Book picks similar to
Le Crime by Peter Steiner
fiction
mystery
thriller
france
You Can't Stop Me
Max Allan Collins - 2010
Harrow made headlines when he apprehended a would-be presidential assassin - only to come home that night and find his wife and son brutally murdered. This tragic twist of fate launched his career as the host of reality TV's smash-hit, Crime Seen!
Silverview
John le Carré - 2021
Julian Lawndsley has renounced his high-flying job in the City for a simpler life running a bookshop in a small English seaside town. But only a couple of months into his new career, Julian's evening is disrupted by a visitor. Edward, a Polish émigré living in Silverview, the big house on the edge of town, seems to know a lot about Julian's family and is rather too interested in the inner workings of his modest new enterprise.When a letter turns up at the door of a spy chief in London warning him of a dangerous leak, the investigations lead him to this quiet town by the sea . . .Silverview is the mesmerizing story of an encounter between innocence and experience and between public duty and private morals. In this last complete masterwork from the greatest chronicler of our age, John le Carré asks what you owe to your country when you no longer recognize it.
The Blessing Way
Tony Hillerman - 1970
Though it goes against his better judgment, Navajo Tribal Police Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn cannot help but suspect the hand of a supernatural killer. There is palpable evil in the air, and Leaphorn's pursuit of a Wolf-Witch is leading him where even the bravest men fear, on a chilling trail that winds perilously between mysticism and murder.
Taboo
Casey Hill - 2011
A first thriller co-written by Melissa Hill and her husband Kevin.The story is set in Dublin and features forensic investigator Reilly Steel who has moved from the US to Dublin to be close to her father.But what should have been a quiet period filled with training and Irish forensics team turns sinister and violent when body after body is found of people killed in what appears to be a twisted game.
Flower Net
Lisa See - 1997
ambassador's son is discovered entombed in a frozen lake in Beijing. Then the son of a powerful Chinese politician is found dead in the hold of a smuggler's freighter bound for California. The Chinese and American authorities suspect the deaths are linked and, in a rare move, join forces to solve the crime, and soon U.S. District Attorney David Stark is sent across the Pacific to team up with brilliant yet rebellious police detective Liu Hulan. Their investigation takes them into every corner of today's China -- from glitzy karaoke bars, where government leaders and mafia kingpins make their most unsavory deals, to Beijing's labyrinthine hutongs, where working-class Chinese have eked out their livings for centuries.Revealing a China that most Westerners have never seen -- a strange nation at once admirable and frightening -- Flower Net is an utterly original story and one of the most timely, thrilling, and thought-provoking reads from an astonishing new writer."Flower Net is a treat. In this, her debut mystery, Lisa See begins to do for contemporary Beijing what, say, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle did for turn-of-the-century London or Dashiell Hammett did for 1920s San Francisco". -- Washington Post
Say You're Sorry
Melinda Leigh - 2017
Now, surrounded by family, she’s finally found peace and a promising career opportunity—until her babysitter is killed and her neighbor asks her to defend his son, Nick, who stands accused of the murder.Tessa was the ultimate girl next door, and the community is outraged by her death. But Morgan has known Nick for years and can’t believe he’s guilty, despite the damning evidence stacked against him. She asks her friend Lance Kruger, an ex-cop turned private eye, for help. Taking on the town, the police, and a zealous DA, Morgan and Lance plunge into the investigation, determined to find the real killer. But as they uncover secrets that rock the community, they become targets for the madman hiding in plain sight.In a new series from Wall Street Journal bestselling author Melinda Leigh, former prosecutor Morgan Dane faces the most personal—and deadly—case of her lifetime.
Thin Air
Lisa Gray - 2019
But after receiving a photo of a three-year-old kidnapped from Los Angeles twenty-five years ago, Jessica is stunned to recognize the little girl as herself.Eager for answers, Jessica heads to LA's dark underbelly. When she learns that her biological mother was killed the night she was abducted, Jessica's determined to solve a case the police have forgotten. Meanwhile, veteran LAPD detective Jason Pryce is in the midst of a gruesome investigation into a murdered college student moonlighting as a prostitute. A chance encounter leads to them crossing paths, but Jessica soon realizes that Pryce is hiding something about her father's checkered history and her mother's death.To solve her mother's murder and her own disappearance, Jessica must dig into the past and find the secrets buried there. But the air gets thinner as she crawls closer to the truth, and it's getting harder and harder to breathe.
Immoral
Brian Freeman - 2005
For the second time in a year, a beautiful teenage girl has disappeared off the streets of Duluth, Minnesota—gone without a trace, like a bitter gust off Lake Superior. The two victims couldn’t be more different. First it was Kerry McGrath, bubbly, sweet sixteen. And now Rachel Deese, strange, sexually charged, a wild child. The media hounds Stride to catch a serial killer, and as the search carries him from the icy stillness of the northern woods to the erotic heat of Las Vegas, he must decide which facts are real and which are illusions. And Stride finds his own life changed forever by the secrets he uncovers. Secrets that stretch across time in a web of lies, death, and illicit desire. Secrets that are chillingly…immoral.
Stasi Child
David Young - 2015
But she soon realizes that this is a death like no other before it - the girl was evidently trying to escape from West Berlin.As a member of the People's Police, Muller's power in East Germany only stretches so far. The Ministry for State Security, the Stasi, assures her the case is closed, all they need to know is the girl's name. Yet they strongly discourage her from asking questions. The evidence doesn't add up, and it soon becomes clear the crime scene has been staged. But this regime does not tolerate curious minds, and it takes Müller too long to realize that the trail she's been following may lead her dangerously close to home ...
Bone by Bone
Carol O'Connell - 2008
No one knows what happened to the younger brother, Josh, until twenty years later, when the older brother, Oren, now an ex-investigator for the Army CID, returns to Coventry for the first time in many years. His first morning back, he hears a thump on the front porch. Lying in front of the door is a human jawbone, the teeth still intact. And it is not the first such object, his father tells him. Other remains have been left there as well. Josh is coming home . . . bone by bone. Using all his investigative skills, Oren sets out to solve the mystery of his brother's murder, but Coventry is a town full of secrets and secret-keepers: the housekeeper with the fugitive past, the deputy with the old grudge, the reclusive ex-cop from L.A., the woman with the title of town monster, and, not least of all, Oren himself. But the greatest secret of all belonged to his brother, and it is only by unraveling it that Oren can begin to discover the truth that has haunted them all for twenty years.
The Cold Cold Ground
Adrian McKinty - 2012
Hunger strikes, riots, power cuts, a homophobic serial killer with a penchant for opera, and a young woman's suicide that may yet turn out to be murder: on the surface, the events are unconnected, but then things--and people--aren't always what they seem. Detective Sergeant Duffy is the man tasked with trying to get to the bottom of it all. It's no easy job--especially when it turns out that one of the victims was involved in the IRA but was last seen discussing business with someone from the loyalist Ulster Volunteer Force. Add to this the fact that, as a Catholic policeman, it doesn't matter which side he's on, because nobody trusts him, and Sergeant Duffy really is in a no-win situation. Fast-paced, evocative, and brutal, The Cold Cold Ground is a brilliant depiction of Belfast at the height of the Troubles--and of a cop treading a thin, thin line.Audio CD is 10 hours and 3 minutes long.
The Girl in the Ice
Robert Bryndza - 2016
Her lips parted as if to speak. Her dead body frozen in the ice…She is not the only one.When a young boy discovers the body of a woman beneath a thick sheet of ice in a South London park, Detective Erika Foster is called in to lead the murder investigation.The victim, a beautiful young socialite, appeared to have the perfect life. Yet when Erika begins to dig deeper, she starts to connect the dots between the murder and the killings of three prostitutes, all found strangled, hands bound and dumped in water around London.What dark secrets is the girl in the ice hiding?As Erika inches closer to uncovering the truth, the killer is closing in on Erika.The last investigation Erika led went badly wrong… resulting in the death of her husband. With her career hanging by a thread, Erika must now battle her own personal demons as well as a killer more deadly than any she’s faced before. But will she get to him before he strikes again?A #1 international bestseller, The Girl in the Ice is a page-turning thriller packed with suspense. If you like Angela Marsons, Rachel Abbott and Karin Slaughter, discover Rob Bryndza’s series today.
Jack of Spies
David Downing - 2013
Jack McColl, a Scottish car salesman with an uncanny ear for languages, has always hoped to make a job for himself as a spy. As his sales calls take him from city to great city—Hong Kong to Shanghai to San Francisco to New York—he moonlights collecting intelligence for His Majesty's Secret Service, but British espionage is in its infancy and Jack has nothing but a shoestring budget and the very tenuous protection of a boss in far-away London. He knows, though, that a geopolitical catastrophe is brewing, and now is both the moment to prove himself and the moment his country needs him most. Unfortunately, this is also the moment he begins to realize what his aspiration might cost him. He understands his life is at stake when activities in China suddenly escalate from innocent data-gathering and casual strolls along German military concessions to arrest warrants and knife attacks. Meanwhile, a sharp, vivacious American suffragette journalist has wiled her way deep into his affections, and it is not long before he realizes that her Irish-American family might be embroiled in the Irish Republican movement Jack's bosses are fighting against. How can he choose between his country and the woman he loves? And would he even be able to make such a choice without losing both?
The Watcher
Jo Robertson - 2011
Working with a single-minded tenacity, she sets out to prove it.Deputy Sheriff Ben Slater hides his personal pain behind the job, but Kate's arrival in his county knocks his world on its axis. He wants to believe her wild theory, but the idea of a serial killer with the kind of pathology she proposes is too bizarre.Together they work to find a killer whose roots began in a small town in Bigler County, but whose violence spread across the nation. A Janus-like killer, more monster than man, he fixates on Kate. The killer wants nothing more than to kill the "purple-eyed girl again."
The Dead Key
D.M. Pulley - 2015
In the confusion that followed, the keys to the vault’s safe-deposit boxes were lost.In the years since, Cleveland’s wealthy businessmen kept the truth buried in the abandoned high-rise. The ransacked offices and forgotten safe-deposit boxes remain locked in time, until young engineer Iris Latch stumbles upon them during a renovation survey. What begins as a welcome break from her cubicle becomes an obsession as Iris unravels the bank’s sordid past. With each haunting revelation, Iris follows the looming shadow of the past deeper into the vault—and soon realizes that the key to the mystery comes at an astonishing price.