Serial Killer Mystery Fiction

It’s hiking season in Black Rock Falls, and the small town in Montana is flooded with visitors. But when a hiker finds a human skull on a deserted trail in the woods that surround the town, Detective Jenna Alton is called in to investigate. With no missing persons reported, Jenna has no leads. Then her team makes a shocking discovery - the body of another hiker, a young man, tied to a tree and riddled with bullets. Could the two murders be linked? As more bodies are found, Jenna and her deputy David Kane know that they must venture deep into the forest to find and face the killer.

Growing up in a beautiful house in the English countryside, Katie Shaw lived a charmed life. At the cusp of graduation, she had big dreams, a devoted boyfriend, and a little brother she protected fiercely. Until the day a violent stranger changed the fate of her family forever. Years later, still unable to live down the guilt surrounding what happened to her brother, Chris, and now with a child of her own to protect, Katie struggles to separate the real threats from the imagined. Then she gets the phone call: Chris has gone missing and needs his big sister once more.

A decorated police officer is found dead in a farmer's field, covered in what appear to be wasp stings. Except it's almost Thanksgiving in New York, and three inches of snow cover the ground. Days later, a prominent businessman with a fear of heights leaps from Harmon's tallest skyscraper. Are the deaths related?

Returning to the Broads after nearly two years at sea, John Tanner moors up next to a boat to find the body of a man whose five-year-old daughter is nowhere to be seen. As a torrent of unwanted memories begins flooding through his mind, an attractive Broads Ranger arrives at the scene with a disturbing tale; one of children being taken by a ghostly figure, standing at the helm of an old wooden boat.

Spring is beginning to brighten Sorenson, Wisconsin, for Mattie and Steve Hurley and their family. While their son Matthew may be in his terrible twos and Steve's daughter Emily a moody teenager, the kids bring light to their lives when their work is dark by its nature - Steve is a homicide detective and Mattie is a medicolegal death investigator, a.k.a. medical examiner. They deal in corpses. The latest corpse, a Jane Doe, was clearly an addict, but drugs didn't kill her, at least not directly. She's been stabbed multiple times in a pattern that is disturbingly familiar to Mattie.

In 1993, Marie Gesto disappeared after walking out of a supermarket in Hollywood. Harry Bosch worked the case but couldn't crack it, and the 22-year-old woman never turned up, dead or alive. Now Bosch is in the Open-Unsolved Unit, where he still keeps the Gesto file on his desk, when he gets a call from the DA. A man accused of two heinous killings is willing to come clean about other murders, including the killing of Marie Gesto.

Olivia finds a dead woman in her car, dressed to look like her, but the body vanishes before anyone else sees it. Olivia's convinced it's another omen, a sign of impending danger. But then she learns that a troubled young woman went missing just days ago - the same woman Olivia found dead in her car. Someone has gone to great lengths to kill and leave this young woman as a warning. But why? And what role has her new home played in this disturbing murder?

A sensitive orphan, Jane Steele suffers first at the hands of her spiteful aunt and predatory cousin, then at a grim school where she fights for her very life until escaping to London, leaving the corpses of her tormentors behind her. After years of hiding from the law while penning macabre "last confessions" of the recently hanged, Jane thrills at discovering an advertisement. Her aunt has died, and her childhood home has a new master: Mr. Charles Thornfield, who seeks a governess.

In Police - the last novel featuring Jo Nesbø's hard-bitten, maverick Oslo detective - a killer wreaking revenge on the police had Harry Hole fighting for the safety of the people closest to him. Now, in The Thirst, the story continues as Harry is inextricably drawn back into the Oslo police force. A serial murderer has begun targeting Tinder daters - a murderer whose MO reignites Harry's hunt for a nemesis of his past.

'Jesus Christ. I found one.' These words are blurted over the phone to Constable Snowy Lane, who is preoccupied with no more than a ham sandwich and getting a game with the East Fremantle league side on Saturday. They signal the beginning of a series of events that are to shake Perth to its foundations. It is 1979, and Perth is jumping with pub bands and overnight millionaires. 'Mr Gruesome' has just taken another victim. Snowy's life and career are to be forever changed by the grim deeds of a serial killer and the dark bloom spreading across the City of Light.

DS Kat Ballantyne is still reeling from a revelation that turned life as she knew it upside down. But when a dog walker discovers the body of a woman among the standing stones known locally as the Three Sisters, there’s no time to focus on her own troubles. Kat is drawn back to work to investigate. At first, the death appears to be an accident. But then Kat discovers an infinity symbol branded onto the dead woman’s abdomen.

A beautiful but deadly serial killer is on the loose, dishing out gruesome and lethal punishment to men who reject her … When Rose arrives in Florida to meet her new love, she is stood up at the airport, but chalks it up to a misunderstanding. She soon learns there is more to her boyfriend’s disappearance than him going on a wild drinking bender. After a frustrating and ultimately fruitless search, Rose realizes he is being held against his will. Rose must risk everything to unravel the woman’s deadly plot before she once again loses the man she loves to a killer. Blood & Bone is the ...

Forensic anthropologist Christine Prusik has a knack for solving the most unusual cases—and for bending the rules in the process. When the bodies of young women start appearing in the caves of Indiana and Illinois, Christine immediately jumps into action. But her Chicago field office is undergoing a reorganization, and the boys’ club at the top seem more interested in getting all the paperwork in order than solving the murders.

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.

Addison has it all: beauty, money, youth. She’s set to inherit the bulk of her father’s wealth, and takeover running his companies. But someone wants her dead. How far would you go to survive? Beaten, shot, and running from the men who want her dead, she escapes, but when a man living in the remote wilderness finds her unconscious, broken and bleeding, will he be friend or foe? *** Johnny was sent to prison because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but now he’s out and he doesn’t want to play nursemaid to a stubborn, obstinate, sexy as hell female. He went off the grid to...

When you search for the missing, there’s no telling what you’ll find. PI Jessie Cole learned that painful truth firsthand when her sister disappeared. Now a new case will test Jessie and Ben once again. Owen Shepard, the public face of one of the country’s biggest health insurance companies, has become the target of a vengeful father. The man blames Shepard for his child’s death and plans to make the CEO know what it’s like to live with a broken heart - and watch others die.

After continuous complaints that a poaching ring is running rampant in Northeastern Washington, Fish and Wildlife police officer Luke McCain is assigned to go undercover to infiltrate the gang. Just as Luke and his fellow officers move to finally catch the poachers red-handed, one of the crooks flees into the mountains and Luke has to hunt him down. Days later, a serial killer suspected of killing dozens of women around the Northwest escapes from custody when a Department of Corrections van crashes in the rugged North Cascades.

On the fourth floor of Chaucer House, two teenagers are found chained to a radiator. The boy is dead but the girl is alive. For Detective Kim Stone every detail of the scene mirrors her own terrifying experience with her brother Mikey, when they lived in the same tower block 30 years ago. When the bodies of a middle-aged couple are discovered in a burnt-out car, Kim can’t ignore the chilling similarity to the deaths of Erica and Keith - the only loving parents Kim had ever known.

It takes an obsessive mind to know one. And Daniel Clark knows the elusive killer he's been stalking. He's devoted every waking minute as a profiler to find the serial killer known only as Eve. He's pored over the crime scenes of 16 young women who died mysterious deaths, all in underground basements or caverns. He's delved into the killer's head and puzzled over the twisted religious overtones of the killings. What Daniel can't possibly know is that he will be Eve's next victim. He will be the killer's first Adam.

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...