Dead Wood


Dani Amore - 2011
    A disgraced ex-cop turned private investigator is hired by the dead woman’s father and immediately becomes the target of a violent ex-convict. An enigmatic music star performs damage control on her links to the dead woman. And a professional killer who idolizes Keith Richards is brought into town by a mysterious employer. Dead Wood is what great mysteries are all about: love, hate, faith and vengeance, all wrapped up in an explosive story that simply refuses to let up.

Croaker: Kill Me Again


Paul Bishop - 1994
    Now, because of a streak of unsolved murders, she feels extra pressure to solve the murder of a mysterious woman who had multiple IDs in different names, a million dollars in cash, and only new clothing and furniture in her equally new condo at the time of her death. Fingerprints inexplicably reveal the woman had already been murdered – 18 years earlier in San Francisco. Despite this twist, the case appears to be open and shut – the woman's ex-husband, convicted of killing her the first time, was released on parole weeks before her second murder. However, the victim has many more surprises for everyone involved – especially for Fey, who finds herself becoming one of the suspects when her investigation takes a turn for the deadly.

The Liar's Girl


Catherine Ryan Howard - 2018
    John's College-and Ireland's most prolific serial killer. Having stalked his four young victims, he drowned them in the muddy waters of the Grand Canal. Sentenced to life imprisonment when he was just nineteen, Will is locked away in the city's Central Psychiatric Hospital. Freshman Alison Smith moved to the Big Smoke to enrol in St. John's and soon fell hard for Will Hurley. Her world bloomed ... and then imploded when Liz, her best friend, became the latest victim of the Canal Killer-and the Canal Killer turned out to be the boy who'd been sleeping in her bed. Alison fled to the Netherlands and, in ten years, has never once looked back. When a young woman's body is found in the Grand Canal, Garda detectives visit Will to see if he can assist them in solving what looks like a copycat killing. Instead, Will tells them he has something new to confess-but there's only one person he's prepared to confess it to. The last thing Alison wants is to be pulled back into the past she's worked so hard to leave behind. Reluctantly, she returns to the city she hasn't set foot in for more than a decade to face the man who murdered the woman she was supposed to become. Only to discover that, until now, Will has left out the worst part of all ...

The Other Daughter


Lisa Gardner - 1999
    Gifted with a loving family, Melanie has always considered herself lucky. Until tonight.Tonight, a has-been reporter turns up investigating her past. Tonight the first note arrives, saying, "You Get What You Deserve." And tonight, Melanie has her first, horrifying vision of the past.Melanie has no memory of her life before the adoption. Now someone wants to give it back, even if it includes the darkest nightmare the Stokes family ever faced: the murder of their first daughter in Texas. As Melanie desperately searches for her real identity, two seemingly unrelated events from the past will come together in a dangerous explosion of truth.

Grave Situation


Alex MacLean - 2011
    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 more disturbing than anything he's ever seen.

Back to Lazarus


Judy K. Walker - 2014
    He beat and choked her to death. I'm told that he was found hanging from a homemade noose in his cell. I want to know why he waited so long to do it." Sydney Brennan isn't sure how to answer her client's question, short of holding a séance, and the Tallahassee detective has some questions of her own. Why does Noel Thomas remember so little about her childhood? Why is she delving into her father's suicide now? And, most importantly, why isn't Noel telling her the truth?Sydney crisscrosses the Florida Panhandle, reconstructing the tragic Thomas family history. The violence that destroyed the Thomas family connects to a present-day web of deceit and corruption through a desperate man willing to do anything to keep his secrets safe. To discover his identity, Sydney must go Back to Lazarus, back to the town where Noel's beautiful but troubled mother began her inevitable descent over twenty years ago. But by following in the footsteps of the murdered woman, does Sydney risk sharing her fate?Rooted in bars and back roads and Panhandle prisons, forgotten towns and forgotten people, at its heart Back to Lazarus is about stories: the stories people tell us, the stories we tell ourselves, and what happens when we realize it's all a lie.

The Cipher


Isabella Maldonado - 2020
    Until now…FBI Special Agent Nina Guerrera escaped a serial killer’s trap at sixteen. Years later, when she’s jumped in a Virginia park, a video of the attack goes viral. Legions of new fans are not the only ones impressed with her fighting skills. The man who abducted her eleven years ago is watching. Determined to reclaim his lost prize, he commits a grisly murder designed to pull her into the investigation…but his games are just beginning. And he’s using the internet to invite the public to play along.His coded riddles may have made him a depraved social media superstar—an enigmatic cyber-ghost dubbed “the Cipher”—but to Nina he’s a monster who preys on the vulnerable. Partnered with the FBI’s preeminent mind hunter, Dr. Jeffrey Wade, who is haunted by his own past, Nina tracks the predator across the country. Clue by clue, victim by victim, Nina races to stop a deadly killer while the world watches.

All The Pretty Girls


J.T. Ellison - 2007
    John Baldwin, find themselves in a joint investigation pursuing a vicious murderer. The Southern Strangler is slaughtering his way through the Southeast, leaving a gruesome memento at each crime scene -- the prior victim's severed hand.Ambitious TV reporter Whitney Connolly is certain the Southern Strangler is her ticket out of Nashville; she's got a scoop that could break the case. She has no idea how close this story really is -- or what it will cost her.As the killer spirals out of control, everyone involved must face a horrible truth -- that the purest evil is born of private lies.

Deeper Than the Dead


Tami Hoag - 2009
    Four children, running in the woods behind their school, stumble upon a partially buried female body, eyes and mouth glued shut. Close behind the children is their teacher, Anne Navarre, shocked by this discovery and heartbroken as she witnesses the end of their innocence. What she doesn’t yet realize is that this will mark the end of innocence for an entire community, as the ties that bind families and friends are tested by secrets uncovered in the wake of a serial killer’s escalating activity. Detective Tony Mendez, fresh from a law enforcement course at FBI headquarters, is charged with interpreting those now revealed secrets. He’s using a new technique—profiling—to develop a theory of the case, a strategy that pushes him ever deeper into the lives of the three children, and closer to the young teacher whose interest in recent events becomes as intense as his own. As new victims are found and the media scrutiny of the investigation bears down on them, both Mendez and Navarre are unsure if those who suffer most are the victims themselves—or the family and friends of the killer, blissfully unaware that someone very close to them is a brutal, calculating psychopath.

Tennison


Lynda La Plante - 2015
    After leaving the Metropolitan Police Training Academy, 22 year-old Jane Tennison is placed on a probationary exercise in Hackney, London where criminality thrives. At first she struggles to deal with the shocking situations she faces, receiving no help or sympathy from her superiors. Jane feels out of her depth in this male-dominated, chauvinistic environment. Then she is given her first murder case . . .

An Ace and A Pair


Blake Banner - 2017
    But he’s a dinosaur who belongs to another age. Detective Carmen Dehan has such a bad attitude that nobody at the precinct can stomach her. Captain Jennifer Cuevas wants them both out of the way and thinks they make a perfect pair. So she gives them the Cold Cases file – the cases nobody gives a damn about.She has no idea just how hot a cold case can get.Ten years back Nelson Hernandez and his four cousins were playing poker in a dive at Hunts Point. Somebody came in, blew them away and beheaded and castrated Nelson, leaving his head and his balls on the table. There was no shortage of suspects, the Jersey Mob, the Triads from Manhattan, or the 43rds own bent cop, Mick Harragan. But nobody was ever charged, and the night of the murder Mick Harragan went missing with Nelson’s wife, Maria.Now Stone and Dehan plan to find him – whatever the consequences…

Walk Into Silence


Susan McBride - 2016
    Did she simply run off, or is something darker at play?When Patrick Dielman shows up at Detective Jo Larsen’s desk insisting that his wife, Jenny, is missing, Jo wonders if it’s a case of a bored housewife running away.But as she digs deeper into Jenny’s life, Jo learns that Dielman keeps a stranglehold on the family finances, down to the last nickel, and that Jenny’s first marriage dissolved following the death of her young son. By all accounts—including her doctor’s—she never recovered from the loss. Between a controlling husband, a tragic past, and a callous ex-husband, Jo can’t be sure if she should suspect foul play or accept that the woman may have wanted to disappear.For Jo, whose own demons are shadowing her every step, finding Jenny becomes more than the typical protect-and-serve.

The Good Lawyer


Thomas Benigno - 2012
    Working as a Bronx Legal Aid Attorney he learns how to twist the system, how to become an unbeatable defense lawyer, and he his peacock proud of his perfect record-not a single conviction. But it's 1982. The Spiderman rapist is on the loose and New York City is a city in fear. When an outraged rape victim commits suicide right before his eyes, searching for absolution, he grabs the headline case of a teacher’s aide accused of molesting three students. Armed with a firm belief in his client’s innocence, he knocks the pegs out from under the prosecution’s case. When one of the children turns up dead, he discovers that his client may be strangely connected to the Spiderman. Digging deeper, horrifying revelations about his family's past collide with the true identity of the sadistic sociopath behind the Spiderman's rampage. In the process, this good lawyer comes face-to-face with his greatest conflict and deepest fear: to win, really win-save the city and even the woman he loves-must he sacrifice every principle he believes in and embrace his family's mafia past to become judge, jury, and executioner?

Folly


Laurie R. King - 2001
    She has moved to an island at the far reaches of the continent to restore the house of an equally haunted figure, her mysterious great-uncle; but as her life begins to rebuild itself along with the house, his story starts to wrap around hers. Powerful forces are stirring, but Rae cannot see where her reality leaves off and his fate begins.Fifty-two years old, Rae must battle the feelings that have long tormented her--panic, melancholy, and a skin-crawling sense of watchers behind the trees. Before she came here, she believed that most of the things she feared existed only in her mind. And who can say, as disturbing incidents multiply, if any of the watchers on Folly Island might be real? Is Rae paranoid, as her family and the police believe, or is the threat real? Is the island alive with promise--or with dangers?With Folly, award-winning author Laurie R. King once again powerfully redefines psychological suspense on a sophisticated and harrowing new level, and proves why legions of readers and reviewers have named her a master of the genre.

Let Me In


Adam Nicholls - 2019
    He never knew what it would cost. Morgan Young only took the small cases - the ones he knew he could solve - but when Detective Gary Lee arrives on his doorstep asking for help, he's given no choice. Two women are dead, and they have to find the killer before he strikes again.Before he knows it, Morgan is in the middle of a revenge story that darkens with every twist. While victims are dropping like flies and his abilities are being questioned, he has one chance to find the serial killer, and that opportunity is passing him by. Fast.LET ME IN is a tense, nail-biting serial killer story with an enthralling prose. Short, exciting chapters and twists at every turn make this novel a great read for any fan of James Patterson, Tess Gerritsen or Harlan Coben.