Book picks similar to
Hell's Kitchen by Chris Niles


fiction
x
mystery
mystery-crime-books

The Quality of Silence


Rosamund Lupton - 2015
    They're searching for Ruby's father, missing in the arctic wilderness.More isolated with each frozen mile they cover, they travel deeper into an endless night. And Ruby, deaf since birth, must brave the darkness where sight cannot guide her.She won't abandon her father. But winter has tightened its grip, and there is somebody out there who wants to stop them.Somebody tracking them through the dark.

The Golden Keel / The Vivero Letter


Desmond Bagley - 2009
    It was never seen again. Now, an expedition plans to unearth the treasure and smuggle it out of Italy. But their reckless mission is being followed - by enemies who are as powerful and ruthless as they are deadly…THE VIVERO LETTERJeremy Wheale's well-ordered life is blasted apart when his brother is murdered. The killer was after a family heirloom - an antique gold tray - which sets Wheale on a trail from Devon to the tropical rainforest of Yucatan. There he joins the hunt for a lost Mayan city. But in the dense cover of the jungle a band of vicious convict mercenaries are waiting to strike…Includes a unique bonus - Desmond Bagley's rare introduction to these books.

Unbecoming


Rebecca Scherm - 2015
    She calls herself Julie, says she’s from California, and slips back to a rented room at night. Regularly, furtively, she checks the hometown paper on the Internet. Home is Garland, Tennessee, and there, two young men have just been paroled. One, she married; the other, she’s in love with. Both were jailed for a crime that Grace herself planned in exacting detail. The heist went bad—but not before she was on a plane to Prague with a stolen canvas rolled in her bag. And so, in Paris, begins a cat-and-mouse waiting game as Grace’s web of deception and lies unravels—and she becomes another young woman entirely.Unbecoming is an intricately plotted and psychologically nuanced heist novel that turns on suspense and slippery identity. With echoes of Alfred Hitchcock and Patricia Highsmith, Rebecca Scherm’s mesmerizing debut is sure to entrance fans of Gillian Flynn, Marisha Pessl, and Donna Tartt.

Found Money


Charlie Carillo - 2012
    Where did it come from? Whose is it? Those questions will be answered in an overnight drama that’s also a journey into the past - a saga of love, lust, greed, double-crossing, prison, betrayal and redemption on that long, crooked road to the truth. Found money looks like easy money, but looks can be deceiving.

Elephants in the Room


Suraj Laxminarayanan - 2018
    Novices to crime, they are driven more by emotions than skill - their plan seems foolproof, or so they think. In another part of the city, a gang of seasoned dacoits has botched up a job and now owes money to the local crime lord. They have to either pay up or pay for it with their lives - and time is running out... In a bizarre twist of fate, both these groups are brought face to face. Trapped in a situation beyond the realm of their planning and experience, they must think on their feet, form quick alliances and rally behind an unlikely leader. Set against the backdrop of Chennai, where men sing gaana songs in kuppams (fishing hamlets) nestled against swanky glass-fronted buildings and life-size cutouts of film stars and politicians, a story of love, greed, friendship, fate and the absurdity of the human condition unfolds.

Tigerman


Nick Harkaway - 2014
    After a long career of being shot at, he’s about to be retired. The mildly larcenous, backwater island of Mancreu is the ideal place to serve out his time, a former British colony in legal limbo, belching toxic clouds of waste and facing imminent destruction by an international community concerned for their own safety. The perfect place for Lester is also the perfect location for a multinational array of shady businesses. Hence the Black Fleet of illicit ships lurking in the bay: spy stations, arms dealers, offshore hospitals, money laundering operations, drug factories and torture centres. None of which should be a problem, since Lester's brief is to sit tight and turn a blind eye.Meanwhile, he befriends a brilliant, internet-addled street kid with a comic book fixation who will need a home when the island dies. When Mancreu's fragile society erupts in violence, Lester must be more than just an observer: he has no choice but to rediscover the man of action he once was, and find out what kind of hero the island—and the boy—will need.From the award-winning author of Angelmaker and The Gone-Away World, Tigerman is a novel at once deeply heartfelt and headlong thrilling—about parenthood, friendship and secret identities, about heroes of both the super and the everyday kind.

Everything Is Lies


Helen Callaghan - 2018
    At least that is what she's always believed.Everyone has secretsUntil the day she arrives at her childhood home to find a house ringing with silence. Her mother is hanging from a tree. Her father is lying in a pool of his own blood, near to death.Especially those closest to you The police are convinced it is an attempted murder-suicide. But Sophia is sure that the woman who brought her up isn't a killer. As her father is too ill to talk it is up to Sophia to clear her mother's name. And to do this she needs to delve deep into her family's past - a past full of dark secrets she never suspected were there . . .What if your parents had been lying to you since the day you were born?

Island of Lost Girls


Jennifer McMahon - 2008
    She watches, unmoving, as someone dressed in a rabbit costume kidnaps a young girl. Devastated over having done nothing, Rhonda joins the investigation. But the closer she comes to identifying the abductor, the nearer she gets to the troubling truth about another missing child: her best friend, Lizzy, who vanished years before.From the author of the acclaimed Promise Not to Tell comes a chilling and mesmerizing tale of shattered innocence, guilt, and ultimate redemption.

Little Deaths


Emma Flint - 2017
    and Cindy, have gone missing. Later that day, Cindy's body is found in a derelict lot a half mile from her home, strangled. Ten days later, Frankie Jr.'s decomposing body is found. Immediately, all fingers point to Ruth. As police investigate the murders, the detritus of Ruth's life is exposed. Seen through the eyes of the cops, the empty bourbon bottles and provocative clothing which litter her apartment, the piles of letters from countless men and Ruth's little black book of phone numbers, make her a drunk, a loose woman - and therefore a bad mother. The lead detective, a strict Catholic who believes women belong in the home, leaps to the obvious conclusion: facing divorce and a custody battle, Malone took her children's lives. Pete Wonicke is a rookie tabloid reporter who finagles an assignment to cover the murders. Determined to make his name in the paper, he begins digging into the case. Pete's interest in the story develops into an obsession with Ruth, and he comes to believe there's something more to the woman whom prosecutors, the press, and the public have painted as a promiscuous femme fatale. Did Ruth Malone violently kill her own children, is she a victim of circumstance - or is there something more sinister at play?

The Sherlockian


Graham Moore - 2010
    London spiraled into mourning -- crowds sported black armbands in grief -- and railed against Conan Doyle as his assassin. Then in 1901, just as abruptly as Conan Doyle had "murdered" Holmes in "The Final Problem," he resurrected him. Though the writer kept detailed diaries of his days and work, Conan Doyle never explained this sudden change of heart. After his death, one of his journals from the interim period was discovered to be missing, and in the decades since, has never been found. Or has it? When literary researcher Harold White is inducted into the preeminent Sherlock Holmes enthusiast society, The Baker Street Irregulars, he never imagines he's about to be thrust onto the hunt for the holy grail of Holmes-ophiles: the missing diary. But when the world's leading Doylean scholar is found murdered in his hotel room, it is Harold - using wisdom and methods gleaned from countless detective stories - who takes up the search, both for the diary and for the killer.

The Basic Eight


Daniel Handler - 1999
    Tyrants, perverts, tragic crushes, gossip, cruel jokes, and the hallucinatory effects of absinthe -- Flannery and the seven other friends in the Basic Eight have suffered through it all. But now, on tabloid television, they're calling Flannery a murderer, which is a total lie. It's true that high school can be so stressful sometimes. And it's true that sometimes a girl just has to kill someone. But Flannery wants you to know that she's not a murderer at all -- she's a murderess.

Dope


Sara Gran - 2006
    But the search will take her into the dark underbelly of New York she thought she'd escaped—and a web of deceit that threatens to destroy her.

Last Looks


Howard Michael Gould - 2018
    He has left behind his career and his girlfriend, Lorena, to pay self-imposed penance for an awful misstep on an old murder case. But the old ghosts are about to come roaring back.There are plenty of difficult actors in Hollywood, and then there's Alastair Pinch.Alastair is a onetime Royal Shakespeare Company thespian who now slums it as the "wise" Southern judge on a tacky network show. He's absurdly rich, often belligerent, and typically drunk--a damning combination when Alastair's wife is found dead on their living room floor and he can't remember what happened.Waldo's old flame Lorena, hiding peril of her own, draws him toward the case, and Alastair's greedy network convinces Waldo to take it on. But after such a long time away from both civilization and sleuthing--and plagued by a confounding array of assailants who want him gone--Waldo must navigate complicated webs of ego and deceit to clear Alastair's name . . . or confirm his guilt.

Dexter: An Omnibus


Jeff Lindsay - 2008
    Which makes his job as a blood spatter analyst for the Miami PD a little tricky. But it means that he's very tidy when it comes to his hobby: murder. After all, even though Dexter only ever kills bad people, he doesn't want to draw attention to it. But now there's another killer out there who's being a whole lot less subtle...Dearly Devoted Dexter: Miami's best-dressed serial killer is getting twitchy - he hasn't killed for months. Ever since their paths first crossed, Sergeant Doakes hasn't let Dexter Morgan out of his sight. Then a body turns up, mutilated and barely alive. To trap the torturer, Doakes and Dexter will have to work together, if they can trust each other. It's a devil's pact and one of them will have to be the bait.Dexter in the Dark: When Dexter is brought in to analyse a charred headless cause, it seems he's dealing with a killer even more sinister than he is, and one with a personal interest in him. And with Dexter now having a family to protect, the stakes are high. As he realises his step-children might share his blood-lust, if he's ever to help them target it, Dexter will first have to stay alive himself.

Mine All Mine


Adam Davies - 2008
    Otto Starks is a "pulse"?a highly specialized security guard who has hyperdeveloped senses and a nervous habit of popping tabs of cyanide. Otto was once a rising star but then he was rolled three times by the notorious Rat Burglar. Now, demoted and dangerously in debt to a loan shark, all he has left is Charlie Izzo, the woman he loves. Unfortunately, she is also the Rat Burglar?s zealous advocate. That?s bad enough. But then Otto gets robbed yet again and the cops pronounce him the prime suspect. When Charlie disappears and Otto becomes a fugitive, he realizes that the Rat Burglar has stolen much more from him than art. And to get it back he must break the law he has devoted his life to upholding. A nail-biting thriller about deception, betrayal, and ownership?in art and in love?Mine All Mine is also a quirky and hilarious romantic comedy.