Serial Killer Mystery Fiction

It is 1985. Detective Inspector Mungo ‘Bob’ Willis is being forced out of Avon and Somerset Police on medical grounds. His career is in tatters, his body broken, his mind shattered, and his partner—DS Lizzie Harper—dead in a sting operation gone wrong. Their last case is closed, but Bob is convinced an innocent man has been framed, leaving a serial killer cruising the A303 with impunity, free to target lone women who have broken down by the roadside late at night.

When teenager Nikki Jackson’s body is found at an amusement park, just hours after Fourth-of-July fireworks lit up the night sky, the Lost Creek police rule her death as suicide - a devastating final act from a girl who had lost all hope. But the absence of the knife used to make the wounds on her delicate wrists makes Detective Madison Harper think otherwise. And the partial fingerprint found on the girl’s face proves her right. Someone else was with Nikki in her final moments.

Carmen Sanchez is a tough Homeland Security agent who plays by the rules. But when her sister is attacked, revealing a connection to a series of murders across Southern California, she realizes a conventional investigation will not be enough to stop the ruthless perpetrator. With nowhere else to turn, Sanchez enlists the aid of Professor Jake Heron, a brilliant and quirky private security expert who, unlike Sanchez, believes rules are merely suggestions. The two have a troubled past, but he owes her a favor and she’s cashing in.

Winner in 2023 Global Book Awards competition Dark Matter: A fast-paced psychological thriller and emotional roller-coaster Personal tragedy gives D.S. Ross the daunting prospect of caring for his twelve-year-old autistic nephew, something he is ill-equipped to handle. As he learns and adapts, the killing doesn’t stop. Racked by grief and loneliness, enraged by those he believes responsible for the death of his wife, one man thirsts for revenge. The Press labels him the BBQ Killer. After being rejected and humiliated, another Killer hides in plain sight, cloaked in kindness and compassion...

Months after discovering the mastermind behind her own kidnapping, Detective Jude Fontaine is dealing with the past the only way she knows how: by returning to every dark corner of it. But it’s a new, escalating series of mass slayings that has become her latest obsession at Homicide. At first, Jude and her partner, Detective Uriah Ashby, can see no pattern to the seemingly random methods, the crime scenes, or the victims - until they’re approached by a brilliantly compulsive math professor.

For three years Investigator Cassie Dewell has been on a hunt for a serial killer known as the Lizard King whose hunting grounds are the highways and truck stops where runaways and prostitutes are most likely to vanish. Cassie almost caught him...once. Working for the Bakken County, North Dakota, sheriff's department, Cassie has set what she believes is the perfect trap, and she has lured him and his truck to a depot. But the plan goes horribly wrong, and the blame falls on Cassie.

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.

Lifelong New Yorker Ronnie Khan never thought she’d leave Queens. She’s not an “aim high, dream big” person - until she meets socialite wellness guru Marley Dewhurst. Marley isn’t just a visionary; she’s a revelation. Seduced by the fever dream of finding her best self, Ronnie makes for the desert mountains of Sedona, Arizona. Healing yoga, transcendent hikes, epic juice cleanses...Ronnie consumes her new bougie existence like a fine wine. But is it, really? Or is this whole self-care business a little sour?

When the home of Alex Cross' oldest friend, Ellie Cox, is turned into the worst murder scene Alex has ever seen, the destruction leads him to believe that he's chasing a horrible new breed of killer. As Alex and his girlfriend, Brianna Stone, become entangled in the deadly Nigerian underworld of Washington DC, what they discover is shocking: a stunningly organized gang of lethal teenagers headed by a powerful, diabolical man - the African warlord known as the Tiger.

Weeks before NYPD Detective Michael Bennett is to marry his longtime love, Mary Catherine, an assassin announces his presence in the city with a string of grisly murders. Each victim is a young woman. And each has been killed in a manner as precise as it was gruesome. Tasked with working alongside the FBI, Bennett and his gung-ho new partner uncover multiple cold-case homicides across the country that fit the same distinctive pattern—proving the perpetrator they seek is as experienced at ending lives as he is at evading detection.

Paris, France: a city of fashion, chocolate croissants, and cute boys. Colette Iselin is thrilled be there for the first time, on her spring break class trip. But a series of gruesome murders are taking place around the city, putting everyone on edge. And as she tours the sights, Colette keeps seeing a strange vision: a pale woman in a ball gown and powdered wig, who looks like Marie Antoinette. Colette knows her status-obsessed friends won't believe her, so she seeks out the help of a charming French boy.

Deadly. Ruthless. Eighteen. Bent on murder. Despite not being old enough to drive, Rose was easily the most skilled assassin in Eva Santella’s Italian boot camp. But then Rose decided to leave that life behind and spent her teen years playing soccer and chess and lying on the beach in Barcelona. The Sultan took all that away. When he killed her boyfriend on the night she turned 18, Rose made a vow that either she would kill The Sultan or die trying. At that moment, she knew despite her best efforts to live a normal life, she was destined to be a killer. Now, after years of hunting The ...

At the age of 12, Eve Black was the only member of her family to survive an encounter with serial attacker the Nothing Man. Now an adult, she is obsessed with identifying the man who destroyed her life. Supermarket security guard Jim Doyle has just started reading The Nothing Man - the true-crime memoir Eve has written about her efforts to track down her family’s killer. As he turns each page, his rage grows. Because Jim’s not just interested in reading about the Nothing Man. He is the Nothing Man.

Czechoslovakia, 1935: Viktor Kosárek, a newly trained psychiatrist who studied under Carl Jung, arrives at the infamous Hrad Orlu Asylum for the Criminally Insane. The facility is located in a medieval mountaintop castle surrounded by forests, on a site that is well known for concealing dark secrets going back many centuries. The asylum houses six inmates - the country's most treacherous killers - known to the terrified public as the Devil's Six. Viktor intends to use a new medical technique to prove that these patients share a common archetype of evil, a phenomenon he calls The Devil Aspect.

Madison hesitates before hitching her pink tulle prom dress and running as fast as she can into the wilderness. The ripped edge of her skirt snags on a tree root and she falls to the forest floor. As she catches her breath, she hears the unmistakable sound of heavy boots closing in on her. He knows where she is…

Saffy Huntley-Oliver is an intelligent and glamorous socialite; she also happens to be a proficient serial killer. For the past fifteen years, she’s hunted down and dispatched rapists, murderers, domestic abusers—bad men all. But leading a double life has left her lonely—dating’s tough when your boyfriend might turn out to be your next victim. Saffy thinks she’s finally found a truly good man in Jonathan Desrosiers, a true-crime podcaster who’s amassed legions of diehard fans for cracking cold cases and bringing justice to victims.

Suzanne's life changes forever the day she receives a visit from Rose Anderson, the woman who has been living with her estranged father, Don. Don is dead, but Rose wants Suzanne to have his possessions - including a series of intimate diaries and a mysterious collection of photographs of women. To Suzanne's shock, one of the photos is of her friend, Sophie, who died 10 years ago in an unexplained and devastating fire. But Don met Sophie only once, during an unsettling visit he paid Suzanne just days before Sophie's death.... So why did he have a picture of her?

Oslo in November. The first snow of the season has fallen. A boy named Jonas wakes in the night to find his mother gone. Out his window, in the cold moonlight, he sees the snowman that inexplicably appeared in the yard earlier in the day. Around its neck is his mother’s pink scarf. Hole suspects a link between a menacing letter he’s received and the disappearance of Jonas’s mother - and of perhaps a dozen other women, all of whom went missing on the day of a first snowfall. As his investigation deepens, something else emerges: he is becoming a pawn....

When the skeleton of a young girl, not yet a teenager, is discovered in Acadia, Canada, Tempe Brennan is reminded of Evangelina, her best friend in her preteen years, who was mysteriously taken away when she was 12. Evangelina was from strange and faraway Acadia. She was named after Evangeline in the Longfellow poem, and loved poetry. Tempe found her exotic and glamorous, and then suddenly she was gone, and Tempe was told not to try to find her, that she was "dangerous".

Just your average father-son story. But with abduction, torture, and murder. Out of nowhere, a retired 60-year old handyman goes on a murder-spree, abducting healthy young people and torturing them with hand-tools. After he's caught, a media fascination in The Handyman swells. People want to know why he snapped. They want to hear all the grisly details. But he'll only tell his gruesome story to one person - his estranged son.