Book picks similar to
Artifice by Patrick Gooch


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thrillers
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The StoneCutter


Scott Blade - 2013
    He is aserial killer that only kills bad guys--his own clients. Shanehas spent his life hunting one very bad killer called the StoneCutter. The StoneCutter buries his victims alive and leaves them for dead. One year ago, he was captured and charged with murder. Shane defended him and got him acquitted.Then he killed the StoneCutter. Or so he thought, because his murders have started over again. Now, Shane must find this cold, sadistic killer before it'stoo late.

The Missing Ones


Patricia Gibney - 2017
    A white flour bag encased the little body. Three small faces watched from the window, eyes black with terror. The child in the middle spoke without turning his head. I wonder which one of us will be next?When a woman’s body is discovered in a cathedral and hours later a young man is found hanging from a tree outside his home, Detective Lottie Parker is called in to lead the investigation. Both bodies have the same distinctive tattoo clumsily inscribed on their legs. It’s clear the pair are connected, but how? The trail leads Lottie to St. Angela’s, a former children’s home, with a dark connection to her own family history. Suddenly the case just got personal. As Lottie begins to link the current victims to unsolved murders decades old, two teenage boys go missing. She must close in on the killer before they strike again, but in doing so is she putting her own children in terrifying danger? Lottie is about to come face to face with a twisted soul who has a very warped idea of justice. Fans of Rachel Abbott, Karin Slaughter and Robert Dugoni will be gripped by this page-turning serial killer thriller, guaranteed to keep you reading late into the night.

The Search


William Casey Moreton - 2011
    His world suddenly upside-down, he embarks on a desperate search for answers as the official rescue effort begins. As he races to find his wife, John is pursued by a cold-blooded killer when he becomes entangled in a scheme to steal millions of dollars from a New York Mafia boss. In the rush of action as the search intensifies, John’s life becomes a high-stakes guessing game of learning who to trust and who to fear.

Total Victim Theory


Ian Ballard - 2013
    Puzzling over the document's sinister entries, Jake pieces together a story of mass murder near the Texas-Mexico border two decades before. If Jake's theory is correct, the names listed on the ledger's final page are the victims of a previously unknown serial killer. Leads are scarce until a gruesome new crime scene, deep in the Mexican desert, shows a chilling connection to the border deaths of long ago.

Blood and Justice


Rayven T. Hill - 2013
    Shaken out of their comfort zone of Internet searches and poring over public records, the couple soon find themselves facing the frightening possibility they are looking for the latest victim of a serial killer.As more bodies pile up, the town is gripped with fear. It seems no one is safe, and the Lincolns race to solve an impossible puzzle before they become the killer's next victims. About This Mystery Series • Book 1: Blood and Justice (A Free eBook) • Book 2: Cold Justice • Book 3: Justice for Hire • Book 4: Captive Justice • Book 5: Justice Overdue • Book 6: Justice Returns • Book 7: Personal Justice • Book 8: Silent Justice • Book 9: Web of Justice • Book 10: Fugitive Justice • Book 11: Profane Justice (Coming Next)

The Compound


Ben Follows - 2017
    In the small town of Crescent Point, Jake will come face to face with an enemy unlike any he's ever faced before, and with the sins he's tried to ignore. He will discover that sometimes when you dig too deep into the darkness, you find something dragging you further down, and the only escape from the darkness is a desperate scramble toward the light.

Darkness Under the Sun


Dean Koontz - 2010
    There once was a killer who knew the night, its secrets and rhythms. How to hide within its shadows. When to hunt. He roamed from town to town, city to city, choosing his prey for their beauty and innocence. His cruelties were infinite, his humanity long since forfeit. But still . . . he had not yet discovered how to make his special mark among monsters, how to come fully alive as Death. This is the story of how he learned those things, and of what we might do to ensure that he does not visit us.

Six Seconds


Rick Mofina - 2008
    Believing he can help her avenge her family's deaths, she follows him back home to the United States.An anguished mother desperate to find her child...In California a soccer mom arrives to pick up her son from school, only to discover that her husband has taken their child and vanished without a trace.A detective who needs to redeem himself...In the Rocky Mountains an off-duty cop rescues a little girl from a raging river moments before she utters her final words in his arms. Haunted by failure, he launches an investigation that leads him to a Montana school where time is ticking down on an event that will rewrite history....Three strangers entangled in a plot to change the world in only six seconds...

Magpie


Elizabeth Day - 2021
    The rest she’ll take.Marisa may have only known Jake a few months, but she has never felt this certain about anyone. When he asks her to move in with him and they start trying for a baby, she knows she has finally found the steadfast love and support she has been looking for all her life.But their relationship is tested when they take in a lodger, Kate, who has little regard for personal boundaries and seems to take an uncomfortable interest in Jake – as well as the baby they are hoping to have.Why is Kate so obsessed with the couple? And, more worryingly, why doesn’t Jake share Marisa's concern?In her determination to find the answers, Marisa risks losing everything she holds dear…Magpie is a tense, twisting, brilliantly written novel about mothers and children, envy and possession, and the dangers of getting everything you’ve ever dreamed of.

Countdown: Part 1 of 8


Carla Cassidy - 2017
    Tock. BOOM.FBI Special Agent Lara Grant had thought that she’d put her past behind her—finally—with her last case. But now a serial bomber is targeting Manhattan’s elite power players, offering them a choice between saving hundreds of lives or seeing their darkest secrets exposed. Lara is working with the Crisis Management Unit to stop the bomber, but how will she react when she’s the one who has to choose between truth...or death?Part 1 of 8: an explosive new installment in the thrilling FBI serial from New York Times bestselling author Carla Cassidy and Tyler Anne Snell, Emmy Curtis and Janie Crouch.

Sara's Game


Ernie Lindsey - 2012
    His car was found. He wasn't. Unbelievably, the police report said, "No foul play suspected." There were a few unreliable sightings over the following months, but little else.Now, on the last day before summer break, her three children have gone missing from their schools, all at the same time.And the note under her windshield wiper asks one simple question: Are you ready to play the game?

Water Memory


Daniel Pyne - 2021
    But when pirates seize the cargo ship she’s on, she must decide whether to risk her life to save her fellow passengers.Sentro’s training takes over, and she’s able to elude her captors, leaving bodies in her wake. But her problems are just getting started. Her memory lapses are getting more frequent, symptoms of serial-concussion syndrome.As she plays a deadly game of cat and mouse with the pirates, she pushes herself to survive by focusing on thoughts of her children. She’s never told them what she really does for a living, and now she might not get the chance.While her memories make her vulnerable, motherhood makes her dangerous.

A Killing Truth


D.V. Berkom - 2016
    After a routine assassination almost gets her killed, she chalks it up to a fluke. Her lover and fellow assassin, Carlos, has another idea altogether. He thinks their boss is setting them up for a fall.When Carlos goes missing and a bombing thwarts another mission, Leine suspects the stakes are far higher than she could ever imagine, and wonders if the man in charge might have it in for her after all.

An Ace and A Pair


Blake Banner - 2017
    But he’s a dinosaur who belongs to another age. Detective Carmen Dehan has such a bad attitude that nobody at the precinct can stomach her. Captain Jennifer Cuevas wants them both out of the way and thinks they make a perfect pair. So she gives them the Cold Cases file – the cases nobody gives a damn about.She has no idea just how hot a cold case can get.Ten years back Nelson Hernandez and his four cousins were playing poker in a dive at Hunts Point. Somebody came in, blew them away and beheaded and castrated Nelson, leaving his head and his balls on the table. There was no shortage of suspects, the Jersey Mob, the Triads from Manhattan, or the 43rds own bent cop, Mick Harragan. But nobody was ever charged, and the night of the murder Mick Harragan went missing with Nelson’s wife, Maria.Now Stone and Dehan plan to find him – whatever the consequences…

Intrusion


Mary McCluskey - 2016
    While Scott throws himself back into his law practice in Los Angeles, Kat is hesitant to rejoin the workplace and instead spends her days shell-shocked and confused, unable to focus.When an unwelcome face from Kat’s past in England emerges—the beautiful and imposing Sarah Cherrington—Kat’s marriage is thrown into a tailspin. Now wealthy beyond anything she could have imagined as a girl, Sarah appears to have everything she could need or want. But Sarah has an agenda and she wants one more thing. Soon Kat and Scott are caught up in her devious games and power plays.Against the backdrops of Southern California and Sussex, in spare and haunting prose, Mary McCluskey propels this domestic drama to its chilling conclusion.