Crime Mystery Thriller Writers-fiction and non-fiction (my favorites)
Discover the best crime mystery thriller books for fiction and nonfiction fans. From Harlan Coben's Tell No One to Ted Dekker and John Grisham, explore gripping page-turners, true crime classics like Helter Skelter, and unforgettable suspense novels in this curated list of favorite authors and must-read mysteries.
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The Analyst
by John Katzenbach
Happy fifty third birthday, Doctor. Welcome to the first day of your death. Dr. Frederick Starks, a New York psychoanalyst, has just received a mysterious, threatening letter. Now he finds himself in the middle of a horrific game designed by a man who calls himself Rumplestiltskin. The rules: in two weeks, Starks must guess his tormentorâs identity. If Starks succeeds, he goes free. If he fails, Rumplestiltskin will destroy, one by one, fifty-two of Dr. Starksâ loved onesâunless the good doctor agrees to kill himself. In a blistering race against time, Starksâ is at the mercy of a psychopathâs devious game of vengeance. He must find a way to stop the madmanâbefore he himself is driven mad. . . .
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The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
by Stieg Larsson
#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER ⢠The thrilling first book in the Millenium series featuring Lisbeth Salander: âCombine the chilly Swedish backdrop and moody psychodrama of a Bergman movie with the grisly pyrotechnics of a serial-killer thriller, then add an angry punk heroine and a down-on-his-luck investigative journalist, and you have the ingredients of Stieg Larssonâs first novelâ (The New York Times). Harriet Vanger, a scion of one of Sweden's wealthiest families disappeared over forty years ago. All these years later, her aged uncle continues to seek the truth. He hires Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently trapped by a libel conviction, to investigate. He is aided by the pierced and tattooed punk prodigy Lisbeth Salander. Together they tap into a vein of unfathomable iniquity and astonishing corruption.
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Double Indemnity
by James M. Cain
ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE'S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME ⢠James M. Cain, virtuoso of the roman noir, gives us a tautly narrated and excruciatingly suspenseful story in Double Indemnity, an X-ray view of guilt, of duplicity, and of the kind of obsessive, loveless love that devastates everything it touches. Walter Huff was an insurance salesman with an unfailing instinct for clients who might be in trouble, and his instinct led him to Phyllis Nirdlinger. Phyllis wanted to buy an accident policy on her husband. Then she wanted her husband to have an accident. Walter wanted Phyllis. To get her, he would arrange the perfect murder and betray everything he had ever lived for.
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Eye of the Needle
by Ken Follett
The award-winning thriller that became an international bestseller and a distinguished film and launched the career of master storyteller Ken Follett.
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The Getaway
by Jim Thompson
Doc McCoy knows everything there is to know about pulling off the perfect bank job. But there are some things he has forgotten--such as a partner who is not only treacherous but insane and a wife who is still an amateur. Worst of all, McCoy has forgotten that when the crime is big and bloody enough, there is no such thing as a clean getaway.
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Rebecca
by Daphne Du Maurier
"Last Night I Dreamt I Went To Manderley Again." So the second Mrs. Maxim de Winter remembered the chilling events that led her down the turning drive past ther beeches, white and naked, to the isolated gray stone manse on the windswept Cornish coast. With a husband she barely knew, the young bride arrived at this immense estate, only to be inexorably drawn into the life of the first Mrs. de Winter, the beautiful Rebecca, dead but never forgotten...her suite of rooms never touched, her clothes ready to be worn, her servant -- the sinister Mrs. Danvers -- still loyal. And as an eerie presentiment of evil tightened around her heart, the second Mrs. de Winter began her search for the real fate of Rebecca...for the secrets of Manderley.
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A Place of Execution
by Val McDermid
Winter 1963: two children have disappeared in Manchester; the murderous careers of Myra Hindley and Ian Brady have begun. On a freezing day in December, another child goes missing: 13-year-old Alison Carter vanishes from the isolated Derbyshire hamlet of Scardale. For the young George Bennett it is the beginning of his most difficult and harrowing case: a murder with no body, an investigation with more dead ends and closed faces than he'd have found in the inner city; an outcome that reverberates down the years. Decades later he tells his story to journalist Catherine Heathcote, but just when her book is poised for publication, Bennett tries to pull the plug. He has new information that he will not divulge, and that threatens the very foundation of his existence. Catherine is forced to reinvestigate the past, with results that turn the world upside down. A taut psychological thriller that explores, exposes and explodes the border between reality and illusion in a multilayered narrative that turns expectations on their head and reminds us that what we know is what we do not know...
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The Grifters
by Jim Thompson
Roy DIllon seems too handsome and well-mannered to be a professional con man. Lilly Dillon looks too young--and loves Roy a little too intensely--to be taken for his mother. Moira Langtry is getting too old to keep on living off the kindness of male strangers. And Carol Roberg seems too innocent to be acquainted with suffering.
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Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders
by Vincent Bugliosi
The true story of the Manson murders.
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A Time to Kill
by John Grisham
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ⢠The master of the legal thriller probes the savage depths of racial violence in this searing courtroom drama featuring the beloved Jake Brigance. âJohn Grisham may well be the best American storyteller writing today.ââThe Philadelphia Inquirer The life of a ten-year-old black girl is shattered by two drunken and remorseless white men. The mostly white town of Clanton in Ford County, Mississippi, reacts with shock and horror at the inhuman crimeâuntil the girlâs father acquires an assault rifle and takes justice into his own hands. For ten days, as burning crosses and the crack of sniper fire spread through the streets of Clanton, the nation sits spellbound as defense attorney Jake Brigance struggles to save his clientâs lifeâand then his own. Donât miss John Grishamâs new book, THE EXCHANGE: AFTER THE FIRM!
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A Touch of Frost
by R.D. Wingfield
âA funny, frantic, utterly refreshing brewâ â Sunday Telegraph Detective Inspector Jack Frost, officially on duty, is nevertheless determined to sneak off to a colleague's leaving party. But first the corpse of a well-known local junkie is found blocking the drain of a Denton public lavatory - and then the daughter of a wealthy businessman is reported missing. And now a wave of crime threatens to submerge sleepy Denton. A robbery occurs at the town's notorious strip joint, the pampered son of a local MP is suspected of a hit-and-run offence and, to top it all, a multiple rapist is on the loose. But the manic Frost manages to assure his superior that all is under control. Now he has only to convince himself...
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Tell No One
by Harlan Coben
âHarlan Coben is the modern master of the hook-and-twist.ââDan Brown For Dr. David Beck, the loss was shattering. And every day for the past eight years, he has relived the horror of what happened. The gleaming lake. The pale moonlight. The piercing screams. The night his wife was taken. The last night he saw her alive. Everyone tells him itâs time to move on, to forget the past once and for all. But for David Beck, there can be no closure. A message has appeared on his computer, a phrase only he and his dead wife know. Suddenly Beck is taunted with the impossibleâthat somewhere, somehow, his wife is alive . . . and heâs been warned to tell no one. Praise for Tell No One âA thriller of runaway tension . . . masterful suspense and explosive twists of fate.ââIris Johansen âA compelling and original suspense thriller.ââLos Angeles Times âNonstop action with plot twists galore.ââPhillip Margolin
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Wicked Prey
by John Sandford
Danger stalks Lucas Davenport at work and all too close to home, in the new thriller by the New York Times best-selling author of Phantom Prey. Original.
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BoneMan's Daughters
by Ted Dekker
They call him BoneMan, a serial killer who's abducted six young women. He's the perfect father looking for the perfect daughter, and when his victims fail to meet his lofty expectations, he kills them by breaking their bones and leaving them to die. Intelligence officer Ryan Evans, on the other hand, has lost all hope of ever being the perfect father. His daughter and wife have written him out of their lives. Everything changes when BoneMan takes Ryan's estranged daughter, Bethany, as his seventh victim. Ryan goes after BoneMan on his own. But the FBI sees it differently. New evidence points to the suspicion that Ryan is BoneMan. Now the hunter is the hunted, and in the end, only one father will stand.
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Adam
by Ted Dekker
It takes an obsessive mind to know one. And Daniel Clark knows the elusive killer he's been stalking. He's devoted every waking minute as a profiler to find the serial killer known only as Eve. He's pored over the crime scenes of sixteen young women who died mysterious deaths, all in underground basements or caverns. He's delved into the killer's head and puzzled over the twisted religious overtones of the killings. What Daniel can't possibly know is that he will be Eve's next victim. He will be the killer's first Adam. After sixteen hopeless months, the case takes a drastic turn on a very dark night when Daniel is shot and left for dead. Resuscitated after twenty minutes of clinical death, Daniel finds himself haunted by the experience. He knows he's seen the killer's face, but the trauma of dying has obscured the memory and left him with crushing panic attacks. Nothing--not even desperate, dangerous attempts to reexperience his own death--seems to bring him closer to finding the killer. Then Eve strikes again, much closer to home. And Daniel's obsession explodes into a battle for his life . . . his sanity . . . his very soul. Enter a world of death and near death that blurs the lines between fiction and reality in a way that will leave you stunned. "The detail is stunning, pointing to meticulous research in FBI methods, forensic medicine, and psychological profiling. We have to keep telling ourselves that this is fiction. At the same time, we can't help thinking that not only could it happen, but that it will happen if we're not careful." David M. Kiely and Christina McKenna, authors of The Dark Sacrament
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To Kill a Mockingbird
by Harper Lee
Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning masterwork of honor and injustice in the deep South -- and the heroism of one man in the face of blind and violent hatred One of the best-loved stories of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has been translated into more than forty languages, sold more than thirty million copies worldwide, served as the basis of an enormously popular motion picture, and was voted one of the best novels of the twentieth century by librarians across the country. A gripping, heart-wrenching, and wholly remarkable tale of coming-of-age in a South poisoned by virulent prejudice, it views a world of great beauty and savage inequities through the eyes of a young girl, as her father -- a crusading local lawyer -- risks everything to defend a black man unjustly accused of a terrible crime.
