Serial Killer Mystery Fiction

The rain had been falling for weeks when Black Rock Falls Sheriff Jenna Alton receives a panicked phone call from a local forest ranger. The lifeless body of a woman has washed up on the banks of a swollen river. Rushing to the scene, Jenna and her deputy, David Kane, find the young girl laying face up in the dirt, her long brown hair spilling out around her, her perfect pale skin showing no signs of struggle. Leaning in for a closer look, she finds a jack of hearts playing card tucked into the girl’s underwear. This was no accident—someone killed this innocent soul.

Hidden deep in the forest, schoolgirl Felicity Parker is found carefully laid out on a rock with nothing but a freshly picked bunch of flowers next to her lifeless form. Detective Jenna Alton is called in to investigate the gruesome discovery. With the body found just off a popular hiking route, Jenna believes the killer is a visitor to the town...until a second local girl is discovered.

When the body of a doctor is discovered brutally murdered in local woodland, Detective Kim Stone is shocked to discover the victim is Gordon Cordell - a man linked to a previous case she worked on involving the death of a young schoolgirl. Gordon has a chequered past, but who would want him dead? As the investigation gets underway, Gordon’s son is involved in a horrific car crash which leaves him fighting for his life. Kim's sure this was no accident.

A series of bizarre assaults is mystifying Boston police: an unknown attacker is viciously beating random strangers and leaving a note quoting an old warning about witchcraft. History professor Alex Maple was one of the victims, and now he's gone missing. Vickie Preston is certain that someone has taken her friend for malicious purposes. She's having blood-drenched visions that seem to be staining her waking life, and the escalating attacks suggest that a dangerous cult is at work behind the scenes.

Writing scrawled on the wall of Sheriff Jenna Alton’s office leads her, and her deputy, David Kane, to a secluded house on the outskirts of town. Inside, Jenna is devastated to find a much-loved local resident with stab wounds covering her lifeless body. As the small town grieves, Jenna discovers the wreck of a car with another dead woman inside. And, before she can make her next move, one of her own team is found unconscious, covered in the blood of a third female victim - a knife inches away from his hand. The clock ticks to uncover a dark secret that connects all three victims.

Shayna Darby is finally coming to terms with her parents’ deaths when she’s delivered another blow. The body of her estranged twin sister, Angela - the possible victim of a serial killer - has been pulled from the Seine. Putting what’s left of her life on hold, Shayna heads to Paris. But while cleaning out Angela’s apartment, Shayna makes a startling discovery: a coded message meant for her alone... Alive. Trust no one.

Diary of a Murderer captivates and provokes in equal measure, exploring what it means to be on the edge - between life and death, good and evil. In the titular novella, a former serial killer suffering from memory loss sets his sights on one final target: his daughter's boyfriend, who he suspects is also a serial killer. In other stories we witness an affair between two childhood friends that questions the limits of loyalty and love; a family's disintegration after a baby son is kidnapped and recovered years later; and more.

What if Sean Courtland’s old Chevy truck had broken down somewhere else? What if he’d never met Denise Givens, a waitress at a local tavern in the Wisconsin town where he lands? Or Dan Young, another young man like Sean drifting through, having fled Minnesota for reasons unknown? Instead, together Sean and Dan pick up carpentry and plumbing work for an old man named Marion Devereaux, and Sean gets drawn into the lives of Denise and her father—and of the townspeople, all haunted by the disappearance of three young boys decades ago, in the 1970s.

Ten years ago as an undergrad, Joan Mason escaped an arsonist’s fire. Shaken, she fled the small collegiate Montana town, leaving behind friends and not looking back. Now a Philadelphia homicide detective, Joan’s trying to put her traumas to rest. It’s not easy. Elijah Weston, the classmate who torched her house, is out of prison and returning to Missoula. Gut instinct tells Joan he’ll strike again. To stop him, she must return to the past as well. To face not only the man she fears but Detective Gideon Bailey, too. The man she loved and left behind.

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 yet another girl goes missing from nearby Bellingham, Washington, crime reporter Tess McClintock is made aware of the case after she's sent a map that appears to mark the location of a number of bodies, including the one in the Haro Strait. With Michael Carter's help, she begins an investigation into the girl and her past. Is there another serial killer working in Bellingham? The Haro Strait is Book Two in the Salish Sea series of crime thrillers set in the Pacific Northwest.

FBI Agent Ella Dark, 29, is given her big chance to achieve her life’s dream: to join the Behavioral Crimes Unit. Ella’s hidden obsession of gaining an encyclopedic knowledge of serial killers has led to her being singled out for her brilliant mind, and invited to join the big leagues. But this time Ella finds herself in a cat and mouse chase with no way out, and she must wonder if she is hunting—or the one who is hunted.

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.

Death is no stranger to Detective Chief Superintendent Frankie Sheehan, but she isn’t the only one from her small, coastal suburb to be intimately acquainted with it. Years ago, teenager Seán Hennessey shocked the tight-knit community when he was convicted of the brutal murder of his parents and attempted slaying of his sister, though he always maintained his innocence. Now, Seán is finally being released from prison - but when his newfound freedom coincides with the discovery of two bodies, the alleged connection between the cases only serves to pull Frankie further from answers.

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.

Melissa Sanderson is the perfect wife and mother. She dotes on her daughter and lives in her dream home in a quiet cul-de-sac in the suburbs. But looks can be deceiving. Something is amiss in that house - all the neighbors think so. Some say Melissa is having an affair. Others say she’s been drinking too much. Then one night, sirens wake up the whole neighborhood. Melissa Sanderson is dead.

From behind the wheel of her car, Tess Kincaid glimpses a woman walking down a Madison, Wisconsin, street. They've never met, but Tess sees the same features every time she looks in the mirror. Tess introduces herself and discovers that she and her doppelganger, Mimi, have more than appearance in common. They even share the same birthday. Mimi - confident and outgoing where Tess is understated and shy - is convinced they're twins, separated shortly after birth. When a body is discovered in a local marsh, Tess is entangled in a search for the truth....

Five serial killers. Known only to each other as: Alpha. Bravo. Charlie. Delta. Easy. Connected through a secure internet location, encrypted and concealed, a unique chat room they have named Jack’s Special Place in homage to their ultimate model—the one killer they hold in the highest esteem: Whitechapel, London. 1888. The infamous murderer remembered in dark history as Jack the Ripper. And so, they are Jack’s Boys. They delight in each other’s crimes. They relish in taunting police around the world with odd clues and deep confusion—the modern version of the Victorian-era killer they emulate.

Arriving at a quiet family home on the outskirts of the Lake District, Detective Morgan Brookes must deliver devastating news to a heartbroken mother. Seeing Lexie’s pink boots against the side of the house, she remembers the girl’s happy face and can’t help but think of her carefree childhood. Three years ago, Morgan saved Lexie from a serial killer, who is now behind bars. But this time, she’s failed to protect her. Certain a new and more terrifying killer is at large, Morgan finds a neighbor who claims a man in a silver car was watching Lexie’s house.

Spring is beginning to brighten Sorenson, Wisconsin, for Mattie and Steve Hurley and their family. While their son Matthew may be in his terrible twos and Steve's daughter Emily a moody teenager, the kids bring light to their lives when their work is dark by its nature - Steve is a homicide detective and Mattie is a medicolegal death investigator, a.k.a. medical examiner. They deal in corpses. The latest corpse, a Jane Doe, was clearly an addict, but drugs didn't kill her, at least not directly. She's been stabbed multiple times in a pattern that is disturbingly familiar to Mattie.