Book picks similar to
A Confidential Source by Jan Brogan
mystery
fiction
mysteries
at-home
Snowblind
Ragnar Jónasson - 2010
Ari Thór Arason: a rookie policeman on his first posting, far from his girlfriend in Reykjavik – with a past that he’s unable to leave behind. When a young woman is found lying half-naked in the snow, bleeding and unconscious, and a highly esteemed, elderly writer falls to his death in the local theatre, Ari is dragged straight into the heart of a community where he can trust no one, and secrets and lies are a way of life. An avalanche and unremitting snowstorms close the mountain pass, and the 24-hour darkness threatens to push Ari over the edge, as curtains begin to twitch, and his investigation becomes increasingly complex, chilling and personal. Past plays tag with the present and the claustrophobic tension mounts, while Ari is thrust ever deeper into his own darkness – blinded by snow, and with a killer on the loose.
The Truth of All Things
Kieran Shields - 2012
When newly appointed Deputy Marshal Archie Lean is called in to investigate a prostitute's murder in Portland, Maine, he's surprised to find the body laid out like a pentagram and pinned to the earth with a pitchfork. He's even more surprised to learn that this death by "sticking" is a traditional method of killing a witch. Baffled by the ritualized murder scene, Lean secretly enlists the help of historian Helen Prescott and brilliant criminalist Perceval Grey. Distrusted by officials because of his mixed Abenaki Indian ancestry, Grey is even more notorious for combining modern investigative techniques with an almost eerie perceptiveness. Although skeptical of each other's methods, together the detectives pursue the killer's trail through postmortems and opium dens, into the spiritualist societies and lunatic asylums of gothic New England. Before the killer closes in on his final victim, Lean and Grey must decipher the secret pattern to these murders--a pattern hidden within the dark history of the Salem witch trials.
If You Knew Her
Emily Elgar - 2017
. . OR THE PERFECT LIE?Cassie had it all - the fairytale wedding, the stunning home, the perfect husband. But when she arrives on the intensive care ward at St Catherine's hospital in a coma, it soon becomes clear that she has a secret; a secret that changes everything.Alice, the chief nurse on the ward begins to feel a connection with Cassie and can't help but wonder if things are not quite as they seem.Frank, another patient, can hear and see everything around him but cannot communicate. He understands that Cassie's life is in danger and only he holds the truth, which no one can know and he cannot tell . . .
Dead Certain
Adam Mitzner - 2017
By night, she pursues her passion for singing in the darkest clubs of Manhattan.No one knows her secret, not even Charlotte, the younger sister she practically raised. But it seems she’s not the only one in the family with something to hide. When Charlotte announces she’s sold her first novel, Ella couldn’t be more thrilled…until she gets a call that her sister’s gone missing.Ella starts investigating with the help of Detective Gabriel Velasquez, an old flame in the NYPD, and what she finds is shocking. If art imitates life, then her sister’s novel may contain details of her real-life affairs. And any one of her lovers could be involved in her disappearance.Desperate to bring Charlotte home, Ella works through her list of suspects, matching fictitious characters with flesh-and-blood men. But will it be too late to save the sister she only thought she knew?
A Killer's Mind
Mike Omer - 2018
Doubting the findings of the local PD’s profiler, The FBI calls on forensic psychologist Zoe Bentley to investigate.Zoe quickly gets off on the wrong foot with her new partner, Special Agent Tatum Gray. Zoe’s a hunter, intense and focused; Tatum’s a smug maverick with little respect for the rules. Together, they must descend into a serial killer’s psyche and untangle his twisted fantasies, or more women will die. But when the contents of three inconspicuous envelopes reveal a chilling connection to gruesome murders from Zoe’s childhood, suddenly the hunter becomes the hunted.
Sacrifice
Sharon J. Bolton - 2008
But realizing that the body is in fact much newer, that the woman’s heart has been cut out and that she was killed within a few days of bearing a child, Tora, herself an obstetrician, becomes obsessed with finding out what happened to her—even when the police, her colleagues and eventually her husband warn her against getting involved.Sacrifice is a bone-chilling, spell-binding debut that will grip readers from its beginning to its startling end.
Unknown Remains: A Novel
Peter Leonard - 2016
Outside his office window, Jack hears a booming sound, and then the worst thing imaginable. He works in the World Trade Center, and it is September 11, 2001.His wife in Connecticut, Diane, is visited the next day by a grief counselor, and then the mob, where she learns her husband owes them $750,000. Their personal bank accounts have been emptied. She’s totally and utterly broke. Lost in grief and now shock, Diane soon learns her husband was not the loving spouse he appeared to be. But neither is she, owing to that Beretta she keeps tucked into her handbag.The perfect summer read, Unknown Remains boasts an exciting crime story, inventive plot twists, and a cast of rogues, who just might be using a national tragedy to cover up their own deep transgressions and greed.
Copycat
Erica Spindler - 2000
No witnesses, no evidence left behind. The Sleeping Angel Killer called his despicable acts 'the perfect crimes.' The case nearly destroyed homicide detective Kitt Lundgren's career - because she let the killer get away.Now the Sleeping Angel Killer is back.But Kitt notices something different about this new rash of killings - a tiny variation that suggests a copycat killer may be re-creating the original 'perfect crimes.' Then the unthinkable happens. The Sleeping Angel Killer himself approaches Kitt with a bizarre offer - he will help her catch his copycat.Kitt must decide whether to place her trust in a murderer - or risk falling victim to a fiend who has taken the art of the perfect murder to horrific new heights.
The Dark Tide
Andrew Gross - 2008
Days later, with many bodies still unidentifiable, Karen resigns herself to the awful truth: her husband of eighteen years is dead.On that same day, a suspicious hit-and-run accident leaves a young man dead in Karen's hometown of Greenwich, Connecticut. Ty Hauck, a detective, becomes emotionally caught up in the case and finds a clue that shockingly connects the two seemingly unrelated events.Months later, two men show up at Karen's home digging into Charles's business dealings. Hundreds of millions of dollars are missing—and the trail points squarely to Charles. With doubt suddenly cast on everything she has ever known, Karen, with Hauck, steps into a widening storm of hedge fund losses, international scams, and murder. And as the investigations converge, these two strangers touched by tragedy are pulled into a deepening relationship and unwittingly open the door to a twisted—and deadly—conspiracy.With its breakneck pacing, plentiful twists, compelling characters, and abundant heart, The Dark Tide confirms Andrew Gross's place as a master storyteller at the top of his game.
What Lies Below
Helen Phifer - 2020
Will Madeleine Hart discover the horrors hidden below, before it's too late?Bestselling writer Madeleine Hart has run away from her life in London and abusive ex Connor. Crumbling Lakeview Hall in the Armboth Valley, abandoned decades earlier, is the perfect Lakeland hideaway for Maddy to make a fresh start, finish her book and disappear from the world.But strange things start to happen. The house is too big and the fear that Connor has tracked her down soon becomes a terrifying reality. Enlisting the help of Seth, who runs the village pub to help solve the mystery of what's happening in the unloved mansion, she doesn't realise that the past and the present are about to collide in a fight to survive.
The Sister
Louise Jensen - 2016
I hope you can forgive me…’Grace hasn't been the same since the death of her best friend Charlie. She is haunted by Charlie's last words, and in a bid for answers, opens an old memory box of Charlie's. It soon becomes clear there was a lot she didn't know about her best friend.
Someone Else's Skin
Sarah Hilary - 2014
Five years ago, her family home was the scene of a shocking and bloody crime that left her parents dead and her foster brother in prison. Marnie doesn’t talk much about her personal life, preferring to focus on work. Not even her partner, DS Noah Jake, knows much about Marnie’s past. Though as one of the few gay officers on the force and half Jamaican to boot, Noah’s not one to overshare about his private life either. Now Marnie and Noah are tackling a case of domestic violence, and a different brand of victim.Hope Proctor stabbed her husband in desperate self-defense. A crowd of witnesses in the domestic violence shelter where she’s staying saw it happen, but none of them are telling quite the same story, and the simple question remains: how did Leo Proctor get in to the secure shelter? Marnie and Noah shouldn’t even have been there when it happened but they were interviewing another resident, Ayana Mirza. They’re trying to get Ayana to testify against her brothers for pouring bleach on her face for bringing dishonor to the family, and blinding her in one eye. But Ayana knows that her brothers are looking for her, and she has no doubt that they’ll kill her this time.As the violence spirals, engulfing the residents of the women's shelter, Marnie finds herself drawn into familiar territory: A place where the past casts long shadows and she must tread carefully to survive.
Open Season
Archer Mayor - 1988
Joe Gunther of the Brattleboro, Vermont police force has a serious problem: in a community where a decade could pass without a single murder, the body count is suddenly mounting. Innocent citizens are being killed—and others set-up—seemingly orchestrated by a mysterious ski-masked man. Signs suggest that a three year-old murder trial might lie at the heart of things, but it’s a case that many in the department would prefer remained closed. A man of quiet integrity, Lt. Gunther knows that he must pursue the case to its conclusion, wherever it leads.Open Season is the first of Archer Mayor’s twenty-three Joe Gunther novels, a series of gripping police procedurals set in New England, where small-town charm, stoicism and civility sometimes conceal brutal truths.
The Lake of Dead Languages
Carol Goodman - 2002
Twenty years ago, Jane Hudson left the Heart Lake School for Girls in the Adirondacks after a terrible tragedy. Now she has returned to the placid, isolated shores of the lakeside school as a Latin teacher, recently separated and hoping to make a fresh start with her young daughter. But ominous messages from the past dredge up forgotten memories that will become a living nightmare.Since freshman year, Jane and her two roommates, Lucy Toller and Deirdre Hall, were inseparable–studying the classics, performing school girl rituals on the lake, and sneaking out after curfew to meet Lucy’s charismatic brother Matt. However, the last winter before graduation, everything changed. For in that sheltered, ice-encrusted wonderland, three lives were taken, all victims of senseless suicide. Only Jane was left to carry the burden of a mystery that has stayed hidden for more than two decades in the dark depths of Heart Lake. Now pages from Jane’s missing journal, written during that tragic time, have reappeared, revealing shocking, long-buried secrets. And suddenly, young, troubled girls are beginning to die again . . . as piece by piece the shattering truth slowly floats to the surface.At once compelling, sensuous, and intelligent, The Lake of Dead Languages is an eloquent thriller, an intricate balance of suspense and fine storytelling that proves Carol Goodman is a rare new talent with a brilliant future.From the Hardcover edition.
The Secrets You Keep
Kate White - 2017
She’s still recovering from a devastating car accident that has left her haunted by recurring, smoke-filled nightmares. Worse still, she can’t shake the ominous feeling her dreams contain a warning. In the beginning, Bryn’s husband Guy couldn’t have been more supportive. But after moving into a new house together, disturbing incidents occur and Guy grows evasive, secretive. What the hell is going on, she wonders? Then, a woman hired to cater their dinner party is brutally murdered.As Bryn’s world unravels—and yet another woman in town is slain —she must summon her old strength to find answers and protect her own life. Her nightmares may in fact hold the key to unlocking the truth and unmasking the murderer.With unexpected, riveting twists, The Secrets You Keep is an utterly compelling psychological thriller that once again showcases Kate White’s extraordinary storytelling talent.