Serial Killer Mystery Fiction

A schoolgirl found it on a nature hike. A severed human foot wearing pink nail polish. A gruesome but invaluable clue that leads forensic pathologist Birdy Waterman down a much darker trail - to a dangerous psychopath whose powers of persuasion seem to have no end.

When a body is discovered in a field in Iowa, the police uncover 14 additional corpses ranging from 20 years old to recent. The remains point to a serial killer with an MO the authorities have seen before - Ed Oliphant, a man who has been in prison for over 20 years...and is Special Agent Kaely Quinn's father. After several failed interview attempts to discover if Ed has been training someone to be a copycat killer, the police turn to Kaely in St. Louis.

When eight-year-old Kathy Stone turns up on the side of the road a year after her abduction, the world awaits her harrowing story. But Kathy doesn’t say a word. Traumatized by her ordeal, she doesn’t speak at all, not even to her own parents. Child therapist Robin Hart is the only one who’s had success connecting with the girl. Robin has been using play therapy to help Kathy process her memories. But as their work continues, Kathy’s playtime takes a grim turn: a doll stabs another doll, a tiny figurine is chained to a plastic toy couch.

Los Angeles: Die Leiche einer wunderschönen Frau wird gefunden, zu Tode gequält und bestialisch verstümmelt. Keinerlei Spuren. Bis auf ein in den Nacken geritztes Kreuz, ein Teufelsmal: das Erkennungszeichen eines hingerichteten Serienmörders. Detective und Profiler Robert Hunter wird schnell klar, dass der Kruzifix-Killer lebt. Er mordet auf spektakuläre Weise weiter. Und er ist Hunter immer einen Schritt voraus - denn er kennt ihn gut. Zu gut.

When a world-renowned psychiatrist is found dead in an abandoned ranch house in the Californian Santa Carina Valley, a Post-it note with the words “Susan Parker” and a cell phone number is taped to the basement door. Still grieving her husband’s devastating suicide less than a year ago, FBI agent Susan Parker is taking a break from work and trying to rebuild her life as a single mom to her seven-year-old daughter, Natalie. When she’s called to the crime scene of Doctor Magnusson, a chill runs down her spine.

Seventeen years ago. That was the last time Mercy Callahan saw Ephraim Burton, the leader of the twisted Eden cult where she was raised. But even though she escaped the abuse and terror, they continue to haunt her. When her brother Gideon discovers new evidence of the cult's - and their victims' - whereabouts, Mercy goes to Sacramento to reconnect with him. There, she meets Gideon's closest friend - homicide detective Rafe Sokolov. From Rafe, she receives an offer she never knew she needed: to track down Ephraim and make him pay for everything.

Across the country, dozens of teenage girls have vanished. Authorities are convinced they're runaways with just the bad luck of the draw to connect them. It's the job of criminal profilers Dr. Tony Hill and Carol Jordan to look for a pattern. They've spent years exploring the psyches of madmen. But sane men kill, too. And when they hide in plain sight, they can be difficult to find.

What happens after death? Troy and his friend, Blake, find out the hard way after these two adventurous teens venture into an abandoned insane asylum, on the hunt for proof of lost spirits - only they stumble across the hideout of a serial killer instead! As if a bad twist of fate, both Troy and Blake are killed. Now spirits themselves, they find themselves trapped inside the walls of the asylum. Will they be able to move on? And who or what is keeping them inside?

Everything Elka knows of the world she learned from the man she calls Father, the solitary hunter who took her under his wing when she was just seven years old. He has taught her how to shoot, track, set snares, and start fires - all the skills she needs to survive in a frozen, lawless land where civilization has been destroyed and men are at the mercy of the elements and each other. But the man Elka thought she knew so well is harboring a terrible secret. He's a killer. A monster.

Jonathan Stride and Serena Dial are both investigating high-profile murders in Las Vegas. A celebrity is assassinated during a fling with a prostitute, and a young boy is killed in a brutal hit-and-run incident. When the cases converge, Jonathan and Serena find themselves racing the clock against a determined serial killer and searching for a connection to the unsolved murder of a showgirl years earlier.

It's only 10 days since Douglas Remfry's release from prison, having served seven years for rape, and now he's dead: naked on a bare mattress in a grubby north London hotel room, his head hooded and his hands tied with a brown leather belt. Someone knew he was coming out. Someone wanted to mete out some punishment of his own. And when a second sex offender is found dead, DI Tom Thorne knows he has a vicious, calculating vigilante on his hands.

It takes a killer to catch a killer. And no one understands the motives of ruthless murderer The Sandman quite like Rhett Voss. Having spent his childhood in the shadows of the deranged lunatic, he's become an expert on the topic. Killing is in his blood, and as a hitman for hire, Voss maintains a steady diet of carnage, himself. Except lately, it's lost its appeal. Until he's enticed to track down the clever Sandman who has his sights set on Nola Tensley.

In 1865 Boston, the members of the Dante Club, poets and Harvard professors Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, and James Russell Lowell, along with publisher J. T. Fields, are finishing America's first translation of The Divine Comedy and preparing to unveil Dante's remarkable visions to the New World.

Capri Sanzio knows that when you give serial killer walking tours for a living, unexpected situations are more common than San Francisco's famous fog. So, when one of her guests claims to see a woman being attacked during a tour, Capri remains unphased. The police search the apartment in question and find no evidence of anything amiss, so they chalk it up to a false report from a true crime fanatic looking to be a part of a case. And Capri thinks they might be right, since lately her tours have been attracting even more obsessives than usual.

When a young red-haired woman is found brutally murdered in downtown Chicago, one detail stands out: the red lipstick encircling her wrists and ankles. Detective Harriet Foster is on the case, even though she’s still grieving the sudden death of her partner. As a Black woman in a male-dominated department, Foster anticipates a rocky road ahead acclimating to a new team—and building trust with her new partner isn’t coming easily. After another victim turns up with the same lipstick markings, Foster suspects she’s looking for a serial killer.

It was a vicious, calculated murder. The killer selected his victim at Euston station, followed her home on the tube, strangled her to death in front of her child. At the same time, killed in the same way, a second body is discovered at the back of King's Cross station. And this grisly event eerily echoes the murder of two other women, stabbed to death months before on the same day. It is DI Tom Thorne who sees the link and comes to the horrifying conclusion. This is not a serial killer the police are up against. This is two of them - and two killers are way more deadly than one....

When homicide detectives Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth are called to a crime scene in a heavily-wooded city park, the setting is all too familiar. And when they discover a playing card on the victim's body, their worst fears are confirmed: There's a serial killer operating in the city for the first time in years. As the violence accelerates in Minneapolis, Magozzi and Rolseth soon realize their killer is planning to complete the deck, and they enlist Grace MacBride and her unconventional partners at Monkeewrench Software to help stop the rampage.

When a young woman is found murdered in the woods, Detective Mackenzie Price and her partner are first on the scene. The harrowing discovery leaves them both breathless—the victim’s left eye has been removed. Mackenzie identifies the victim as Whitney Smythe, a lost soul with troubled past, and makes another shocking discovery—Whitney recently gave birth. Reeling from the scene, Mackenzie and her team soon discover that this case is very similar to a murder that happened thirty years ago. But the killer was captured and died behind bars, so how can the two murders possibly be connected?

Nine months ago, DCI Matilda Darke survived a bullet to the head. The brutal attack claimed dozens of lives, including those she loved most, and the nightmares still plague her every waking thought. Now, she’s ready to get back on the job. But a new terror awaits. A woman is found murdered and her wounds look eerily similar to several cold cases. Desperate to find a lead, DCI Darke and her team must face a terrifying truth: a serial killer is on the loose in Sheffield.

When Gwen Marcey's dog comes home with a human skull and then leads her to a cabin in the woods near her Montana home, she realizes there's a serial killer in her community. And when she finds a tortured young girl clinging to life on the cabin floor, she knows this killer is a lunatic. Yet what unsettles Gwen most is that the victim looks uncannily like her daughter. The search for the torturer leads back in time to a neo-Nazi bombing in Washington state - a bombing with only one connection to Montana: Gwen.