Dark Paradise


Tami Hoag - 1994
    Now it’s up to ex-court reporter Marilee Jennings to decipher the puzzle of her best friend’s death. But someone has a stake in silencing her suspicion. Someone with secrets worth killing for—and the power to turn this beautiful haven into a . . .  And as Mari digs deeper beneath New Eden’s picture-perfect exterior, finding the truth is suddenly no longer a matter of justice.     It’s her only hope of staying alive.From the Paperback edition.

The Shivering Turn


Sally Spencer - 2017
    'My daughter's not just run away - she's dead!' When Mary Corbet walks into private investigator Jennie Redhead's rundown Oxford office one pleasant spring day in 1974, she is a desperate woman. Although she's convinced her daughter has been murdered, she can get neither the police nor her husband to agree with her.Jennie is not convinced either, but more out of compassion than conviction agrees to take the case. The only clue she has to go on is a fragment of an obscure 17th century poem she finds in Linda's bedroom: Or will you, like a cold and errant coward/Abandon all and make a shivering turn. But from that one clue Jennie's investigations will lead her beyond the city's dreaming spires to Oxford's darker underbelly, in which lurks a hidden world of privilege, violence and excess.

The Unheard


Nicci French - 2021
    Maybe Tess is overprotective, but passing her daughter off to her ex and his new young wife fills her with a sense of dread. It's not that Jason is a bad father--it just hurts to see him enjoying married life with someone else. Still, she owes it to her daughter Poppy to make this arrangement work.But Poppy returns from the weekend tired and withdrawn. And when she shows Tess a crayon drawing--an image so simple and violent that Tess can hardly make sense of it----Poppy can only explain with the words, "He did kill her."Something is horribly wrong. Tess is certain Poppy saw something--or something happened to her--that she's too young to understand. Jason insists the weekend went off without a hitch. Doctors advise that Poppy may be reacting to her parents' separation. And as the days go on, even Poppy's disturbing memory seems to fade. But a mother knows her daughter, and Tess is determined to discover the truth. Her search will set off an explosive tempest of dark secrets and buried crimes--and more than one life may be at stake.

Suicide Run: Three Harry Bosch Stories


Michael Connelly - 2011
    In "Cielo Azul," Bosch is haunted by a long-ago closed case -- the murder of a teenage girl who was never identified. As her killer sits on death row, Bosch tries one last time to get the answers he has sought for years. In "One Dollar Jackpot," Bosch works the murder of a professional poker player whose skills have made her more than one enemy. Whether investigating a cold case or fresh blood, Bosch relentlessly pursues his quarry, always on the lookout for the "tell." In this first collection of Harry Bosch stories, Michael Connelly once again demonstrates that he is the master of "fast-paced, brilliantly plotted crime fiction.... Harry Bosch is back on the case, and not a moment too soon" (Chicago Sun Times).

The Sleeping Doll


Jeffery Deaver - 2007
    Pell is serving a life sentence for the brutal murders of the wealthy Croyton family in Carmel years earlier -- a crime mirroring those perpetrated by Charles Manson in the 1960s. But Pell and his cult members were sloppy: Not only were they apprehended, they even left behind a survivor -- the youngest of the Croyton daughters, who, because she was in bed hidden by her toys that terrible night, was dubbed the Sleeping Doll.But the girl never spoke about that night, nor did the crime's mastermind. Indeed, Pell has long been both reticent and unrepentant about the crime. And so with the murderer transported from the Capitola superprison to an interrogation room in the Monterey County Courthouse, Dance sees an opportunity to pry a confession from him for the recent murder -- and to learn more about the depraved mind of this career criminal who considers himself a master of control, a dark Svengali, forcing people to do what they otherwise would never conceive of doing. In an electrifying psychological jousting match, Dance calls up all her skills as an interrogator and kinesics -- body language -- expert to get to the truth behind Daniel Pell.But when Dance's plan goes terribly wrong and Pell escapes, leaving behind a trail of dead and injured, she finds herself in charge of her first-ever manhunt. But far from simply fleeing, Pell turns on his pursuers --and other innocents -- for reasons Dance and her colleagues can't discern. As the idyllic Monterey Peninsula is paralyzed by the elusive killer, Dance turns to the past to find the truth about what Daniel Pell is really up to. She tracks down the now teenage Sleeping Doll to learn what really happened that night, and she arranges a reunion of three women who were in his cult at the time of the killings. The lies of the past and the evasions of the present boil up under the relentless probing of Kathryn Dance, but will the truth about Daniel Pell emerge in time to stop him from killing again?