Forensic Mystery Fiction

Hospitals are supposed to be places of healing. But in the coronary care unit at one of Copenhagen’s leading medical centers, a nurse fills a syringe with an overdose of heart medication and stealthily enters the room of an older male patient. Six days earlier, a paperboy on his route in central Copenhagen stumbles upon a macabre find: the naked body of a dead woman, lying in a fountain with arms marked with small incisions. Cause of death? Exsanguination - the draining of all the blood in her body.

Black Flies is the story of paramedic Ollie Cross and his first year on the job in mid-'90s New York. It is a ground's-eye view of life on the streets: the shoot-outs, the bad cops, the unhinged medics, the hopeless patients, the dark humor in bizarre circumstances, and one medic's struggle to balance his desire to help against his own growing callousness. This story features lives that hang in the balance, including a single job with a misdiagnosed newborn that sends Cross and his partner into a life-changing struggle between good and evil.

Morton Farrier, the esteemed English forensic genealogist, had cleared a space in his busy schedule to track down his own elusive father finally. But he is then presented with a case that challenges his research skills in his quest to find the killer of a woman murdered more than 180 years ago. Thoughts of his own family history are quickly and violently pushed to one side as Morton rushes to complete his investigation before other sinister elements succeed in derailing the case.

When Mark Hartmann is asked to perform a post-mortem on a lab assistant killed by cancer, everything looks straightforward. But his initial findings are surprising: Millicent Sweet appears to have died of several different, aggressive tumours. Before he can discuss this with colleagues, he's called to a conference in Scotland. A serious error of judgement gives a pharmaceutical company a handle on him, and they threaten to expose his excesses unless he falsifies his report on Sweet.

Just as 200,000 fans are pouring into town for Race Week, a body is found in a barrel of asphalt next to the Charlotte Motor Speedway. The next day, a NASCAR crew member comes to Temperance Brennan’s office at the Mecklenburg County Medical Examiner to share a devastating story. Twelve years earlier, Wayne Gamble’s sister, Cindi, then a high school senior and aspiring racer, disappeared along with her boyfriend, Cale Lovette. Lovette kept company with a group of right-wing extremists known as the Patriot Posse.

Edmund Harkins has gone missing. Few in Bampton liked him, knowing him to be a wife-beater and distinctly unsavory character, so when some hungry pigs unearth his corpse from a shallow grave, there is hardly an outpouring of grief. As bailiff, it is Hugh de Singleton’s duty to bring Edmund’s killer to justice. But where is he to start investigating when almost everyone in the village has a motive? And when everyone is pleased to see the scoundrel dead, who knows how far they might go to help someone get away with murder?

Where Family Ties Are Rooted in Murder A crumbling vineyard. A long-buried letter. And bones that refuse to stay hidden. When graduate student Addison Lane joins a forensic anthropology practicum in the Ozarks, she expects dirt, science, and maybe a few local legends. What she doesn’t expect is to unearth a string of shallow graves—and the key to a mystery that connects her past to a decades-old murder. As Addison, Dr. Svoboda, and their unlikely ally Alexander dig deeper into the overgrown rows of Reznik Vineyard, secrets begin to surface—ones tied to Viktor Reznik’s final diary, a...

Will the last humans on Earth please turn out the lights? James Patterson's ZOO was just the beginning. The planet is still under violent siege by ferocious animals. Humans are their desperate prey. Except some humans are evolving, mutating into a savage species that could save civilization-or end it.

Cases of random violence have erupted across the country - murderous acts committed by previously non-violent people. Detective Adam Boedecker, grieving brother to one of the suicide-murderers, has discovered that all the suspects had taken a new breakthrough anti-depressant, Valazine. Elizabeth Barnes has devoted her heart and soul to pharmaceutical research. She's at the top of her game and slated to be awarded top honors for her latest breakthrough drug. Until a detective contacts her about a recent wave of homicides.

Evelyn Talbot knows that a psychopath can look perfectly normal. She was only 16 when her own boyfriend, Jasper, imprisoned and tortured her - and left her for dead. Now an eminent psychiatrist who specializes in the criminal mind, Evelyn is the force behind Hanover House, a maximum-security facility located in a small Alaskan town. Her job puts her at odds with Sergeant Amarok, who is convinced that Hanover is a threat to his community, even as his attraction to beautiful Evelyn threatens to tear his world apart.

In a small grim room, the body of a woman is discovered, panic and pain etched in her face. The scene matches in every detail a series of murders two years ago-murders that ended when irrefutable forensic evidence secured the conviction of a deeply disturbed young man named Derek Tyler. But there's no way Tyler could have killed the latest victim. He's been locked up in a mental institution since his trial, barely speaking a word. So is there a copycat?

In Harvest, the book that introduced us to Tess Gerritsen's unique blend of medical expertise, harrowing suspense, and brilliantly crafted plot twists, the dark side of medical research is exposed. Harvest vividly portrays a young woman doctor challenging a world where medical miracles and greed fuel a lethal conspiracy - and the bright lights of the O.R. conceal the ultimate corruption of genius.

In the near-future United States, where advanced technology can create eggs or sperm from any person’s cells, celebrities face the alarming potential of meeting biological children they never conceived. Famous singer Trace Thorne is tired of being targeted by the Vault, a black market site devoted to stealing DNA. Sick of paying ransom money for his own cell matter, he hires bio-security guard Ember Ryan to ensure his biological safety.

After fleeing Los Angeles during the last, desperate throes of the DRYP pandemic, medical resident Susan Barry and critically injured oil company executive Alan Wheeler know their toehold on survival in rural Liberty Valley won't last. They need food, fuel, and help. At first, they reach out to other survivors by radio, but when a mysterious code starts, the other survival colonies disappear from the air one by one.

With her vindictive ex-husband out of prison, San Francisco medical examiner Annabelle Schwartzman is trying harder than ever to move on with her life - by focusing on her job to speak for the victims who can’t. Summoned to a homicide in Golden Gate Park, she realizes that she’d seen the victim just hours before, alive and well in a parked Jeep with a small boy. Now, the woman has been stabbed to death and stripped of her burka, and the child is nowhere to be found. Then an African American student is found dead, bearing knife wounds identical to those of the woman in the park.

Heather Lawrence’s long-awaited vacation to Salzburg wasn’t supposed to go like this. Mere hours into the transatlantic flight, the Houston FBI agent is awakened when passengers begin exhibiting horrific symptoms of an unknown infection. As the virus quickly spreads and dozens of passengers fall ill, Heather fears she’s witnessing an epidemic similar to ones her estranged husband studies for a living - but this airborne contagion may have been deliberately released.

In Silent Treatment, best-selling author Dr. Michael Palmer crosses the line between medicine and murder with a heart-pounding thriller guaranteed to satisfy fans of medical suspense.

When his wife mysteriously dies the night before she is scheduled for surgery, Dr. Harry Corbett realizes a killer is moving through the wards of Good Samaritan Hospital - a killer so sophisticated and silent that he can only be a doctor.

In Los Angeles, FBI counterterrorism agent Quinn Traynor receives an urgent call from CDC agent Madeline Hamilton. She’s discovered the first victim of a lethal, unfamiliar virus. Their joint investigation uncovers an imminent bio-terror attack, and their only hope is to identify the terrorists carrying the disease. With just two days remaining before it’s too late, the FBI and the CDC race to prevent a pandemic. The ensuing nightmare will hit closer to home than they ever anticipated, and one of them will pay an unimaginable price for protecting the country.

In the shadows of New York City lies forbidden North Brother Island, where the remains of a shuttered sanatorium hide the haunting memories of century-old quarantines and human experiments. The ruins conceal the scarred and beautiful Cora, imprisoned by contagions and the doctors who torment her.

Leo Stone is a ruthless killer or the victim of a miscarriage of justice. A year ago, he was convicted of the murder of two women and sentenced to life in prison. But now he's free, and according to him, he's innocent. DS Maeve Kerrigan and DI Josh Derwent are determined to put Stone back behind bars where he belongs, but the more Maeve finds out, the less convinced she is of his guilt. Then another woman disappears in similar circumstances. Is there a copycat killer, or have they been wrong about Stone from the start?