Book picks similar to
The Creature in Crestwood Park by Barbara Ford


childhood
classroom-library
location-fiction
mystery

Buried in the Backwater (A Sheriff Elven Hallie Mystery #1)


Drew Strickland - 2021
    Her body washes away with the rain.Her killer remains a mystery.Sheriff Elven Hallie has been longing for a new case that would add some excitement to his small-town life.But a dead girl wasn’t what he expected.On the last murder case he worked, he was just a deputy with an experienced Sheriff to guide him and they were looking for an outsider.This time, he’s in charge, and the killer is part of their community.Short-staffed, and newly elected, Elven has an entire West Virginia county to police. With the help of his new deputy, Maddison Cook, Elven must navigate between Dupray’s rich and poor.It’s an uphill battle the entire way.With pressures mounting from the townspeople, county officials, and his own sense of duty, will he be able to catch the killer? Or will another body surface, pulling Elven in over his head?If you’re a fan of C.J. Box’s Joe Pickett, Craig Johnson’s Longmire, Jeff Carson’s David Wolf and Patrick Logan’s Damien Drake, then you will be sucked into this page-turning mystery with an ending that you’ll never see coming!

Integration


Stephen Edger
    All they want in return is a small favour.The offer seems too good to be true, and when the group calls again, demanding he integrate their laundered cash through the bank he works for, he refuses. But when Mark’s girlfriend goes missing and his brother is attacked, he begins to realise just how far the group will go to get what they want.But it’s not easy to move vast sums of money undetected, and as the pressure mounts, Mark finds himself risking everything he has to find his girlfriend and save his own life before the group and the police catch up with him.Blackmail, murder, conspiracy and money laundering: INTEGRATION is a British crime thriller set in the murky depths of the finance industry.

Night Without End (Oxford Bookworms Library)


Margaret Naudi - 2009
    

Deliver Us From Evil (DI Braddick Book #4)


Conrad Jones - 2019
    The victims' bodies are missing and the police have no clue as to their identities or who killed them.As the investigation snowballs, the potential body count rises and the Major Investigation Team have little to go on until DNA evidence is examined.There appears to be no motive for the dreadful murders until an ancient script is found daubed on the walls of a nearby property. As the clues are unravelled, Braddick and his team realise they are dealing with something they have never faced before. Because this time they're tracking evil itself… Deliver us from Evil is a fast-paced crime thriller full of breathless action. It can be read as book 4 in the international bestselling DI Braddick series or as a truly unmissable stand-alone thriller.

The Spy Whisperer


Matthew Dunn - 2018
    One by one, they are committing suicide. But the suicides are not what they seem. They have been forced to take their lives by a supremely clever individual. Former high-ranking MI6 officer Ben Sign is instructed to identify who is behind the murders. Could it be a hostile foreign intelligence agency? Sign thinks not. He believes the murderer is one of the six MI6 officers who wants to kill off the competition. With the help of a male former undercover police officer and a female serving Special Branch officer, he scours London and the rest of Britain to identify the serial killer he nicknames 'the whisperer'. But the whisperer has help: a former special forces assassin, code name 'the limpet'. Can Sign find the whisperer and the limpet in time? Who's working against him? Can he protect national security from a psychopath?"Fans of action-heavy thrillers set in the intelligence world are likely already reading Dunn, but if they're not, they should start. They won't be disappointed." - Booklist"For those who like an updated version of James Bond, Matthew Dunn's Will Cochrane books are spy stories at their finest." - Iron Mountain Daily NewsPraise for Spycatcher: "Great talent, great imagination, and real been-there done-that authenticity make this one of the year's best thriller debuts. Highly recommended." - Lee Child"I know of no other spy thriller that so successfully blends the fascinating nuances of the business of espionage and intelligence work with full-throttle suspense storytelling." - Jeffery Deaver"Dunn, who was a field officer in the British Secret Intelligence Service, often known as M16, has created a plot with plenty of action and lots of twists and turns . . . nonstop action and relentless danger." - Associated PressPraise for Dark Spies: "Another deep and intense thriller that feels authentic in terms of how it conveys the spy world... Dunn has crafted another winner in this fine series. The world of spy fiction has a writer who deserves comparison to Ludlum and Fleming." - Booklist"Fans will enjoy the trademark momentum and the inclusion of several long-running subplots and characters." - Publishers Weekly on A Soldier's Revenge"One of the things that makes A Soldier's Revenge so good, aside from the complexity of the plot, the harrowing escapes and spy craft that Dunn artfully employs, is the visceral feelings that he can convey. . . . Cochrane is no emotionless Bond...he's much more real." - blackdogspeaks.com on A Soldier's Revenge

The Crime Code


Michael Cordy - 2007
    Violent crime has become a global epidemic, nowhere more so than in the United States. Everything from the death penalty to liberal reforms has failed. Nothing has been effective. Until now.Project Conscience promises to be the solution. It is a bold attempt by a powerful group of scientists, politicians and senior law-enforcement personnel to use gene therapy to treat male criminals and cure violent crime. But among their number are those with a more sinister agenda, who would go further and turn the dream of Project Conscience into the nightmare of Crime Zero.Luke Decker, a criminal psychologist disillusioned with the growing dependence on genetic science, is on the verge of resigning from the FBI when a death-row killer's whispered revelation threatens everything he believes in and catapults him into the heart of the conspiracy. Decker's only ally is Dr Kathy Kerr, an old flame and ideological adversary, and the geneticist behind the original Project Conscience.Together they must put aside their differences to fight against a scheme so ruthless in intent and so vast in scope that it will irrevocably change the evolution of mankind itself.Crime Zero is a terrifyingly credible thriller based on technological developments that are already with us. At its core is the story of one man's desperate fight for self-determination and free will in a world where such qualities are in danger of imminent extinction . . .

Cozy Mystery 15 Book Set


K.M. Morgan - 2016
     The Daisy McDare Series Daisy McDare's vacation plans go awry when a washed up rock star turns up dead and the local detective thinks Daisy's cousin Addison is the killer. Daisy arms herself with cupcakes, one-liners, and plenty of spunk to find the killer before her cousin goes to jail for a crime she didn't commit. 4 books included from this series: The Deadly Rock Star Affair, The Deadly Restaurant Affair, The Deadly Secret Affair, and The Deadly Rival Affair. The Deanna Devlin Series Welcome to Desert Palms, a cozy Arizona tourist town set up against the mountains. Deanna Devlin is a thirty-two year old reporter who dreams of tackling hard-nosed stories, but is stuck writing puff pieces for the local paper. When a murder strikes Desert Palms, Deanna suddenly gets her chance to cover some hard-hitting news. Unfortunately, one of Deanna's good friends is wrongly suspected as the killer by the local police detective. To prove her friend's innocence, Deanna has no choice but to take matters into her own hands and find the real killer herself. 2 books included from this series: A Prescription To Die For and A Novel To Die For. The Witches Of Enchanted Bay Series Welcome to Enchanted Bay, a picture-perfect small town on the coast of Northern California. Meg Walton comes from a long line of witches. It's a secret her family has been keeping for generations. The Waltons have been living a quiet existence, running the local donut shop in town. All that changes when a murder occurs. Enter Connor Smith, Meg's former crush, who left for San Francisco ten years before, and who has now returned to town as the new detective with the Enchanted Bay police department. If Meg's feelings were mixed enough over having Connor back in town, the detective wrongfully suspects one of Meg's good friends for murder. To prove her friend's innocence, Meg has to find the real killer herself--with the help of a few good spells. 6 books included from this series: Witches Of Enchanted Bay, Ax To Grind, Killer Twist, A Bewitching Murder, A Riddle Of A Murder, and The Nuts And Bolts Of Murder. The Chloe Cook Series Thirty-four year old cosmetics saleswoman Chloe Cook is busy searching for a love that lasts in the tourist town of Cape Cod when a murder strikes. The victim is Marty Diamond, a mattress mogul known for his high pressure sales tactics and schlocky TV ads. Unfortunately, the local police detective suspects that Chloe's good friend Kristina Miller is the killer. To prove Kristina's innocence, Chloe has to take matters into her own hands and find the real killer herself. 3 books included from this series: Mattress Mart Murder, Reunions Can Be Deadly, and Killer Finale.

The Starlight Conspiracy


Steve Voake - 2008
    That is, until she meets an old man who entrusts her with a package containing a mysterious item that has unbelievable powers. It is a meeting that will change her life.

Point of Honor


Maurice Medland - 1997
    A master storyteller." - Clive Cussler Two men separated by a strict code of honor locked in a lethal game of international terror . . . Jorge Cordoba has schemed and murdered his way to the top of a Colombian drug cartel intent on bankrupting the industrialized nations of the world. But when the freighter delivering the goods that will secure the cartel's - and Cordoba's - future goes missing, he's thrown into a life or death struggle to recover it. Enter Navy Lieutenant Daniel Blake, a former merchant marine officer who's just been ordered to lead a boarding party of seven men and one woman onto an abandoned freighter. In the hull of the freighter are thirty tons of cocaine, $350 million in cash - and half a dozen corpses with their tongues cut out. Separated from his own ship with a typhoon rapidly approaching, Blake and his team are plunged into a battle of terror against not one, but two treacherous enemies - Cordoba's strike force racing to the scene and a savage murderer who is still aboard. At the heart of this electrifying novel are two very different men, separated by their morality and strict code of honor, bound together in a deadly game of power and survival that each must fight to the very end.

Her Deadly Homecoming


Tony Urban - 2020
    Brutally murdered. Eyelids surgically removed.Their killer never caught.Eighteen years later… a new victim is found.Carolina McKay thought she’d escaped her past. The murders that wrecked her youth. Her family. But most of all, her hometown.After her promising career as a big-city police detective is ended by a gunshot, Carolina heads home to Dupray, West Virginia, defeated and purposeless.Until the murders start anew. Sheriff Lester Fenech, her mentor and surrogate father, feels old and outmatched. With less than a month until his retirement, he’s desperate to solve the case which has tormented him. But he needs help. When the first killings rocked Dupray, Carolina was just a teenager. Now, she’s the best chance they have to catch a monster.Will she be able to pull herself together and solve the murders? Or will her own haunted past get in the way and leave more dead bodies in a killer’s wake?A page-turning thriller packed with twists and suspense. Fans of Willow Rose, Patrick Logan, Karin Slaughter, and Lisa Gardner will love Carolina McKay.

Mary Higgins Clark Gift Set Cst: While My Pretty One Sleeps and Weep No More My Lady


Mary Higgins Clark - 1992
    The killing of one of her best customers reminded her of the one thing -- they slaying of her own mother years earlier. Faced with a variety of suspects, Neeve plunges into the mystery of Lambston's death, determined to find the truth. But as she is drawn into a whirlwind of money and romance, she is also being stalked by a killer who's closer than she could ever dream . . .Weep No More, My LadyYoung Elizabeth Lange is haunted by the tragic death of her beloved sister, the legendary actress Leila LaSalle. Ted Winters, Leila's multi-millionaire fiance, has been accused of her murder -- and Elizabeth is slated to be the star witness for the prosecution. But before the trial begins, Elizabeth gets an invitation to unwind at a swank California spa. There is caught up in a torrent of confusing emotions and perplexing questions. Elizabeth must discover the truth -- and soon. Because someone is stalking her, patiently waiting for the right moment to strike . . .

Cursed Blessing


J.M. LeDuc - 2009
    There, he is content to live a peaceful existence as the town’s head librarian. Although he loves the peace and tranquility that have become his life, he is haunted by nightmares. Nightmares that always pertain to some skill that he had learned as a covert operative and they always contain an image of his lost love; Chloe.Brent’s life turns upside down when he receives a gift from Lucile Conklin. Her late husband has bequeathed a rare book collection to him upon his death. Among the books Brent finds a letter written by his grandfather twenty years earlier. What he doesn’t know is that he has also been passed a secret, now known as The Endowment. This secret is so old that it dates back to the dawn of creation. A secret which began as a gift from God, but because of man’s wickedness and immorality has become so evil that if it were to fall into the wrong hands, Armageddon would occur.A secret that is a Cursed Blessing. This is a new release of a previously published edition.

Murder in the Goblins Playground (DCI Arthur Ravyn Mystery, #1)


Ralph E. Vaughan - 2016
    Located deep in Red Cap Woods, it has long been the site of weird events, from pagan rites to human sacrifice by secret devil cults. When local rowdy Allan Cutter staggers into the snug bar of the Three Crowns pub and dies, old fears that have lain dormant for ages come to the fore. His death is quickly followed by the murder of a developer who planned to destroy Red Cap Woods. Villagers believe dark powers are awakening, that the murderous elves reputed to dwell in the woods will again dip their caps in human blood. Into this maelstrom of fear and emotion come DCI Arthur Ravyn and DS Leo Stark. As the bodies continue to mount, they discover it will take all their combined skills, intellect and courage to solve the mysterious deaths, keep the villagers from panicking, and not get sacked by powers even more inimical than those lurking in the eldritch depths of Red Cap Woods.

Three Keys to Murder


Gary Williams - 2012
    Her father’s tragic death earlier in the year still haunts her. For decades, Juan Velarde Cortez obsessively hunted a legendary treasure, and his passing has left unresolved feelings for Fawn. Now, when a series of grisly killings rock the small island community—each victim’s face has a distinct signature—Fawn suspects a bizarre connection between the murders, her father’s quest, and the death ritual of an infamous Seminole Indian from the 1800s. A cigar box that once belonged to her father appears to hold the key. As Fawn draws closer and closer to solving the 200-year-old puzzle and determining the killer’s identity, she will be forced to unravel historical clues that will lead her on a harrowing journey. Time is quickly running out as a serial killer is watching and waiting in the shadows. Will Fawn discover the truth before she becomes the next victim? With historical links and storyline twists, this follow-up to Gary Williams’ & Vicky Knerly’s debut novel, Death in the Beginning, engages all the necessary elements of and delivers a fast-paced, heart-pounding thriller. This is a new release of a previously published edition.

Wild Horses / 10lb Penalty


Dick Francis