Forensic Mystery Fiction

As a physician in the ER of a rural South Carolina hospital, Dr. Rhea Lynch is a dedicated healer, a woman of science, and to some degree, a skeptic. But her most fundamental beliefs are put to the test with the arrival of a traveling faith healer, whose "cures" produce some baffling mysteries: a young quadriplegic woman can suddenly move her arms; a chronic pain sufferer begins to dance again. Events go from bizarre to deadly with the arrival of a gravely injured but violent young woman determined to practice a dark, deadly magic.

Chief medical examiner Kay Scarpetta is the reluctant star witness in a sensational murder trial when she receives shocking news. The judge’s sister has been found dead. At first glance, it appears to be a home invasion, but then why was nothing stolen, and why is the garden strewn with dead plants and insects? Although there is no apparent cause of death, Scarpetta recognizes telltale signs of the unthinkable, and she knows the worst is yet to come. The forensic pathologist finds herself pitted against a powerful force that returns her to the past.

A mysterious electrical storm plunges Manhattan into darkness. As a strange, smothering fog rolls in, all communication crashes. In the blink of an eye, the island seems to vanish into a void. FBI special agent Jessica Blackwood and brilliant scientist Dr. Theo Cray know this isn’t a freak accident. It’s a sinister sleight of hand. Their greatest adversary, a serial killer and cultist known as the Warlock, has escaped during a prison transfer in New York. A depraved master of manipulation, he promised the end of days. He’s making good on it.

Three years after her mother’s death, Ruth is finally sorting through her things when she finds a curious relic: a decades-old photograph of her own Norfolk cottage—before she lived there—with a peculiar inscription on the back. Ruth returns to the cot­tage to uncover its meaning as Norfolk’s first cases of Covid-19 make headlines, leaving her and Kate to shelter in place there. They struggle to stave off isolation by clapping for frontline workers each evening and befriending a kind neighbor, Zoe, from a distance.

The inspiration for the hit Fox series Bones, Kathy Reichs explores another high-stakes crime from today's headlines, in a case that lands forensic anthropologist Tempe Brennan in the middle of a gruesome international scheme.

Mayan ruins in the Yucatán...a secret room in a tomb...age-old skeletons. To anthropologist Gideon Oliver, the renowned Skeleton Detective, the invitation to join the archaeological excavation of Tlaloc promises two months of paradise on Earth. That is, until an ancient series of Mayan curses against desecrators of the site is unearthed.

Convicted serial killer Carrie Grethen has escaped from a psychiatric hospital with plans for revenge. Wary and shaken, Scarpetta also has to investigate the death by fire of an unknown woman. The post mortem reveals that the woman was stabbed before the fire was started, and soon Scarpetta and her colleagues are called out to the scene of another fire and another murder.

If the biblical plagues of Egypt truly happened—could they happen again—on a global scale? Two years after vanishing into the Sudanese desert, Professor Harold McCabe comes stumbling out of the sands, but he dies before he can tell his story. Then an autopsy uncovers a bizarre corruption: someone had begun to mummify the professor's body—while he was still alive. Subsequently, the medical team who had performed the man's autopsy has fallen ill with an unknown disease. Fearing the worst, a colleague of the professor reaches out to Painter Crowe, the director of Sigma Force. The call is urgent, for Professor McCabe had vanished into the desert while searching for proof of the ten plagues of Moses.

Ce que j’aime faire de mes journées : rien. Je me définis comme un paresseux. Les DVD et les livres sont mes seuls amis, car ils n’exigent aucune concession de ma part. Même travailler ne me viendrait pas à l’esprit. Voilà pourquoi je prête mon corps à la science. Je participe à des études cliniques en tant que cobaye. Pas de responsabilités, peu d’exigences. On me paie pour tester des produits.

Dr. Morton Handler practiced a strange brand of psychiatry. Among his specialties were fraud, extortion, and sexual manipulation. Handler paid for his sins when he was brutally murdered in his luxurious Pacific Palisades apartment. The police have no leads, but they do have one possible witness: seven-year-old Melody Quinn.

En route to Isle of Palms, a barrier island off the South Carolina coast, forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan receives a call from the Charleston coroner. During the storm, a medical waste container has washed up on the beach. Inside are two decomposed bodies wrapped in plastic sheeting and bound with electrical wire. Chillingly, Tempe recognizes many details as identical to those of an unsolved case she handled in Quebec 15 earlier.

It’s the kind of case that chills Caitlyn to the bone. Missing person. College student. Beloved daughter of a world leader in biotechnology. She was last seen on a spring break cruise. No witnesses. No motives. Just one possible lead - reports of a stranger who may have lured the young archeology major off the ship and into the jungles of Guatemala. When Caitlyn follows her hunch into the jungle - with the FBI’s Jake Carver by her side - the trail takes a surprising turn into the very heart of darkness.

Claire Abrams' dreams became a nightmare when she passed on a genetic mutation that killed her little boy. Now she wants a second chance to be a mother, and finds it in Robert Nash, a maverick fertility doctor who works under the radar with Jillian Hendricks, a cunning young scientist bent on making her mark - and seducing her boss.

Piper is a lich-doctor, a physician who works among the dead, determining causes of death for the city guard's investigations. It's a peaceful, if solitary profession . . . until the day when he's called to the river to examine the latest in a series of mysterious bodies, mangled by some unknown force. Galen is a paladin of a dead god, lost to holiness and no longer entirely sane. He has long since given up on any hope of love. But when the two men and a brave gnole constable are drawn into the maze of the mysterious killer, it's Galen's job to protect Piper from the traps that await.

Trying to find some normalcy during the COVID-19 pandemic, Brian Murphy and his family are on a summer excursion in Cape Cod when his wife, Emma, comes down with concerning flu-like symptoms. But their leisurely return home to New York City quickly becomes a race to the local hospital as she suddenly begins seizing in the car. At the ICU, she is diagnosed with eastern equine encephalitis, a rare and highly lethal mosquito-borne viral disease seemingly caught during one of their evening cookouts.

In the quiet of twilight, on an early autumn day, 26-year-old Elisa Vandersteel is killed while riding her bicycle along the Charles River. It appears she was struck by lightning - except the weather is perfectly clear, with not a cloud in sight. Dr. Kay Scarpetta, the Cambridge Forensic Center's director and chief, decides at the scene that this is no accidental act of God. Her investigation becomes complicated when she begins receiving a flurry of bizarre poems from an anonymous cyberbully who calls himself Tailend Charlie.

It is a case unlike any psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware has ever encountered. Five-year-old Woody Swope is ill, but the real problem is his parents. They refuse to agree to the one treatment that could save this boy's life. Alex sets out to convince Mr. and Mrs. Swope - only to find that the parents have left the hospital and taken their son with them. Worse, the sleazy motel room where the Swopes were staying is empty - except for the ominous bloodstain. The Swopes and their son have vanished into the sordid shadows of the city.

It's New Year's Eve, the final night of Virginia's bloodiest year since the Civil War, and another poor soul has turned up dead. Ted Eddings, a scuba diver and investigative reporter who was a favorite at the medical examiner's office, is found 30 feet below the Elizabeth River's icy surface. Kay Scarpetta, chief medical examiner for the state of Virginia, can't help but wonder why she received a phone call from someone reporting the death before the police were notified.

Following the post mortem of a stowaway that reveals neither cause of death nor identity, Dr. Kay Scarpetta travels to Paris in search of information. In Paris she is given a secret mission--one that could ruin her career.

John Lowery was declared dead in 1968—the victim of a Huey crash in Vietnam, his body buried long ago in North Carolina. Four decades later, Temperance Brennan is called to the scene of a drowning in Hemmingford, Quebec. The victim appears to have died while in the midst of a bizarre sexual practice. The corpse is later identified as John Lowery. But how could Lowery have died twice, and how did an American soldier end up in Canada?