Forensic Mystery Fiction

Tanya Bigelow was a solemn little girl when Dr. Alex Delaware successfully treated her obsessive-compulsive symptoms. Now, at 19, Patty Bigelow, Tanya's aunt and adoptive mother, has made a deathbed confession of murder and urged the young woman to seek Delaware's help.

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.

Ten years ago in California, Daniel Pell, a self-styled Charles Manson, was sentenced to life in prison for murdering an entire family: husband, wife, and two children, plus one of his young male followers. He is brought to Salinas, California, to interview with Kathryn Dance after he is implicated in yet another killing. Things go terribly wrong during an interview break, and Pell escapes, intent on killing again.

Grausame Verbrechen im ländlichen Idyll: Kay Scarpetta ermittelt. Der grausame Mord an der elfjährigen Emily Steiner schockiert die Kleinstadt Black Mountain im Westen von North Carolina. Die örtliche Polizei hatte es bislang selten mit Mord oder sexuellem Missbrauch von Kindern zu tun - und noch niemals mit einem Fall, auf den beides zutraf. Die Menschen dort kommen nicht mal auf die Idee, nachts ihre Haustüren abzuschließen. Gerichtsmedizinerin Kay Scarpetta, die in Virginia in einem ähnlichen Fall ermittelt, wird hinzugezogen und steht zunächst vor unlösbaren Rätseln.

Hambledon, Pennsylvania, is still reeling from the sensational murder trial that shattered the peace of the bucolic hamlet less than a year ago. Dr. Jonathan Ferrier was accused of killing his beautiful young wife after she died following a botched abortion. The scion of a powerful old eastern family, Jonathan hired the best attorneys money could buy. When he was acquitted, many believed he had bought his freedom. Now, he has returned home to sell his practice and move on. But haunted by his wife's death, Jonathan still strives to heal the judgmental people of his divided town.

Convicted serial killer Carrie Grethen has escaped from a psychiatric hospital with plans for revenge. Wary and shaken, Scarpetta also has to investigate the death by fire of an unknown woman. The post mortem reveals that the woman was stabbed before the fire was started, and soon Scarpetta and her colleagues are called out to the scene of another fire and another murder.

John Lowery was declared dead in 1968—the victim of a Huey crash in Vietnam, his body buried long ago in North Carolina. Four decades later, Temperance Brennan is called to the scene of a drowning in Hemmingford, Quebec. The victim appears to have died while in the midst of a bizarre sexual practice. The corpse is later identified as John Lowery. But how could Lowery have died twice, and how did an American soldier end up in Canada?

At first the rules were simple: quarantine the city and let the plague die. So men and women closed their doors and lived in lockdown, fighting for survival against a disease as contagious and destructive as the Black Death. A disease for which there was no known cure. But the plague did not die. And so, at lunchtime on a Friday afternoon, the president announces the new rules. Every American should take up arms to protect the disease-free zones. Anyone attempting to leave the plague-zone must be shot.

Dr. Bill Brockton is in the middle of a nuclear-terrorism disaster drill when he receives an urgent call from the nearby town of Oak Ridge - better known as Atomic City, home of the Bomb, and the key site for the Manhattan Project during World War II. Although more than sixty years have passed, could repercussions from that dangerous time still be felt today?

Detective Ryan Boone just can't let this case go. While the mystery behind the robbery and murders in Twisted was uncovered a few months back, there is still a very large loose thread that Boone desperately wishes to tie up. He convinces his superiors to allow him to travel to Ottawa, where he's uncovered a lead into a conspiracy that hints what happened in Toronto has nationwide, and horrific, implications. Former detective Cora Porter has moved to forensics, but when a strange case hits close to home, she squeezes her way into the investigation.

The dead can't speak to us, Professor Madoc had said. But that was a lie. The body Patrick Fort is examining in anatomy class is trying to tell him all kinds of things. But no one hears what he does, and no one understands when he tries to tell them. Life is already strange enough for Patrick - being a medical student with Asperger's Syndrome doesn't come without its challenges. And that's before he is faced with solving a possible murder, especially when no one believes a crime has even taken place.

The voice belongs to a woman, but Dr. Alex Delaware remembers a little girl. It is 11 years since seven-year-old Melissa Dickinson dialed a hospital help line for comfort - and found it in therapy with Alex Delaware. Now the lovely young heiress is desperately calling for the psychologist's help once more. Only this time it looks like Melissa's deepest childhood nightmare is really coming true....

Forensic artist Gwen Marcey is between jobs when she accepts temporary work in Pikeville, Kentucky - a small town facing big-city crime. But before Gwen can finish her first drawing of the serial rapist who is on the loose, the latest witness vanishes. Just like all the others. Gwen suspects a connection between the rapist and the "accidental" deaths that are happening around town, but the local sheriff has little interest in her theories. When her digitally-obsessed teenage daughter joins her, Gwen turns her attention to a second assignment.

At sixteen, Holly Danvers barely survived the car accident that killed her father. While she has no memory of the crash, it took an ayahuasca treatment, a native plant-based psychedelic therapy, in the jungles of Peru for her to emotionally recover. Twenty years later, Holly is a sought-after psychiatrist determined to use her expertise with psychedelics to treat patients suffering from addictions. Ignoring the risks, she embarks upon an unproven new protocol with miraculous results. But her success in probing the traumas of her patients and the secrets they keep is short-lived.

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.

When Claire regains consciousness after a stranger causes her car to crash in a snowstorm, she is frantic to discover that her nine-year-old daughter, Emma, is missing from the back seat. Then Emma is found in the woods nearby, unharmed but cradling a child’s skull. She claims it ‘called’ to her – and she can hear another voice nearby. Meanwhile, forensic scientist Rhona MacLeod is trying to discover the identity of a corpse found badly burnt in a skip. The two cases are linked in ways they could never have imagined.

When a beautiful, red haired nurse’s body is found mutilated in her house in Lawley the morning after a date with Detective Constable Ryan Downey, all eyes turn to him. With a very specific modus operandi, Detective Sergeant Jenna Morgan and her team know exactly who the offender is; the trouble is he’s currently serving a life stretch in HMP Long Lartin. It soon becomes evident to DS Morgan and her team that there may be a copycat killer on the loose.

Newly minted chief resident at Boston Memorial Hospital Noah Rothauser is swamped in his new position, from managing the surgical schedules to dealing with the fallouts from patient deaths. Known for its medical advances, the famed teaching hospital has fitted several ORs as "hybrid operating rooms of the future" - an improvement that seems positive until an anesthesia error during a routine procedure results in the death of an otherwise healthy man.

When Dr. Kate Philo and her exploration team discover what appears to be a seal frozen in an Arctic iceberg, they believe they have made a momentous breakthrough in their research. Kate is part of the Lazarus Project, run by the egocentric genius Erastus Carthage. To date they have brought small creatures like plankton and shrimp "back to life" - for 1/10th of a creature’s natural lifespan. As the underwater excavation begins, Kate and her team realize it is not a seal they have found, but a man.

If you thought fiction couldn't get darker then think again. Nineteen Seventy Seven, the second instalment of the Red Riding Quartet, is one long nightmare.Its heroes - the half decent copper Bob Fraser and the burnt-out hack Jack Whitehead - would be considered villains in most people's books.