Novel set in Europe, Manila and Turkey
Ten Great Thrillers set in CHICAGO
22nd October 2024
Ten great thrillers set in Chicago. Chicago, A city of contrasts and hidden depths, Chicago provides a rich backdrop for thrilling narratives. Its sprawling cityscape, with its towering skyscrapers and winding alleyways, offers endless possibilities for suspenseful plots. The city’s history of organised crime, political corruption, and social unrest adds a layer of intrigue to crime fiction.
Thrillers set in Chicago often explore themes of power, greed, and the blurred lines between right and wrong. The city’s diverse neighbourhoods, from the affluent Gold Coast to the gritty South Side, offer a variety of settings for high-stakes action and suspenseful mysteries. Whether it’s a classic detective story or a modern noir thriller, Chicago provides the perfect backdrop for a gripping tale.
Here are ten of our favourite thrillers set in this great city.
Deep Dark Night by Steph Broadribb
A city in darkness. A building in lockdown. A score that can only be settled in blood…
Working off the books for FBI Special Agent Alex Monroe, Florida bounty-hunter Lori Anderson and her partner, JT, head to Chicago. Their mission: to entrap the head of the Cabressa crime family. The bait: a priceless chess set that Cabressa is determined to add to his collection.
An exclusive high-stakes poker game is arranged in the penthouse suite of one of the city’s tallest buildings, with Lori holding the cards in an agreed arrangement to hand over the pieces, one by one. But, as night falls and the game plays out, stakes rise and tempers flare.
When a power failure plunges the city into darkness, the building goes into lockdown. But this isn’t an ordinary blackout, and the men around the poker table aren’t all who they say they are. Hostages are taken, old scores resurface and the players start to die.
And that’s just the beginning…
Murder Knocks Twice by Susanna Calkins
The first mystery in Susanna Calkins’ captivating new series takes readers into the dark, dangerous, and glittering underworld of a 1920s Chicago speakeasy.
Gina Ricci takes on a job as a cigarette girl to earn money for her ailing father–and to prove to herself that she can hold her own at Chicago’s most notorious speakeasy, the Third Door. She’s enchanted by the harsh, glamorous world she discovers: the sleek socialites sipping bootlegged cocktails, the rowdy ex-servicemen playing poker in a curtained back room, the flirtatious jazz pianist and the brooding photographer–all overseen by the club’s imposing owner, Signora Castallazzo. But the staff buzzes with whispers about Gina’s predecessor, who died under mysterious circumstances, and the photographer, Marty, warns her to be careful.
When Marty is brutally murdered, with Gina as the only witness, she’s determined to track down his killer. What secrets did Marty capture on his camera–and who would do anything to destroy it? As Gina searches for answers, she’s pulled deeper into the shadowy truths hiding behind the Third Door.
The Last Straw by Ed Duncan
When a teenage girl witnesses a carjacking gone bad, she is marked for death by a crime boss with no apparent motive. A black lawyer and a white enforcer with an unlikely history forge an uneasy alliance to protect the girl from a hit man with an agenda of his own.
After they find out that the crime boss is the father of the black teenage carjacker, Paul Elliott – lawyer and close friend of the witness’s family – begins counseling them.
As the long-simmering feud between Rico and John D’Angelo reaches boiling point, bodies start to pile up in rapid succession… and old scores will be settled.
The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes
Chicago 1931. Harper Curtis, a violent drifter, stumbles on a house with a secret as shocking as his own twisted nature – it opens onto other times. He uses it to stalk his carefully chosen ‘shining girls’ through the decades – and cut the spark out of them.
He’s the perfect killer. Unstoppable. Untraceable. He thinks…
Chicago, 1992. They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Tell that to Kirby Mazrachi, whose life was shattered after a brutal attempt to murder her. Still struggling to find her attacker, her only ally is Dan, an ex-homicide reporter who covered her case and now might be falling in love with her.
As Kirby investigates, she finds the other girls – the ones who didn’t make it. The evidence is … impossible. But for a girl who should be dead, impossible doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…
The Litigators by John Grisham
David Zinc has it all: Big firm, big salary, life in the lawyer’s fast lane.
Until the day he snaps and throws it all away.
Leaving the world of corporate law far behind, he talks himself into a new job with Finley & Figg. A self-styled ’boutique’ firm with only two partners, Oscar Finley and Wally Figg are ambulance-chasing street lawyers who hustle nickel-and-dime cases, dreaming of landing the big win.
For all his Harvard Law Degree and five years with Chicago’s top firm, Zinc has never entered a courtroom, never helped a client who really needed a lawyer, never handled a gun.
All that is about to change.
We All Fall Down by Michael Harvey
When a light bulb falls in a subway tunnel, it releases a pathogen that could kill millions. While the mayor postures, people begin to die, especially on the city’s grim west side. Hospitals become morgues. L trains are converted into rolling hearses. Finally, the government acts, sealing off entire sections of the city – but are they keeping people out or in? Meanwhile, Michael Kelly’s hunt for the people who poisoned his city takes him into the tangled underworld of Chicago’s west side gangs and the even more frightening world of black biology – an elite discipline emerging from the nation’s premier labs, where scientists play God and will stop at nothing to preserve their secrecy. It’s a brave new world… and the most audacious page-turner yet from an emerging modern master. Featuring plenty of next-generation technology, We All Fall Down is stylish suspense from a major new voice.
A Safe Place for Dying by Jack Fredrickson
An extortion letter arrives at Crystal Waters, one of Chicago’s wealthiest gated communities. Shortly thereafter, a mansion blows up. The residents want answers fast before another zillion dollar residence turns to rubble. They hire former businessman Dek Elstrom. Ruined by scandal, Dek may be down, but thanks to his rather droll sense of humour, he is nowhere near out. A former Crystal Waters resident himself, Dek now lives in the primitive, pigeon-scented turret of a castle his grandfather never finished building. He still loves his ex-wife, and he wants to solve this case to redeem himself in her eyes. Sadly, he soon becomes the main suspect.
Dead Land by Sara Paretsky
Chicago is the city of broad shoulders, but V.I. Warshawski knows its politics: “Pay to Play”. Money changes hands in the middle of the night; by morning, buildings and parks have been replaced by billion-dollar projects.
Private investigator V.I. gets pulled into one of these clandestine deals when her impetuous goddaughter Bernie tries to rescue a famed singer-songwriter, now living on the streets. Thanks to Bernie, V.I. finds herself in the path of some developers whose negotiating strategy is simple: they bulldoze – or kill – any obstacle in their way.
Questions pile up almost as fast as the dead bodies. When she tries to answer them, the detective finds a terrifying conspiracy stretching from Chicago’s parks to a cover-up of the dark chapters in the American government’s interference in South American politics. Before finds answer, V.I. will be pushed closed to breaking point. People who pay to play take no prisoners.
Infinite by Brian Freeman
From bestselling author Brian Freeman comes an explosive new psychological thriller that pushes the limits of reality as we know it.
One rainy night, the unthinkable happens: Dylan Moran’s car plunges off the road into a raging river, his beautiful wife drowning as he struggles to shore.
In the aftermath, through his grief, Dylan experiences sudden, strange visions: wherever he goes, he’s haunted by glimpses of himself. Dylan initially chalks it up to trauma, but that changes when he runs into a psychiatrist who claims he’s her patient. She says he has been undergoing a unique hypnotherapy treatment built on the idea that with every choice, he creates an infinite number of parallel universes.
Now those parallel universes are unlocked—and Dylan’s doppelgänger has staked a claim to his world. Can Dylan use these alternate realities to get a second chance at the life that was stolen from him? Or will he lose himself…to himself?
Atomic Love by Jennie Fields
Chicago, 1950: Rosalind Porter is unfulfilled, heartbroken and angry.
Five years ago her career as a scientist was sabotaged by the man who also broke her heart: former Manhattan Project colleague Thomas Weaver.
Now, out of the blue, Thomas gets back in touch: he urgently needs to see her.
Rosalind is wary, can she let him back into her life and risk being hurt all over again?
But then someone changes her mind – FBI agent Charlie Szydlo.
He suspects Thomas of selling atomic secrets to Russia, and he needs her help to find out the truth.
But is it the truth about what Thomas might have done or the truth about his feelings for her that really matters? And at the back of her mind is Charlie – a good man whose pain she is drawn to healing.
Torn between two men, Rosalind faces a heartbreaking choice . . .
Enjoy your Chicago thrillers! Any of your favourites we’ve missed, please add in Comments below
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