Severed


Simon Kernick - 2007
    The room was stifling hot; and when I did finally manage to drag open my eyes, all I could see was blood. I thought I'd stepped into the middle of a nightmare. But I was wrong. The nightmare was only just beginning. Ex-soldier Sean Tyler wakes up in an unfamiliar room next to the headless corpse of a girl he's met recently. With his memory of the previous 24 hours wiped clean, he's hardly out of bed before the he notices a note next to the TV telling him to press play on the room's DVD machine. The film shows him stabbing someone to death.Tyler is confident that the footage is fake, but will a jury see things the same way? The man on the end of the phone tells him that if he wants the evidence to disappear, he must go to an address in east London, and await further instructions.Tyler knows he must do as he is told. He also knows that the phone caller has no intention of keeping him alive.To survive he must recover the missing 24 hours of his life and find out who's setting him up before his time runs out for good. The clock is ticking...

Past Mortem


Ben Elton - 2004
    Newson is not the only member of the Class of take back '88 who has been raking over the ashes of the past. As his old class begins to reassemble in cyberspace, the years slip away and old feuds and passions burn hot once more.Meanwhile, back in the present, Newson's life is no less complicated. He is secretly in love with Natasha, his lovely but very attached sergeant, and failing comprehensively to solve a series of baffling and peculiarly gruesome murders. A school reunion is planned and as history begins to repeat itself, the past crashes headlong into the present. Neither will ever be the same again.In Past Mortem, Ben Elton - previous winner of The Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger Award for Popcorn - delivers both a heart-stopping thriller and a killer comic romance.

Rupture: An Eli Branch Thriller


A. Scott Pearson - 2009
    After years of research, Eli is on the cusp of a groundbreaking discovery that could light the way for the future. But, as Eli will soon learn, today's medicine has a dark side.While investigating the suspicious death of one of his patients, Eli uncovers an elaborate web of lies spun by his late father, a longtime professor of anatomy at Mid-South Medical College in Memphis. Instead of finding answers, Eli only finds more questions-and more victims, each meeting a sudden, violent end.Eli joins forensic pathologist Meg Daily to find a common thread among the victims. As they piece together the chilling puzzle, Eli and Meg plunge headfirst into the world of deadly medicine-a world way too close to home.Trapped in the paradox of ending one life to save another, Eli and Meg find that in this life-or-death race against time, one false step could be fatal.

All Fall Down


Erica Spindler - 2000
    Melanie May, a small-town cop hungry for the big time, risks her career to convince a troubled FBI profiler of the identity of a serial killer, only to realize that the profile she's created fits someone in her own life -- and that the killer won't stop...until all fall down.

Taken


Jacqui Rose - 2012
    Since she had to give away her baby at 15, she’s been lost in booze and bad company. But now she wants to find her child and put things right… Perfect for fans of Jessie Keane and Martina Cole‘All she wanted to do was get out of there. Get on a train and head for London, the place she’d been avoiding for so many years. But it was finally time.’Casey Edwards has demons to put to rest. Since she had to give away her baby at 15, she’s been lost in booze and bad company. But now she wants to find her child and put things right. Heading to Soho, Casey meets former gangster Vince Sadler, an old-school hard man who can still handle himself – and anyone else. There’s a spark between Vince and Casey but she can’t let herself get hurt, not again.To find the truth, Casey must enter the dark world of London’s gangland: hard drugs, vice, even people trafficking. Soon she discovers that mob boss Alfie Jennings and sadistic psycho Oscar Hardings are plotting something dangerous, something brutal. Something that puts Casey – and her child – in serious trouble . . .Full of strong women, devious gangsters and compelling twists, Taken is compulsive read perfect for fans of Jessie Keane and Roberta Kray.

The Delta Star


Joseph Wambaugh - 1983
    But what's a Caltech phone number doing in her trick book? And how does that connect to a dead private eye and a useless credit card? And what does all that have to do with a Whisky-class Russian sub and the Nobel Prize?

Irreparable Harm


Melissa F. Miller - 2011
    Downloaded by more than one million readers!Attorney Sasha McCandless has one goal: Make partner at the best firm in town. Then a plum assignment plunges her into a world of deceit and danger.When a commercial flight crashes, killing everyone on board, she's tapped to defend the airline. It's her big chance ... high-stakes litigation for an important client. But, as she digs into the evidence, people close to the case start dying.She discovers the crash was intentional, caused by a smartphone app capable of overriding the cockpit controls. But she's not sure who she can trust with the horrifying truth. She teams up with a federal air marshal, and they race to prevent another airline disaster.Soon, Sasha finds herself with a brand-new life goal: Stop a madman before he kills her.

The Night Crew


John Sandford - 1997
    Small, dark-haired, shy but tough, a Wisconsin farm girl on the streets of Los Angeles, she roams the city with her small band of video free-lancers in their truck from ten to dawn, looking for news: accidents, robberies, murders, demonstrations — anything they can shoot and sell to the local stations or the networks. It's an exhilarating life . . . until the day two deaths shake their world.The first is the jumper. Five stories up, perched on the ledge of a hotel window, dark pants, white shirt, just standing there — and then he's gone, falling through the air towards the cameras. The second is Jason, one of Anna's cameramen. Strangely affected by the jumper, he quits the scene early that night, not to be seen again until his body turns up on the beach several hours later, shot in the head. The police wonder if it's drug-related, but Anna isn't so sure, and the more she looks into it on her own, the more the ghosts of the past — hers, Jason's, and finally the jumper's — begin to emerge, until her whole world turns as dark and dangerous as the night itself.

Before He Kills


Blake Pierce - 2016
    It doesn’t take long for the police to realize a serial killer is on the loose—and that his spree has just begun.Detective Mackenzie White, young, tough, smarter than the aging, chauvinistic men on her local force, finds herself called in grudgingly to help solve it. As much as the other officers hate to admit it, they need her young, brilliant mind, which has already helped crack cold cases that had left them stumped. Yet even for Mackenzie this new case proves an impossible riddle, something the likes of which she—and the local force—have ever seen.With the FBI called in, together, an intense manhunt ensues. Mackenzie, reeling from her own dark past, her failed relationships, and her undeniable attraction to the new FBI agent, finds herself battling her own demons as her hunt for the killer takes her to the darkest places of her mind. As she delves into the killer’s mind, obsessing over his twisted psychology, she finds that evil truly does exist. She only hopes it will not be too late to extricate herself from it, as her entire life collapses around her.As more bodies turn up dead and a frantic race against time ensues, there is no way out but to find him before he kills again.A dark psychological thriller with heart-pounding suspense, Before He Kills marks the debut of a riveting new series—and a beloved new character—that will leave you turning pages late into the night.

The Gingerbread Man


Maggie Shayne - 2001
    When the FBI takes over the case, Vince agrees to take time off. Traveling to a small upstate New York town, he meets Holly Newman--a fragile woman whose sister was abducted and killed years ago. Convinced that Holly's sister's death is linked to the recent murders, he attempts to unearth clues hidden deep in Holly's mind.

Love Me If You Must


Nicole Young - 2007
    For a start she discovers something unsettling in the basement that interests the police officer next door.

Deception Point


Dan Brown - 2001
    A conspiracy of staggering brilliance. A thriller unlike any you've ever read....When a NASA satellite discovers an astonishingly rare object buried deep in the Arctic ice, the floundering space agency proclaims a much-needed victory—a victory with profound implications for NASA policy and the impending presidential election. To verify the authenticity of the find, the White House calls upon the skills of intelligence analyst Rachel Sexton. Accompanied by a team of experts, including the charismatic scholar Michael Tolland, Rachel travels to the Arctic and uncovers the unthinkable: evidence of scientific trickery—a bold deception that threatens to plunge the world into controversy. But before she can warn the President, Rachel and Michael are ambushed by a deadly team of assassins. Fleeing for their lives across a desolate and lethal landscape, their only hope for survival is to discover who is behind this masterful plot. The truth, they will learn, is the most shocking deception of all.

Hostile Witness


Rebecca Forster - 2004
    Josie, once a hot-shot criminal defense attorney, left the fast track behind for a small practice in Hermosa Beach, California. But Hannah Sheraton intrigues her and, when the girl is charged as an adult, Josie cannot turn her back. But the deeper she digs the more Josie realizes that politics, the law and family relationships have created a combustible and dangerous situation. When the horrible truth of the murder is uncovered it could save Hannah Sheraton or destroy them both.

Daughter


Jane Shemilt - 2014
    The authorities launch a nationwide search with no success. Naomi has vanished, and her family is broken.As the months pass, the worst-case scenarios—kidnapping, murder—seem less plausible. The trail has gone cold. Yet for a desperate Jenny, the search has barely begun. More than a year after her daughter’s disappearance, she’s still digging for answers—and what she finds disturbs her. Everyone she’s trusted, everyone she thought she knew, has been keeping secrets, especially Naomi. Piecing together the traces her daughter left behind, Jenny discovers a very different Naomi from the girl she thought she’d raised.

Closure


Randall Wood - 2009
    Special Agent Jack Randall of the FBI finds himself appointed to track down and stop the shooter. Not by his superiors, but by the killer himself.As more bodies fall the shooter takes his message to the press, earning the support of the public with his choice of targets and confounding the FBI at every turn. From the desert of Nevada to the urban jungle of New York City, Jack and his team follow the trail of bodies and haunting messages left behind by the killer. With the pressure to find him mounting on Jack, the assassin’s crimes grow bolder, and his message more sinister and closer to home.It becomes clear to Jack that in order to find the shooter, he may have to look inside his own past, and become the man he was years ago.