Forensic Mystery Fiction

The case is a macabre, ritualistic murder—a teen-aged boy from a wealthy family whose body was found without a drop of blood left in it. But the murder is just the start. A high-ranking executive and daughter of one of the richest men in Spain is kidnapped, a crime which is tied to the previous murder. Behind them both is a hidden mastermind with even more sinister plans. And the only person with a chance to see the connections, solve the crimes and successfully match wits with the killer before tragedy strikes again...is Antonia Scott.

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.

There are 206 bones in the human body. Forensic anthropologists know them intimately, can read in them stories of brief or long lives and use them to reconstruct every kind of violent end. 206 Bones opens with Tempe regaining consciousness and discovering that she is in some kind of very small, very dark, very cold enclosed space. She is bound, hands to feet. Who wants Tempe dead, or at least out of the way, and why? Tempe begins slowly to reconstruct...

Eve Duncan is the most sought-after artist in the field of forensic sculpting. Dedicated to her work ever since her daughter, Bonnie, was taken and killed at the age of seven, Eve feels a sense of duty to those whose lives were lost and whose bones are now in her hands.

Kadence, a new type of implanted defibrillator, misfires in a patient visiting University Hospital for a routine medical procedure causing the heart rhythm problem it's meant to correct. Dr. Kate Downey, an experienced anesthesiologist, resuscitates the patient but she grows concerned for a loved one who recently received the same device—her beloved great aunt Irm.

Ten years ago as an undergrad, Joan Mason escaped an arsonist’s fire. Shaken, she fled the small collegiate Montana town, leaving behind friends and not looking back. Now a Philadelphia homicide detective, Joan’s trying to put her traumas to rest. It’s not easy. Elijah Weston, the classmate who torched her house, is out of prison and returning to Missoula. Gut instinct tells Joan he’ll strike again. To stop him, she must return to the past as well. To face not only the man she fears but Detective Gideon Bailey, too. The man she loved and left behind.

Winter has come to North Carolina and, with it, a drop in crime. Freed from a heavy work schedule, Tempe Brennan is content to dote on her daughter Katy, finally returned to civilian life from the army. But when mother and daughter meet at Tempe’s place one night, they find a box on the back porch. Inside: a very fresh human eyeball.

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.

"Been a while since I had me a nice little whodunit," homicide detective Milo Sturgis tells Alex Delaware. But there's definitely nothing nice about the brutal tableau behind the yellow crime-scene tape. On a lonely lover's lane in the hills of Los Angeles, a young couple lies murdered in a car. Each bears a single gunshot wound to the head.

Dr. Brian Holbrook - former football star and disgraced chief of cardiology - is given the chance of a lifetime when he gets a call from the prestigious Boston Heart Institute. They need him to join an elite team testing the new miracle drug Vasclear. With his father suffering from a dangerous heart condition, Holbrook seizes the opportunity to save his reputation, and also his father's life. However, when patients start dying mysteriously, and colleagues begin to disappear, it's up to Holbrook to find the truth before it's too late.

Antonia Scott has an unusually gifted forensic mind, whose ability to reconstruct crimes and solve baffling murders is legendary. She’s the lynchpin of a top-secret project, Red Queen, created to work across borders and behind the scenes to solve the most devious and dangerous crimes, those that are beyond the skills of the regular police forces. But the Red Queen project is under attack on all fronts. Across Europe, its agents are murdering each other and cases from the past, long believed resolved, are rearing their deadly heads again.

For high-powered personal injury attorney Noah Byron, the good things in life come with a price tag - cars, houses, women. That's why he represents only cases that come with the possibility of a nice cut of the action. But as a favor to his ex-wife, he meets with the mother of twelve-year-old Joel, a boy poisoned by tainted children's medicine. While the official story is that a psycho tampered with bottles, the boy's mother believes something much more sinister is at work...and the trail leads right back to the pharmaceutical company.

Dr. Toby Harper works the night shift in an emergency room. She spends her daytime hours alone with her mother who suffers from Alzheimer's disease. When elderly Alzheimer's patients from the same retirement home start dying mysteriously, Toby is the only one suspicious enough to investigate. As a result she finds herself, her mother, and her own sanity at risk.

When Dr. Samantha Owens' homicide detective friend, Darren Fletcher, invites her to look over the evidence of a routine police investigation, she jumps at the chance and immediately realizes the crime scene has been staged. What seems to be a clear case of murder/suicide - a crime of passion - is anything but....

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.

A MYSTERY AT SEA plunges forensic geologists Cassie Oldfield and Walter Shaws into deadly waters. When a boat is found deserted off the California coast, it looks to be a simple fishing accident. But there is nothing ordinary going on here. The geologists track the strange incident to an even stranger project. Someone with toxic skills is at work in this sea.

Six children have escaped government experiments, and a frightening brush with death. Living out in the world for the first time, they yearn to be reunited with Kit and Frannie, the couple who saved their lives, and to return to the cabin known as the Lake House. But before they can get there, they will face a horrifying evil, for one man has survived the laboratory that bred the flying children, and he is obsessed with reclaiming them for a new round of experiments - with an even more deadly outcome.

It all begins with a painting called Guilt. Eve Duncan’s daughter, Jane, has no idea why she painted the portrait of the chilling face that now hangs in a Paris gallery. But the members of a cult that dates back to the time of Christ know both the face and the significance behind it. They believe that Jane must die – when the moment is right, and not an instant before she leads them to an ancient treasure whose value and power are beyond price.

In the tightly knit world of Boston medicine, the Randall family reigns supreme. When heart surgeon J. D. Randall’s teenage daughter dies during a botched abortion, the medical community threatens to explode. Was it malpractice? A violation of the Hippocratic Oath? Or was Karen Randall murdered in cold blood? The natural suspect is Arthur Lee, a brilliant surgeon and known abortionist, who has been carrying out the illegal procedure with the help of pathologist John Berry.

Former "It Girl" Janie Jenkins is acerbic, whip smart, and fresh out of prison. Ten years ago, at the height of her glamour and fame, she was incarcerated for the murder of her mother, a philanthropist best known for her string of rich husbands. Now, released on a technicality, Janie chops off her trademark hair, determined to chase down the one lead she has about her mother's killer. The only problem? Janie doesn't know if she's the one she's looking for.