Forensic Mystery Fiction

A tipsy young woman seeking aid on a desolate highway disappears into the inky black night. A retired schoolteacher is stabbed to death in broad daylight. Two women are butchered after closing time in a small-town beauty parlor. The ultimate whodunits, these crimes demand the attention of LAPD detective Milo Sturgis and his collaborator on the crime beat, psychologist Alex Delaware.

DEATH VALLEY EARNS ITS NAME when a terrorist threatens to unleash lethal radioactive toxins in America's most fragile national park. Forensic geologists Cassie Oldfield and Walter Shaws embark upon a perilous mission to find and stop the terrorist. Mineral clues lead them deep into the desert, and the canyons, pushing them to their limits. The summer heat is brutal. The material they seek is hotter than the desert in August, and they are each vulnerable to its effects.

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.

After a nationwide manhunt for notorious felon Carl Deere left two women hospitalised in a critical condition, clinical psychiatrist and criminal profiler Doctor Alexander Gregory is left heartbroken. Both are special to him: one is his new friend, Detective Chief Inspector Ava Hope, and the other is the woman he loves, Doctor Naomi Palmer. However, there’s something he doesn’t know…

En route to Isle of Palms, a barrier island off the South Carolina coast, forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan receives a call from the Charleston coroner. During the storm, a medical waste container has washed up on the beach. Inside are two decomposed bodies wrapped in plastic sheeting and bound with electrical wire. Chillingly, Tempe recognizes many details as identical to those of an unsolved case she handled in Quebec 15 earlier.

Morton Farrier was no longer at the top of his game. His forensic genealogy career was faltering and he was refusing to accept any new cases, preferring instead to concentrate on locating his own elusive biological father. Yet, when a particular case presents itself, that of finding the family of a woman abandoned in the midst of the Battle of Britain, Morton is compelled to help her to unravel her past.

Morton Farrier’s life has been turned upside down by the recent addition to his household. Despite his perpetual exhaustion, he is determined to crack his latest genealogical investigation: the mystery of one Grace Emmerson, a militant suffragette. Salso happens to be his wife’s great-grandmother. Using a range of genealogical skills and resources, Morton sets out to discover Grace’s secret past.

Boston homicide detective Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles are plagued by what seems like a completely senseless murder. Sofia Suarez, a widow and nurse who was universally liked by all her neighbors, lies bludgeoned to death in her own home. But anything can happen behind closed doors, and Sofia seemed to have plenty of secrets in her last days, making covert phone calls to old contacts and traceless burner phones. When Jane finally makes a connection between Sofia and the victim of a hit-and-run months earlier, the case only grows more blurry.

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's been 10 years since Dr. Bill Brockton created the Body Farm - the world's first postmortem research facility dedicated to advancing the frontiers of forensic science - and the researcher is at the pinnacle of his career. Under his leadership, the University of Tennessee's forensic anthropology program has become the most prominent in the world, and Brockton's skills and knowledge are in high demand among top law enforcement.

In the near-future United States, where advanced technology can create eggs or sperm from any person’s cells, celebrities face the alarming potential of meeting biological children they never conceived. Famous singer Trace Thorne is tired of being targeted by the Vault, a black market site devoted to stealing DNA. Sick of paying ransom money for his own cell matter, he hires bio-security guard Ember Ryan to ensure his biological safety.

When Morton Farrier is presented with a case revolving around a mysterious letter written by disreputable criminal Ann Fothergill in 1827, he quickly finds himself delving into a shadowy Georgian underworld of smuggling and murder on the Kent and Sussex border. Morton must use his skills as a forensic genealogist to untangle Ann’s association with the notorious Aldington Gang and also with the brutal killing of Quartermaster Richard Morgan.

Deep in the steaming jungles of Paraguay, Aimee Weir is in trouble. The petrobiologist has found what she was looking for - a unique microorganism in a natural gas deposit - but it proves to be more destructive than anyone could have imagined. A contagion is striking down all in its wake. The camp is quarantined, but workers start to vanish in the night. Is it fear of contamination - or has something far more lethal come to the surface? Something that has been trapped beneath the miles of stone, waiting... for us.

Master Sergeant Reed Beckham has led his Delta Force Team, codenamed Ghost, through every kind of hell imaginable and never lost a man. When a top-secret Medical Corps research facility goes dark, Team Ghost is called in to face their deadliest enemy yet - a variant strain of Ebola that turns men into monsters.

Eleven years ago, the Co-ed Slayer murdered nine female students on the Oregon State University campus. Lacey Campbell barely escaped his attack, but lost her best friend whose remains were never found. As the sole surviving victim, Lacey helped send the sadistic serial killer to prison for life. Now a forensic odontologist examining teeth and bones for the state Medical Examiner, Lacey is devastated when she arrives at a crime scene and identifies the skeletal remains as her college friend’s.

In 17 consecutive best selling novels, Jonathan Kellerman has proven himself the master of the psychological thriller. Now, in Kellerman's most compelling novel yet, LA psychologist-detective Alex Delaware confronts a long-unsolved murder of unspeakable brutality - an ice-cold case whose resolution threatens his survival and that of longtime friend, homicide detective Milo Sturgis.

The dead do speak, but only to those who understand forensics. In a bustling northern Idaho County where murderers are scarce, the community suffers three killings in the space of five months. Sean Landers, an experienced LA homicide detective, realizes something is off about these murders.

A raging wildfire. A massive blackout. A wealthy man shot to death in his palatial hilltop home. For Clay Edison, it’s all in a day’s work. As a deputy coroner, caring for the dead, he speaks for those who cannot speak for themselves. He prides himself on an unflinching commitment to the truth. Even when it gets him into trouble. Then, while working the murder scene, Clay is horrified to discover a link to his brother, Luke. Horrified. But not surprised. Luke is fresh out of prison and struggling to stay on the straight and narrow. And now he’s gone AWOL.

It’s Dr. Kay Scarpetta’s birthday, and she’s about to head to Miami for a vacation with Benton Wesley, her FBI profiler husband, when she notices seven pennies on a wall behind their Cambridge house. Is this a kids’ game? If so, why are all of the coins dated 1981 and so shiny they could be newly minted? Her cellphone rings, and Detective Pete Marino tells her there’s been a homicide five minutes away.

Peter Coldrick had no past; that was the conclusion drawn by years of personal and professional research. Then he employed the services of one Morton Farrier, forensic genealogist - a stubborn, determined man who uses whatever means necessary to uncover the past. With the Coldrick Case, Morton faces his toughest and most dangerous assignment yet, where all of his investigative and genealogical skills are put to the test.