Mystery Bestsellers for the Week Ending March 09, 2012

A list of the top 15 mystery hardcover bestsellers for the week ending March 9th, 2012 has been posted by the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books.

Vince Flynn's 12th Mitch Rapp thriller Kill Shot retains its spot atop the list as this week's bestselling crime novel. But the week may be best remembered as the one in which The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson, which was on our list for almost two years, finally moved off it.

Two new titles debut this week.

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Entering the list in a strong 9th position is The Expats, the debut thriller by Chris Pavone.

Kate Moore is a working mother, struggling to make ends meet, to raise children, to keep a spark in her marriage … and to maintain an increasingly unbearable life-defining secret. So when her husband is offered a lucrative job in Luxembourg, she jumps at the chance to leave behind her double-life, to start anew.

She begins to reinvent herself as an expat, finding her way in a language she doesn't speak, doing the housewifely things she's never before done — play dates and coffee mornings, daily cooking and never-ending laundry. Meanwhile, her husband works incessantly, at a job Kate has never understood, for a banking client she's not allowed to know. He's becoming distant and evasive; she's getting lonely and bored.

Then another American couple arrives. Kate soon becomes suspicious that these people are not who they say they are, and she's terrified that her own past is catching up to her. So Kate begins to dig, to peel back the layers of deception that surround her. She discovers fake offices and shell corporations and a hidden gun, a mysterious farmhouse and numbered accounts with bewildering sums of money, and finally unravels the mind-boggling long-play con that threatens her family, her marriage, and her life.

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Five places lower in number 14 is Chasing Midnight, the 19th Doc Ford mystery by Randy Wayne White.

At a reception hosted by a notorious Russian black marketeer, Doc Ford uses darkness, and his friend Tomlinson, as cover to get an underwater look at the billionaire's yacht. By the time Ford surfaces, everything has changed.

Environmental extremists have taken control of the island. Or are they thugs hired by the Russian's competitors? Whatever the motive, they have herded everyone together and threatened to kill one hostage every hour until midnight unless their demands are met-at which point they will just blow everybody up.

Electronic jammers make communications with the outside world impossible. The only hope of avoiding terrible consequences: The militants do not know Ford's capabilities, or that he is still on the loose. But that situation won't last for long … and the clock is ticking.

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