Our Favorite Political and Legal Thrillers This Year

Matthew Keating, a one-time Navy SEAL—and a past president—has always defended his family as staunchly as he has his country. Now those defenses are under attack.
A madman abducts Keating’s teenage daughter, Melanie—turning every parent’s deepest fear into a matter of national security. As the world watches in real time, Keating embarks on a one-man special-ops mission that tests his strengths: as a leader, a warrior, and a father.

Avery Keene, a brilliant young law clerk for the legendary Justice Howard Wynn, is doing her best to hold her life together—excelling in an arduous job with the court while also dealing with a troubled family. When the shocking news breaks that Justice Wynn—the cantankerous swing vote on many current high-profile cases—has slipped into a coma, Avery’s life turns upside down. She is immediately notified that Justice Wynn has left instructions for her to serve as his legal guardian and power of attorney. Plunged into an explosive role she never anticipated, Avery finds that Justice Wynn had been secretly researching one of the most controversial cases before the court—a proposed merger between an American biotech company and an Indian genetics firm, which promises to unleash breathtaking results in the medical field. She also discovers that Wynn suspected a dangerously related conspiracy that infiltrates the highest power corridors of Washington.

American Traitor is the latest in Brad Taylor's Pike Logan series, and finds Pike and Jennifer Cahill vacationing in Australia when they hear from Pike's old friend Clifford Delmonty. He's been working for an Australian contractor when he witnessed something he wasn't meant to see...and now Chinese agents are hot on his tail. And Pike and Jennifer rush to help their friend, they uncover a sinister plot enacted by China to destabilize the government of Taiwan, and it's up to them to stop a war before it can begin.

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Hayley Chill is a White House staffer with some pretty big secrets—she's responsible for directing the president, who is actually a Russian mole turned double agent. And when a series of devastating cyber attacks hit the U.S., everywhere she turns, people are pressuring her and the president to blame it on the Russians. Hayley must walk an extremely fine line to keep the president from angering the Russians while also getting to the bottom of who is really responsible for the attacks, before anyone declares war.

Margaret Truman, daughter of Harry S. Truman, published a series of mystery novels set in Washington D.C., and this is the first authorized continuation of that series, written by Jon Land. Three major events shake the world at the start of the novel: a terrorist attack in Israel, the sudden death of the American Vice President, and a chance encounter in the D.C. Metro station that leads to PI Robert Brixton thwarting a bombing. When the Secret Service contact Brixton and tell him they think all three events are linked, and that the death of the VP was no mere heart attack, he'll have to get to the bottom of an international mystery.

Navy SEAL James Reece faces the challenge of his career as 2021 dawns. It's a new beginning and new presidency for the American people, who are in desperate need of unification. The new president is idealistic, young, and hiding a big secret that threatens to be exposed when an old enemy of the United States decides to make their move. It's been twenty years since their last attack, and they've learned a thing or two in that time. But this time, they're determined to succeed in their mission.

Detective Billy Harney has seen some of the roughest cases working on the Chicago PD, and he knows what it's like when a case turns political. So his suspicions are raised when a drive-by shooting is rushed through and begins questioning everyone's assumptions about the case. When he finds evidence that hints at more victims than just the obvious ones on file, his unofficial investigation uncovers corruption and deceit that leads to the top of the city.

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In 2008, a cheerful ambulance-chasing lawyer named Jay Shenk persuades the grieving Keener family to sue a private LA hospital. Their son Wesley has been transformed by a routine surgery into a kind of golem, absent all normal functioning or personality, walking in endless empty circles around his hospital room.  In 2019, Shenk—still in practice but a shell of his former self—is hired to defend Wesley Keener’s father when he is charged with murder . . . the murder, as it turns out, of the expert witness from the 2008 hospital case. Shenk’s adopted son, a fragile teenager in 2008, is a wayward adult, though he may find his purpose when he investigates what really happened to the murdered witness.

Cotton Malone's latest adventure has him digging deep into the past when a Soviet spy's secret dossier surfaces just ahead of an election to decide who will be Germany's newest chancellor. One candidate is a loyal politician who has served Germany for years. One is a nationalistic usurper. Both have secrets, but only one has dark ties to Hitler's final days in 1945, where the truth about what really happened to the dictator and those closest to him threaten to finally be exposed.

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Victoria Emerson is a Congresswoman from West Virginia who has devoted herself to improving her community. She's driven by her love for her three teenage sons, and knows firsthand how hard it is to survive as a single mom. When a member of the armed forces shows up on her doorstep one day with a chilling code word, she knows that the nation is on the brink of nuclear war. She's supposed to head straight to a secret bunker, but unable to bring her sons, she refuses. When she and her family survive nuclear fallout by some miracle, she's left to try and form order in a country that is devastated in every possible way.

Related: The Most Popular Political Thrillers According to Goodreads