Crime fiction to die for ;)
Dive into the best crime fiction books that will keep you on the edge of your seat. Discover thrilling mysteries, gripping detective stories, and suspenseful novels you won't want to miss.
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Darkly Dreaming Dexter
by Jeff Lindsay
Meet Dexter Morgan, a polite wolf in sheep’s clothing. He’s handsome and charming, but something in his past has made him abide by a different set of rules. He’s a serial killer whose one golden rule makes him immensely likeable: he only kills bad people. • The Killer Character That Inspired the Hit Showtime Series Dexter And his job as a blood splatter expert for the Miami police department puts him in the perfect position to identify his victims. But when a series of brutal murders bearing a striking similarity to his own style start turning up, Dexter is caught between being flattered and being frightened–of himself or some other fiend.
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Jack Wakes Up
by Seth Harwood
What does an action movie one-hit-wonder and ex-drug-addict do when he's cleaned up, down on his luck, and running out of money? In the three years since Jack Palms went clean-no drugs, no drinking, no life-he's added fourteen pounds of muscle, read 83 books, and played it as straight as anyone can ask him. Now, when an old friend from L.A. calls, he hits the streets of San Francisco to help a group of Czech drug buyers make one big score, a single drug deal that he hopes will set him up for life. But, when people start turning up dead, and an old nemesis on the police force calls, Jack finds himself with just 24 hours to track down San Francisco's biggest drug supplier or face charges that will put him behind bars. Only an Oscar-caliber performance will get him through this alive.
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Dexter in the Dark
by Jeffry P. Lindsay
Miami cop Dexter Morgan and serial killer (the Dark Passenger), one-in-the-same, investigate a double murder on the University of Miami campus while the burned and beheaded body count continues to mount.
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Dearly Devoted Dexter
by Jeff Lindsay
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Life’s tough for Dexter Morgan. It’s not easy being the world’s only serial killer with a conscience, especially when you work for the Miami police. • The Killer Character That Inspired the Hit Showtime Series Dexter To avoid suspicion, Dexter’s had to slip deep into his disguise: spending time with his girlfriend and her kids, slowly becoming the world’s first serial killing couch potato. Then a particularly nasty psychopath starts cutting a trail through Miami — a killer whose twisted techniques leave even Dexter speechless. When his sister Deborah, a tough-as-nails cop, is drawn into the case, it becomes clear that Dexter will have to do come out of hiding and hunt the monster down. Unless, of course, the killer finds him first. . .
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7th Heaven
by James Patterson
A terrible fire in a wealthy suburban home leaves a married couple dead and Detective Lindsay Boxer and her partner Rich Conklin searching for clues. And after California's golden boy, Michael Campion has been missing for a month, there finally seems to be a lead in his case--a very devastating lead. As fire after fire consume couples in wealthy, comfortable homes, Lindsay and the Murder Club must race to find the arsonists responsible and get to the bottom of Michael Campion's disappearance. But suddenly the fires are raging too close to home. Frightened for her life and torn between two men, Lindsay must find a way to solve the most daunting dilemmas she's ever faced--at work and at home.
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Double Cross
by James Patterson
Alex Cross returns in this high action, stunning murder mystery. Alex Cross and his new girlfriend Detective Brianna Stone are caught up in the terror.
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2nd Chance
by James Patterson
The Women's Murder Club returns for another thrilling crime investigation. Will their skills be enough to take down a brutal madman? A brutal madman sprays bullets into a crowd of children leaving a San Francisco church. Miraculously-or was it intentionally?-only one person dies. Then an elderly black woman is hung. Police homicide inspector Lindsay Boxer senses a connection and together with medical examiner Claire, assistant D. A. Jill, and Chronicle reporter Cindy, finds a link that sends a chill through the entire nation. This killer's motives are unspeakable. In this "inventive" installment of the Women's Murder Club, James Patterson proves once again why he is the #1 master of the murder mystery (Sunday Times).
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Fight Club: A Novel
by Chuck Palahniuk
"Fight Club's estranged narrator leaves his lackluster job when he comes under the thrall of Tyler Durden, an enigmatic young man who holds secret after-hours boxing matches in the basement of bars."--P. [3] of cover.
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Stranger Than Fiction
by Chuck Palahniuk
Chuck Palahniuk’s world has always been, well, different from yours and mine. In his first collection of nonfiction, Chuck Palahniuk brings us into this world, and gives us a glimpse of what inspires his fiction.At the Rock Creek Lodge Testicle Festival in Missoula, Montana, average people perform public sex acts on an outdoor stage. In a mansion once occupied by The Rolling Stones, Marilyn Manson reads his own Tarot cards and talks sweetly to his beautiful actress girlfriend. Across the country, men build their own full-size castles and rocketships that will send them into space. Palahniuk himself experiments with steroids, works on an assembly line by day and as a hospice volunteer by night, and experiences the brutal murder of his father by a white supremacist. With this new direction, Chuck Palahniuk has proven he can do anything.
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Killshot
by Elmore Leonard
Carmen Colson saw the scam. And now she and Wayne, her ironworker husband, have to pay. Because Blackbird kills smart and deadly. Richie kills stupid and crazy. Both are out to erase any living evidence--and when these lethal partners take up the chase, a safe place from killing is awfully hard to find.
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Prayers for Rain
by Dennis Lehane
A killer who fells his victims with his mind is on the loose, but Boston's most unlikely private investigator team--Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro--is on the case.
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Darkness, Take My Hand
by Dennis Lehane
Boston private detectives Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro try to protect the son of a prominent psychiatrist in the midst of an ever-growing body count and a list of clues that point impossibly to a serial killer who has been in prison for twenty years.
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A Drink Before the War
by Dennis Lehane
In Bost, PIs Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro investigate the death of an African-American cleaning lady, gunned down in a burst of Uzi fire. A tale of street gang violence and of the racial divide between black and irish.
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Gone, Baby, Gone
by Dennis Lehane
“Powerful and raw, harrowing, and unsentimental.” —Washington Post Book World “Chilling, completely credible….[An] absolutely gripping story.” —Chicago Tribune “Mr. Lehane delivers big time.” —Wall Street Journal In Gone, Baby, Gone, the master of the new noir, New York Times bestselling author Dennis Lehane (Mystic River, Shutter Island), vividly captures the complex beauty and darkness of working-class Boston. A gripping, deeply evocative thriller about the devastating secrets surrounding a little girl lost, featuring the popular detective team of Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro, Gone, Baby, Gone was the basis for the critically acclaimed motion picture directed by Ben Affleck and starring Casey Affleck, Ed Harris, and Morgan Freeman.
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Mystic River
by Dennis Lehane
When they were children, Sean Devine, Jimmy Marcus, and Dave Boyle were friends. But then a strange car pulled up to their street. One boy got into the car, two did not, and something terrible happened -- something that ended their friendship and changed all three boys forever. Twenty-five years later, Sean is a homicide detective. Jimmy is an ex-con who owns a corner store. And Dave is trying to hold his marriage together and keep his demons at bay -- demons that urge him to do terrible things. When Jimmy's daughter is found murdered, Sean is assigned to the case. His investigation brings him into conflict with Jimmy, who finds his old criminal impulses tempt him to solve the crime with brutal justice. And then there is Dave, who came home the night Jimmy's daughter died covered in someone else's blood. A tense and unnerving psychological thriller, Mystic River is also an epic novel of love and loyalty, faith and family, in which people irrevocably marked by the past find themselves on a collision course with the darkest truths of their own hidden selves.
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Shutter Island
by Dennis Lehane
Summer, 1954. U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels has come to Shutter Island, home of Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Along with his partner, Chuck Aule, he sets out to find an escaped patient, a murderess named Rachel Solando, as a hurricane bears down upon them. But nothing at Ashecliffe Hospital is what it seems. And neither is Teddy Daniels. Is he there to find a missing patient? Or has he been sent to look into rumors of Ashecliffe’s radical approach to psychiatry? An approach that may include drug experimentation, hideous surgical trials, and lethal countermoves in the shadow war against Soviet brainwashing. . . . Or is there another, more personal reason why he has come there? As the investigation deepens, the questions only mount: How has a barefoot woman escaped the island from a locked room? Who is leaving clues in the form of cryptic codes? Why is there no record of a patient committed there just one year before? What really goes on in Ward C? Why is an empty lighthouse surrounded by an electrified fence and armed guards? The closer Teddy and Chuck get to the truth, the more elusive it becomes, and the more they begin to believe that they may never leave Shutter Island. Because someone is trying to drive them insane. . . .
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Wilderness
by Robert B. Parker
“A novel of violence, crisp dialogue, and suspense. . . . The reader is immediately caught up in the ambience of danger.”—The Boston Globe At forty-six, Aaron Newman was enjoying the good things in life—a good marriage, a good job—and he was in good shape himself. Then he saw the murder. A petty vicious killing that was to plunge him into an insane jungle of raw violence and fear, threatening and defiling the things he cared about.
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Now and Then
by Robert B. Parker
Investigating a new client's unfaithful wife, Boston private eye Spenser finds himself in trouble when the case goes terribly wrong and three people wind up dead, a situation that reveals the wife's lover's ties to a terrorist organization.
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The Judas Goat
by Robert B. Parker
“There is no halt to the breathless action!”—The New York Times Book Review Spenser has gone to London—and not to see the Queen. He's gone to track down a bunch of bombers who've blown away his client's wife and kids. His job is to catch them. Or kill them. His client isn't choosy. But there are nine killers to one Spenser—long odds. Hawk helps balance the equation. The rest depends on a wild plan. Spenser will get one of the terrorists to play Judas Goat—to lead him to others. Trouble is, he hasn't counted on her being very blond, very beautiful and very dangerous.
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Stranger in Paradise
by Robert B. Parker
Ten years after hit man Crow Cromartie escapes with the spoils of a lucrative heist, Massachusetts police officer Jesse Stone is astonished when the fugitive enlists his cooperation with a job gone bad involving a young woman whose father wants her killed. By the author of High Profile. 275,000 first printing.
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The Harry Bosch Novels
by Michael Connelly
For the first time in one volume, the three novels that introduced Michael Connelly's great LAPD homicide detective, maverick Hieronymous (Harry) Bosch. The Black Echo (Winner of the Edgar Award for Best First Novel) For Harry Bosch-hero, loner, nighthawk-the body stuffed in a drainpipe off Mulholland Drive isn't just another statistic. This one is personal. Billy Meadows was a fellow Vietnam "tunnel rat," fighting the VC and the fear they used to call the Black Echo. Harry let Meadows down once. He won't do it again. The Black Ice The corpse in the hotel room seems to be that of a missing LAPD narcotics officer. Rumors abound that the cop had crossed over-selling a new drug called Black Ice. Now Harry's making some dangerous connections, leading from the cop to a string of bloody murders, and from Hollywood Boulevard's drug bazaar to Mexico's dusty back alleys. In this lethal game, Harry is likely to be the next victim. The Concrete Blonde When Harry Bosch shot and killed Norman Church, the police were convinced it marked the end of the hunt for the Dollmaker-L.A.'s most bizarre serial killer. But now Church's widow is accusing Harry of killing the wrong man-a charge that rings terrifyingly true when a new victim is discovered with the Dollmaker's macabre signature. For the second time, Harry must hunt the murderer down, before he strikes again. Together, these three novels are the perfect way to discover, or rediscover, the sleuth the New York Times Book Review called a "wonderful, old-fashioned hero who isn't afraid to walk through the flames."
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The Overlook
by Michael Connelly
Near Mulholland Drive, Dr. Stanley Kent is found shot twice in the back of the head. It's the case LAPD detective Harry Bosch has been waiting for, his first since being recruited to the Homicide Special Squad. When he discovers that Kent had access to dangerous radioactive substances, what begins as a routine investigation becomes something darker, more deadly, and frighteningly urgent. Bosch is soon in conflict with not only his superiors but the FBI, which thinks the case is too important for just a cop. Complicating his job even more is the presence of Agent Rachel Walling, his onetime lover. Now guarding one slim advantage, Bosch relentlessly follows his own instincts, hoping they are still sharp enough to find the truth--and a killer who can annihilate an entire city.
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The Black Ice
by Michael Connelly
L.A.P.D. detective Harry Bosch investigates the mysterious death of a narcotics officer who was reportedly selling a new drug called black ice.
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The Man from St. Petersburg
by Ken Follett
"Ken Follett has done it once more . . . goes down with the ease and impact of a well-prepared martini." —New York Times Book Review His name was Feliks. He came to London to commit a murder that would change history. A master manipulator, he had many weapons at his command, but against him were ranged the whole of the English police, a brilliant and powerful lord, and the young Winston Churchill himself. These odds would have stopped any man in the world—except the man from St. Petersburg.
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The Third Twin
by Ken Follett
The study of twins and the genetics of aggression totally consumes research scientist Jeannie Ferrami. An accomplished and headstrong researcher, Jeannie has developed a sophisticated software program to identify identical twins reared apart. But Jeannie's breakthrough project is threatened by the appearance of a sudden impossibility--identical twins born weeks apart to different mothers at separate locations. When Jeannie's research assistant, Lisa, is raped, Steve Logan, a young law student who is one of Jeannie's research subjects, is identified in a police lineup as Lisa's attacker. Logan's genetic tests reveal no violent behavior patterns. Then Jeannie stumbles upon the beginnings of a stunning revelation. Logan is unaware of the existence of a criminal twin brother in jail. Jeannie is convinced of Steve's innocence, yet her judgment may be clouded by her growing emotional attachment to him. By now Jeannie's problems are mounting. Berrington Jones, Jeannie's arrogant and intimidating boss, is a world-renowned authority on biotechnical engineering. He and his partners are involved in devious but lucrative negotiations to sell Genetco, their biogenetic research company. Jeannie's research poses a major threat to their impending millions. Jones arranges to have Jeannie fired. Stunned and feeling helpless, Jeannie doesn't understand why this has happened to her. With Steve and his brother in jail, who is committing these sex crimes? While acting on a hunch that might solve the mystery surrounding Steve and his brother's birth, Jeannie is violently attacked by yet another twin who looks exactly like Steve. Determined to protect her research program and convinced her former boss has something important to hide, a terrified Jeannie has no other choice but to find out why Jones and his partners will stop at nothing to discredit her work.