Books with category Crime Investigation
Displaying 16 books

Fatal Vision

2025

by Joe McGinniss

Fatal Vision is the electrifying true story of Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald, the handsome, Princeton-educated physician convicted of savagely slaying his young pregnant wife and two small children—murders he vehemently denies committing.

Bestselling author Joe McGinnis chronicles every aspect of this horrifying and intricate crime, and probes the life and psyche of the magnetic, all-American Jeffrey MacDonald, a golden boy who seemed destined to have it all. The result is a penetration to the heart of darkness that enshrouded one of the most complex criminal cases ever to capture the attention of the American public.

It is haunting, stunningly suspenseful—a work that no reader will be able to forget.

Small Sacrifices

2021

by Ann Rule

Small Sacrifices is Ann Rule's shocking and powerful account of the destructive forces that drove Diane Downs, a beautiful young mother, to shoot her three young children in cold blood.

The mesmerizing story unfolds with the shooting of three children, and follows a detailed uncovering of facts that seems to lead to the mother as the prime suspect. Diane Downs, a beautiful, brilliant sociopath, commits the ultimate evil to gain the love of a married man.

Ann Rule provides an insight into the horrifying personality of Downs, who never confesses to her crimes. Her conduct during the trial is as disturbing as the act itself. She taps her foot and smiles while listening to "Hungry Like the Wolf," the song that played in her car during the crime. She laughs when she should cry, and cries only when it benefits her. One daughter is dead, another has lost the use of her arm and speech, and the little boy is paralyzed. None of this horror seems to penetrate Diane, who appears to have no feelings for her children's suffering.

This book is a must-read for all true crime buffs, as Ann Rule meticulously presents every piece of evidence, keeping the reader on the edge of their seat.

The Widow

2017

by Fiona Barton

When the police started asking questions, Jean Taylor turned into a different woman. One who enabled her and her husband to carry on, even as more bad things began to happen...

But that woman’s husband died last week. And Jean doesn’t have to be her anymore. There’s a lot Jean hasn’t said over the years about the crime her husband was suspected of committing. She was too busy being the perfect wife, standing by her man while living with the accusing glares and the anonymous harassment. Now there’s no reason to stay quiet.

There are people who want to hear her story. They want to know what it was like living with that man. She can tell them that there were secrets. There always are in a marriage. The truth—that’s all anyone wants. But the one lesson Jean has learned in the last few years is that she can make people believe anything…

This is the tale of a missing child, narrated by the wife of the main suspect, the detective leading the hunt, and the journalist covering the case. It's a brilliantly ominous, psychologically acute portrait of a marriage in crisis—perfect for fans of The Silent Wife and The Girl on the Train.

Undone

2009

by Karin Slaughter

When a tortured young woman enters the trauma center of an Atlanta hospital, Dr. Sara Linton is thrust into a desperate police investigation with Special Agent Will Trent and his partner, Faith Mitchell.

Though guarding their own wounds and their own secrets, Sara, Will, and Faith find that they are all that stand between a madman and his next victim. In the backwoods of suburban Atlanta, local police have set up their investigation. But Georgia Bureau of Investigation detective Will Trent doesn't wait for the go-ahead from his boss—he plunges through police lines, single-handedly exposing a hidden house of horror buried beneath the earth.

Another woman—a smart, upscale, independent young mother—has been snatched. For the two cops out on the hunt, for the doctor trying to bring her patient back to life, the truth hits like a hammer: The killer’s torture chamber has been found, but the killer is still at work.

Whispers of the Dead

2009

by Simon Beckett

A field of corpses, laid out in a macabre display… A serial killer who confounds even the most seasoned profilers… A doctor whose life has been shattered by crime—plunged into the heart of a shocking investigation…

In this masterful new novel by Simon Beckett, #1 internationally bestselling author of Written in Bone and The Chemistry of Death, forensic anthropologist David Hunter is thrust into his first murder investigation on U.S. soil—and his most devastating case yet.

In the heat of a Tennessee summer, Dr. Hunter has come to Knoxville’s legendary “Body Farm”—the infamous field laboratory where law enforcement personnel study real corpses—to escape London and the violence that nearly destroyed his life. He’s also here to find out if he’s still up to the job of sorting through death in all its strange and terrible forms.…

Hunter will soon find his answer when he’s called to a crime scene in a remote Smoky Mountain cabin—a scene as grisly as it is bizarre. The body is taped to a table. Everything about the crime scene—the wounds, the decomposition, the microscopic evidence—quickly short-circuits the tools and methods of forensic experts.

Within days, Hunter knows he’s dealing with a serial killer, someone intimately familiar with the intricacies of forensics. All around him, egos and hierarchies clash—from the boasts of a renowned criminal profiler to the dogged work of a young female investigator—but fate keeps pushing Hunter further into the heart of the manhunt. And the killer keeps coming up with surprises: booby-trapping corpses, faking times of death, swapping bodies—finally turning his sights on Hunter himself.…

An electrifying race against time, a fascinating journey into the world of forensic science, and a terrifying portrait of a killer in love with death itself, Whispers of the Dead is a thriller of the highest order.

Blood Sins

2008

by Kay Hooper

Young, vulnerable, attractive, Tessa Gray made the perfect victim. Which was why Noah Bishop of the FBI's Special Crimes Unit recruited her to play the role of grieving widow. As the supposed new owner of property coveted by the Church of the Everlasting Sin, she'd be irresistible bait for the reclusive and charismatic Reverend Samuel.

His fortified compound in the mountains near Grace, North Carolina, had been the last known residence of two women murdered in ways that defied scientific explanation. Though hardly as naive or as vulnerable as she appears, Tessa knows she has a lot to learn about using her unique gift. She also knows that Bishop and the SCU have to be desperate to rely on an untried psychic agent in an undercover operation so dangerous. And desperate they are.

For the killer they're hunting is the most terrifying they've ever faced and shakes even the most seasoned agents: a soulless megalomaniacal cult leader who can use their own weapons, talents, and tactics against them. By entering the cult's well-guarded compound, Tessa will be exposing herself to the dark magnetism of a psychopath on an apocalyptic crusade of terror that spares no one, not even the youngest victims.

And Samuel has protected himself within a fanatically loyal congregation, many of whom occupy surprising positions of power within the community. Even Grace's chief of police, Sawyer Cavenaugh, a man Tessa will have to trust with her life, may be unable to protect her. Because no one, not even Tessa herself, can guarantee she's strong enough to resist or powerful enough to battle a killer who's less than human.

The Bone Garden

2008

by Tess Gerritsen

Present day: Julia Hamill has made a horrifying discovery on the grounds of her new home in rural Massachusetts: a skull buried in the rocky soil—human, female, and, according to the trained eye of Boston medical examiner Maura Isles, scarred with the unmistakable marks of murder. But whoever this nameless woman was, and whatever befell her, is knowledge lost to another time.

Boston, 1830: In order to pay for his education, Norris Marshall, a talented but penniless student at Boston Medical College, has joined the ranks of local “resurrectionists”—those who plunder graveyards and harvest the dead for sale on the black market. Yet even this ghoulish commerce pales beside the shocking murder of a nurse found mutilated on the university hospital grounds. And when a distinguished doctor meets the same grisly fate, Norris finds that trafficking in the illicit cadaver trade has made him a prime suspect.

To prove his innocence, Norris must track down the only witness to have glimpsed the killer: Rose Connolly, a beautiful seamstress from the Boston slums who fears she may be the next victim. Joined by a sardonic, keenly intelligent young man named Oliver Wendell Holmes, Norris and Rose comb the city—from its grim cemeteries and autopsy suites to its glittering mansions and centers of Brahmin power—on the trail of a maniacal fiend who lurks where least expected...and who waits for his next lethal opportunity.

Cause of Death

New Year's Eve, the last day of Virginia's bloodiest year since the Civil War. Dr. Kay Scarpetta plunges into the murky depths of a ship graveyard to recover the very human remains of Ted Eddings, an investigative reporter. What kind of story was Eddings chasing below the icy surface of the Elizabeth River? And why did Scarpetta receive a phone call from someone reporting the death before the police were notified?

She soon discovers that Eddings' murder is merely the first layer of something much deeper — a labyrinthine conspiracy that will put all of her criminal and forensic knowledge to the test like never before. For Scarpetta, the real challenge won't be cataloging the growing number of dead bodies, but preventing herself and those she loves from becoming the next victims.

Fatal Voyage

2005

by Kathy Reichs

Investigating a plane crash in the Smoky Mountains in North Carolina, forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan discovers in a most disturbing way that the evidence doesn't add up. Tripping over a coyote-chewed leg at the crash scene, she performs a little mental arithmetic and realizes that this victim wasn't on the plane. Once again, Brennan's high-tech DMORT snaps into action faster than you can say Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team.

The author of Death du Jour serves up another exquisite meal.

Blood Memory

2005

by Greg Iles

Catherine "Cat" Ferry is a forensic odontologist, a specialist in bite marks and the clues they provide. But while Cat's colleagues know her as a world-class scientist, she secretly attempts to manage her fragile psyche with alcohol, delving into the minds of rapists and murderers yet never allowing her own frightening past to creep into the foreground.

Cat's latest case involves a disturbing murder in New Orleans. Banishing her personal demons, she focuses on the potential killer, until one morning she's paralyzed by a panic attack at a grisly murder scene. Praying the attack is a onetime event, she continues her job as a consultant to the New Orleans Police Department, but when another victim dies in the same shocking way - raising fears that a serial killer is at large - Cat blacks out over the victim's mutilated corpse.

Suspended from the FBI task force, plagued by nightmares, and at odds with her married lover - a homicide detective - Cat finally reaches her breaking point. In a desperate effort to regain control over a life spiraling out of control, Cat retreats to her hometown of Natchez, Mississippi. But her family's secluded antebellum estate provides no sanctuary.

When some of Cat's forensic chemicals are spilled in her childhood bedroom, two bloody footprints are revealed. This sight shocks her more than any corpse she has seen in her career. Cat's father was murdered when she was eight years old, but she always believed the crime occurred in the garden outside their home. The bloody footprints suggest otherwise.

Driven by this fragment of her past, Cat attempts a forensic reconstruction of the decades-old crime, even as developments in New Orleans task force pull her back into the case she left behind. Plagued by troubling nightmares, Cat pieces together the horrifying events she has been shielded from all her life. Soon, both she and the FBI realize that the murders occurring now in New Orleans are intimately bound up with Cat's family and her past.

Green River, Running Red: The Real Story of the Green River Killer - America's Deadliest Serial Murderer

2005

by Ann Rule

In her most personal and provocative book to date, the #1 bestselling master of true crime presents her long-awaited definitive narrative of the brutal and senseless crimes that haunted the Seattle area for decades. This is the extraordinary true story of the most prolific serial killer the nation had ever seen—a case involving more than forty-nine female victims, two decades of intense investigative work...and one unrelenting killer who not only attended Ann Rule's book signings but lived less than a mile away from her home.

In 1982, the body of Wendy Coffield is discovered floating near the sandy shore of Washington’s Green River. Authorities have no idea that this tragic and violent death is only the beginning of a string of murders that will rock and terrify the Seattle area for two decades.

With her signature riveting prose and in-depth research, Ann Rule takes us behind the scenes of the search for the Green River Killer, a terrifying specter who ritualistically killed young women and eluded authorities for years. From seeking the help of incarcerated serial killer Ted Bundy to Ann Rule’s horrifying realization that the killer she was writing about had attended her book signings, Green River, Running Red is the suspenseful and unforgettable definitive narrative of the brutal and senseless crimes that haunted the Seattle area for decades.

A Small Death in Lisbon

1999

by Robert Wilson

A Small Death in Lisbon is a complex literary thriller that intertwines two gripping narratives set in different eras. The story masterfully shifts between 1941 Germany and 1999 Lisbon, offering a rich tapestry of historical intrigue and modern-day mystery.


In 1941, Klaus Felsen, an industrialist, is coerced by the SS high command to travel to Lisbon to oversee the smuggling of wolfram, a critical element for Hitler's blitzkrieg. Neutral Portugal becomes a battleground of clandestine operations, where business trumps alliances.


Fast forward to 1999, where the brutal murder of a young woman, Catarina Oliveira, on a Lisbon beach draws in Inspector Ze Coelho, a widower with a daughter. As Coelho delves into the case, he uncovers layers of personal and historical secrets, connecting past sins with present-day consequences.


This novel paints a vivid portrait of Lisbon's transformation post-1974 revolution and the lingering scars from World War II, seen through the eyes of both Germans and Portuguese. The narrative is leisurely yet compelling, leading to an extraordinary climax as the two timelines converge.

The Angel of Darkness

1997

by Caleb Carr

The Angel of Darkness, by Caleb Carr, immerses readers in the vivid world of The Alienist with an intriguing twist: the story is narrated by former street urchin Stevie Taggert, whose rough life has endowed him with wisdom beyond his years. Thus, New York City, and the groundbreaking alienist Dr. Kreizler himself, are seen anew.

Set in June 1897, a year has passed since Dr. Laszlo Kreizler, a pioneer in forensic psychiatry, tracked down the brutal serial killer John Beecham with his trusted companions. Kreizler and his friends—high-living crime reporter John Schuyler Moore; indomitable, derringer-toting Sara Howard; the brilliant detective brothers Marcus and Lucius Isaacson; powerful and compassionate Cyrus Montrose; and Stevie Taggert, the boy Kreizler saved from a life of street crime—have returned to their former pursuits, trying to forget the horror of the Beecham case.

But when the distraught wife of a Spanish diplomat begs Sara's aid, the team reunites to help find her kidnapped infant daughter. This case is fraught with danger, as Spain and the United States are on the verge of war. Caleb Carr once again demonstrates his brilliant ability to re-create the past, both high life and low.

As the horror unfolds, Delmonico's still serves up wondrous meals, and a summer trip to the elegant gambling parlors of Saratoga provides precious keys to the murderer's past. At the same time, readers embark on revealing journeys into Stevie's New York, a place where poor and neglected children—then as now—turn to crime and drugs at shockingly early ages.

Peppered throughout are characters taken from real life and rendered with historical vigor, including suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton; painter Albert Pinkham Ryder; and Clarence Darrow, who thunders for the defense in a tense courtroom drama during which the sanctity of American motherhood itself is put on trial.

Fast-paced and chilling, The Angel of Darkness is a tour de force, a novel of modern evil in old New York.

Déjà Dead

1997

by Kathy Reichs

Her life is devoted to justice; for those she never even knew. In the year since Temperance Brennan left behind a shaky marriage in North Carolina, work has often preempted her weekend plans to explore Quebec.


When a female corpse is discovered meticulously dismembered and stashed in trash bags, Temperance detects an alarming pattern and she plunges into a harrowing search for a killer. But her investigation is about to place those closest to her—her best friend and her own daughter—in mortal danger...

The Last Coyote

Harry Bosch has hit rock bottom. His once stable life is now in shambles. His earthquake-damaged home has been condemned, his girlfriend has left him, and he's drinking far too much. After attacking his commanding officer, Harry is suspended indefinitely, pending a psychiatric evaluation.

With his badge turned in, Harry finds himself with time to dwell on the past. He decides to investigate an unsolved crime from 1961: the brutal murder of a prostitute, who was none other than his own mother. As he delves deeper, Harry realizes that the case was mishandled, and the stench of a cover-up is undeniable. Someone powerful was able to divert justice, and Harry is determined to uncover the truth.

As he relentlessly follows the fragmented pieces of the case, new murders occur, drawing Harry deeper into a dangerous web of deceit. The more he uncovers, the more evident it becomes that someone wants the past to remain buried—someone very powerful, cunning, and deadly.

In this gripping installment of the Harry Bosch series, Michael Connelly delivers a suspenseful thriller filled with psychological depth and a relentless pursuit of justice.

Her Beauty

Two pie loving police officers are questioning a man suspected of murdering his wife. The Accused Man keeps having visions of past events, warning him there are things he should not seek an answer for.

And an FBI Agent Lutricia Bell, conducting an investigation of her own, reveals a different angle on the nature of the crime. Realities will mash together as three different viewpoints paint the picture, creating a question, is the crime itself what truly matters?

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