Book picks similar to
Mr. Glamour by Richard Godwin
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Mind of a Killer
Dan Padavona - 2018
A teenage girl is brutally murdered in an idyllic lake community. In over his head, the local sheriff calls upon the Behavior Analysis Unit’s best profiler, Scarlett Bell, to find the murderer. Is a serial killer stalking Coral Lake? Now Scarlett faces a killer unlike any she’s encountered. Bloodthirsty. Cunning. Insane. Another girl goes missing, and the special agent must stop the killer before time runs out. But the killer is a ghost, a phantom hiding in plain sight, and Scarlett must untangle a confusing web of evidence if she hopes to track him down. If she fails, the girl dies. The body count will grow. Scarlett should beware. The killer is coming for her now.
Good Samaritans
Will Carver - 2018
He stays up late, calling strangers from his phonebook, hoping to make a connection, while his wife, Maeve, sleeps upstairs. A crossed wire finds a suicidal Hadley Serf on the phone to Seth, thinking she is talking to The Samaritans.But a seemingly harmless, late-night hobby turns into something more for Seth and for Hadley, and soon their late-night talks are turning into day-time meet-ups. And then this dysfunctional love story turns into something altogether darker, when Seth brings Hadley home…And someone is watching…Dark, sexy, dangerous and wildly readable, Good Samaritans marks the scorching return of one of crime fiction’s most exceptional voices.
The Stranger Diaries
Elly Griffiths - 2018
A high school English teacher specializing in the Gothic writer R. M. Holland, she teaches a course on it every year. But when one of Clare’s colleagues and closest friends is found dead, with a line from R. M. Holland’s most famous story, “The Stranger,” left by her body, Clare is horrified to see her life collide with the storylines of her favourite literature. To make matters worse, the police suspect the killer is someone Clare knows. Unsure whom to trust, she turns to her closest confidant, her diary, the only outlet she has for her darkest suspicions and fears about the case. Then one day she notices something odd. Writing that isn't hers, left on the page of an old diary: "Hallo, Clare. You don’t know me." Clare becomes more certain than ever: “The Stranger” has come to terrifying life. But can the ending be rewritten in time?
Spies, Lies and a Pair of Ties
Sheralyn Pratt - 2003
At 24, she has only been a PI for three years, but in that time she has never found a case she couldn't solve, or a person who could trick her. So when she's asked to investigate an embezzlement case at a nearby factory, Rhea doesn't think twice. What Rhea doesn't know is that the events that will take place on this case will snowball into a life decision. And what starts out as a humdrum investigation, filled with seemingly chance encounters, will change her life forever.
The Cuban Affair
Nelson DeMille - 2017
At age thirty-five he’s living in Key West, owner of a forty-two-foot charter fishing boat, The Maine. Mac served five years in the Army as an infantry officer with two tours in Afghanistan. He returned with the Silver Star, two Purple Hearts, scars that don’t tan, and a boat with a big bank loan. Truth be told, Mac’s finances are more than a little shaky.One day, Mac is sitting in the famous Green Parrot Bar in Key West, contemplating his life, and waiting for Carlos, a hotshot Miami lawyer heavily involved with anti-Castro groups. Carlos wants to hire Mac and The Maine for a ten-day fishing tournament to Cuba at the standard rate, but Mac suspects there is more to this and turns it down. The price then goes up to two million dollars, and Mac agrees to hear the deal, and meet Carlos’s clients—a beautiful Cuban-American woman named Sara Ortega, and a mysterious older Cuban exile, Eduardo Valazquez.What Mac learns is that there is sixty million American dollars hidden in Cuba by Sara’s grandfather when he fled Castro’s revolution. With the “Cuban Thaw” underway between Havana and Washington, Carlos, Eduardo, and Sara know it’s only a matter of time before someone finds the stash—by accident or on purpose. And Mac knows if he accepts this job, he’ll walk away rich…or not at all.Brilliantly written, with his signature humor, fascinating authenticity from his research trip to Cuba, and heart-pounding pace, Nelson DeMille is a true master of the genre.
A Noise Downstairs
Linwood Barclay - 2018
Until, driving along a deserted road late one night, he surprises a murderer disposing of a couple of bodies. That’s when Paul’s "normal" existence is turned upside down. After nearly losing his own life in that encounter, he finds himself battling PTSD, depression, and severe problems at work. His wife, Charlotte, desperate to cheer him up, brings home a vintage typewriter—complete with ink ribbons and heavy round keys—to encourage him to get started on that novel he’s always intended to write.However, the typewriter itself is a problem. Paul swears it’s possessed and types by itself at night. But only Paul can hear the noise coming from downstairs; Charlotte doesn’t hear a thing. And she worries he’s going off the rails.Paul believes the typewriter is somehow connected to the murderer he discovered nearly a year ago. The killer had made his victims type apologies to him before ending their lives. Has another sick twist of fate entwined his life with the killer—could this be the same machine? Increasingly tormented but determined to discover the truth and confront his nightmare, Paul begins investigating the deaths himself.But that may not be the best thing to do. Maybe Paul should just take the typewriter back to where his wife found it. Maybe he should stop asking questions and simply walk away while he can. . .
Catch as Catch Can (Merseyside Crime, #1)
Malcolm Hollingdrake - 2021
Together with new colleague Skeeter Warlock, Decent quickly discovers there’s a sinister link between them all, one that will bring them face-to-face with some uncomfortable home truths.Catch as Catch Can is the first in the Merseyside Crime Series from Malcolm Hollingdrake – bestselling author of the Harrogate Crime Series.
Only the Innocent
Rachel Abbott - 2011
But when the billionaire philanthropist is discovered murdered in his London home, tied naked to a bed, the scandal is only a shadow of the darkness lurking off-camera.Laura Fletcher returns from an Italian vacation to find her husband dead and her home under siege by paparazzi. Is she shocked? Yes. But is she distraught? Not exactly. Especially when Chief Inspector Tom Douglas reveals his suspicions that Hugo’s killer is female. Laura always knew she wasn’t the only woman in Hugo’s life. And she knows she wasn’t the only one with a motive to kill.The deeper Douglas digs, the more sordid details about Hugo Fletcher he uncovers. And yet nothing compares to the secret Laura guards, a secret that could bring the guilty to justice—or destroy an innocent life forever.
The Crow Girl
Erik Axl Sund - 2016
When two more bodies are found, it becomes clear that she is hunting a serial killer.With her career on the line, she turns to psychotherapist Sofia Zetterlund. Together, they uncover a chain of shocking events that began decades ago – but will it lead them to the murderer before someone else dies?
Snap
Belinda Bauer - 2018
Jack's in charge, she said. I won't be long.But she doesn't come back. She never comes back. And life as the children know it is changed for ever.Three years later, mum-to-be Catherine wakes to find a knife beside her bed, and a note that says: I could have killed you.Meanwhile Jack is still in charge - of his sisters, of supporting them all, of making sure nobody knows they're alone in the house, and - quite suddenly - of finding out the truth about what happened to his mother.But the truth can be a dangerous thing ...
The Craftsman
Sharon J. Bolton - 2018
August, 1999On the hottest day of the year, Assistant Commissioner Florence Lovelady attends the funeral of Larry Glassbrook, the convicted murderer she arrested thirty years earlier. A master carpenter and funeral director, Larry imprisoned his victims, alive, in the caskets he made himself. Clay effigies found entombed with their bodies suggested a motive beyond the worst human depravity.June, 196913-year- old Patsy Wood has been missing for two days, the third teenager to disappear in as many months. New to the Lancashire police force and struggling to fit in, WPC Lovelady is sent to investigate an unlikely report from school children claiming to have heard a voice calling for help. A voice from deep within a recent grave.August, 1999As she tries to lay her ghosts to rest, Florence is drawn back to the Glassbrooks' old house, in the shadow of Pendle Hill, where she once lodged with the family. She is chilled by the discovery of another effigy - one bearing a remarkable resemblance to herself. Is the killer still at large? Is Florence once again in terrible danger? Or, this time, could the fate in store be worse than even her darkest imaginings?
Shell Shock (Gus Conrad )
Steve Stahl - 2015
Gus Conrad is called to consult by the U.S. army for its growing epidemic of suicides and PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) among soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, his problems begin.Accused of murdering one of his own patients, a soldier with PTSD, Conrad learns from the mother that the answer to who is the real killer resides in England, where her family holds a long-hidden secret.Now Conrad must find the real killer as he slips out of the country to uncover to his horror the practice over the past century of British and U.S. armies both secretly killing their own soldiers who claimed psychological problems following combat, deeming them cowards, making their deaths look like suicides.The current head of the American death squad has apparently killed Conrad’s patient, and is now targeting Conrad himself for death. Following the clues in England, Conrad is shocked at what he discovers.
Will Conrad and Warburton be able get back to the U.S. to expose the practice of armies killing their own soldiers they deem cowards?
Can they stop the rogue leader of the American death squad before they themselves are killed?
High Water
Lynn Hightower - 2002
A daughter's intuition. A father's terrifying secret. High WaterBeaufort, South Carolina: When the matriarch of the Smallwood family dies of mysterious causes, everybody in town has their eyes on the widower. An ex-marine involved in a local scandal years before, Fielding Smallwood is known as a fierce man with a powerful sense of discipline. He was neglectful of his wife and three children, including Georgie, the youngest, who is convinced her father is the killer...until another tragedy occurs and her sister Claire becomes a prime suspect. Now it's up to Georgie to find the evidence needed to clear her sister's name -- even if what she discovers threatens the survival of the only family she has left.Lynn Hightower entwines deadly deceptions and startling revelations in this rich, intricate work of suspense.
The Last Kind Words
Tom Piccirilli - 2012
Upon the razor-thin edge between love and violence lives a pair of brothers, their bonds frayed by betrayals and guilt, their loyalty to each other their last salvation.Raised to pick a pocket before he could walk, Terry Rand cut free from his family after his older brother, Collie, went on a senseless killing spree that left eight dead. Five years later, only days before his scheduled execution, Collie contacts Terry and asks him to return home. Collie claims he wasn’t responsible for one of the murders—and insists that the real killer is still on the loose.Dogged by his own demons, Terry is swept back into the schemes and scams of his family: His father, Pinsch, a retired cat burglar, brokenhearted because of his two sons. His card-sharp uncles, Mal and Grey, who’ve incurred the anger of the local mob. His grandfather, Shep, whose mind is failing but whose fingers can still slip out a wallet from across the room. His teenage sister, Dale, who’s flirting dangerously with the lure of the family business. And Kimmie, the woman Terry abandoned, who’s now raising a child with Terry’s former best friend. Terry pieces together the day his brother turned rabid, delving into a blood history that reveals the Rand family tree is rotten to the roots, and the secrets his ancestors buried are now coming furious and vengeful to the surface.A meditation on how love can confine a person just as easily as it can free him, juxtaposing shocking violence and sly humor, The Last Kind Words is the brilliantly inventive family saga that only a singular talent like Tom Piccirilli could conjure.