Book picks similar to
All Things Violent by Nikki Dolson


crime
book-riot
noir-contemporary
not-on-overdrive

Stanton: The Trilogy


Alex MacLean - 2016
    When he finally decides to leave the force and start over, he's assigned a string of murders that all bear the signs of a serial killer collecting trophies.As Stanton unravels each grisly crime scene, the mounting evidence points uncomfortably close to him and a case unlike anything he's ever seen.One Kill Away (Book 2) - In this sequel to Grave Situation, Detective Allan Stanton has walked away from his job to reconnect with his young son--until a killer starts methodically carving his way through the city's underbelly. His ex-partner needs help, and Stanton reluctantly returns.The killer is definitely working through a list of victims, and he's leaving cryptic clues at his grisly crime scenes. Are they there to confuse the police? Or is there something more to them? As Stanton unravels this shocking central mystery, he becomes the target of an unexpected enemy--those next on the killer's list.Sorrowful Road (Book 3) - Detective Stanton has been haunted for the last year by one case he couldn't close: the brutal murder of a pretty twenty-two-year-old in Point Pleasant Park. On the anniversary of her death, the body of another young woman is found. The MO suggests the same person killed them both, but the long gap between murders is unusual for a serial killer.Fellow detective Audra Price joins Stanton in the search for this ruthless predator. But neither is prepared to handle such a unique brand of psychopath. Over a decade of unsolved case files turn up a swath of carnage, cut all across Canada with bone-chilling efficiency. The only way to bring justice to the victims is by following the most horrifying trail of their careers--to a monster who knows he's being hunted.

Deadly Lies


Chris Patchell - 2013
    Now as an adult, Jill's made it - she has a successful career and a solid, if not static, marriage to Detective Alex Shannon. Together they live out what seems to be a perfect life in Seattle. The vow she made as a teenager to never again be a victim lies dormant - until one day a reporter lures her to his hotel room under the pretense of an interview - and suddenly all of it comes rushing back. Jill seeks revenge on the reporter, triggering a series of events that leads Jill down a wormhole of retribution, forcing her to spin an ever-widening web of lies. Meanwhile, Alex is pulled into a case of a series of murders that began as cyber relationships. There seems to be a familiar fingerprint on these crimes, but Alex refuses to believe the murderer could be so close to him. For those who couldn't put down The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo comes a thrilling ride a la Mr. and Mrs. Smith, where husband and wife stand on opposite sides of a divide created by lies and rooted in a dark and deadly past.

Slice


David Hodges - 2010
     THERE’S A KILLER INSIDE THE POLICE STATION. A police station should be a safe place. But not when there’s a psychotic serial killer working there. THE FIRST VICTIM IS FOUND GRUESOMELY MUTILATED IN HIS MOST SENSITIVE AREA. HE IS DRESSED IN A JUDGE’S WIG. Detective Superintendent Jack Fulton takes on the grisly murder enquiry and discovers that his murderer might actually be one of the police station staff. MORE EMINENT VICTIMS FOLLOW. KILLED IN THE SAME SADISTIC MANNER. The press nickname the razor-wielding assassin “The Slicer.” With the killer stalking the shadowy Victorian building, Fulton has to contend not only with press harassment and police who will stop at nothing to get a result, but also with other problems much closer to home. As the killer leads him on a grim game of cat and mouse, Fulton has little idea of just how personal that game is about to become . . . YOU WON’T WANT TO PUT THIS ONE DOWN Perfect for fans of Rachel Abbott, Robert Bryndza, Mel Sherratt, Angela Marsons, Colin Dexter, or Ruth Rendell. THE AUTHOR A former police superintendent, with thirty years’ service. Since ‘turning to crime’, he has received critical media acclaim, including a welcome accolade from Inspector Morse’s creator, the late great, Colin Dexter, and he is now a prolific novelist with eleven published crime novels and an autobiography on his police career to his credit. His previous police experience has enabled him to provide a gritty realism to his thrillers and his Somerset Murder Series, featuring feisty female detective, Kate, and her partner, Hayden, has gone from strength to strength, attracting interest in the United States as well as in the UK. DETECTIVE KATE HAMBLIN MYSTERY SERIES Book 1: MURDER ON THE LEVELS Book 2: REVENGE ON THE LEVELS Book 3: FEAR ON THE LEVELS Book 4: KILLER ON THE LEVELS Book 5: SECRETS ON THE LEVELS Book 6: DEATH ON THE LEVELS STANDALONES SLICE

Generation Loss


Elizabeth Hand - 2007
    Her pictures of the musicians and hangers on, the infamous, the damned, and the dead, got her into art galleries and a book deal. But thirty years later she is adrift, on her way down, and almost out. Then an old acquaintance sends her on a mercy gig to interview a famously reclusive photographer who lives on an island in Maine. When she arrives Downeast, Cass stumbles across a decades-old mystery that is still claiming victims, and into one final shot at redemption.

Money Shot


Christa Faust - 2008
    THEY THOUGHT WRONG.It all began with the phone call asking former porn star Angel Dare to do one more movie. Before she knew it, she'd been shot and left for dead in the trunk of a car. But Angel is a survivor. And that means she'll get to the bottom of what's been done to her even if she has to leave a trail of bodies along the way...

Midnight Haul


Max Allan Collins - 1986
    The tiny New Jersey town she lived in has seen a rash of suicides lately, with the unlikely coincidence that everyone who has died worked for Kemco, the chemical factory company that fuels the town’s economy.As Crane digs deeper, he encounters Boone, a local woman writing a book about the environmental destruction that has come at the hands of the local chemical giant. The two team up to unravel the conspiracies surrounding the factory—which soon makes them the next targets for those aiming to keep Kemco’s shady dealings under wraps.The pair races to expose the illegal operations poisoning the town and bring Kemco to justice—before either of them becomes the latest in the growing list of “suicides.”

A Place of Execution


Val McDermid - 1999
    On a freezing day in December, another child goes missing: 13-year-old Alison Carter vanishes from the isolated Derbyshire hamlet of Scardale. For the young George Bennett it is the beginning of his most difficult and harrowing case: a murder with no body, an investigation with more dead ends and closed faces than he'd have found in the inner city; an outcome that reverberates down the years.Decades later he tells his story to journalist Catherine Heathcote, but just when her book is poised for publication, Bennett tries to pull the plug. He has new information that he will not divulge, and that threatens the very foundation of his existence. Catherine is forced to reinvestigate the past, with results that turn the world upside down.A taut psychological thriller that explores, exposes and explodes the border between reality and illusion in a multilayered narrative that turns expectations on their head and reminds us that what we know is what we do not know...

Vine Street


Dominic Nolan - 2021
    SOHO, 1935.SERGEANT LEON GEATS' PATCH.A snarling, skull-cracking misanthrope, Geats marshals the grimy rabble according to his own elastic moral code.The narrow alleys are brimming with jazz bars, bookies, blackshirts, ponces and tarts so when a body is found above the Windmill Club, detectives are content to dismiss the case as just another young woman who topped herself early.But Geats - a good man prepared to be a bad one if it keeps the worst of them at bay - knows the dark seams of the city.Working with his former partner, mercenary Flying Squad sergeant Mark Cassar, Geats obsessively dedicates himself to finding a warped killer - a decision that will reverberate for a lifetime and transform both men in ways they could never expect.

Too Late to Call Texas


Trent Zelazny - 2012
    Or the dead guy. Or the steamer trunk. Or the rag doll. If only he hadn’t found any of these things, everything might have been okay. But he had found them. All of them. Now Carson Halliday is on the run, trying his damnedest to keep one step ahead of a dangerous gang of outlaws and mad men. A run leading him from town to town in the dry wasteland of the southern New Mexico desert, over dark hills and dangerous plains, through shantytowns and city streets, and, most frightening of all, into the mysterious depths of the human heart."One of the best of the new breed of writers." —Joe R. Lansdale"A powerful and good writer." —Neil Gaiman"Trent Zelazny is the best hard-boiled noir writer of this generation!" —Sarah L. Covert, Editor of She Never Slept

The Sad Man (Novella): A Dani Lancing Story


P.D. Viner - 2013
    As a Family Liaison Officer he is always the bearer of bad news - it is his job to tell the friends and family of victims the fate of their loved ones.But Tom is weighted down by crimes both old and new - haunted by the death of his best friend Dani, whose murder has never been solved.When a rare opportunity emerges for Tom to take the lead in a horrific murder investigation, he is determined to get justice for the victim. A young girl has been found in her own home, cut so badly - and so carefully - that she has bled to death, leaving a deliberate pool of blood in the shape of angel wings....

The Hunted


Gabriel Bergmoser - 2020
    . .and the nightmare begin?Frank owns a service station on a little-used highway. His granddaughter, Allie, is sent to stay with him for the summer, but they don't talk a lot.Simon is a dreamer and an idealist, in thrall to the romance of the open road and desperately in search of something.Maggie is the woman who will bring them together, someone whose own personal journey will visit unimaginable terror on them all. . .'With echoes of Deliverance and Battle Royale, the Australian outback-set The Hunted is a truly terrifying, breathlessly exciting novel. It gut-punches you in the first few pages and doesn't let you recover until the final, thrilling climax. An extraordinary book.' M. W. CRAVEN What readers are saying: 'A high octane roller-coaster of a novel, brilliantly written with strong characters to cheer for. Just don't read it before going to sleep like I did.''This type of horror/action thriller isn't my usual thing but boy, did I love this book.''This entire book was just pure, fast-paced tension and I loved every insane page of it.''I'd say it's a hard book to put down, but a couple of times I found the suspense heightened enough that I needed a break. That's how good it was.''Even the squeamish would find it difficult to put this book down for very long.'

Sole Intention


M.A. Comley - 2013
    Ellen discovers that a number of women with similar features and hair colour have also vanished in the Worcester area. Ellen and Brian suspect a serial kidnapper is to blame, and without a body, the police are happy to leave the case in their hands to solve.Hoping the women are still alive, Ellen digs for clues and races to find the women, despite her troubled private life and a meddlesome stepfather with a violent secret.

The Find (The Find, #1)


Venezia Miller - 2021
    In the dark forests of Sandviken, Sweden, a hiker makes a shocking discovery that disrupts the lives of four families, bound by memories of joyous summer vacations, but confronted by a dark secret they long believed to be a relic of the past.For over thirty years, a serial killer has lived among them, hunting innocent young girls and using them for his perverted pleasures.The investigation is slow, and the inspectors assigned to the case are confronted not only with a cunning, calculated and ruthless killer but also with their own personal demons.It’s only a matter of time before he strikes again.Will they be able to stop him this time?And at what price?Keywords: mystery, detective, suspense.

When You Disappeared


John Marrs - 2013
    But Simon never makes it to the office. His running shoes are by the front door. Nothing is missing - except him.Catherine knows Simon must be in trouble. He wouldn't just leave her. He wouldn't leave the children.But Simon knows the truth - about why he left and what he's done. He knows things about his marriage that it would kill Catherine to find out. The memories she holds onto are lies.While Catherine faces a dark new reality at home, Simon's halfway around the world, alive and thriving. He's doing whatever it takes to stay one step ahead of the truth.But he can't hide forever, and when he reappears twenty-five years later, Catherine will finally learn who he is.And wish she'd stayed in the dark.Revised edition: Previously published as The Wronged Sons, this edition of When You Disappeared includes editorial revisions.

Stray Dogs


John Ridley - 1997
    I don't know what it is, but it works that way for man and animal alike. I've seen some peculiar things on a hot day too. I've seen a scorpion sting itself to death. It just keeps drivin' its tail into its body again and again. A little killer killing itself. And what a man'll do on a hot day. A man could get his self killed just for rubbing shoulders with another. . . ."A loner, a drifter, a gambler--John Stewart asks little of life. But when his '64 Mustang busts a radiator hose in the middle of the empty Nevada desert, he prays to God, Buddha, L. Ron. And rolls into the tiny town of Sierra. Where he finds . . . nothing. A gas station whose former owner is lying low in the cemetery. A strip of barren, dust-blown store fronts. A truck stop cafe with more flies than customers.Stewart wants out. Sucker-punched in a rigged poker game, he's got to get to Vegas to settle a debt. Or else.Then in walks Grace, a seductive knockout who can read fortunes in faces. In the next twenty-four hours, Stewart becomes ensnared in a web of dirty double-crosses, cold propositions, and desperate souls--deadly ground where murder is just one gasp away.A stunning, fast-paced novel, Stray Dogs unfolds with unrelenting tension, memorable characters, and shocking twists of plot. John Ridley has created a hypnotic story that is pure noir, from its first page until its shattering climax.From the Hardcover edition.