble in crime, but they’re the perfect targets for the Travelers’ unique brand of subterfuge and seduction. Meanwhile, in Summerville, Iowa, White nationalists of the Fatherland Volk ready the deadly next step in their plot to eliminate foreign elements from the United States. Specifically, members Bruce MacBurn, Ray Johnston, and Joe Lang plan to acquire uranium and bomb several buildings, including the Denver Mint and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Joe, however, is actually a mole for the FBI’s Counterterrorism Task Force. As he allows the White nationalists to proceed with their plan—and potentially set themselves up for arrest on more severe charges—the Hashemis get tangled up in the scheme and realize they can no longer afford to be amateurs in the smuggling game. King’s fans will relish this smoothly set up con that, like others in the series, has just enough complexity to allow unexpected chaos to occur. His nuanced antiheroes steal the show, as when Danny, in conversation with Genie, expresses his chances of seducing Nadia with the chillingly confident line, “We’re already in love.” The Fatherland Volk members, meanwhile, despicably use racist epithets and discuss blaming their terrorism on Middle Eastern agents. Nadia’s sentimental characterization will keep readers distressed over her fate (“There was nothing wrong with wanting to be touched, wanting to feel that wild happiness, if only for a few moments”). This entry’s mellow finale, memorable cast, and emotional weight may have readers hoping for a direct sequel. That said, the author rarely offers readers what they expect.

King’s latest novel proves he still adores the Travelers, and so will longtime fans.

In King’s (The Murder Run, 2019) seventh Travelers novel, married con artists help rob an island casino.

The two main characters adopt different names in every town they visit. Here, in Madisonville, he’s Paul Longmont and she’s Jessie Taggert. Jessie has spent the last two months “worming her way” into wealthy Hugo Lansing’s life. Paul, meanwhile, poses as someone in need of $500,000 in bearer bonds, which Lansing can provide—for a $100,000 fee. After the wily couple swipes the bonds and sells them back to Lansing for 10 cents on the dollar, Alexander Koenig, the man who got Paul into the con game, contacts them. He asks the pair to join a crew that’s going to hit the Solomon Island casino, off the coast of Bathsheba City. The plan, as Koenig tells it, is to rob the room safes as a distraction while going for a larger prize: more than $1 million of mobster Jeffrey Smithson’s laundered cash. Two noteworthy pieces of information: There are no guns allowed on the island, and the date of the planned heist is Smithson’s 70th birthday, so he’ll be surrounded by immediate family. While posing as casino workers Max and Kelly Jo Barlow, can the Travelers outmaneuver other greedy cons and learn the suspicious Koenig’s real mission? King dials back his protagonists’ personal drama, which will offer new readers a clean introduction to the series. As always, the initial con is just complex enough to maintain interest, with repercussions that may or may not bleed into the rest of the story. King resists the temptation to delve too far into Koenig’s backstory, although he establishes that Paul has “always dreamed of beating him at his own game.” JB and Lulu, another con artist couple, capably play tit for tat with the Travelers, showing the canny author at the height of his game. There’s some good gallows humor, as well, as when Max asks Kelly Jo if they should pose as missionaries, and she replies, “Have you heard the good news?” Although events crest early, the second half juggles a challenging number of moving parts.

Another full-throttle installment that shows that this crime series has no intention of slowing down.

This sixth installment of a series finds the Traveling Man grifting alone while his partner enjoys a normal life.

The Traveling Man, a career con artist, is using the name Tony Rogers while in Mitchellville, Maryland. His wife, continuing under the alias Nicole, has opted for semiretirement with millionaire James Denison in San Francisco. Tony flies without his usual backup into the midst of lawyer Jerry Chen, National Defense Agent Paul Robertson, and several other conspirators who have stolen NGO aid funds from Kyrgyzstan. Chen plans to break into the safe of Clemens, the conspirator holding key bank account codes, to protect himself from being offed by someone killing members of the group. The attorney contacts Missy Grey, a player who calls Tony to crack the safe. The heist goes well until someone murders Duke and Barker, Tony’s partners, making it personal. Meanwhile, in San Francisco, Nicole battles the boredom of living straight by taking on Lily Crockett, a young apprentice criminal. Together they flirt and drink with men and joyride in stolen cars. But when Lily attempts a solo adventure, the callow con doesn’t escape the attention of her marks. They steal her purse and threaten to unravel her life, which forces Nicole to step in. In this latest volume of The Travelers series, King (The Kidnap Victim, 2018, etc.) maintains his svelte, addictive style despite a touch of nostalgia for his characters’ early days. As Nicole reminds Tony, “Money spends better when you have to steal it.” Denison can’t quite douse Nicole’s grifting fire, and she frequently tells him not to worry (“Just relax. This isn’t Cricket Bay”). The plot’s main thrill is seeing Tony in action alone among a half-dozen greedy backstabbers. There’s fresh tension here, as the author eventually proves that his con has “that old happiness” with Nicole and is “one step better than he was on his own.” From the elegiac tone, readers may suspect disaster in the final pages. Or will events leave the Travelers prepped for either the quiet life or another thrilling mark?

The author alters the stakes in this entertaining con artist tale and brings his characters full circle.

This fifth installment of a series sees married grifters attempt to tweak their con artistry with fresh talent.

In the town of Springville, the Traveling Man is going by the name John Ferguson. His wife, who usually helps him con criminals out of vast sums of money, is still using the alias Nicole Carter from their last caper. She hopes to retire in Cricket Bay, Florida, alongside James Denison, the grieving widower whom the Travelers recently helped. Replacing Nicole is 25-year-old Molly Wright, who has “more confidence than ability” in the grifting game. She and John plan to gain the trust of sleazy lawyer Neal Robertson and access his safe-deposit box at the Milton Bank—which may contain up to $100,000 in cash. Naturally, complications arise. Molly hasn’t mentioned her husband, Chad, who’d like to rip off John at the earliest opportunity. Interfering with Nicole’s retirement is Fred Stein, a crooked IT worker who recognizes her as Sally from the time the Travelers halted his credit card scheme. When these two wild cards intrude on the game, the cons end up pushed into some dark, murderous corners. For this latest Travelers outing, King (The Freeport Robbery, 2017, etc.) once again offers a lean, dialogue-driven blast of shifting alliances and action. Longtime fans will enjoy the emotional tapestry built around the notion that Nicole is “too old” to continue seducing marks and John needs to train her replacement. With minimal exposition, the author keeps his characters’ temperaments and decisions in the forefront of the story. It’s genuinely shocking—and narratively satisfying—when Nicole is honest with Denison and his family about being a con artist. Later, as events are boiling toward a fatal encounter, the Traveling Man’s no-nonsense savagery comes through in the line “I want to kill...so bad that I can taste his blood in my mouth.” As always, King leaves his creations in intriguing new positions by the end, ensuring anticipation for the next high-stakes volume.

This Travelers tale delivers another exceptional slice of gamesmanship, slippery morals, and emotional fallout.

King’s (The Blackmail Photos, 2016, etc.) fourth outing with the Travelers, a husband-and-wife con artist team, sees them chasing stolen artwork.

The Travelers go from city to city, orchestrating elaborate cons that rip off deserving crooks. This time around, the couple poses as Ron and Nicole Carter, in the city of Charles Bay. Their latest target is Pat McCall, a corrupt information-technology professional who deals in credit card numbers. After sleeping with him, Nicole tries to get him to drink some spiked water, so that he’ll pass out and she can lift data from his laptop. McCall doesn’t fall for this ruse, however, and Ron must intervene to salvage their identities. The 40-something Nicole blames herself for the failed con, believing that she’s no longer the femme fatale that she once was. Soon she and Ron are on a fresh con facilitated by Aaron Rickover, an insurance investigator. He informs them that a gold, jeweled casket that was on its way to the Peter Damascus Sculpture Museum in Los Angeles has been stolen and placed in a “freeport” vault, outside of the reach of U.S. customs. The museum offers the Travelers a $150,000 finder’s fee to obtain it. The Carters do manage to collect the masterpiece, only to have a rival squad of thieves unexpectedly engage them in gunplay at an airport. In this latest go-round with the Travelers, readers should already be accustomed to author King’s casual excellence, particularly when it comes to character development. In the first half, for example, he ably reestablishes a psychological rift between his protagonists when Ron suggests that they adopt a third partner—a younger woman whom Nicole could train to seduce targets. King then cleverly flips this dynamic, though, when they eventually con a cultured man whose wife is near death in a hospital, and whom Nicole allows to emotionally cling to her “as tightly as the last piece of flotsam from the wreckage of his life.” Overall, King delivers a solidly written, self-contained thriller that also sets the stage for his cons’ return.

Another exceptional account of heart-of-gold con artistry.

In this third installment of his Travelers series, King’s (The Computer Heist, 2016, etc.) con-artist couple target a would-be politician.

The Traveling Man and his wife are in a town called Randal Junction. This time, he’s taken the name “George Harrison,” while she goes by “Roslyn.” They’re posing as married real estate agents to penetrate the ambitious life of banker Donald Honeycutt, who’s running for Congress. The con begins in earnest when Roslyn draws Honeycutt into a sexual affair, and George clandestinely films one of their trysts from a van. They later mail the banker a package containing a few steamy stills and a DVD of the event, which he nearly opens in front of his even-more-ambitious wife, Billie Honeycutt. They also send him a note demanding that he drop $10,000 into a mailbox each month, or they’ll tell Billie and the media everything. The con proceeds apace until Billie notices a missing $10,000 that no campaign business accounts for. Although she’s aware of her husband’s one weakness—women—she’d made him promise not to philander during the campaign. She sets a private eye named Stan Jessup on the banker’s trail to learn more. Roslyn, however, has a secret that radically alters the nature of the blackmail scheme—one that could make Randall Junction the Travelers’ last stop. For his third small-town thriller, King nearly undoes his ruthless couple by pitting them against an equally horrible duo. Billie, for example, is only with Donald because she “plans to go to Washington and take her wheeling and dealing to the next level without having to be in office herself.” As usual, King’s dialogue and secondary characters make for rich, pulpy reading; for example, when Sheriff Bo Teardale catches up with George, he reassures him by saying, “You’ve been watching too much TV. If I want you disappeared, you’ll disappear.” And even though King gives Donald the self-deprecating line, “It was the plot to a bad movie,” he masterfully crafts the deadly tangle of interpersonal alliances and their fallout. Although this volume could finish the Travelers’ tales, a sequel would be irresistible.

A tightly executed thriller and the high point of a great series.

King’s (The Traveling Man, 2015) latest thriller picks up the trail of his married con artists as they descend on a software company.

Samantha Bartel is the assistant director of new development for Leapfrog Technologies in Cloverdale. Middle-aged, unmarried, and resentful of her superiors at Leapfrog who have benefited from her work, Sam plans sabotage. Enter the Traveling Man and his wife, this time using the names Joe and Tess Campbell. After surviving their previous con in Seanboro, this ruthless, manipulative couple once again hopes to fleece a deserving mark. Sam reveals that her company is about to roll out a data-mining program called Lilypad 5. For $100,000—half up front—she hires the Campbells to help steal the program and destroy the server holding it. While Leapfrog reels from the “accident,” Sam plans to sell Lilypad 5 to one of her firm’s competitors. Personal lives, however, tend to skew even the best-laid scams. Ronnie Franklin, Leapfrog’s director of new development, and Leroy Smalls, the company’s security chief, need piles of cash for private reasons. Once an initial double cross threatens to implode Leapfrog, the Campbells must stay ahead of the mayhem if they want to get paid. King returns in fine form with his devious creations in tow. Fascinating as the Campbells are, however, Sam, Ronnie, and Leroy vie for the reader’s sympathy in remarkable ways. When lovelorn Sam dines with a potential mate named Reuben, she wonders whether her life with him “would be just as empty as it was now, only with twice the laundry and cleaning?” King hints at the potential for psychological trauma from the lives his protagonists lead when Tess declares, “I don't have PTSD. I’m completely over what happened in Seanboro.” The violence here, though brief, is unexpected and staggeringly brutal; the repercussions electrify the narrative. King leaves his audience clamoring for more seedy, smart adventures, with perhaps a bit more damage accrued to Mr. and Mrs. Traveling Man.

King strikes another vein of modern noir gold in this technology tale.

Husband and wife con artists must get back on their feet after a scheme goes spectacularly wrong in this criminally good debut by King.

Married hustlers Tom and Patty (or, at least, those are their aliases) arrive in a small town alongside their partner, Buddy Ray, with the intention of pulling off a lucrative con—selling contaminated lakefront land for a high price. Everything proceeds according to plan, until Buddy and Patty go against Tom’s instructions and take on a doomed side deal. From there, things take a dangerous turn, and Tom and Patty are left to pick up the pieces of their business and personal relationship (and heal more than a few physical wounds). After taking a monthslong break, the couple tries to get back in the game—with similarly messy results. On the spectrum of grays, these two are much closer to black than white. They cheat, steal, manipulate, blackmail and even kill when the moment calls for it. Yet readers might still find themselves white-knuckling their books (or e-readers) when the pair is in a tight spot. Despite the couple’s more questionable values, Tom and Patty’s relationship is based on love, loyalty and trust, and even they have their red lines: “We don’t scam civilians. Rule number two. We use them; we pay them; we stay out of jail.” Charismatic, levelheaded Tom is especially likable despite his criminality. It also doesn’t hurt that Robert and Pamela Johnson (as they call themselves in the second half of the book) are more than once pitted against an even more cutthroat thug who makes them look like the good guys. Surrounding them is a cast of superbly sketched characters whose competing motives constantly trip up their plans, such as Marcie, the overconfident, small-time real estate agent they’ve looped into their land-sale con. With a story every bit as intricate and entertaining as the personalities who fill it, King’s uncommonly solid debut is a must-read.

An absorbing, deviant tale of redemption.