Book picks similar to
The Debt by Roberta Kray
crime
k-authors
mysteries-thrillers-read
mystery-crime
Nothing Personal
Jason Starr - 1998
The Sussmans live in a posh building on the Upper East Side. When Joey DePino loses his job and is threatened by his bookies and loan shark, he involves the Sussmans in a sick, desperate plan to pay off his gambling debts. But ad exec David Sussman has his own problems trying to stop his suddenly psychopathic mistress from ruining him, and he won't go down without a fight. As the lives of the DePinos and the Sussmans become increasingly intertwined, Joey and David plunge their families into an amoral world where anything is possible and nothing is personal. Part crime novel, part unflinching satire of compulsive gambling, eating disorders, and cold-blooded evil, Nothing Personal firmly establishes Jason Starr as one of the most exciting young noir novelists around.
The Accused
Constance Briscoe - 2011
But both girls are ex-cons and former prostitutes and she will have to go to extra-ordinary lengths to prove Elizabeth innocent....
Alone
Lisa Gardner - 2004
. . Massachusetts State Trooper Bobby Dodge watches a tense hostage standoff unfold through the scope of his sniper rifle. Just across the street, in wealthy Back Bay, Boston, an armed man has barricaded himself with his wife and child. The man’s finger tightens on the trigger and Dodge has only a split second to react . . . and forever pay the consequences.Alone . . . that’s where the nightmare began for cool, beautiful, and dangerously sexy Catherine Rose Gagnon. Twenty-five years ago, she was buried underground during a month-long nightmare of abduction and abuse. Now her husband has just been killed. Her father-in-law, the powerful Judge Gagnon, blames Catherine for his son’s death . . . and for the series of unexplained illnesses that have sent her own young son repeatedly to the hospital. Alone . . . a madman survived solitary confinement in a maximum security prison where he’d done hard time for the most sadistic of crimes. Now he walks the streets a free man, invisible, anonymous . . . and filled with an unquenchable rage for vengeance. What brings them together is a moment of violence—but what connects them is a passion far deeper and much more dangerous. For a killer is loose who’s woven such an intricate web of evil that no one is above suspicion, no one is beyond harm, and no one will see death coming until it has them cornered, helpless, and alone.
The Child Finder
Rene Denfeld - 2017
She would be eight-years-old now—if she has survived. Desperate to find their beloved daughter, certain someone took her, the Culvers turn to Naomi, a private investigator with an uncanny talent for locating the lost and missing. Known to the police and a select group of parents as "the Child Finder," Naomi is their last hope.Naomi’s methodical search takes her deep into the icy, mysterious forest in the Pacific Northwest, and into her own fragmented past. She understands children like Madison because once upon a time, she was a lost girl, too.As Naomi relentlessly pursues and slowly uncovers the truth behind Madison’s disappearance, shards of a dark dream pierce the defenses that have protected her, reminding her of a terrible loss she feels but cannot remember. If she finds Madison, will Naomi ultimately unlock the secrets of her own life?Told in the alternating voices of Naomi and a deeply imaginative child, The Child Finder is a breathtaking, exquisitely rendered literary page-turner about redemption, the line between reality and memories and dreams, and the human capacity to survive.
Missing, Presumed
Susie Steiner - 2016
Detective Sergeant Manon Bradshaw tries to sleep after yet another soul-destroying Internet date – the low murmuring of her police radio her only solace.Over the airwaves come reports of a missing woman – door ajar, keys and phone left behind, a spatter of blood on the kitchen floor. Manon knows the first 72 hours are critical: you find her, or you look for a body. And as soon as she sees a picture of Edith Hind, a Cambridge post-graduate from a well-connected family, she knows this case will be big.Is Edith alive or dead? Was her ‘complex love life’ at the heart of her disappearance, as a senior officer tells the increasingly hungry press? And when a body is found, is it the end or only the beginning?
The Bone Jar
S.W. Kane - 2020
An abandoned asylum. Will a mysterious former patient help untangle the dark truth?The body of an elderly woman has been found in the bowels of a derelict asylum on the banks of the Thames. As Detective Lew Kirby and his partner begin their investigation, another body is discovered in the river nearby. How are the two murders connected?Before long, the secrets of Blackwater Asylum begin to reveal themselves. There are rumours about underground bunkers and secret rooms, unspeakable psychological experimentation, and a dark force that haunts the ruins, trying to pull back in all those who attempt to escape. Urban explorer Connie Darke, whose sister died in a freak accident at the asylum, is determined to help Lew expose its grisly past. Meanwhile Lew discovers a devastating family secret that threatens to turn his life upside down.As his world crumbles around him, Lew must put the pieces of the puzzle together to keep the killer from striking again. Only an eccentric former patient really knows the truth—but will he reveal it to Lew before it’s too late?
Since We Fell
Dennis Lehane - 2017
In all other respects, however, she enjoys an ideal life with an ideal husband. Until a chance encounter on a rainy afternoon causes that ideal life to fray. As does Rachel’s marriage. As does Rachel herself. Sucked into a conspiracy thick with deception, violence, and possibly madness, Rachel must find the strength within herself to conquer unimaginable fears and mind-altering truths. By turns heart- breaking, suspenseful, romantic, and sophisticated, Since We Fell is a novel of profound psychological insight and tension. It is Dennis Lehane at his very best.
Shadow Man
Cody McFadyen - 2006
She was one of the best until a madman terrorized her family, killed her husband and daughter, and left her face scarred and her soul brutalized. Turning the tables on the killer, Smoky shot him dead but her life was shattered forever. Now Smoky dreams about picking up her weapon again. She dreams about placing the cold steel between her lips and pulling the trigger one last time. Because for a woman who's lost everything, what is there left to lose? She's about to find out.In all her years at the Bureau, Smoky has never encountered anyone like him: a new and fascinating kind of monster, a twisted genius who defies profilers' attempts to understand him. And he's issued Smoky a direct challenge, coaxing her back from the brink with the only thing that could convince her to live.The killer videotaped his latest crime, an act of horror that left a child motherless, then sent a message addressed to Agent Smoky Barrett. The message is enough to shock Smoky back to work, back to her FBI team. And that child awakens something in Smoky she thought was gone forever.Suddenly the stakes are raised. The game has changed. For as this deranged monster embarks on an unspeakable spree of perversion and murder, Smoky is coming alive again and she's about to face her greatest fears as a cop, a woman, a mother—and a merciless killer's next victim.From the Hardcover edition.
Whatever You Love
Louise Doughty - 2010
I am calm as I make this promise: I am going to find out what you love, then whatever it is, I am going to track it down and I am going to take it away from you.After the death of Laura's nine-year-old daughter, Betty, is ruled an accident in a hit-and-run, Laura decides to take revenge into her own hands, determined to track down the man responsible. All the while, her inner turmoil is reopening the old wounds of her passionate love affair with Betty's father, David, and his abandonment of the family for another woman.Haunted by her past and driven to a breaking point by her thirst for retribution, Laura discovers the unforeseen lengths she is willing to go to for love and vengeance.
The Dark Lake
Sarah Bailey - 2017
Even back then, she was a mystery that I wanted to solve.The lead homicide investigator in a rural town, Detective Sergeant Gemma Woodstock is deeply unnerved when a high school classmate is found strangled, her body floating in a lake. And not just any classmate, but Rosalind Ryan, whose beauty and inscrutability exerted a magnetic pull on Smithson High School, first during Rosalind's student years and then again when she returned to teach drama. As much as Rosalind's life was a mystery to Gemma when they were students together, her death presents even more of a puzzle. What made Rosalind quit her teaching job in Sydney and return to her hometown? Why did she live in a small, run-down apartment when her father was one of the town's richest men? And despite her many admirers, did anyone in the town truly know her? Rosalind's enigmas frustrate and obsess Gemma, who has her own dangerous secrets—an affair with her colleague and past tragedies that may not stay in the past.
Try Not to Breathe
Holly Seddon - 2016
Only fifteen years old, Amy disappeared walking home from school one day and was found in a coma three days later. Her attacker was never identified and her angelic face was plastered across every paper and nightly news segment.Fifteen years later, Amy lies in the hospital, surrounded by 90’s Britpop posters, forgotten by the world until reporter Alex Dale stumbles across her while researching a routine story on vegetative patients.Remembering Amy’s story like it was yesterday, she feels compelled to solve the long-cold case.The only problem is, Alex is just as lost as Amy—her alcoholism has cost her everything including her marriage and her professional reputation.In the hopes that finding Amy’s attacker will be her own salvation as well, Alex embarks on a dangerous investigation, suspecting someone close to Amy.Told in the present by an increasingly fragile Alex and in dream-like flashbacks by Amy as she floats in a fog of memories, dreams, and music from 1995, Try Not to Breathe unfolds layer by layer to a breathtaking conclusion.
The Detective's Daughter
Lesley Thomson - 2013
Her murder shocked the nation. Her husband never pressed charges and moved abroad under a cloud of suspicion. Her son, just four years old, grew up in a loveless boarding school. And Detective Inspector Darnell, vowing to leave no stone unturned in the search for her killer, began to lose his only daughter. The young Stella Darnell grew to resent the dead Kate Rokesmith for capturing her father's attention in a way she never could.Thirty years later, Stella is dutifully sorting through her father's attic after his sudden death. The Rokesmith case papers are in a corner gathering dust: the case was never solved. Stella knows she should destroy them. Instead, she opens the box, and starts to read...
Girl Jacked
Christopher Greyson - 2013
They were old friends. He knew only one way to deal with pain. Hunt it down and kill it."
Police Officer Jack Stratton is hiding. Hiding from the world. From pain. From the memories of losing his best friend, Chandler, in Iraq. Suffering from PTSD and isolated from those he cares about, the last thing Jack expects to hear is his foster sister Michelle, Chandler’s sister, is gone. The words cut straight to his core. Although the police think she just took off, he knows Michelle would never leave those she loved behind–like he did. Now he must take action, find Michelle, and bring her home or die trying. The first novel in the Jack Stratton Collection introduces us to handsome rogue, Jack Stratton. A debt of honor to his dead foster brother drives Jack into a world of deception and lies. As Jack’s walls begin to crumble, he must navigate the quirky characters that seep into the mystery of his foster sister’s disappearance. And in the sleepy community of Darrington, like so many places in this world, nothing is as it appears. The hidden mysteries that often go unnoticed begin to emerge as Jack and his new unpredictable sidekick begin to turn over the rocks. Following a trail that has grown cold, Jack must tread carefully to protect his job, his family, and his life. This stand-alone novel features rogue hero Jack Stratton. Look for other books in the Jack Stratton Collection including Jack Knifed, Jacks are Wild, and now Jack and the Giant Killer. They can be read in any order, however, they are best experienced in sequence.
The Magpie
Marrisse Whittaker - 2021
A detective who is out of control. Meet DSI Wilde. Wilde by name. Wild by nature. DSI Billie Wilde is on a mission to catch the killer responsible for a horrific showcase of murders, in order to prove that she’s still at the top of her game. But when hidden skeletons come out of dark corners, she is forced to confront her past and face the truth - that she is the ultimate target, now firmly in the executioner’s sights.As Billie grapples with her past, and learns she isn’t who she thought she was, she uncovers devastating childhood links to each of the victims. The past refuses to stay buried and Billie soon finds herself wondering if she knows who’s behind the brutal murders.But can Billie solve the case and unravel the mystery of her own past before it’s too late?
The Neighbour
Fiona Cummins - 2019
. .FOR SALE: A lovely family home with good-sized garden and treehouse occupying a plot close to woodland. Perfect for kids, fitness enthusiasts, dog walkers . . .
And, it seems, the perfect hunting ground for a serial killer.
On a hot July day, Garrick and Olivia Lockwood and their two children move into 25 The Avenue looking for a fresh start. They arrive in the midst of a media frenzy: they’d heard about the local murders in the press, but Garrick was certain the killer would be caught and it would all be over in no time. Besides, they’d got the house at a steal and he was convinced he could flip it for a fortune.The neighbours seemed to be the very picture of community spirit. But everyone has secrets, and the residents in The Avenue are no exception.After six months on the case with no real leads, the most recent murder has turned DC Wildeve Stanton’s life upside down, and now she has her own motive for hunting down the killer – quickly.