Best Crime Fiction Books

A house explosion that kills a family draws Lindsay Boxer and the Women's Murder Club into the path of a radical group targeting the rich and powerful. As bombings and assassinations escalate toward a deadly climax, the case exacts a devastating personal cost on the club itself.

After a shootout leaves Lindsay Boxer facing a career-ending lawsuit, she retreats to the coastal town of Half Moon Bay — only to stumble onto a string of brutal murders of wealthy couples. As her trial looms in San Francisco, two cases close in on her at once.

The fourth and final Bruce Medway novel, returning to Benin — where the series began — as Medway investigates a brutal murder connected to the region's vodoun culture and its underworld of ritual and violence. A fitting close to the West African series, darker and more interior than the earlier books.

Retired FBI profiler Terry McCaleb is pulled back into the work to consult on a ritualistic murder — and the evidence he uncovers points, impossibly, to LAPD detective Harry Bosch. As McCaleb builds a case against a man he respects, Bosch is locked in a high-profile trial, unaware that an old colleague has turned his expert eye on him.

A simple job — find a woman's missing sister so a will can be settled — turns sinister when Kinsey Millhone realizes Elaine Boldt didn't just go to Florida for the winter. A trail of a burglary, an apartment fire, and a body leads Kinsey to suspect she's chasing not a missing person but a murder.

A simple good deed for an elderly couple drops Jack Reacher into the middle of a brutal gang war between Ukrainian and Albanian mobs. Lee Child's twenty-fourth Reacher thriller is among the most violent in the series, trading subtlety for relentless, body-stacking momentum.

A mild-mannered art-history professor leads a secret life as a predator, photographing and murdering women and burying them where no one will look. When his careful concealment begins to unravel, Lucas Davenport closes in on a killer whose ordinary surface hides a monstrous appetite.

Alex Cross returns to his North Carolina hometown to help defend a cousin accused of a horrifying murder. But Starksville holds more than one secret, and as Cross digs into the case he unearths buried truths about his own family — and the father he believed was long dead.

When $5,000 appears in her bank account, Kinsey Millhone realizes she's being framed — set up to look like she took a bribe in an arson investigation. To clear her name, she must turn detective on her own case, untangling a wealthy family's secrets and the personal enemy who engineered her downfall.

A world-famous supermodel and a teenage boy are found dead after a glittering party, and the case drags Lucas Davenport into the glamorous, treacherous world of high fashion. As the bodies and the suspects multiply, Davenport must sort the truth from the beautiful lies of people who have built their lives on appearances.

Between jobs and restless, Lucas Davenport agrees to help a presidential candidate he respects, hunting a credible threat of assassination as the Iowa caucuses approach. Somewhere in the heartland, a pair of true believers has decided that killing is justified to change the country — and Lucas has only days to find them.

Seventeen years ago, Bailey Fowler was convicted of murdering Jean Timberlake in the small coastal town of Floral Beach — then he escaped. Recaptured at last, he swears he's innocent, and his dying father hires Kinsey Millhone to prove it. But Floral Beach has kept its secrets for a long time, and it does not want them dug up.

Now writing for a small consumer-watchdog news site, Jack McEvoy becomes a suspect when a woman he once spent a night with is found murdered. Clearing his name, he uncovers a killer who finds his victims through the data sold by consumer DNA-testing companies — and a terrifying new frontier where your genes are for sale.

Just as Alex Cross prepares to leave the police force, his partner John Sampson asks for help: an Army buddy is on death row for murders he didn't commit. Their investigation uncovers a trio of killers operating inside the military and a conspiracy that reaches the highest ranks.

A Russian national is shot dead on the shore of Lake Superior, his body riddled with old Soviet-era bullets. The killing pulls Lucas Davenport into a Cold War mystery that never quite ended, and into an uneasy partnership with a sharp Russian investigator as he hunts a secret that has been hidden for decades.

When Alex Cross's niece is found brutally murdered, his birthday celebration turns into a personal manhunt that leads to a secret club where Washington's most powerful indulge their darkest appetites — a trail that climbs toward the very highest levels of government.

When a fellow investigator dies suddenly, Kinsey Millhone inherits his unfinished case: building the civil suit against David Barney, a man acquitted of murdering his wealthy wife six years ago. As Kinsey reconstructs the old crime, she must decide whether Barney is a killer who beat the system — or an innocent man twice accused.

The first Bruce Medway novel, introducing the fixer and sometime investigator who operates in West Africa's underworld of corrupt business, smuggling, and sudden violence. Medway is hired to find a missing German businessman in Benin — a job that quickly becomes far more dangerous than advertised. The first of four West African thrillers that established Robert Wilson's reputation before the Falcón series.

Two wealthy elderly women are bludgeoned to death in their homes, and at first the killings look like random burglaries gone wrong. But Lucas Davenport sees a pattern: someone is murdering rich old women and quietly stripping their homes of valuable antiques, a long con built on the assumption that no one is watching.

A federal judge known for his charitable work is gunned down alongside his two young sons in his own home. The killing is precise, professional, and baffling — the judge had no obvious enemies. Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers dig into a respected man's hidden life to find a motive for the unthinkable.

Nelson Dyar, a bored New York bank teller, moves to Tangier hoping to escape his life — and descends into a world of currency smugglers, drug dealers, and nihilistic expatriates that ends in catastrophe.

Newly retired from the LAPD, Harry Bosch can't let go of the one case that haunts him: the unsolved murder of a young woman connected to a violent movie-set robbery. Without a badge, working alone, he reopens the investigation — and discovers that the case reaches into the FBI and the shadow of national security.

A website appears featuring photographs of the children of powerful politicians, surrounded by extremist political rants. It could be protected speech — or a coded call for assassination. Lucas Davenport is quietly assigned to find out who is behind it before the implied threat against a senator's child becomes real.

Two bodies are found hanging from a tree in rural Minnesota — a black man and a white woman — and the scene screams racial hate crime. Newly appointed to a roving post with the state's Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, Lucas Davenport is sent to investigate, and discovers that the truth is stranger and more personal than the politics suggest.