Best Crime Fiction Books

An investigator for the agency that polices judicial misconduct receives a chilling tip: a sitting Florida judge is a meticulous serial killer who has eluded detection for years. As Lacy Stoltz digs into his hidden list of victims, she realizes her own name may be added to it.

Brad Thor's seventh Scot Harvath thriller. Counterterrorism operative Scot Harvath races across Europe and the Middle East to recover a lost secret about the origins of Islam — a revelation powerful enough to change history, and one that ruthless enemies will kill to keep buried.

A killer is murdering entire families in their homes, vanishing without a trace, and the press has dubbed him the most meticulous murderer in history. As Alex Cross hunts him, a celebrated true-crime writer who has made Cross his subject inserts himself into the investigation — with an agenda of his own.

Kinsey Millhone reports a shoplifting team she spots in a department store — a small good deed with deadly consequences. When one of the women is soon found dead, an apparent suicide, her grieving fiancé hires Kinsey, and the trail leads into a sophisticated organized-theft operation run by people who do not forgive interference.

Cassie Black, an ex-convict trying to go straight, agrees to one last high-stakes heist in Las Vegas — the score that will fund a new life and let her reclaim the daughter she gave up. But the job goes wrong, and a ruthless fixer is dispatched to recover what she took, hunting her across the desert in a deadly cat-and-mouse.

A kidnapper is abducting the children of New York's wealthiest families and quizzing them on the suffering of the poor — and when they fail his lessons in inequality, they die. Detective Michael Bennett and FBI agent Emily Parker race to stop a killer who has turned class guilt into a death sentence.

A devious divorcée cons Kinsey Millhone into helping locate an estranged son, the first thread in a web of deceit. Meanwhile, a dead colleague's files reveal a coded list — the record of a methodical killer who has murdered women for years without detection. The lone 'X' marks the series' darkest, most ruthless adversary.

Newly married, Lindsay Boxer barely has time for a honeymoon before a newborn baby vanishes and a terrified teenager stands accused. As Lindsay races to find the missing child, Yuki prosecutes a brutal assault case and Lindsay's own marriage is tested by the relentless pull of the job.

Severed heads are unearthed in the garden of a San Francisco mansion, and a vigilante is executing the city's drug dealers with a gun stolen from the police evidence locker. Newly pregnant and stretched thin, Lindsay Boxer must solve two cases that both seem to point uncomfortably close to home.

Lindsay Boxer gives birth just as three cases collide: a professor who dreams murders before they happen, a corpse that vanishes from the morgue, and a star athlete accused of a brutal killing. New motherhood and the relentless job pull Lindsay in every direction at once.

Brutal crimes are being committed by people in San Francisco police uniforms, and the evidence points inside Lindsay Boxer's own department. As the corruption spreads and trust collapses, Lindsay must investigate the colleagues she works beside every day — and decide who, if anyone, she can still believe.

Healthy men are dropping dead of sudden heart attacks that prove to be murders, the work of a killer with an intimate, deadly method. As Lindsay Boxer hunts the cause, she also faces the trial of a man accused of a devastating bombing — and the wreckage of her own marriage after Joe's betrayal.

A young mother and her baby daughter vanish, and all eyes turn to the husband — a man whose calm is unnerving and whose story doesn't add up. As Lindsay Boxer races to find the missing pair, the case twists toward something darker and stranger than a simple domestic tragedy.

Guns are flowing north across the border and San Francisco cops are turning up dead, the two facts tangled in a conspiracy bigger than anything Lindsay Boxer has faced. As the body count rises and the danger reaches her own circle, Lindsay races to expose a network that wants her silenced.

New York is reeling from a series of escalating, high-tech terror attacks, and no one can predict where the next blow will fall. As the city teeters on the edge of panic, Michael Bennett races against a sophisticated enemy who seems always one step ahead — and whose endgame could be catastrophic.

Alex Cross is hunting multiple killers at once — a meticulous murderer of beautiful women, a savage 'beating' killer, and a vengeful plastic surgeon Cross once arrested. As the cases multiply, Cross finds himself the target, framed and pursued, with his name and freedom suddenly on the line.

A tip leads to a trap, and a detective dies in Michael Bennett's place. Someone has marked Bennett for death, and as the attempts on his life escalate and reach toward his children, he must find the enemy hunting his family before the next ambush succeeds.

The mayor of New York makes Michael Bennett an offer he can't refuse: find the mayor's missing daughter, and the city will go easy on Bennett's own son, who is in serious trouble of his own. But the search pulls Bennett into a dangerous web of cybercrime and foreign intrigue with stakes far beyond one missing girl.

An assassin is in New York with the most audacious target imaginable: the President of the United States, in the city for a high-stakes summit. As world leaders gather and tensions with Russia simmer, Michael Bennett has only days to find a killer before an assassination triggers global catastrophe.

Scientist Henry Pierce gets a new phone number and starts receiving calls for a woman named Lilly — an escort who seems to have vanished. Unable to let it go, Pierce begins investigating her disappearance, and his obsessive curiosity drags him out of his ordered world and into a dangerous one that does not want to be examined.

After Alex Cross watches a killer he helped convict go to his execution, a new murder appears bearing the dead man's signature — and a taunting note signed simply 'M.' As the killings mount and grow personal, Cross must wonder whether he sent an innocent man to die, or whether something far more cunning is at work.

Alex Cross is gravely wounded and out of action, leaving John Sampson to carry the weight. As a coordinated wave of attacks threatens the capital and the people Cross loves, Sampson must protect his oldest friend, hold the line, and stop a conspiracy — all without the partner who has always had his back.

A glamorous Washington socialite and a private-school headmaster are found shot dead in a car outside a gala, their secret connection a mystery. Alex Cross knew the dead woman — and as he investigates her hidden life, the case pulls him into a web of power, money, and old secrets that someone will kill to protect.

In witness protection on the California coast, Michael Bennett thought distance would keep his family safe from crime lord Manuel Perrine. He was wrong. Perrine's reign of terror reaches across the country, and Bennett must hunt the man who has sworn to destroy everything he loves.