Serial Killer Mystery Fiction

There’s a twisted serial killer stalking the streets of New York City, dealing his own perverse version of justice. He kills swiftly and silently, leaving his calling card - a red "J" - on the bodies of his prey. His victims have one thing in common: They’ve all been jurors in the city’s most infamous cases - cases in which the killer was found "not guilty". Overnight, the Justice Killer has the city in a stranglehold. And there’s only one man who has a shot at finding him....

A serial killer is rampaging across the country, tying families to chairs—arranged in puzzling tableaus—then murdering them, without leaving a trace of evidence. FBI Special Agent Lukas Stark has been hunting the Tableau Killer for eighteen months but is always two steps behind in a maze of dead ends. He has no understanding of why the killer stages the scenes so meticulously or chooses entire families. Burning out, Stark is forced to take on a new partner, Gilles Garnier.

In The Boy Who Followed Ripley, Highsmith explores Ripley's bizarrely paternal relationship with a troubled young runaway, whose abduction draws them into Berlin's seamy underworld. More than any other American literary character, Ripley provides "a lens to peer into the sinister machinations of human behavior." (John Freeman, Pittsburgh Gazette).

When a world-renowned psychiatrist is found dead in an abandoned ranch house in the Californian Santa Carina Valley, a Post-it note with the words “Susan Parker” and a cell phone number is taped to the basement door. Still grieving her husband’s devastating suicide less than a year ago, FBI agent Susan Parker is taking a break from work and trying to rebuild her life as a single mom to her seven-year-old daughter, Natalie. When she’s called to the crime scene of Doctor Magnusson, a chill runs down her spine.

Her fingers numb with cold, Jo rushes to search for footprints in the empty parking lot before they are covered in snow. Her cousin and her little daughter never came home tonight and she is desperate to find them. With temperatures dropping, no-one can survive outside for long. When Detective Jo Fournier’s cousin goes missing with her sweet five-year-old Alexia, Jo heads straight to where they were last seen. Her heart stops when she finds their unlocked car—one door has been left open and Alexia’s beloved teddy is lying in the snow.

Here’s a harrowing array of spine-chilling stories that will make your heart race nonstop. This book is full of twists and turns, dark corners, edge-of-your-seat suspense, and devilish plots that get your blood pumping. Horror Anthology contains 19 short stories of terrifying real tales of horror. With exceptional articulation and clarity, author Ann Gaiman spins dark but real tales that will make you sit on the edge of your seat.

Author Miles Van Meter is on a book tour to promote his sensational best seller Sleeping Beauty, a true-crime account of a deeply personal subject: the attack by a serial killer that left his twin sister, Casey, in a coma. Tonight the audience waits to hear Miles discuss recent developments in his sister's case, unaware that pieces of this complex puzzle of violence, unknown even to the author, are about to be revealed.

At 26, Dahlia Lighthouse is haunted by her upbringing. Raised in a secluded island mansion deep in the woods and kept isolated by her true crime-obsessed parents, she is unable to move beyond the disappearance of her twin brother, Andy, when they were 16. After several years away and following her father’s death, Dahlia returns to the house, where the family makes a gruesome discovery: buried in their father’s plot is another body—Andy’s, his skull split open with an ax.

One hot summer evening, 11-year-old Mikey Driscoll is on the way home from playing with friends. Two days later, his body is discovered on a bed of wildflowers by some local teenagers. The case is assigned to Detective Lottie Parker, and this time it’s personal. The victim was a close friend of her son, Sean, from the run-down Munbally estate on the other side of town. Sean tells his mother Mikey was behaving normally before he died, but Lottie can’t help but feel that her son is keeping something from her.

Ted Bundy. One of America's most notorious serial killers. For two women, he is the ultimate obsession. One is a cop whose sister may have been one of Bundy's victims. The other is a deranged groupie who corresponded with Bundy in prison - and raised her son to finish what Bundy started. To charm and seduce innocent girls. To kidnap and brutalize more women than any serial killer in history. And to lure one obsessed cop into a trap as sick and demented as Bundy himself....

Elspeth, Meggy and Xavier are locked in a flat. They don’t know where they are, and they don’t know why they’re there. They only know that the shadow man has taken them, and he won’t let them go. Desperate to escape, the three of them must find a way out of their living hell, even if it means uncovering a very dark truth. Because the shadow man isn’t a nightmare. He’s all too real.

A serial killer terrorizes Seattle, attempting to recreate the nine circles of hell by using the blood and bodies of the innocent. Detective Robi Darcmel, a gifted yet troubled savant, is the only man standing in the path of this pathological killer. As the fate of Emerald City hangs in the balance, can Darcmel overcome his failings, or will Seattle burn to ash?

Snow dusts the cobbled streets of York as tourists flock to its famous Christmas markets. But for DCI Oldroyd, what starts as a peaceful evening on a ghost tour quickly turns deadly. The tour guide’s grim discovery is no theatrical performance—he finds the body of Henry Marlow, a notorious local landlord, in the doorway of a derelict building. Oldroyd soon has no shortage of suspects: a resentful ex-wife, angry tenants, and even the guide who knows every secret passage of the old city.

Rachel Goldman writes mysteries in which Duffy Madison, consultant to the county prosecutor's office, helps find missing persons. Rachel is busy working on her next book when a man calls out of the blue asking for help in a missing person case. The caller's name? Duffy Madison. Is this real, or has she lost her mind? She doesn't have much time to find out, because a serial killer is on the loose, kidnapping and murdering mystery authors. And Rachel may just be the next target.

Detective Robert Hunter of the LAPD's Homicide Special Section receives an anonymous call asking him to go to a specific web address - a private broadcast. Hunter logs on, and a show devised for his eyes only immediately begins. But the caller doesn't want Detective Hunter to just watch; he wants him to participate, and refusal is simply not an option. Forced to make a sickening choice, Hunter must sit and watch as an unidentified victim is tortured and murdered live over the Internet.

‘Do you believe the Devil exists, Detective?’ the officer at the end of the line asks. ‘Because if you don’t...I’m sure you will once you get here.’ This is how Robert Hunter is called to one of the most vicious crime scenes he has ever attended. The disturbing nature of the murder is heightened when the autopsy reveals a poem, left by the killer, inside the body of their victim. When another murder occurs, the methods and signature of each death differ so greatly that forensics fail to link the two crimes.

When new victims of the still-at-large serial killer known as the Red Reaper start to appear in London, DCI Declan Walsh and his team are placed back on the case—but everything isn't what it seems. For a start, the deaths are different, and the calling card is new. It could be a copycat, apart from one thing... They know what Declan did to the real Red Reaper a year earlier. Something only Declan and the closest members of his team keep secret. Is this the real Reaper, back to gain revenge on Declan and his family—or is this a protégé, staking his own claim to the serial killer name?

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.

When Amy Whyte and Penny Brogan leave a nightclub in the early hours of Sunday morning and don’t arrive home, their families are beside themselves with worry. Conor Dowling has just been released from prison, a man full of hatred for Amy, the girl who put him behind bars in the first place. The case is given to Detective Lottie Parker when the girls’ blood-soaked bodies are found, days later, in a derelict squat. Chillingly, both girls are clutching silver coins in their hands - what message is this killer leaving behind? All the signs point to Conor, but his alibi is watertight.

Months after discovering the mastermind behind her own kidnapping, Detective Jude Fontaine is dealing with the past the only way she knows how: by returning to every dark corner of it. But it’s a new, escalating series of mass slayings that has become her latest obsession at Homicide. At first, Jude and her partner, Detective Uriah Ashby, can see no pattern to the seemingly random methods, the crime scenes, or the victims - until they’re approached by a brilliantly compulsive math professor.