Serial Killer Mystery Fiction

Kate Marshall was a promising young police detective when she caught the notorious Nine Elms serial killer. But her greatest victory suddenly turned into a nightmare. Traumatized, betrayed, and publicly vilified for the shocking circumstances surrounding the cannibal murder case, Kate could only watch as her career ended in scandal. Fifteen years after those catastrophic events, Kate is still haunted by the unquiet ghosts of her troubled past. Now a lecturer at a small coastal English university, she finally has a chance to face them.

FBI Agent Rick Clark and his forensic psychologist sidekick, Marty Robin, are investigating a number of brutal serial murders committed within a three-year-period. All of the victims are women, and their backgrounds are similar in one important way. One important way, that is, in the twisted brain of the serial killer. While Rick and Marty speculate on personal events that may have created this moral monster, the listener becomes, if not sympathetic to the perp, at least more understanding of the role the past plays in creating a cold-blooded killer on a mission to save lost souls.

It's only 10 days since Douglas Remfry's release from prison, having served seven years for rape, and now he's dead: naked on a bare mattress in a grubby north London hotel room, his head hooded and his hands tied with a brown leather belt. Someone knew he was coming out. Someone wanted to mete out some punishment of his own. And when a second sex offender is found dead, DI Tom Thorne knows he has a vicious, calculating vigilante on his hands.

Astra has returned to Chicago and the everyday life of a cape: getting kittens out of trees, training, aiding the city's emergency first-responders, training, doing public relations events, training, and the occasional superhero v. supervillain fight that threatens to level neighborhoods or at least set them on fire. Then Astra takes a hard hit during a fight and very briefly finds herself somewhere else, somewhere she's only been before in dreams and in the company of Kitsune, a shape-shifting trickster fox.

Tracy Crosswhite is reopening the investigation into Seattle’s Route 99 serial killer. After thirteen victims, he stopped hunting and the trail went cold, stirring public outrage. Now, nearly three decades after his first kill, Tracy is expected to finally bring closure to the victims’ families and redeem the Seattle PD’s reputation. Even if it means working with her nemesis, Captain Johnny Nolasco.

It’s my first day back at work, the grief I’m carrying is still with me, but I file it away and put on my professional face to greet my new patient. As a successful psychiatrist and criminologist, I’m used to working with damaged minds. But I’m not prepared for Trent Davis. Sitting across the table from me, his warm brown eyes shine. He laughs easily and part of me can't help but like him, despite what his file says he’s capable of. Then a package arrives for Trent, with my home as the return address. And everything falls apart…

Detective Mia Hart never planned to return home. One terrifying summer night, Mia lost two of her closest friends to suicide. Scarred and broken, she fled St. Lucy’s, a small island off the coast of Maine. Now fifteen years later, when the body of a journalist is fished out of the bay near St. Lucy’s cliffs, Mia is forced to help with the case - and face all she’s been running from. As she approaches the island, the wintery winds of Black Rock Bay usher Mia home again.

A sensitive orphan, Jane Steele suffers first at the hands of her spiteful aunt and predatory cousin, then at a grim school where she fights for her very life until escaping to London, leaving the corpses of her tormentors behind her. After years of hiding from the law while penning macabre "last confessions" of the recently hanged, Jane thrills at discovering an advertisement. Her aunt has died, and her childhood home has a new master: Mr. Charles Thornfield, who seeks a governess.

When a body is discovered in a field in Iowa, the police uncover 14 additional corpses ranging from 20 years old to recent. The remains point to a serial killer with an MO the authorities have seen before - Ed Oliphant, a man who has been in prison for over 20 years...and is Special Agent Kaely Quinn's father. After several failed interview attempts to discover if Ed has been training someone to be a copycat killer, the police turn to Kaely in St. Louis.

Four-year-old Ellen is snatched by a stranger in the dead of night. Her devastated mother, Nicole, receives four identical phials and a threatening note in a familiar scrawl that chills her to the bone. But she always knew this would happen. She’s been expecting it for years. According to the note, one of the phials is poisoned. Nicole is given a deadly challenge: If she drinks one, the sadistic kidnapper will notify the police of Ellen’s location. The sender claims to be Luka Volkov, but Luka is supposed to be dead, killed long ago in a fire that haunts all those involved.

When yet another girl goes missing from nearby Bellingham, Washington, crime reporter Tess McClintock is made aware of the case after she's sent a map that appears to mark the location of a number of bodies, including the one in the Haro Strait. With Michael Carter's help, she begins an investigation into the girl and her past. Is there another serial killer working in Bellingham? The Haro Strait is Book Two in the Salish Sea series of crime thrillers set in the Pacific Northwest.

Thomas Allen Mathew, a reclusive 65-year-old living in Sioux City, Iowa, finds himself plagued by a sense of disconnect and agonizing headaches. When he begins to question his own identity, Thomas delves into his troubled past, uncovering dark secrets that lead to a shocking revelation.

A calculating serial killer, who 'trophies' the faces of his victims, is targeting Londoners and committing the most gruesome of murders. With each new atrocity, the public and the police are getting more desperate for results. Under enormous pressure, DCI Jack Hawksworth and his team begin their investigation and soon find it taking them into the murky world of illegal immigrants and human organ trading. But when the murderer strikes closer to home than Jack could ever have imagined possible, the case becomes a personal crusade – and a race against time.

A murderer is on the loose on the streets of New York City: nicknamed the Doomsday Killer, he's claimed six victims in just two weeks, and the city is terrified. Even worse, the police are mystified: the victims have nothing in common, defying all profiling, and all that connects them is that each received a sick postcard in the mail before they died - a postcard that announced their date of death. In desperation, the FBI assigns the case to maverick agent Will Piper, once the most accomplished serial-killing expert in the bureau's history, now on a dissolute spiral to retirement.

Lifelong New Yorker Ronnie Khan never thought she’d leave Queens. She’s not an “aim high, dream big” person - until she meets socialite wellness guru Marley Dewhurst. Marley isn’t just a visionary; she’s a revelation. Seduced by the fever dream of finding her best self, Ronnie makes for the desert mountains of Sedona, Arizona. Healing yoga, transcendent hikes, epic juice cleanses...Ronnie consumes her new bougie existence like a fine wine. But is it, really? Or is this whole self-care business a little sour?

What if Sean Courtland’s old Chevy truck had broken down somewhere else? What if he’d never met Denise Givens, a waitress at a local tavern in the Wisconsin town where he lands? Or Dan Young, another young man like Sean drifting through, having fled Minnesota for reasons unknown? Instead, together Sean and Dan pick up carpentry and plumbing work for an old man named Marion Devereaux, and Sean gets drawn into the lives of Denise and her father—and of the townspeople, all haunted by the disappearance of three young boys decades ago, in the 1970s.

In their isolated country house, a mother and her two children prepare to wait out a blinding snowstorm. Two violent predators walk through the door. Nothing will ever be the same. When the two strangers turn up at Rowena Cooper's isolated Colorado farmhouse, she knows instantly that it's the end of everything. For the two haunted and driven men, on the other hand, it's just another stop on a long and bloody journey. And they still have many miles to go, and victims to sacrifice, before their work is done.

When the body of a man is found in the dense forest surrounding Black Rock Falls, Sheriff Jenna Alton immediately sees disturbing similarities with a past case - the same murder weapon, the remote beauty spot, and the way the victim is perched against a tree with no sign of a struggle. But the killer in that case was jailed for life.

The peace of Kielder Water is shattered when tourists open a barrel they found floating in the reservoir at dawn. Detectives Stone and Oliver are called to examine the skeletal remains inside. The tourists are eliminated from the investigation, but that same day a second body is discovered - this one with skin. Have the police let the killer leave the scene? While Stone investigates the remains, Oliver travels to Iceland to gather evidence and track down the tourists who have fled. Someone will do anything to protect the secrets of the past.

In the city of Glendale, darkness lurks as a relentless figure with a deadly agenda strikes fear into the hearts of the innocent. Murder is just a tool in their pursuit of power. But within the formidable walls of the House of Calamari, the city's largest appeal service, a glimmer of hope remains. Meet Alfred, your guide through the labyrinth of justice and redemption. Let me introduce you to the team of Redemption seekers, which now includes my faithful dog, Bonnie. Together, we navigate a world where secrets unravel and danger is ever-present.