20 Great Thrillers, June 2012

If you are not watching Justified, the television series about charming but troublesome Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, you should be. Givens’ old school style of law enforcement results in his purgatorial assignment to his hometown of Hazard, Kentucky, where he encounters old friends and makes new enemies of them. The series is based around the character introduced in Elmore Leonard’s short story “Fire in the Hole;” RAYLAN, however, is a new novel and weaves situations from the third season of the television series into a whole new set of problems, including bank robbers and revenge-minded antagonists. It’s a strong read, full of great plotting and dialogue.