Serial Killer Mystery Fiction

DI Tudor Manx was hoping for a quiet life. But his hopes are dashed when there's a gruesome find - a mutilated body, crucified to the bow of a fishing boat. Is this a message or a macabre premonition? Manx's past still haunts him - the disappearance of his younger sister, Miriam: a cold case that remains unsolved. Can he work it all out before the body count rises?

Charlie Stanlon is a serial killer. A ghastly, vicious sociopath who chains women to a table in his basement and tortures them to death. He has no friends. He has no family. He despises his co-workers. His only pleasure in life is to cause pain and terror...until the day he finds an adorable Boston terrier and takes it home.

A demented serial killer, who calls himself "The Will of the People", has gained a wide audience by sending warning letters to the New York Daily News. When "Will" names a prominent criminal defense attorney as his next victim, P.I. Matt Scudder suddenly finds himself protecting an old associate. Matching his wits against the wily murderer, Matt must race to uncover "Will's" identity before he loses his lawyer friend.

Tensions have been running high in White River as it approaches the anniversary of a fatal shooting of a black motorist by a local police officer. The economically depressed, racially polarized city is on edge, confronted with angry demonstrations, arson, and looting. In the midst of the turmoil, a White River police officer is shot dead by an unknown sniper. As the town spirals out of control, local authorities approach Dave Gurney to conduct an independent investigation of the shooting. But when he zeroes in on peculiar aspects of the individual murders that follow, his involvement is suddenly terminated.

Jessie Black's successful prosecution of a serial murderer and rapist put her on the path to stardom at the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office. Public defender Jack Ackerman represented the opposition, and his spectacular public breakdown after the trial put him in a mental institution and gave Frank Ramsey a second chance at freedom. When Ramsey petitions the court for a new trial with a claim that Ackerman was ineffective, Black must step up to defend him.

On a frigid December night, Karen sits at the edge of Philadelphia's Schuylkill River, dressed in a flowing gown, like a visitor from the distant past. A beautiful and shining young woman, she gazes up at a bone-white winter moon like a fairytale princess. At first glance, one might not even notice that she is dead, coated in a patina of ice. Homicide cops Kevin Byrne and Jessica Balzano take the lead on the case, uncovering a plethora of eerie clues, each more warped and spine-chilling than the last.

A student nurse has the shock of her life when she discovers her patient, prosecutor Derek Nicholson, brutally murdered in his bed. The act seems senseless - Nicholson was terminally ill, with only weeks to live. But what most shocks Detective Robert Hunter of the Los Angeles Robbery Homicide Division is the calling card the killer left behind.

Medicine Creek, Kansas, has been slowly dying for the last century. In a town where nothing changes, the community is terrified after a series of grisly murders takes place. Even more alarming, the bodies are displayed in bizarre tableaus. With the entire town in shock, FBI Agent Pendergast arrives from New Orleans to investigate. From the fields to the local caves, Pendergast discovers the remnants of a Prohibition-era moonshine operation and the truth behind one of the town's greatest mysteries.

Tracy Crosswhite a passé vingt ans à mettre en doute les faits qui ont entouré la disparition de sa sœur Sarah et le procès criminel qui s'en est suivi. Elle ne croit pas qu'Edmund House - le violeur qui a purgé sa peine et a été condamné pour l'assassinat de Sarah - soit le véritable coupable. Pour que justice soit rendue, Tracy est devenue enquêtrice criminelle dans la police de Seattle, et a dévoué sa vie à la recherche des tueurs.

It's the ultimate test of strategy and skill. The killer chooses each opponent carefully, learning each one's weaknesses. Every meticulously planned move is leading to a devastating checkmate. Because in this game, all the pretty pawns must die.

Kat Grant and Alice Campbell have a friendship forged in shared confidences and long lunches lubricated by expensive wine. Though they're very different women - the artsy socialite and the struggling suburbanite - they're each other's rocks. But even rocks crumble under pressure. Like when Kat's financier husband, Howard, plunges to his death from the second-floor balcony of their South Florida mansion. Howard was a jerk, a drunk, a bully, and, police say, a murder victim. The questions begin piling up.

Computational biologist and serial-killer hunter Dr. Theo Cray receives an off-the-record request from the FBI to investigate an inexplicable double homicide. It happened at the excavation site where a murderer had buried his victims’ remains. In custody is a forensic technician in shock, with no history of aggression. He doesn’t remember a thing. His colleagues don’t even recognize the man they thought they knew. But an MRI reveals something peculiar. And abnormal.

It’s hiking season in Black Rock Falls, and the small town in Montana is flooded with visitors. But when a hiker finds a human skull on a deserted trail in the woods that surround the town, Detective Jenna Alton is called in to investigate. With no missing persons reported, Jenna has no leads. Then her team makes a shocking discovery - the body of another hiker, a young man, tied to a tree and riddled with bullets. Could the two murders be linked? As more bodies are found, Jenna and her deputy David Kane know that they must venture deep into the forest to find and face the killer.

Eric’s wife, Anne, has followed the advice of handsome lawyer Mark Fenham and invested a small fortune in a merchant bank also involved in underwriting marine insurance. Now her company must pay out a vast insurance claim for the Sea Dawn, a ship sunk in Spanish waters. Eric Ward smells fraud. His wife could lose everything. And then, one by one, people connected to the Sea Dawn start to die. The murderous trail takes Ward to sunny Spain—where he comes face-to-face with his arch enemy. Will Ward uncover the truth about the sinking of the Sea Dawn?

FBI Special Agent Mackenzie White is summoned when another body is found dead in a self-storage unit. There at first appears to be no connection between the cases; yet as Mackenzie digs deeper, she realizes it is the work of a serial killer - and that he will soon strike again. Mackenzie will be forced to enter the mind of a madman as she tries to understand a psyche obsessed with clutter, storage, and claustrophobic places. It is a dark place from which she fears she may not return - and yet one which she must probe....

On the fourth floor of Chaucer House, two teenagers are found chained to a radiator. The boy is dead but the girl is alive. For Detective Kim Stone every detail of the scene mirrors her own terrifying experience with her brother Mikey, when they lived in the same tower block 30 years ago. When the bodies of a middle-aged couple are discovered in a burnt-out car, Kim can’t ignore the chilling similarity to the deaths of Erica and Keith - the only loving parents Kim had ever known.

For untold years, the perfectly preserved mummy had lain forgotten in the dusty basement of Boston’s Crispin Museum. Now its sudden rediscovery by museum staff is both a major coup and an attention-grabbing mystery. Dubbed “Madam X,” the mummy–to all appearances, an ancient Egyptian artifact–seems a ghoulish godsend for the financially struggling institution. But medical examiner Maura Isles soon discovers a macabre message hidden within the corpse–horrifying proof that this “centuries-old” relic is instead a modern-day murder victim.

DCI Kate Young never meant to shoot Superintendent John Dickson at the reservoir that night—even if, as a scheming corrupt cop and head of the shady syndicate, he probably had it coming. But now Kate has photographic evidence that someone else knows her terrible secret… Tormented by guilt and the voices of the dead, Kate is desperate to unmask the rest of the corrupt officers before her own sins catch up with her. When DI Harriet Khatri, awaiting trial for the murder of Kate’s mentor, claims she was framed by Dickson’s syndicate, Kate reluctantly agrees to help in the hope of finding answers.

Tim Mason’s gripping new novel finds Inspector Charles Field hunting a ruthless serial killer who is terrorizing Florence Nightingale and her nurses in Crimea in 1855. But when the main suspect turns up dead, Field determines the case is closed. Or is it? Twelve years later in London, amidst the turmoil surrounding the expansion of voting rights, Field discovers a woman’s body, mouth covered by the killer’s signature embroidered rose. Did Field suspect the wrong man before, or is he dealing with a copycat?

A victim killed with a single, precise stab to the heart appears at first glance to be a robbery gone wrong. A caring, upstanding social worker lost to a senseless act of violence. But for Detective Kim Stone, something doesn't add up. When a local drug addict is found murdered with an identical wound, Kim knows instinctively that she is dealing with the same killer. But with nothing to link the two victims except the cold, calculated nature of their death, this could be her most difficult case yet.