Serial Killer Mystery Fiction

Retiring prosecutor Jessica Yardley can’t turn down one last investigation. This time, it’s a set of murders inspired by a series of grisly paintings called The Night Things. She’s the only one who can catch the killer, who’s left a trail of bodies in a rural community outside of Las Vegas. But the more Jessica finds out, the less clear her case becomes. Out of options, she’s forced to consult her serial killer ex-husband - to gain additional insight into the crimes and the killer’s motivations.

A small Kansas town has turned into a killing ground. Is it a serial killer, a man with the need to destroy? Or is it a darker force, a curse upon the land? Amid golden cornfields, FBI Special Agent Pendergast discovers evil in the blood of America's heartland. No one is safe.

Rainey Paxton is convinced there is a link between the disappearances of several women and her friend Winnie. Her obsession leads her back to the mysterious house where she said goodbye to Winnie years prior. Rainey is certain there is something sinister about the man who took her friend to Florida. Meanwhile, seventeen-year-old Dakota Jagger is on her own, looking for shelter. While roaming the city streets, Dakota meets a charming and persuasive man who offers to help her. This is the same man who stalks women and keeps them as his own.

Yana and Macy must now stay on the low as their father Black Ice hunts them and their mother. Meanwhile, Ayana escapes with Rachel and tries to think of another plan to kill her sisters.

Southend-on-Sea, Essex: Detective Sergeant Tomek Bowen — driven, dogged, and haunted by the death of his brother — is called to one of the most shocking crime scenes he has ever seen. A man has been ritualistically murdered and dumped in an allotment near the local airport. Early investigations indicate this was a man with a past. A past that earned him many enemies. But when another victim is found murdered under similar circumstances, it becomes clear that Bowen is on the trail of a serial offender.

When new victims of the still-at-large serial killer known as the Red Reaper start to appear in London, DCI Declan Walsh and his team are placed back on the case—but everything isn't what it seems. For a start, the deaths are different, and the calling card is new. It could be a copycat, apart from one thing... They know what Declan did to the real Red Reaper a year earlier. Something only Declan and the closest members of his team keep secret. Is this the real Reaper, back to gain revenge on Declan and his family—or is this a protégé, staking his own claim to the serial killer name?

What do you do when a killer targets the people you love the most? When he knows how to make them vulnerable? When he knows the same about you? These are the questions that haunt FBI Special Agent Pierce Quincy. The police say his daughter’s death was an accident. Quincy will risk everything to learn the truth — and there’s only one person willing to help. Ex-cop Rainie Connor had once been paired professionally — and personally — with the brilliant FBI profiler. He helped her through the darkest days of her life.

In the north of England, single women are beginning to disappear from weddings. A pattern soon becomes clear: Someone is crashing the festivities and luring the women away - only to leave the victims' bodies in their own burned-out cars in remote locations. Tony and Carol are called upon to investigate - but this may be the toughest case they've ever had to face. Meanwhile, Detective Sergeant Paula McIntyre and her partner Elinor must deal with a cruel cyber-blackmailer targeting their teenage ward, Torin.

Elspeth, Meggy and Xavier are locked in a flat. They don’t know where they are, and they don’t know why they’re there. They only know that the shadow man has taken them, and he won’t let them go. Desperate to escape, the three of them must find a way out of their living hell, even if it means uncovering a very dark truth. Because the shadow man isn’t a nightmare. He’s all too real.

Three murders within 18 months. Three that Special Agent Rick Clark and forensic psychologist Dr. Marty Robin knew of. How many other women the Bedsheet Serial Killer had raped and murdered was anyone’s guess. This case was definitely beyond the reach of a single police department, and whether the local police force liked it or not, this was a case for the FBI. Clark and Robin would need all of the resources the agency had available to solve it. Marty’s expert knowledge of psychopathic killers was the key to unlocking the case.

After a turbulent time, DCI Ryan's life is finally beginning to return to normal, and he's looking forward to spending an uneventful Easter bank holiday weekend with his fiancée. Then, on Good Friday morning, he is called out to a crime scene at one of the largest cemeteries in Newcastle. The body of a redheaded woman has been found buried in a shallow grave, and the killer has given her wings, like an angel. Soon another woman is found at a different cemetery, followed quickly by another.

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....

Piper Oliver knows she can't trust him. They warned her that the tall, dark, and sexy black-ops soldier Jory Dean would try to win her over with his steel-gray eyes and deadly charm, but she won't be conned by this man they call a traitor. All she has to do is figure out the science necessary to save his life, and she's done. Something isn't adding up, though, and she won't rest until she uncovers the truth - even if it's buried in his deep, dangerous kiss.

Women are turning up dead on the rural outskirts of Virginia, killed in grotesque ways, and when the FBI is called in they are stumped. A serial killer is out there, his frequency increasing, and they know there is only one agent good enough to crack this case: Special Agent Riley Paige. Riley is on paid leave, recovering from her encounter with her last serial killer, and, fragile as she is, the FBI is reluctant to tap her brilliant mind. Yet Riley, needing to battle her own demons, comes onboard.

In The Boy Who Followed Ripley, Highsmith explores Ripley's bizarrely paternal relationship with a troubled young runaway, whose abduction draws them into Berlin's seamy underworld. More than any other American literary character, Ripley provides "a lens to peer into the sinister machinations of human behavior." (John Freeman, Pittsburgh Gazette).

A late summer heatwave seems to have triggered an unusually high number of suicides. As the dead bodies pile up, DS Jack Mackinnon and the rest of MIT realise things aren’t as straightforward as they seem, and when similar letters are found at the scene of each "suicide", Mackinnon is convinced they are dealing with a serial killer. A killer who is determined to deliver his own deadly justice.

In the Maya Gray series (which begins with book one, Girl One: Murder) FBI Special Agent Maya Gray, 39, has seen it all. She’s one of BAU’s rising stars and the go-to agent for hard-to-crack serial cases. When she receives a handwritten postcard promising to release 12 kidnapped women if she will solve 12 cold cases, she assumes it’s a hoax. Until the note mentions that, among the captives, is her missing sister. Maya, shaken, is forced to take it seriously.

In one moment, high school teacher and single mother Brooke Davenport interrupts a vicious assault, saves a young woman’s life, and attracts the attention of a serial killer. Sixteen years ago, Brooke lost her roommate to a brutal murder. Now she teaches women’s self-defense, still trying to heal from the guilt and grief that plague her.

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.

Chicago private investigator Michael Kelly is hired by his former partner, John Gibbons, to help solve an eight-year-old rape and battery case, a case it turns out his old friend was once ordered to forget. When Gibbons turns up dead on Navy Pier, Kelly enlists a team of his savviest colleagues to connect the dots between the recent murder and the cold case it revived.