True Blue


David Baldacci - 2009
    police force until she was kidnapped and framed for a crime. She lost everything: her badge, her career, her freedom--and spent two years in prison. Now she's back on the outside and focused on one mission: to be a cop once more. Her only shot to be a true blue again is to solve a major case on her own, and prove she has the right to wear the uniform. Even with her police chief sister on her side, she has to work in the shadows: a vindictive U.S. attorney is looking for any reason to send Mace back behind bars. Then Roy Kingman enters her life.Roy is a young lawyer who aided the poor until he took a high-paying job at a law firm in Washington. Mace and Roy meet after he discovers the dead body of a female partner at the firm. As they investigate the death, they start uncovering surprising secrets.Soon, what began as a fairly routine homicide takes a terrifying and unexpected turn . . . into something complex, diabolical, and possibly lethal.

The Two Minute Rule


Robert Crais - 2006
    Requiem unleashes his most powerful novel to date--a brilliantly plotted tale about justice, love, and the sins of a father and son.

Dead Connection


Alafair Burke - 2007
    The killer has left behind a clue connecting the two cases to First Date, a popular online dating service, and Flann McIlroy, an eccentric, publicity-seeking homicide detective, is convinced that only Ellie can help him pursue his terrifying theory: someone is using the lure of the Internet and the promise of love to launch a killing spree against the women of New York City.   To catch the killer, Ellie must enter a high-tech world of stolen identities where no one is who they appear to be. And for her, the investigation quickly becomes personal: she fits the profile of the victims, and she knows firsthand what pursuing a sociopath can do to a cop--back home in Wichita, Kansas, her father lost his life trying to catch a notorious serial murderer.   When the First Date killer begins to mimic the monster who destroyed her father, Ellie knows the game has become personal for him, too. Both hunter and prey, she must find the killer before he claims his next victim--who could very well be her.   Expertly plotted and perfectly paced, Dead Connection advances Alafair Burke to the front ranks of American thriller writers.

Snatched


Karin Slaughter - 2012
    Which is why he should have listened to his own.  While in an airport restroom at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International, Will overhears a girl’s pleading, plaintive voice: “Please, I wanna go home.” Something isn’t right here, thinks Will. He feels it in his gut. But he waits too long to act, and now the girl and the anxious, angry man she’s with have disappeared into the crowds at the busiest passenger airport in the world.  After a desperate search and with time running out, Will makes a call to his supervisor, Amanda Wagner. Will’s partner, Faith Mitchell, immediately sends out an abducted child alert. The entire airport will soon be grinding to a halt: Almost 100 million passengers a year. Five runways. Seven concourses. Six million square feet of space that sprawled across two counties, three cities, and five jurisdictions. All shut down on a dime because Will has a hunch that he is certain is true: a girl, maybe six or seven years old, has been snatched from God knows where. And he intends to bring her back—no matter what it takes. Includes an exclusive excerpt from Karin Slaughter’s thrilling new novel of suspense, Criminal. PRAISE FOR THE CRIME FICTION OF KARIN SLAUGHTER  “Karin Slaughter is one of the best crime novelists in America.”—The Washington Post  “Crime fiction at its finest.”—Michael Connelly “An absolute master.”—Chicago Tribune “Slaughter writes with a razor. . . . Better than Cornwell can ever hope to be.”—The Plain Dealer “Slaughter will have you on the edge of your seat.”—Seattle Post-Intelligencer “One of the boldest thriller writers working today.”—Tess Gerritsen  “Move over, Catherine Coulter—Slaughter may be today’s top female suspense writer.”—Library Journal (starred review)

The Sleeping Doll


Jeffery Deaver - 2007
    Pell is serving a life sentence for the brutal murders of the wealthy Croyton family in Carmel years earlier -- a crime mirroring those perpetrated by Charles Manson in the 1960s. But Pell and his cult members were sloppy: Not only were they apprehended, they even left behind a survivor -- the youngest of the Croyton daughters, who, because she was in bed hidden by her toys that terrible night, was dubbed the Sleeping Doll.But the girl never spoke about that night, nor did the crime's mastermind. Indeed, Pell has long been both reticent and unrepentant about the crime. And so with the murderer transported from the Capitola superprison to an interrogation room in the Monterey County Courthouse, Dance sees an opportunity to pry a confession from him for the recent murder -- and to learn more about the depraved mind of this career criminal who considers himself a master of control, a dark Svengali, forcing people to do what they otherwise would never conceive of doing. In an electrifying psychological jousting match, Dance calls up all her skills as an interrogator and kinesics -- body language -- expert to get to the truth behind Daniel Pell.But when Dance's plan goes terribly wrong and Pell escapes, leaving behind a trail of dead and injured, she finds herself in charge of her first-ever manhunt. But far from simply fleeing, Pell turns on his pursuers --and other innocents -- for reasons Dance and her colleagues can't discern. As the idyllic Monterey Peninsula is paralyzed by the elusive killer, Dance turns to the past to find the truth about what Daniel Pell is really up to. She tracks down the now teenage Sleeping Doll to learn what really happened that night, and she arranges a reunion of three women who were in his cult at the time of the killings. The lies of the past and the evasions of the present boil up under the relentless probing of Kathryn Dance, but will the truth about Daniel Pell emerge in time to stop him from killing again?

Love You More


Lisa Gardner - 2011
    His wife, state police trooper Tessa Leoni, claims to have shot him in self-defense, and bears the bruises to back up her tale. For veteran detective D. D. Warren it should be an open-and-shut case. But where is their six-year-old daughter?As the homicide investigation ratchets into a frantic statewide search for a missing child, D. D. Warren must partner with former lover Bobby Dodge to break through the blue wall of police brotherhood, seeking to understand the inner workings of a trooper’s mind while also unearthing family secrets. Would a trained police officer truly shoot her own husband? And would a mother harm her own child? For Tessa Leoni, the worst has not yet happened. She is walking a tightrope, with nowhere to turn, no one to trust, as the clock ticks down to a terrifying deadline. She has one goal in sight, and she will use every ounce of her training, every trick at her disposal, to do what must be done. No sacrifice is too great, no action unthinkable. A mother knows who she loves. And all others will be made to pay.

Lost Hills


Lee Goldberg - 2020
    The sheriff, desperate for more positive press, makes Eve the youngest female homicide detective in the department’s history.Now Eve, with a lot to learn and resented by her colleagues, has to justify her new badge. Her chance comes when she and her burned-out, soon-to-retire partner are called to the blood-splattered home of a missing single mother and her two kids. The horrific carnage screams multiple murder—but there are no corpses.Eve has to rely on her instincts and tenacity to find the bodies and capture the vicious killer, all while battling her own insecurities and mounting pressure from the media, her bosses, and the bereaved family. It’s a deadly ordeal that will either prove her skills…or totally destroy her.

Clandestine


James Ellroy - 1982
    A chance to lead on a possible serial killing is all it takes to fuel Underhill's reckless ambition - and it propels him into a dangerous alliance with certain mad and unstable elements of the law enforcement hierarchy. When the case implodes with disastrous consequences, it is Fred Underhill who takes the fall. His life is in ruins, his promising future suddenly a dream of the past. And his good and pure love for a crusading woman lawyer has been corrupted and may not survive. But even without the authority of a badge, Fred Underhill knows that his only hope for redemption lies in following the investigation to its grim conclusion. And the Hell to which he has been consigned for his sins is the perfect place to hunt for a killer who hungers but has no soul.

Missing You


Harlan Coben - 2014
    Staring back at her is her ex-fiancé Jeff, the man who shattered her heart—and who she hasn’t seen in 18 years.Kat feels a spark, wondering if this might be the moment when past tragedies recede and a new world opens up to her. But when she reaches out to the man in the profile, her reawakened hope quickly darkens into suspicion and then terror as an unspeakable conspiracy comes to light, in which monsters prey upon the most vulnerable. As the body count mounts and Kat's hope for a second chance with Jeff grows more and more elusive, she is consumed by an investigation that challenges her feelings about everyone she ever loved—her former fiancé, her mother, and even her father, whose cruel murder so long ago has never been fully explained. With lives on the line, including her own, Kat must venture deeper into the darkness than she ever has before, and discover if she has the strength to survive what she finds there.

Little Girl Lost


Brian McGilloway - 2011
    A child is found wandering in an ancient woodland, her hands covered in blood. But it is not her own.Unwilling, or unable, to speak, the only person she seems to trust is the young officer who rescued her, Detective Sergeant Lucy Black. Soon afterwards, DS Black is baffled to find herself suddenly moved from a high-profile case involving the kidnapping of another girl, a prominent businessman's teenage daughter. Black's problems are not only professional: she's caring for her increasingly unstable father, and trying to avoid conflict with her frosty mother - who also happens to be the Assistant Chief Constable. As she struggles to identify the unclaimed child, Black begins to realise that her case and the kidnapping may be linked by events that occurred during the grimmest days of the country's recent history - events that also defined her own troubled childhood.Little Girl Lost is a devastating crime thriller about corruption, greed and vengeance, and a father's love for his daughter.

The 7th Victim


Alan Jacobson - 2008
    His brutal murders confound the local task force, despite the gifted profiling skills of Special Agent Karen Vail. But along with Vail’s insight and expertise comes considerable personal and professional baggage. On leave pending a review of her assault on her abusive ex-husband, Vail must battle forces determined to bring her down, as she fights to find Dead Eyes before he murders more young women. But the seventh victim is the key to all that stirs this killer...the key that will unlock secrets perhaps too painful for Vail to bear. These are secrets that threaten to destroy her, secrets that will bring down her storied career. For Karen Vail, the truth rests at the heart of a lie. And uncovering it could get her killed...With material meticulously researched during seven years of study with the Bureau’s vaunted profiling unit, Alan Jacobson brings refreshing realism and unprecedented accuracy to his pages.The 7th Victim is a page-turner as only Alan Jacobson can write, with a stunning twist of an ending that will satisfy even the most discerning thriller reader.

The Godwulf Manuscript


Robert B. Parker - 1973
    He is hardly surprised that his only clue is a radical student with four bullets in his chest.The cops are ready to throw the book at the pretty blond coed whose prints are all over the murder weapon but Spenser knows there are no easy answers. He tackles some very heavy homework and knows that if he doesn't finish his assignment soon, he could end up marked "D" -- for dead.

NYPD Red


James Patterson - 2012
    Every night, the red carpet rolls out for movie stars arriving at premieres in limos; the most exclusive restaurants close for private parties for wealthy producers and preeminent directors; and thousands of fans gather with the paparazzi, hoping to catch a glimpse of the most famous and beautiful faces in the world. With this many celebrities in town, special task force NYPD Red is on high alert-and they can't afford to make a single mistake. Then a world-renowned producer fatally collapses at his power breakfast, and top NYPD Red Detective Zach Jordan is the first one on the scene. Zach works with his beautiful new partner, Detective Kylie MacDonald-who also happens to be his ex-girlfriend-to discover who the murderer might be. But this is only the beginning: the most brutal, public, and horrifyingly spectacular crimes they've ever encountered are about to send all of New York into chaos, putting NYPD Red on the ropes. Zach and Kylie know there's no way of telling what a killer this deranged will do next. With the whole world watching, they have to find a way to stop a psychopath who has scripted his finale down to the last explosive detail. With larger-than-life action, relentless speed, and white-knuckle twists, NYPD Red is the next mega-blockbuster from "The Man Who Can't Miss." (TIME)

Fearless Jones


Walter Mosley - 2001
    But can Jones match Mosley's engaging long-term hero Easy Rawlins? On the evidence of this first book, the answer is resoundingly in the affirmative, even if the new series takes a little time to establish the new protagonist. And this is probably because the central character here is not so much the eponymous Fearless Jones as Paris Minton, the owner of a small second-hand bookstore. Minton is savagely beaten up and his store burned to the ground for mysterious reasons. A beautiful woman is involved, and the beleaguered Minton asks for the aid of his friend, the resourceful Fearless Jones. As Jones painstakingly investigates the woman's past, a very dark mystery begins to unravel. The crime aspects here are delivered with total panache, but Mosley would never be happy without adding that level of socio-political commentary he is so adept at, and the place of black men in 1950s LA (with few rights and little money) is a potent theme. Easy Rawlins is still Mosley's main man, but Fearless Jones gives every appearance of possessing similar longevity. --Barry Forshaw

New York Dead


Stuart Woods - 1991
    Stone finds himself caught in a perilous web of unspeakable crimes and dangerous friends that has throughout it one common thread: Sasha.Librarian's note: the first five books in the Stone Barrington series are #1, New York Dead, 1991; #2, Dirt, 1996; #3, Dead in the Water, 1997; #4, Swimming to Catalina, 1998; and #5, Worst Fears Realized, 1999.