Serial Killer Mystery Fiction

Springtime on the Cornish coast and Porthpella’s artistic community are throwing open their doors, welcoming visitors to the annual Arts Trail. And this year, celebrity artist Harrison Loveday is the guest of honour. However, the light mood soon darkens when there’s a dramatic death at the opening-night party, and after threatening messages start appearing around the village, fear takes over. Before long, Porthpella is shocked by a second brutal murder, and whisperings of a ‘serial killer’ start to circulate.

When a chance encounter sparks an unlikely bond between rival murderers Sloane and Rowan, the two find something elusive—the friendship of a like-minded, pitch-black soul. From small-town West Virginia to upscale California, from downtown Boston to rural Texas, the two hunters collide in an annual game of blood and suffering, one that pits them against the most dangerous monsters in the country.

A vicious storm. A celebrity murder. And a killer at sea. The Sea Angel is a party boat. But the final cruise of the summer proves to be the last dance for film superstar Kasia Simon. DC Holly Towns snags an extra paid shift on board the Sea Angel, and can hardly believe her luck. A plainclothes gig providing security seems like a holiday. But the night turns deadly, when she finds a body on a lower deck, beautiful and glamorous except for the gunshot wound to the temple. With the rest of the CIU team called to a terrifying sniper incident, Holly is on her own to get the investigation ...

Someone is murdering high-ranking Vietnamese government officials, so the head of Saigon's homicide division, Captain Chyang Fang, a troubled Chinese Vietnamese man, is given the task of finding the killer. Hated by almost everyone in Saigon and an outcast in both Chinese and Vietnamese circles, Fang has to rely on his wit, biting sarcasm, and not-so-capable assistant, Sergeant Phan - a man who would rather play on his smartphone than work - to find the killer who leaves toy cobras on the bodies of his victims.

After FBI special agent Garrett Mann executes a deadly raid on an underground facility in New Mexico, the sole survivor’s testimony reveals a greater threat to come. The covert lair was a training ground for hundreds of cartel sicarios, who have since disappeared into the US, their ultimate mission still unknown. When another FBI raid goes catastrophically wrong, Mann finds himself on the trail of the Bureau’s original target—a moonlighting serial killer who leads the agent into a nightmare that’s darker and more extensive than Mann ever feared.

Kennedy Farmer, an experienced athlete, never returns after leaving for her usual running route through the dusty mountain trails of New Mexico. While the search for Kennedy begins, Detective Alyssa Wyatt and her squad face a terrifying new case when the body of a young woman, Rheagan Pembroke, is discovered in the desert terrain surrounding Albuquerque. Her wounds horrify even the hardened squad of the Albuquerque P.D.—and the case takes an even darker turn when they discover a polaroid stuffed into the victim's mouth, showing the body of Gunner Galveston, a murder victim from years ago.

Kat Grant and Alice Campbell have a friendship forged in shared confidences and long lunches lubricated by expensive wine. Though they're very different women - the artsy socialite and the struggling suburbanite - they're each other's rocks. But even rocks crumble under pressure. Like when Kat's financier husband, Howard, plunges to his death from the second-floor balcony of their South Florida mansion. Howard was a jerk, a drunk, a bully, and, police say, a murder victim. The questions begin piling up.

When a reporter dies in a shockingly familiar way, the media rushes to announce the return of the PDQ Killer. The city of Denver reels, but no one more than Harry Kugel. After all, he is the PDQ Killer—or was fifteen years ago. And he didn’t do this. Still working to reform his ways, Harry won’t let some amateur murderer ride his twisted coattails and risk drawing the police back his way. To protect his legacy and quiet new life, he’ll have to expose the copycat. Without exposing himself.

“One of the most likable vigilante serial killers” ( The New Yorker) faces his ultimate adversary…an evil so terrifying it scares away Dexter’s inner monster - and nearly dries up his sense of humor - in this wickedly witty, darkly suspenseful novel.

Psychiatrist Dr. Gwen Moore is an expert on killers. She’s spent a decade treating California’s most depraved predators and unlocking their motives - predators much like the notorious Bloody Heart serial killer, whose latest teenage victim escaped and then identified local high school teacher Randall Thompson as his captor. The case against Thompson as the Bloody Heart Killer is damning - and closed, as far as Gwen and the media are concerned. If not for one new development.

He performs his profane ceremony in a wooded Minneapolis park, anointing his victims, then setting the bodies ablaze. He has already claimed three lives, and he won't stop there. Only this time there is a witness. But she isn't talking. Enter Kate Conlan, former FBI agent turned victim/witness advocate. Not even she can tell if the reluctant witness is a potential victim or something more troubling still.

In this first novel, we are introduced to suave, handsome Tom Ripley: a young striver, newly arrived in the heady world of Manhattan in the 1950s. A product of a broken home, branded a "sissy" by his dismissive Aunt Dottie, Ripley becomes enamored of the moneyed world of his new friend, Dickie Greenleaf. This fondness turns obsessive when Ripley is sent to Italy to bring back his libertine pal, but he grows enraged by Dickie's ambivalent feelings for Marge, a charming American dilettante.

Bret Easton Ellis’s masterful new novel is a story about the end of innocence, and the perilous passage from adolescence into adulthood, set in a vibrantly fictionalized Los Angeles in 1981 as a serial killer begins targeting teenagers throughout the city.

Dexter Morgan has been under considerable pressure. It’s just not easy being an ethical serial killer - especially while trying to avoid the unshakable suspicions of the dangerous Sergeant Doakes (who believes Dexter is a homicidal maniac... which, of course, he is). In an attempt to throw Doakes off his trail, Dexter has had to slip deep into his foolproof disguise. While not working as a blood-spatter analyst for the Miami Police Department, he now spends nearly all his time with his cheerful girlfriend, Rita....

Sometimes Love Can Be Fatal As winter settles over the small town of Barrel Creek, Private Investigator Frankie Dawson makes a horrifying discovery. A popular teacher has been brutally murdered in the woods beside the local high school. When a new client hires Frankie to track down the vicious killer, he quickly uncovers evidence revealing the teacher’s secret past and linking her death to a series of grisly homicides. As Frankie joins forces with the FBI and local police, he realizes that to solve the perplexing case, he must find the truth behind the killer’s terrifying obsession. ...

Meet Dexter Morgan, a polite wolf in sheep’s clothing. He’s handsome and charming, but something in his past has made him abide by a different set of rules. He’s a serial killer whose one golden rule makes him immensely likable: he only kills bad people.

He slips into their homes at night and walks silently into bedrooms where women lie sleeping, unaware of the horrors they soon will endure. The precision of the killer's methods suggests he is a deranged man of medicine, propelling the Boston newspapers and the frightened public to name him "The Surgeon". The cops' only clue rests with another surgeon, the victim of a nearly identical crime. Two years ago, Dr. Catherine Cordell fought back and killed her attacker before he could complete his assault.

A small Georgia town erupts in panic when a young college professor is found brutally mutilated in the local diner. But it's only when town pediatrician and coroner Sara Linton does the autopsy that the full extent of the killer's twisted work becomes clear. Sara's ex-husband, Police Chief Jeffrey Tolliver, leads the investigation - a trail of terror that grows increasingly macabre when another local woman is found crucified a few days later.

A serial rapist is kidnapping teenage girls. But he’s not interested in just any teenage girls - only virgins. He hunts them by following their status updates and check-ins on social media. Once captured, they’re locked away in his sound-proof basement until they’re groomed and ready. He throws them away like pieces of trash after he’s stolen their innocence. Nobody escapes alive. Until Ella. She risks it all to escape, setting herself and the other girls free. Only the girl who's been captive the longest gets out with her. And soon Ella discovers her nightmare's far from over.

The Truth May Save His Soul… and End His Life Private investigator Frankie Dawson goes home to Memphis, determined to start anew after a heartbreaking tragedy, only to find himself entangled in the investigation of a gruesome double murder with a disturbing connection to his own troubled past. When the killings are linked to a trail of human bones discovered along the banks of the Wolf River, he begins to unravel the terrifying truth behind a series of murders that have gone undetected for over a decade. As the investigation intensifies, Frankie realizes that his sister's tragic death ...