Crime Fiction Suspense

Nils Shapiro accepts what appears to be an easy, lucrative job: find out if Beverly Mayer’s grandson is foolishly throwing away his trust fund in Hollywood, especially now, in the wake of his fiancée’s tragic death. However, that easy job becomes much more complicated once Nils arrives in Los Angeles, a disorienting place where the sunshine hides dark secrets. Nils quickly suspects that Ebben Mayer’s fiancée was murdered and that Ebben himself may have been the target.

My husband and I are fighting for our lives in hospital after a terrible car accident. But despite my pain, all I can think about is what our families will find behind our front door. The scarf that has been all over the news, belonging to a dead young woman with honey-coloured hair. I have to speak to the police before my husband can. I’m drifting in and out of consciousness, but when I hear my wife talking to the police, accusing me of the murder of an innocent woman, a cold fear grips me. I know I’ve got a temper.

All around Albuquerque, New Mexico, young women are going missing, seemingly vanished into thin air. With no link between the victims, Detective Alyssa Wyatt is quickly plunged into a horrifying case with no obvious clues. And when Jersey Andrews, the best friend of Alyssa's teenage daughter, Holly, joins the list of vanished girls, the case becomes personal. But this investigation will lead Alyssa and partner Cord into the most sinister depths of humanity; an evil place where life is expendable and where the depraved can fulfill their darkest desires - if they have the money.

Gus Freeman is a retired detective inspector who has spent the past three years alone. Freeman’s wife, Tess, died from a brain aneurysm six months to the day after his retirement. He is still coming to terms with his enforced solitary existence. His old boss wants Gus to head up a Crime Review Team investigating cold cases. Old witness statements plus fresh clues, and the hunt would be on. But Freeman wonders whether his superiors need his old-style methods.

Christian Windsor is a certified genius. He's also autistic. At 23 years old, with two PhDs, Christian joins the FBI's most dangerous division, The Exceptional Crimes Unit. His first assignment? A serial killer on a rampage. Nicknamed The Surgeon, he's cutting the eyeballs out of women. That's not the only psychopath lurking in the shadows, though. There's another, and Christian can't see him.

When an old friend of DI Declan Walsh is murdered and an old enemy restarts their vendetta against him, he's placed in charge of solving the case alongside his fellow detectives in the Last Chance Saloon Crime Unit; DCI Alexander Monroe, DS Anjli Kapoor, DC Billy Fitzwarren, Doctor Rosanna Marcos and her assistant DC Joanne Davey, realizing in the process that somewhere in Whitehall a new narrative is being written for the murder.

Jesuit Priest Michael Dominic’s assignment to the Vatican’s legendary Secret Archives results in his discovery of a hidden papyrus: the unpublished writings of Mary Magdalene - a lost record buried in Rome’s deepest recesses. The forgotten relic’s heretical revelation threatens the Vatican’s very legitimacy, and pits Michael against ruthless and powerful enemies. Desperate, he reaches out to Hana Sinclair, an investigative reporter with a record of tackling contentious subjects.

When lawyer Jenny Cooper is appointed Severn Vale District Coroner, she's hoping for a quiet life and space to recover from a traumatic divorce, but the office she inherits from the recently deceased Harry Marshall contains neglected files hiding dark secrets and a trail of buried evidence. Could the tragic death in custody of a young boy be linked to the apparent suicide of a teenage prostitute and the fate of Marshall himself?

Separate incidents with two common threads - a first wife who took her own life, and a secret the victims took to their graves. Stephanie Coburn has barely recovered from her sister's mysterious suicide before her brother-in-law and his new wife are murdered, her face disfigured beyond recognition. Stephanie never met the bride, has never even seen a clear photograph. But she knew her sister, and she knows something is desperately wrong.

Emma decided to skip the gym and went home early. It was the last easy decision she made because she found her roommate being raped by her boyfriend. She had two choices: Call the cops and be killed by his family's mafia connections or kill him first and hope to survive. There was no choice to her. She killed the bastard first and went to the one person who could protect her: Carter Reed. He's a weapon

Lorenzo Gambini is bored. So f--king bored. Most people either annoy him or avoid him, afraid to face him. Figuratively. Literally. With his face partially disfigured, scarred, he looks every bit the monster the stories make him out to be: the notorious Scar. They say he's a sociopath. Maybe he's a psychopath. Whatever path he's on, people tend to stay far away from it. Until one day, a young woman bumps right into him - a woman just as fed up with life, but for much different reasons.

A rare stamp and a corpse are discovered in Bath within hours of each other. As he investigates, Inspector Peter Diamond discovers that both the person who found the stamp and the victim belong to the Bloodhounds, an elite group of mystery lovers, who now urge Diamond to bring the murderer to justice. But there's a hitch: the body lies inside a padlocked houseboat and the only key is in the pocket of a man with an airtight alibi.

DS George Cross can be rude, difficult, and awkward with people. But his unfailing logic and relentless pursuit of justice means his conviction rate is the best on the force. When a ravaged body is found in a local demolition site, it is up to Cross to piece together the truth from whatever fragments he can find. DS Cross has little to go on, but from the faint tan lines on the body and strange scars on his forearms, an identity gradually emerges. Cross mounts an investigation that will uncover jealousy, ambition and a family tearing itself apart.

Phoenix detective Veranda Cruz is dead set on taking down the Villalobos crime family, but the ruthlessness of her quarry demands a ruthless edge of her own. Targeted by an increasingly unstable foe, Veranda must protect her family and navigate adversaries within the force while she sets a trap for Bartolo. As the action heats up, Veranda and her new Homicide team - along with an arson investigator who kindles a flame of his own - are all drawn into a deadly gambit.

The good news is that Joe Pickett has his job back. The bad news is that he's come to learn that a drone is killing wildlife - and the drone belongs to a mysterious and wealthy man whose grandson is dating Joe's own daughter, Lucy. When Joe tries to lay down the rules for the drone operator, he's asked by the FBI and the DOJ to stand down, which only makes him more suspicious. Meanwhile, bodies are piling up in and around Joe's district in shocking numbers. He begins to fear that a pack of four vicious killers working on behalf of the Sinaloa cartel known as the Wolf Pack have arrived.

Tara never imagined her introduction to Ireland like this - carrying her mam's ashes to honor her final request: "Tell Johnny I'm sorry.... Take me home." She's never met her mam's estranged brother, Johnny Meehan, who owns an architectural salvage business in Galway. Although Tara is immediately charmed by the medieval city, the locals seem wary of strangers, and a gypsy warns her that death is all around. When Tara arrives at her uncle's stone cottage, the prophesy seems true. A dead man lies sprawled over the threshold in a pool of blood.

Close to bringing the Dupree crime family that murdered his parents to justice, FBI agent Ian Slade wants to track the leader - not protect the man's niece. But with Esme Dupree's uncle determined to silence her before she can testify against her brother, Ian and his K-9 partner are duty-bound to guard her. Even if her family ties make him doubt her innocence. But as he and Esme fight to survive the chase through the Florida Everglades, it becomes clear to Ian that she's nothing like her family.

Styvie Savard was a damn good cop - before she made a mistake that cost her everything. Now she lives in her car, works a dead-end job, and scrapes by on the fumes of a dwindling savings account. Life couldn’t get much worse, until it does. One morning on the way to work, Styvie hits a 16-year-old, Dharma, with her car. When the injured girl flees the scene, Styvie finds that she can’t leave well enough alone.

Bestselling author Martin Walker pens stories filled with small-town ambience and charming characters. In The Devil’s Cave, police chief Bruno Courréges is investigating a murder as the tiny French village of St. Denis prepares for Easter. An unknown woman - dead, naked, and bearing the marks of a black magic ritual - is found in a boat floating down the River Vézère. With the townsfolk terrified, clues quickly lead Bruno to the Gouffre de Colombac - the Devil’s Cave.

The new Kings Lake Central murder squad is about to spend its first morning on team-building exercises and reviewing cold cases when the call comes in that the body of one of the city's rough sleepers has been found in a shop doorway. It happens, someone says, he isn't the first to die on the streets and he won't be the last, but the story the new team begins to uncover is far from routine.