14 Murder Mystery Books That Are So Scary, Sherlock Sleeps With A Light On
14 Best Murder Mystery Books
Lock the doors, get comfortable under the sheets, and make sure your flashlight has batteries! These mysteries will have you guessing till the very last page. From classics to modern day thrillers, here are the best murder mystery books you must read!
1. The Secret Place
$11.02
"An absolutely mesmerizing read Tana French is simply this a truly great writer Gillian Flynn Detective Stephen Moran has been waiting for his chance to join Dublins Murder Squad when sixteen-year-old Holly Mackey arrives in his office with a photo of a popular boy whose body was found at a girls boarding school a year earlier The photo had been posted at The Secret Place the schools anonymous gossip board and the caption says I KNOW WHO KILLED HIM Stephen joins with Detective Antoinette Conway to reopen the case beneath the watchful eye of Hollys father fellow detective Frank Mackey With the clues leading back to Hollys close-knit group of friends to their rival clique and to the tangle of relationships that bound them all to the murdered boy the private underworld of teenage girls turns out to be more mysterious and more dangerous than the detectives imagined".
2. One Of Us Is Lying
$13.18
"Pay close attention and you might solve this. On Monday afternoon, five students at Bayview High walk into detention. Bronwyn, the brain, is Yale-bound and never breaks a rule. Addy, the beauty, is the picture-perfect homecoming princess. Nate, the criminal, is already on probation for dealing. Cooper, the athlete, is the all-star baseball pitcher. And Simon, the outcast, is the creator of Bayview High's notorious gossip app.
Only, Simon never makes it out of that classroom. Before the end of detention Simon's dead. And according to investigators, his death wasn't an accident. On Monday, he died. But on Tuesday, he'd planned to post juicy reveals about all four of his high-profile classmates, which makes all four of them suspects in his murder. Or are they the perfect patsies for a killer who's still on the loose?".
3. Before I Go To Sleep
$10.88
"Memories define us. So what if you lost yours every time you went to sleep? Your name, your identity, your past, even the people you love—all forgotten overnight. And the one person you trust may be telling you only half the story.
Welcome to Christine's life".
4. Sharp Objects
$10.60
"Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, reporter Camille Preaker faces a troubling assignment: she must return to her tiny hometown to cover the murders of two preteen girls. For years, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the half-sister she barely knows: a beautiful thirteen-year-old with an eerie grip on the town. Now, installed in her old bedroom in her family's Victorian mansion, Camille finds herself identifying with the young victims—a bit too strongly. Dogged by her own demons, she must unravel the psychological puzzle of her own past if she wants to get the story—and survive this homecoming".
5. Mr. Mercedes
$17.15
"In a high suspense race against time three of the most unlikely heroes Stephen King has ever created try to stop a lone killer from blowing up thousands. Mr Mercedes is a rich resonant exceptionally readable accomplishment by a man who can write in whatever genre he chooses, The Washington Post. In the frigid pre dawn hours in a distressed Midwestern city desperate unemployed folks are lined up for a spot at a job fair.
Without warning a lone driver plows through the crowd in a stolen Mercedes running over the innocent backing up and charging again. Eight people are killed fifteen are wounded. The killer escapes.
In another part of town months later a retired cop named Bill Hodges is still haunted by the unsolved crime. When he gets a crazed letter from someone who self identifies as the perk and threatens an even more diabolical attack Hodges wakes up from his depressed and vacant retirement, hell bent on preventing another tragedy. Brady Hartsfield lives with his alcoholic mother in the house where he was born. He loved the feel of death under the wheels of the Mercedes and he wants that rush again. Only Bill Hodges with two new unusual allies can apprehend the killer before he strikes again. And they have no time to lose because Brady's next mission if it succeeds will kill or maim thousands".
6. Vanishing Girls
$11.64
"New York Times bestselling author Lauren Oliver delivers a gripping story perfect for fans of We Were Liars and I Was Here, about two sisters inexorably altered by a terrible accident.
Dara and Nick used to be inseparable, but that was before the accident that left Dara's beautiful face scarred and the two sisters totally estranged.
When Dara vanishes on her birthday, Nick thinks Dara is just playing around. But another girl, nine-year-old Madeline Snow, has vanished, too, and Nick becomes increasingly convinced that the two disappearances are linked. Now Nick has to find her sister, before it's too late.
In this edgy and compelling novel, Lauren Oliver creates a world of intrigue, loss, and suspicion as two sisters search to find themselves, and each other".
7. The Expats
$25.51
Can We Ever Escape Our Secrets?
"The international thriller that Patricia Cornwell says is "bristling with suspense" about an American abroad who finds herself in complex web of intrigue".
8. And Then There Were None
$8.81
"Ten people, each with something to hide and something to fear, are invited to a isolated mansion on Indian Island by a host who, surprisingly, fails to appear. On the island they are cut off from everything but each other and the inescapable shadows of their own past lives. One by one, the guests share the darkest secrets of their wicked pasts. And one by one, they die…".
9. The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency
$20.00
"This first novel in Alexander McCall Smith's widely acclaimed The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series tells the story of the delightfully cunning and enormously engaging Precious Ramotswe, who is drawn to her profession to "help people with problems in their lives." Immediately upon setting up shop in a small storefront in Gaborone, she is hired to track down a missing husband, uncover a con man, and follow a wayward daughter. But the case that tugs at her heart, and lands her in danger, is a missing eleven-year-old boy, who may have been snatched by witchdoctors".
10. Mystic River
$8.69
"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".
11. Birds Of A Feather
$10.84
"Jacqueline Winspear's marvelous debut, Maisie Dobbs, won her fans from around the world and raised her intuitive, intelligent, and resourceful heroine to the ranks of literature's favorite sleuths. Birds of a Feather, its follow-up, finds psychologist and private investigator Maisie Dobbs on another dangerously intriguing adventure in London "between the wars." It is the spring of 1930, and Maisie has been hired to find a runaway heiress. But what seems a simple case at the outset soon becomes increasingly complicated when three of the heiress's old friends are found dead. Is there a connection between the woman's mysterious disappearance and the murders? Who would want to kill three seemingly respectable young women? As Maisie investigates, she discovers that the answers lie in the unforgettable agony of the Great War".
12. The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
$5.70
"The twelve stories (eleven in American editions) of the Memoirs are: "Silver Blaze", "The Adventure of the Cardboard Box", "The Adventure of the Yellow Face", "The Adventure of the Stockbroker's Clerk", "The Adventure of the Gloria Scott", "The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual", "The Adventure of the Reigate Squire", "The Adventure of the Crooked Man", "The Adventure of the Resident Patient", "The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter", "The Adventure of the Naval Treaty", "The Final Problem"."
13. Gaudy Night
$19.48
"The great Dorothy L. Sayers is considered by many to be the premier detective novelist of the Golden Age, and her dashing sleuth, Lord Peter Wimsey, one of mystery fiction's most enduring and endearing protagonists. Acclaimed author Ruth Rendell has expressed her admiration for Sayers's work, praising her "great fertility of invention, ingenuity, and wonderful eye for detail." The third Dorothy L. Sayers classic to feature mystery writer Harriet Vane, Gaudy Night is now back in print with an introduction by Elizabeth George, herself a crime fiction master. Gaudy Night takes Harriet and her paramour, Lord Peter, to Oxford University, Harriet's alma mater, for a reunion, only to find themselves the targets of a nightmare of harassment and mysterious, murderous threats".
14. The Talented Mr. Ripley
$14.19
"Three classic crime novels by a master of the macabre - The Talented Mr. Ripley, Ripley Under Ground, and Ripley's Game - appear here together in hardcover for the first time. Suave, agreeable, and completely amoral, Patricia Highsmith's hero, the inimitable Tom Ripley, stops at nothing - not even murder - to accomplish his goals. In achieving the opulent life that he was denied as a child, Ripley shows himself to be a master of illusion and manipulation and a disturbingly sympathetic combination of genius and psychopath. Sent on a mission to Italy to coax an irresponsible young playboy back to his wealthy father in America, Ripley finds himself so fond of the young man that he sets out to be like him - exactly like him. The precarious charade that ensues is the first step to a life of elegance and ease - and perpetual danger. As she leads us through the mesmerizing tangle of Ripley's deadly and sinister games, Highsmith turns the mystery genre inside out and takes us into the mind of a man utterly indifferent to evil".
