Book picks similar to
Ratking by Michael Dibdin
mystery
fiction
crime
italy
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.
A Deeper Darkness
J.T. Ellison - 2012
She has been pulled into a suffocating grief no amount of workaholic ardor can penetrate;until she receives a peculiar call from Washington, D.C.On the other end of the line is an old boyfriend's mother, asking Sam to do a second autopsy on her son. Eddie Donovan is officially the victim of a vicious carjacking, but under Sam's sharp eye the forensics tell a darker story. The ex-Ranger was murdered, though not for his car.Forced to confront the burning memories and feelings about yet another loved one killed brutally, Sam loses herself in the mystery contained within Donovan's old notes. It leads her to the untouchable Xander, a soldier off-grid since his return from Afghanistan, and then to a series of brutal crimes stretching from that harsh mountainous war zone to this nation's capital. The tale told between the lines makes it clear that nobody's hands are clean, and that making sense of murder sometimes means putting yourself in the crosshairs of death.
Abducted
T.R. Ragan - 2011
Kidnapped just blocks from home after a romantic evening with her boyfriend, Jared, she woke up to find herself at the mercy of a depraved serial killer. Imprisoned and tormented for months by the maniac she came to know as Spiderman, Lizzy narrowly escaped, the only one of his victims to survive. But Spiderman escaped too, outwitting police and cursing Lizzy to spend her life looking over her shoulder…Fourteen years later, Lizzy is a private investigator who teaches self-defense to teenage girls in her free time. She does what she can to help others protect themselves and to forget the horror of her ordeal, yet fears she will always be known as “the one who got away.” Then she receives a phone call from Jared, now a special agent for the FBI, with grim news. The killer has resurfaced, this time with a very specific target—Lizzy. And he’s made it clear that she will not escape him again. So begins a chilling game of cat-and-mouse, a terrifying, heart-pounding hunt that only one will survive.
A Clubbable Woman
Reginald Hill - 1970
After passing out on his bed for five hours, he comes downstairs to discover communication has been cut off forever - by a hole in the middle of her forehead. Down at the club, passions run high, on and off the field. This is a home game for Detective Superintendent Andrew Dalziel who knows all the players, male and female. But Sergent Peter Pascoe whose loyalties lie with another code has a few ideas of his own. This is the first appearance together on any field for Dalziel and Pascoe, and already we can feel that electricity of opposite but complementary skills which will take them into the topmost division
1st to Die
James Patterson - 2001
So these women form a Women's Murder Club to collaborate outside the box and pursue the case by sidestepping their bosses and giving each other a hand. The four women develop intense bonds as they pursue a killer whose crimes have stunned an entire city. Working together, they track down the most terrifying and unexpected killer they have ever encountered--before a shocking conclusion in which everything they knew turns out to be devastatingly wrong.Full of the breathtaking drama and unforgettable emotions for which James Patterson is famous, 1st to Die is the start of the #1 New York Times bestselling series of crime thrillers.
Cover Her Face
P.D. James - 1962
Coolly brilliant policeman Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard must find her killer among a houseful of suspects, most of whom had very good reason to wish her ill. Cover Her Face is P. D. James's electric debut novel, an ingeniously plotted mystery that immediately placed her among the masters of suspense.
When the Bough Breaks
Jonathan Kellerman - 1985
It's a good one!We meet Dr. Morton Handler who practiced a strange brand of psychiatry. Among his specialties were fraud, extortion, and sexual manipulation. Handler paid for his sins when he was brutally murdered in his luxurious Pacific Palisades apartment. The police have no leads, but they do have one possible witness: seven-year-old Melody Quinn.Psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware's job is to unlock the terrible secret buried in Melody's memory. As the sinister shadows in the girl's mind begin to take shape, Alex discovers that the mystery touches a shocking incident in his own past. This connection is only the beginning, a single link in a forty-year-old conspiracy. And behind it lies an unspeakable evil that Alex Delaware must expose before it claims another innocent victim: Melody Quinn.
The Rosary Girls
Richard Montanari - 2005
Now Montanari has written an astounding novel that pits two besieged detectives against a fiercely intelligent serial killer.Sprawling beneath the statue of William Penn, Philadelphia is a city of downtrodden crack houses and upscale brownstones. Somewhere in this concrete crazy quilt, one teenage Catholic girl is writing in her diary, another is pouring her heart out to a friend, and yet another is praying. And somewhere in this city is a man who wants these young women to make his macabre fantasy become reality. In a passion play of his own, he will take the girls–and a whole city–over the edge.Kevin Byrne is a veteran cop who already knows that edge: He’s been living on it far too long. His marriage failing, his former partner wasting away in a hospital, and his heart lost to mad fury, Byrne loves to take risks and is breaking every rule in the book. And now he has been given a rookie partner. Jessica Balzano, the daughter of a famous Philly cop, doesn’t want Byrne’s help. But they will need each other desperately, since they’ve just caught the case of a lifetime: Someone is killing devout young women, bolting their hands together in prayer, and committing an abomination upon their otherwise perfect bodies.Byrne and Balzano spearhead the hunt for the serial killer, who leads them on a methodically planned journey. Suspects appear before them like bad dreams–and vanish just as quickly. And while Byrne’s sins begin to catch up with him, and Balzano tries to solve the blood-splattered puzzle, the body count rises. Meanwhile, the calendar is approaching Easter and the day of the resurrection. When the last rosary is counted, a madman’s methods will be revealed, and the final crime will be the one that hurts the most.Relentlessly paced and vividly told, The Rosary Girls is a smart, emotionally complex, fiercely gripping thriller from an author who takes chances, breaks new ground, and leaves readers haunted and moved long after the last page is turned.
Devil's Peak
Deon Meyer - 2004
A young woman makes a terrible confession to a priest. An honorable man takes his own revenge for an unspeakable tragedy. An aging inspector tries to get himself sober while taking on the most difficult case of his career. From this beginning, Deon Meyer weaves a story of astonishing complexity and suspense, as Inspector Benny Griessel faces off against a dangerous vigilante who has everything on his side, including public sympathy. A gruesome abuse case has hit the newsstands, and one man has taken it upon himself to stand up for the children of Cape Town. When the accused is found stabbed through the heart by spear, it's only the beginning of a string of bloody murders - and of a dangerous dilemma for detective Griessel. The detective is always just one step behind as someone slays the city's killers. But the paths of Griessel and the avenger collide when a young prostitute lures them both into a dangerous plan - and the two find themselves with a heart-stopping problem that no system of justice could ever make right.
Bad Things Happen
Harry Dolan - 2009
He’s hoping to escape a violent past he would rather forget. But his solitude is broken when he finds himself drawn into a friendship with Tom Kristoll, publisher of the mystery magazine Gray Streets—and into an affair with Laura, Tom’s sleek blond wife. When Tom offers him a job as an editor, Loogan sees no harm in accepting. What he doesn’t realize is that the stories in Gray Streets tend to follow a simple formula: Plans go wrong. Bad things happen. People die.Elizabeth Waishkey is a single mother raising a fifteen-year-old daughter. She’s also the most talented detective in the Ann Arbor Police Department. But when Tom Kristoll turns up dead, she doesn’t quite know what to make of David Loogan. Is he a killer, or an ally who might help her find the truth? Loogan, for his part, would like to trust her, but he has his own agenda. He suspects his friend’s death is part of a much larger puzzle, and he’s not going to wait for someone else to put the pieces together. As Loogan and Elizabeth navigate their way through the Kristoll's world, they find no shortage of people with motives for murder, from a young graduate student obsessed with Laura Kristoll to a trio of bestselling writers, all of them with secrets they don’t want uncovered.As the deaths start mounting up—some of them echoing stories published in Gray Streets—Loogan begins to look more and more like the most promising suspect.Soon it becomes clear that only Elizabeth can find the path to solving both the murders and the mystery of Loogan himself. But by the time she unravels the twisted skein, Loogan May be indicted for murder—or more likely, become the next victim.
Blue Monday
Nicci French - 2011
A day of dark impulses. A day to snatch a child from the streets ...The abduction of five-year-old Matthew Farraday provokes a national outcry and a desperate police hunt. And when a picture of his face is splashed over the newspapers, psychotherapist Frieda Klein is left troubled: one of her patients has been relating dreams in which he has a hunger for a child. A child he can describe in perfect detail, a child the spitting image of Matthew.Detective Chief Inspector Karlsson doesn't take Frieda's concerns seriously until a link emerges with an unsolved child abduction twenty years ago and he summons Frieda to interview the victim's sister, hoping she can stir hidden memories. Before long, Frieda is at the center of the race to track the kidnapper.But her race isn't physical. She must chase down the darkest paths of a psychopath's mind to find the answers to Matthew Farraday's whereabouts.And sometimes the mind is the deadliest place to lose yourself.
City of Echoes
Robert Ellis - 2015
Driven by the grisliness of the killing, Jones and his hot-tempered partner, Denny Cabrera, jump headfirst into the investigation. But as Jones uncovers evidence that links the crime to a brutal, ritualized murder that occurred eighteen months prior, he begins to suspect that there’s more going on beneath the surface. When Jones discovers shocking, deep-seated corruption; a high-level cover-up; and his own personal ties to the rising body count, he’s no longer sure he can trust anyone, even himself.
The Tenant
Katrine Engberg - 2016
In short order, they establish a link between the victim, Julie Stender, and her landlady, Esther de Laurenti, who’s a bit too fond of drink and the host of raucous dinner parties with her artist friends. Esther also turns out to be a budding novelist—and when Julie turns up as a murder victim in the still-unfinished mystery she’s writing, the link between fiction and real life grows both more urgent and more dangerous. But Esther’s role in this twisted scenario is not quite as clear as it first seems. Is she the culprit—or just another victim, trapped in a twisted game of vengeance? Anette and Jeppe must dig more deeply into the two women’s pasts to discover the identity of the brutal puppet-master pulling the strings in this electrifying literary thriller.
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.
Death at the Chateau Bremont
M.L. Longworth - 2011
Antoine Verlaque, the charming chief magistrate of Aix, suspects foul play, and when he discovers that Bremont had been a close friend of Marine Bonnet, his on-again off-again girlfriend, Verlaque must turn to her for help.The once idyllic town suddenly seems filled with people who scould have benefited from Bremont's death--including his playboy brother Francois, who's heavily in debt and mixed up with some unsavory characters. But just as Verlaque and Bonnet are narrowing down their list of suspects, another death occurs. And this time, there can be no doubt--it's murder.A lively mystery steeped in the enticing atmosphere of the south of France and seasoned with romance as rich as the French cuisine that inspires it, this first installment in the acclaimed Verlaque & Bonnet Provencal Mystery series is as addictive and captivating as Provence itself.