Book picks similar to
Murder Games: The New York Murders (50 States of Murder) by Jon Mills


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Kill Chase


M.K. Farrar - 2021
    A ten year old murder is back to haunt him...When fishermen haul a bag containing a dismembered leg from the river Avon, a search ensues to find the rest of the body.Detective Inspector Ryan Chase of the Bristol Major Crimes Investigation Team is in charge of both identifying the body and finding the killer.Dealing with grief from the death of his daughter, his broken-down marriage, and a worrying habit he can’t seem to break, DI Chase has his hands full.The mystery deepens when another piece of a body is found and it doesn’t match the first.Who is dumping body parts into the river? Why are clues leading DI Chase back to a ten-year-old unsolved case?Has a murderer reignited their taste for death?

The Devil to Pay


Harold Robbins - 2007
    The only way for her to get it: A coffee plantation she has inherited. But there's a catch: She has to run the plantation, deep in the jungles of Colombia, a land of drug lords and warlords. The mysterious inheritance of the plantation, from the father she had never met, comes at the same time a criminal conspiracy is turning her life into a living hell--a conspiracy that stretches all the way to Colombia.  Racing to South America, on the run from the police, she becomes entangled with suspicious characters: Ramon, rich and handsome, with a secret sex life that shocks even Nash though she considers herself an adventurous woman; Josh, an American expatriate, who claims to be a simple gem smuggler and arouses passions in Nash she thought were long dead; and Lily Soong, an erotic Chinese beauty who men--and women--lust after, often to their doom. But no one brings as much danger to her life as Pablo Escobar, king of the Medellín drug cartels, considered the most dangerous man in Colombia, the murder capital of the world.  Things get even more complicated when Nash's quest to clear herself takes her to Shanghai, home of the powerful Chinese Triads that control the flow of dirty money from gambling, prostitution, drugs and murder. Refusing to let the cartel's murderers drive her off the plantation and ruin the lives of hundreds of families who work it, Nash tackles organized crime and police agencies on two continents to save her plantation . . . and stay alive.

The Complete Detective Stephen Greco Box Set (4 crime thrillers)


Helen H. Durrant - 2020
    . . why have her eyes have been viciously poked out? Detective Stephen Greco has just started a new job at Oldston CID and now he faces a series of murders with seemingly no connection but the brutal disfigurement of the victims. Greco’s team is falling apart under the pressure and he doesn’t know who he can trust. Then they discover a link to a local drug dealer, but maybe it’s not all that it seems.BOOK 2: DARK HOUSESA young woman is found brutally murdered in an empty house Detective Stephen Greco and his team must piece together her life as quickly as possible. Within twenty-four hours there is another killing using the same method. The detectives realise that the victims are random but the locations are not. The killer is more concerned with finding the right house – an old empty place where he won’t be disturbed. When someone walks into the station and confesses, it looks like it’s all over, but Greco’s not convinced and soon he’ll be fighting to save the woman who’s most important to himBOOK 3: DARK TRADEA teenage boy is found murdered. He has been stabbed through the heart by a professional killer. Detective Stephen Greco and his new team discover that the boy is an illegal immigrant. A killer nicknamed “the Knifeman” then strikes again. The murder leads DCI Greco on a dark trail of people smuggling and exploitation.BOOK 4: DARK ANGELTwo young men break into an expensive house. They take money and jewellery — and a large amount of heroin. Within twenty-four hours they are found brutally murdered. The killings have all the hallmarks of a local drug baron. The two victims were also “angels” helping in a community project which seems to have been lowering the local crime rate. But not everything is as it seems. And just when it seems like Greco seems to have cracked the case, new information comes to light which threatens to change everything.THE DETECTIVESDCI Stephen Greco is a meticulous policeman with a touch of O.C.D. Easy to admire, but difficult to like. He has created a new team after a personal tragedy threatened to end his career, and is struggling to care for his daughter.DS Grace Harper is an ambitious young policewoman with excellent people skills. Like Greco, she is a single parent and struggles to balance work and childcare.THE SETTINGThe Northern city of Manchester is a place of great diversity, from high-end restaurants and clubs for the moneyed classes to grim housing estates riven by crime and drugs.

Merry Bloody Christmas


Ellie Scott - 2018
    A chocoholic grizzly bear, a talking Christmas tree, mince pie overdoses and a very bloody murder. Will poor old Saint Nick make it out alive? Sad, strange, funny and gruesome, this overlapping, multi-genre collection of tales has a little something for every reader. Curl up with a mulled wine and some fictional festive misery, and discover what Father Christmas really likes to drink when he wriggles down your chimney. Spoiler: it isn’t milk.

Lying in Judgment


Gary Corbin - 2016
    Following her suspected boyfriend one night, he erupts into a rage, beats him and leaves him to die – or so he thought. Soon he discovers that he has killed the wrong man – a perfect stranger.Six months later, impaneled on a jury, he realizes he realizes that the murder being tried is the one he committed. After wrestling with his conscience, he works hard to convince the jury to acquit the accused man. But the prosecution’s case is strong as the accused man had both motive and opportunity to commit the murder. As the pressure builds, Peter begins to slip up and reveal things that only the murderer would know – and Christine, a pretty and intelligent alternate juror, suspects something is amiss.Meanwhile, Peter’s wife leaves him, his mother suffers a series of debilitating strokes, and his best friend and employee, accused of sexual harassment, needs Peter’s help that he’s too preoccupied to give. As jurors one by one declare their intention to convict, Peter’s conscience eats away at him and he careens toward nervous breakdown, revealing details about the crime that had not been disclosed in court.“Lying in Judgment” is a 95,000-word story about a good man’s search for redemption for his one unfortunate mistake, pitted against society’s search for justice.

Death Served Cold


Sourabh Mukherjee - 2021
    A teenager poisons her family for the love of her tutor. A woman driven by greed ruthlessly bludgeons eight members of her family.A beautician gangs up with her lover to rob a house, killing innocent women from three generations of a family. A practising lawyer strangles her lawyer husband with the cord of a mobile charger. A friendly and jovial teacher commits at least six murders over fourteen years in a sleepy town down south.DEATH SERVED COLD is a painstakingly researched collection of true, blood-curdling accounts of gruesome murders committed by India’s most dangerous women over the last three decades.These stories explore the dark recesses of the female psyche and challenge popular stereotypes by revealing shocking excesses of sadism and aggression rarely associated with women.

Prescription: Murder! Volume 3: Authentic Cases From the Files of Alan Hynd


Alan Hynd - 2014
     From the files and pen of world renowned true crime writer Alan Hynd (1903 - 1974) comes the final installment of deliciously dark true murder cases of the first half of the 20th Century. These stories, the third of these three short collections, are unified by a single theme: they all involve physicians. And not for the autopsy, but as perpetrators or accused perpetrators. You may never see your family care giver again in the same light. Told in the characteristic wry, anecdotal reportorial style that made Alan Hynd famous in his day (two wartime best sellers in 1943, contributions to The Reader's Digest, Colliers, Coronet, The Saturday Evening Post, True, Liberty, The American Mercury and almost every true detective magazine in print) these tales will have you cringing one minute, laughing the next, and gasping in shock a moment later. Truly, no one could make up classics like these. We meet here the notorious Dr. Cream, a twitchy-eyed psychotic with a yen for prostitutes, a Philadelphia chiropractor whose girlfriend lost her head, and Marcel Petiot, whose patients payed their own way out of this world. Then as a bonus, get to know (from a safe distance) "Lethal Louise," the black widow of California, and Adolf Luetgert of Chicago, whose sausage-making plant was put to extracurricular uses. This is not for the faint of heart. True crime is always farther out there than fiction.

If You Tell: A True Story of Murder, Family Secrets, and the Unbreakable Bond of Sisterhood


Gregg Olsen - 2019
    Until now.For years, behind the closed doors of their farmhouse in Raymond, Washington, their sadistic mother, Shelly, subjected her girls to unimaginable abuse, degradation, torture, and psychic terrors. Through it all, Nikki, Sami, and Tori developed a defiant bond that made them far less vulnerable than Shelly imagined. Even as others were drawn into their mother’s dark and perverse web, the sisters found the strength and courage to escape an escalating nightmare that culminated in multiple murders.

Mister Candid


Jules Hardy - 2005
    But everything I've learned about him makes me believe he's fundamentally a good person. Sounds crazy doesn't it? How can he be a good person?' For seventeen years the FBI have been hunting down a killer, a killer with a difference. His victims are the sickos the law couldn't touch. But are his actions those of a maniac or a saviour? And what happened to turn him into Mr Candid? Brought into a life of privilege and wealth on America's East Coast, Charlie Kane was a child prodigy. Reading the New York Times at the age of three, a mathematical genius at thirteen, this gentle, handsome boy went to Harvard University where he found the love of his life and a place in the world. Until one Thanksgiving, seventeen years ago, when Charlie and the entire Kane family all but vanished.

Mumbaistan


Piyush Jha - 2012
    A prostitute, her lover and a policeman play for high stakes in BombDay. Injectionwala exposes chilling medical malpractices and a lovelorn vigilantes twisted game plan. In Coma Man, a man awakens from coma after twenty years, and sets out in search of his wife and himself. Gritty love stories, manipulative cops and hard-boiled slumlords form the backdrop of this unputdownable thriller. Its MUMBAISTAN all the way. Mumbai, a city of dreams for many. But for others, a nightmare. Behind the façade of lustre and glamour churns a seething underbelly of squalor, corruption and crime. Mumbaistan’s three explosive crime novellas unravel the subterranean secrets of maximum city—from the teeming maw of Dharavi and the wanton streets of Kamathipura to the swank high-rises of Bandra. A prostitute, her lover and a policeman play for high stakes in Bomb-Day. Injectionwala exposes chilling medical malpractices and a lovelorn vigilante’s twisted game plan. In Coma Man, a man awakens from coma after twenty years, and sets out in search of his wife— and himself. Macabre love stories, conniving cops and hard-boiled slumlords form the backdrop of a schizophrenic city that is brooding...dying. Welcome to Mumbaistan; a gritty, compelling take on the megalopolis that lives on the edge.

Shock


Marc Timms - 2020
    The mysterious death is reminiscent of the work of a serial killer who terrorized Katie’s hometown five years ago. The police arrested Katie’s brother for the murders, but the trial and her brother’s behavior left her with plenty of questions.After a second killing nearby, Katie is afraid that the Shock Killer, the man who had forced her into hiding, was back to involve her in a second round of murders. Even more frightening is the fact that Katie might have to come face-to-face with her brother and learn the truth of the murders.

The Counterfeit Candidate


Brian Klein - 2021
    Their bodies are burned and buried in the Reich Chancellery garden, above the Führer's bunker.Buenos Aires, 9th January, 2012Three audacious thieves carry out the biggest safe depository heist in Argentine history, escaping with more than one hundred million dollars' worth of valuables. Within hours, an encrypted phone call to America triggers a blood-soaked manhunt as the thieves are tracked down, systematically tortured, then murdered.San Francisco, 18th January, 2012Senator John Franklin, hailed as the 'Great Unifier', secures the Republican Presidential nomination and seems destined for the Oval Office. Despite the sixty-seven year interval and a span of thirteen thousand miles, these events are indelibly linked.Chief Inspector Nicolas Vargas of the Buenos Aires Police Department and Lieutenant Troy Hembury of the LAPD are sucked into a dark political conspiracy concealing an incredible historical truth stretching from the infamous Berlin bunker to Buenos Aires and to Washington, which threatens the very heart and soul of American democracy.

The Girl Who Stole the Apple


Peter Tickler - 2016
     A little girl dressed in a Snow White costume walks into a store and steals an apple . . . then the store blows up. One of the staff, Maggie Rogers, is conveniently out of the store when all this happens. Maggie turns out to have a past full of secrets and betrayal, and attracts the attention of the police as well as more sinister forces. Maggie and the little girl end up on the run, not knowing who’s on their side or even what their pursuers really want. Then they seem to have reached the end of the line. Nowhere else to run, nowhere else to hide. Maggie and the little girl face a desperate struggle for survival. Find out the answers in this beautifully written novel which will take you on a darkly gripping journey to a surprising end. Great for fans of Gillian Flynn, Ian McEwan or Paula Hawkins who love fast-paced suspense thrillers Also by Peter Tickler: DEAD IN THE WATER.

Twofer Murder


Lauren Carr - 2017
    The guys go away for a fishing weekend only to get caught up in the murder of a journalist investigating fraud at a timber company. Meanwhile, the ladies are spending the weekend in the presidential suite at a posh resort where Jessica Faraday is to accept a lifetime achievement award for her late grandmother at a murder mystery writers conference. But before they have time to get their facials, they get wrapped up in their own real mystery when an up and coming author ends up dead! Lauren Carr’s Twofer Murder is a 2-for-1—making it a must-read for any mystery fan!

Itsy Bitsy Spider


Willow Rose - 2013
    She decides to move there with her family, much to her teenage-daughter's regret. One morning a wealthy old woman in her street is found murdered and soon Emma finds herself wrapped in a mystery uncovering the island's dark secrets that not only runs deep within the history of the island but also within her own family. From the author of the International Bestselling books, the Rebekka Franck-series comes a new Scandinavian Mystery destined to keep you up all night. This is the first book in the Emma Frost-series and is followed by Miss Polly had a dolly.