Serial Killer Mystery Fiction

Just when Alex Cross thought his life was calming down into a routine of patients and therapy sessions, he finds himself back in the game - this time to catch a criminal mastermind like no other. A spate of elaborate murders in Washington, D.C., have the whole East Coast on edge. They are like nothing Alex Cross and his new girlfriend, Detective Brianna Stone, have ever seen.

DS Kat Ballantyne came to the crime-writing festival for an escape. Instead she’s walked straight into a murder scene. Moments before he’s due on stage, a famous novelist is found dead in a locked room. It looks like natural causes, but Kat sees tiny clues that suggest murder. As she investigates, she uncovers literary rivalries, personal vendettas and hidden agendas. Is there anyone who didn’t have a motive to murder Mark Swift?

FBI special agent Zoe Spencer uses skeletal remains to recreate the faces of murder victims through sculpture. Though highly scientific, the process is also sensitive and intimate; she becomes attached to the individuals she identifies, desperate to find justice for each. As Zoe examines old remains, she sees a teenage girl looking back at her - the victim in a cold case from over a decade ago.

Getting in his car was a mistake. But as the frigid air whipped through her thin coat, she felt too cold to say no. Now, snowflakes settle on her long dark lashes. Ice-cold and forever fifteen years old, she’ll never see her mother’s smile again… As the biggest snowstorm the Outer Banks has seen in decades ravages the coastline, Detective Casey White is called to an abandoned junk yard miles beyond the marshes. Teenager Jill Carter’s body is posed on her back, a look of terror frozen on her beautiful face.

Sue Grafton's X: Perhaps her darkest and most chilling novel, it features a remorseless serial killer who leaves no trace of his crimes. Once again breaking the rules and establishing new paths, Grafton wastes little time identifying this sociopath. The test is whether Kinsey can prove her case against him before she becomes his next victim.

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.

By day, Maeve Fly works at the happiest place in the world as every child’s favorite ice princess. By the neon night glow of the Sunset Strip, Maeve haunts the dive bars with a drink in one hand and a book in the other, imitating her misanthropic literary heroes. But when Gideon Green—her best friend’s brother—moves to town, he awakens something dangerous within her, and the world she knows suddenly shifts beneath her feet. Untethered, Maeve ditches her discontented act and tries on a new persona.

Detective Alex Cross and Bree's wedding plans are put on hold when Alex is called to the scene of the perfectly executed assassination of two of Washington D.C.'s most corrupt: a dirty congressmen and a scheming lobbyist. Next, the elusive marksman begins picking off other crooked politicians, sparking a blaze of theories - is the marksman a hero or a vigilante? The case explodes and FBI agent Max Siegel battles Alex for jurisdiction.

Rainey Paxton never gave up on finding her friend Winnie after she was abducted by a serial killer. But the person Rainey knew wasn't the one she found. The woman Rainey loves has changed, and this new version is disturbing. Dakota Jagger finds that being free doesn't mean she has freedom. She longs for love and acceptance, pulling Winnie along with her to the life they dreamed of while in captivity. But Henry Thomas Bishop, the barbaric serial killer they escaped, is still out there. He is stalking the two women... waiting to collect his property.

Chicago, 1923: Ten-year-old Dani Flanagan returns home to find police swarming the house, her parents dead. Michael Malone, the young patrolman assigned to the case, discovers there’s more to the situation—and to Dani Flanagan herself—than the authorities care to explore. Malone is told to shut his mouth, and Dani is sent away to live with her spinster aunts in Cleveland.

Everyone thinks Emmy Dockery is crazy. Obsessed with finding the link between hundreds of unsolved cases, Emmy has taken leave from her job as an FBI researcher. Now all she has are the newspaper clippings that wallpaper her bedroom, and her recurring nightmares of an all-consuming fire. Not even Emmy's ex-boyfriend, field agent Harrison "Books" Bookman, will believe her that hundreds of kidnappings, rapes, and murders are all connected.

Portrait of the Medical Student as a Young Body Snatcher. Yet I must insist that in the end, this is not a story about Death. It is perhaps a Life story, or even—yes—a Love story. It is the story of how I clawed my way from the decay of a crumbling legacy into the modern era of Reason and Science. It is the story of how I escaped the prison of archaic superstition to the freedom of enlightenment. It is the story of how a rose can blossom from even the bloodiest soil, of how light can grow from shadow, how love can grow from despair.

As bogus corruption charges loom over her, DS Kat Ballantyne finds herself deskbound and stuck with cold cases. Her hated boss, DI Carver, has given her just one week to explain how £50,000 found its way into her bank account. If she can’t, she’ll be lucky to have a desk at all. Then a close friend calls her from a murder scene, claiming to have strangled a local gangster’s wife. Kat has no choice but to disobey orders and investigate. Despite overwhelming forensic evidence supporting her friend’s confession, something still doesn’t add up…

Baltimore city Homicide Detective JD Fitzpatrick has seen a lot of horrific violence, both as a cop and during his deployment in Afghanistan, but nothing like the trail of tortured bodies that are turning up throughout the city. He’s up against a brutal killer with a very personal vendetta. And now JD is beginning to suspect that his medical examiner may be shielding some crucial evidence linked to the case.

To serial slayer Andrew Compton, murder is an art, the most intimate art. After feigning his own death to escape from prison, Compton makes his way to the United States with the sole ambition of bringing his “art” to new heights. Tortured by his own perverse desires, and drawn to possess and destroy young boys, Compton inadvertently joins forces with Jay Byrne, a dissolute playboy who has pushed his “art” to limits even Compton hadn’t previously imagined.

Five years ago Elizabeth Piccioni's husband was arrested for being a serial killer. Her life suddenly turned upside down, she did what she thought was best for her newborn baby: she took her son and ran away to start a new life. Now, living in a quiet part of the Midwest with a new identity, Elizabeth is ready to start over. But one day she receives a phone call from a person calling himself Cain. Cain somehow knows about her past life. He has abducted her son, and if Elizabeth wants to save him she must retrieve her husband's trophies - the fingers he cut off each of his victims.

During a routine patrol along the Yakima River, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife officer Luke McCain encounters a terrified young woman fleeing a man she believes killed two people in a homeless camp in Seattle. Her story convinces Luke to contact his wife, FBI Special Agent Sara McCain, who goes to work with Seattle Police to identify and locate the killer before he finds the woman and makes the potential witness his next victim. Meanwhile, Luke uncovers a group illegally excavating prehistoric mammoth bones on state land.

The peaceful little village of Saltern-le-Fen is buzzing with excitement. A film crew are in town, shooting a new TV police drama, Fen Division Five. But Detective Jackman receives a disturbing tip-off that something is wrong. Detective Marie Evans meanwhile is looking forward to moving into her dream home. But there’s no time to celebrate. The naked body of a young man is found at the river’s edge. He’s been strangled, his skin massaged in expensive oil. Two days later, another handsome young man is discovered in a shallow lake.

When a young red-haired woman is found brutally murdered in downtown Chicago, one detail stands out: the red lipstick encircling her wrists and ankles. Detective Harriet Foster is on the case, even though she’s still grieving the sudden death of her partner. As a Black woman in a male-dominated department, Foster anticipates a rocky road ahead acclimating to a new team—and building trust with her new partner isn’t coming easily. After another victim turns up with the same lipstick markings, Foster suspects she’s looking for a serial killer.

Melissa Sanderson is the perfect wife and mother. She dotes on her daughter and lives in her dream home in a quiet cul-de-sac in the suburbs. But looks can be deceiving. Something is amiss in that house - all the neighbors think so. Some say Melissa is having an affair. Others say she’s been drinking too much. Then one night, sirens wake up the whole neighborhood. Melissa Sanderson is dead.