Novel set in PHILADELPHIA
Ten Great Thrillers Set across the AMERICAN WEST COAST
12th October 2026
Ten great thrillers set across the American West Coast
Thick sea fog rolls over jagged cliffs, swallowing the highway. In hidden coastal coves and damp redwood forests, dark secrets fester. Wealthy hillside estates conceal cold-blooded betrayals, while rainy northern port towns harbour smuggling rings and quiet serial predators. Tech boardrooms hide corporate sabotage behind pristine glass, and isolated island cabins trap frantic targets as fierce Pacific gales close in. From sun-bleached southern beaches to shadow-drenched northern pines, the rugged coastline witnesses ruthless manhunts, buried evidence, and calculated revenge. Underneath the breathtaking ocean views, danger lurks in every tide, leaving no one safe from the darkness washing ashore. Here ar ten od our favourite thrillers set across the Coast.
Deep Blue Trouble by Steph Broadribb – SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
Her daughter Dakota is safe, but her cancer is threatening a comeback, and Lori needs JT – Dakota’s daddy and the man who taught Lori everything – alive and kicking. Problem is, he’s behind bars, and heading for death row. Desperate to save him, Lori does a deal, taking on off-the-books job from shady FBI agent Alex Monroe. Bring back on-the-run felon, Gibson ‘The Fish’ Fletcher, and JT walks free. Teaming up with local bounty hunter Dez McGregor threatens to put the whole job in danger. But this is one job she’s got to get right, or she’ll lose everything…
Hard Cold Winter by Glen Erik Hamilton – SEATTLE
When an old crony of Van Shaw’s late grandfather calls in a favor, he embarks on a journey deep into the remote forest of the Olympic Mountains in search of a missing girl tied to his own criminal past.
Discovering a brutal murder scene, Van finds himself caught between a billionaire businessman on the one side and vicious gangsters on the other.
In an attempt to survive Van will have to face some of the toughest questions of his life, not least over his relationship with his iron willed girlfriend, Luce. But with the clock ticking, a desperate Van may just need every ally he can get, especially as someone prepares to unleash a firestorm on Seattle that could burn them all to ashes.
Afraid of the Light by Douglas Kennedy – LOS ANGELES
The new novel from the bestselling author of The Pursuit of Happiness and The Moment
Brendan has always lived a careful, constrained life. A salesman who never liked the work, he’s a man who has stayed in his marriage and his faith because it was what was expected of him. But now, having lost his job after corporate downsizing and on the cusp of sixty, he finds himself scrambling to somehow stay afloat in the only Los Angeles work on offer to a man his age – driving for Uber.
When one of his rides, a retired professor named Elise, asks to be dropped off outside an abortion clinic where she now volunteers, Brendan finds himself literally driving right into the virulent epicentre of one of the major issues of our time, engulfing his life in the process.
A novel of high suspense and considerable moral complexity, Afraid of the Light is a tough, affecting social thriller that speaks volumes about the corrosive divisions of our troubled times.
You Love Me by Caroline Kepnes – BAINBRIDGE ISLAND
Joe is done with the cities. He’s done with the muck and the posers, done with Love. Now, he’s saying hello to nature, to simple pleasures on a cozy island in the Pacific Northwest. For the first time in a long time, he can just breathe.
He gets a job at the local library–he does know a thing or two about books–and that’s where he meets her: Mary Kay DiMarco. Librarian. Joe won’t meddle, he will not obsess. He’ll win her the old-fashioned way . . . by providing a shoulder to cry on, a helping hand. Over time, they’ll both heal their wounds and begin their happily ever after in this sleepy town.
The trouble is . . . Mary Kay already has a life. She’s a mother. She’s a friend. She’s . . . busy.
True love can only triumph if both people are willing to make room for the real thing. Joe cleared his decks. He’s ready. And hopefully, with his encouragement and undying support, Mary Kay will do the right thing and make room for him.
The Fragile Ones by Jennifer Chase – CALIFORNIA
When the bodies of eleven and twelve-year-old sisters, Tessa and Megan, are found at the bottom of a ravine—dressed in matching pastel summer outfits, their small bodies broken from the fall—Detective Katie Scott is called to one of the most shocking and heartbreaking crime scenes of her career.
Carefully picking through the fragile remains, Katie makes the first of many disturbing discoveries: the girls were not biological sisters. The youngest, Megan, is a DNA match to a kidnapping case years before. The tiny number burnt into her skin the mark of a terrifying killer intent on keeping count of his collection.
Her PTSD from the army triggered, Katie is left reeling as she maps other missing children in the local area. Has this twisted soul found a way to stay nearby his victims? Could he be watching now as Katie hits one dead end after another?
A wild storm building, matching a fiber found during the autopsy to a nearby boatyard is the break Katie needs. But when another girl goes missing, just as lightning strikes and the power goes out, Katie only has her instincts, her team and her service dog to rely on. As time runs out for Katie to finds the stolen child alive, who will become the next number on this monster’s deadly list?
Deep Freeze by Lisa Jackson – OREGON
Jenna Hughes left Hollywood for a farm in Oregon to get away from fame. But someone has followed the former movie star – an obsessed fan whose letters are personal and deeply disturbing.
And while Jenna’s already shaken up by what she’s seen on paper, she’d be terrified if she knew what Sheriff Shane Carter is investigating. It’s a shocking case that started with the discovery of a dead woman in the woods. Now two more women are missing, and one of them looks just like Jenna.
As a blizzard bears down on their small town, the merciless killer’s grisly work has only just begun. Jenna is getting close to meeting her biggest fan – the one who wants to own her forever.
Where’d you go, Bernadette by Maria Semple – SEATTLE
Bernadette Fox is notorious. To her Microsoft-guru husband, she’s a fearlessly opinionated partner: to fellow private-school mothers in Seattle, she’s a disgrace: to design mavens, she’s a revolutionary architect, and to 15-year-old Bee, she is a best friend and, simply, Mom.
Then Bernadette disappears. It began when Bee aced her report card and claimed her promised reward: a family trip to Antarctica. But Bernadette’s intensifying allergy to Seattle–and people in general–has made her so agoraphobic that a virtual assistant in India now runs her most basic errands. A trip to the end of the earth is problematic.
The Samaritan by Mason Cross – LOS ANGELES
When the mutilated body of a young woman is discovered in the Santa Monica Mountains, LAPD Detective Jessica Allen knows this isn’t the work of a first-time killer. She’s seen this MO before – two and a half years ago on the other side of the country. Allen begins to dig deeper and soon uncovers a terrifying truth. A sadistic serial killer has been operating undetected for the past decade, preying on lone female drivers who have broken down. The press dub the killer ‘the Samaritan’, but with no leads and a killer who leaves no traces, the police investigation quickly grinds to a halt.
That’s when Carter Blake shows up to volunteer his services. He’s a skilled manhunter with an uncanny ability to predict the Samaritan’s next moves. At first, Allen and her colleagues are suspicious. After all, their new ally shares some uncomfortable similarities to the man they’re tracking. But as the Samaritan takes his slaughter to the next level, Blake is forced to reveal that the similarities between the two men are closer than even Allen suspects.
With time running out and an opponent who knows all of his tricks, Blake must find a way to stop the Samaritan . . . even if it means bringing his own past crashing down on top of him.
A Merciful Secret by Kendra Elliot – OREGON
In this Wall Street Journal bestseller, a pair of ritual murders could expose Mercy Kilpatrick to something terrifying: her own past…
Raised off the grid by survivalists, Mercy Kilpatrick believed in no greater safeguard than the backwoods of Oregon. Unforgiven by her father for abandoning the fold for the FBI, Mercy still holds to her past convictions. They’re in her blood. They’re her secrets—as guarded as her private survival retreat hidden away in the foothills.
In a cabin near her hideaway, Mercy encounters a young girl whose grandmother is dying from multiple knife wounds. Hundreds of miles away, a body is discovered slashed to death in a similar way. The victims—a city judge and an old woman living in the woods—couldn’t be more different.
With the help of police chief Truman Daly, Mercy must find the killer before the body count rises. Mercy knows that the past has an edge on her. So does her family. How can she keep her secrets now…when they’re the only things that can save her?
Japantown by Barry Lancet – SAN FRANCISCO
San Francisco antiques dealer Jim Brodie receives a call one night from a friend at the SFPD: an entire family has been senselessly gunned down in the Japantown neighborhood of the bustling city. As an American born and raised in Japan and part-owner of his father’s Tokyo private investigation firm, Brodie has advised the local police in the past, but the near-perfect murders in Japantown are like nothing he’s ever encountered. With his array of Asian contacts and fluency in Japanese, Brodie follows leads gathered from a shadow powerbroker, a renegade Japanese detective, and the elusive tycoon at the center of the Japantown murders along a trail that takes him from the crime scene in California to terrorized citizens and informants in Japan. Step by step, he unravels a web of intrigue stretching back centuries and unearths a deadly secret that threatens not only his life but also the lives of his entire circle of family and friends.
Enjoy our selection of thrillers set across the American West Coast!
Tony for the TripFiction Team
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