Serial Killer Thrillers Fiction

Beth and Tom Hardcastle are the envy of their neighbourhood—they have the perfect marriage, the perfect house, the perfect family. When the police knock on their door one evening, Beth panics. Tom should be back from work by now—what if he’s crashed his car? She fears the worst. But the worst is beyond imagining. As the interrogation begins, Beth will find herself questioning everything she believed about her husband.

On the day she returns to active duty with the Serial Crimes Unit, Detective Inspector Anjelica Henley is called to a crime scene. Dismembered body parts from two victims have been found by the river. The modus operandi bears a striking resemblance to Peter Olivier, the notorious Jigsaw Killer, who has spent the past two years behind bars. When he learns that someone is co-opting his grisly signature - the arrangement of victims’ limbs in puzzle-piece shapes - he decides to take matters into his own hands.

Josh Baxter, the man behind the wheel, is a virtual stranger to Charlie. They met at the campus ride board, each looking to share the long drive home to Ohio. Both have good reasons for wanting to get away. For Charlie, it’s guilt and grief over the shocking murder of her best friend, who became the third victim of the man known as the Campus Killer. For Josh, it’s to help care for his sick father - or so he says.

Mayhem. You won't find this story on television. Hollywood gets more than it bargained for when television's hottest star arrives at the Miami Police Department and develops an intense, professional interest in a camera-shy blood spatter analyst named Dexter Morgan. Mega-star Robert Chase is famous for losing himself in his characters. When he and a group of actors descend on the Miami Police Department for "research", Chase becomes fixated on Dexter Morgan, the blood spatter analyst with a sweet tooth for doughnuts and a seemingly average life.

The Chicago PD is on high alert when two city aldermen are found dead: one by apparent suicide, one brutally stabbed in his office, and both with thirty dimes left on their bodies—a betrayer’s payment. With no other clues, the question is, Who else has a debt to pay? Detective Harriet Foster is on the case before the killer can strike again. But even with the help of her partner, Detective Vera Li, and the rest of their team, Harriet has little to go on and a lot at risk. There’s no telling who the killer’s next target is or how many will come next.

Twenty miles across the North Dakota border, where the scenery goes from rolling grass prairie to pipeline fields, detective Cassie Dewell has been assigned as the new deputy sheriff of Grimstad - a place people used to be from but were never headed to. Grimstad is now the oil capital of North Dakota. With oil comes money, with money comes drugs, and with drugs come the dirtiest criminals hustling to corner the market.

When eight-year-old Kathy Stone turns up on the side of the road a year after her abduction, the world awaits her harrowing story. But Kathy doesn’t say a word. Traumatized by her ordeal, she doesn’t speak at all, not even to her own parents. Child therapist Robin Hart is the only one who’s had success connecting with the girl. Robin has been using play therapy to help Kathy process her memories. But as their work continues, Kathy’s playtime takes a grim turn: a doll stabs another doll, a tiny figurine is chained to a plastic toy couch.

Writer Karen Walker knows more than most about murderers. Her first love went on to become The Bagman, a notorious serial killer now locked away for life in a maximum-security prison. Karen has spent her life running from the weight of having loved him, defended him and, ultimately, leading the police to his door. But now, ten years later, just as she’s about to publish her account of his crimes, a young woman is abducted in horribly familiar circumstances.

Hours later, the man’s cold body lies in the city mortuary, alongside the woman he couldn’t save. And his sister, unconventional nurse Gemma Tate, tracks down troubled police inspector Sebastian Bell to unravel the truth. Sebastian has enough pressure to solve the murder of an aristocratic heiress without Gemma meddling in his case. But the cryptic sentences she brings him from her brother’s notebook could be a crucial lead. If only they knew what “milky way” meant.

On her sixtieth birthday, a woman commits suicide. When the case lands on Detective Carl Mørck’s desk, he can’t imagine what this has to do with Department Q, Copenhagen’s cold cases division since the cause of death seems to be clear. But his superior, Marcus Jacobsen, is convinced that this is not in fact a suicide, but a murder related to an unsolved case that has been plaguing him since 1988.

Missing persons expert and nomadic loner Frankie Elkin travels the country searching for the lost ones the rest of the world has forgotten. Her specialty, cold cases that typically end in tragedy. But this one could be different. Kaylee Pierson, “The Beautiful Butcher,” confessed from the start to enticing 18 men home before slitting their throats.

Returning home from a trip to Paris, Boston medical examiner Maura Isles confronts a nightmarish scene. Police cruisers line her street and slumped in a car at the end of Maura's driveway is a dead woman, her head bloodied by a gunshot wound. Cops and neighbors gape at her as she approaches. Only when Maura looks at the victim does she understand why everyone is so shocked by her arrival. The dead woman looks exactly like Maura.

Back in her natural habitat, Dr Nell Ward heads to a woodland pond to survey local newt populations. She's shocked to discover a car submerged in the water - with the driver dead behind the wheel. Nell recognises the dead man as professional racing driver, and tabloid love rat, Jack Rafferty, whose performance on (and off) Finchmere's racetrack had earned him enemies. Suspecting this isn't the tragic accident it appears DI James Clark calls upon Nell and her ecological skills to help find the murderer.

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?

Fourteen years ago, Kaitlin Roe was the lone witness to the abduction of her cousin Gina. She still remembers that lonely Virginia road. She can still see the masked stranger and hear Gina’s screams. And she still suffers the guilt of running away in fear and resents being interrogated as a suspect in the immediate aftermath. Now Kaitlin has only one way to assuage the pain and nightmares—by interviewing everyone associated with the unsolved crime for a podcast that could finally bring closure to a case gone cold.

A calculating killer who calls himself The Teacher is taking on New York City, killing the powerful and the arrogant. His message is clear: remember your manners or suffer the consequences! For some, it seems that the rich are finally getting what they deserve. For New York's elite, it is a call to terror.

Only one man can tackle such a high-profile case: Detective Mike Bennett. The pressure is enough for anyone, but Mike also has to care for his ten children-all of whom have come down with virulent flu at once!

Discovering a secret pattern in The Teacher's lessons, Detective Bennett realizes he has just hours to save New York from the greatest disaster in its history.

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.

Four-year-old Ellen is snatched by a stranger in the dead of night. Her devastated mother, Nicole, receives four identical phials and a threatening note in a familiar scrawl that chills her to the bone. But she always knew this would happen. She’s been expecting it for years. According to the note, one of the phials is poisoned. Nicole is given a deadly challenge: If she drinks one, the sadistic kidnapper will notify the police of Ellen’s location. The sender claims to be Luka Volkov, but Luka is supposed to be dead, killed long ago in a fire that haunts all those involved.

Struggling with her demons, Darcy moves her family to Genoa Cove. With the sadistic killer she captured serving a life sentence, she hopes a peaceful life along the ocean will end her nightmares. Then a body surfaces along the coast. And the evidence points to one man: the killer Darcy put behind bars three years ago. Either Darcy caught the wrong man, or an apprentice serial killer stalks paradise. Then the murderer takes another life, and the nightmare of three years ago rushes forth to claim Darcy.

Dexter is arrested on charges of murder. He has lost everything - including his wife, his kids, and the loyalty of his sister. Now completely alone, Dexter faces a murder charge (for a crime, ironically, he did not actually commit). His only chance for freedom lies with his brother, Brian, who has a dark plan to prove Dexter's innocence. But the stakes are deadly, and the epic showdown that lies in Dexter's path may lead, once and for all, to his demise.