Best Mystery Books

A Secret Service agent recruits Jack Reacher to do the impossible: assassinate the Vice President-elect — on paper — to expose the holes in his protection before a real killer exploits them. As credible death threats mount, Reacher's war game becomes a desperate race to stop an assassination for real.

A luxury-hotel murder scene yields a shocking clue: a news photo places Lindsay Boxer's own husband, Joe, at the scene — with another woman. When Joe vanishes, Lindsay must investigate the man she married, uncovering a possible double life tangled in espionage and national security.

An imprisoned serial killer's reign of terror seems to be over — until a copycat begins killing in his style, and reporter Cindy Thomas, writing a book about the original murderer, finds herself drawn dangerously close to both. Lindsay Boxer and the Women's Murder Club race to stop a protégé finishing his mentor's work.

When her longtime mentor and former partner Warren Jacobi is brutally stabbed to death, Lindsay Boxer vows to find his killer at any cost. The murder links to a string of clue-leaving killings — and to a brutal cartel that has drawn her husband Joe to Mexico, as Yuki prosecutes a case of her own.

A pair of arsonists is burning wealthy families alive in their own homes, leaving taunting Latin clues amid the ashes. As Lindsay Boxer hunts the fire-setters, the cold case of a missing young man — the son of a former governor — resurfaces to test the Women's Murder Club on two fronts.

A young man is found dead on a houseboat in London. Three women — each damaged, each with a connection to the dead man — become suspects in an investigation that reaches back through years of loss and resentment.

A passenger plane is shot out of the sky over Washington, and Alex Cross is drawn into the hunt for whoever turned the capital's airspace into a killing ground. As the investigation deepens, a separate executioner is at work — and the title is no idle threat: someone wants Cross dead.

As Alex Cross plans his long-awaited wedding to Bree Stone, a sniper begins assassinating Washington's most corrupt politicians and power brokers, dividing a city that half-cheers the killings. Then Cross's oldest nemesis, Kyle Craig, returns to turn the chaos into a personal trap.

A criminal genius named Thierry Mulch becomes obsessed with Alex Cross, watching his every move and orchestrating an elaborate campaign to prove he can outthink and destroy him. As Mulch closes in, the danger gathers around the one thing Cross can't protect: his family.

When Washington's police chief — Cross's friend and mentor — is gunned down, Alex Cross steps back into the force to find the killer. But the murder is only the start: a wave of vigilante killings is sweeping the capital, as someone decides the law is too slow and begins executing criminals in the streets.

A shady stranger hires Kinsey Millhone to deliver a $25,000 check to a teenage boy — a simple errand that turns out to be anything but. The client, John Daggett, is a drunk, a liar, and an ex-con responsible for deaths he never paid for, and when he turns up drowned, Kinsey is left to untangle who wanted him dead.

A killer who stages elaborate murders for a watching audience terrorizes Washington, just as Alex Cross is trying to build a peaceful life with Bree Stone. Then his oldest nemesis, the brilliant Kyle Craig, escapes and resurfaces — with a new face and a single obsession: destroying Cross.

Alex Cross and John Sampson set out on a wilderness canoe trip to clear their heads, but their old enemy M has other plans. Stalked through the Montana backcountry by snipers and drones, the two friends fight for their lives, while Bree pursues a dangerous trafficking case of her own back home.

Investigating an insurance fraud that turns deadly, Kinsey Millhone finds herself drawn deep undercover into the world of staged-accident scams — and trapped in the orbit of a volatile, dangerous man whose jealousy could get her killed. To get out, she'll have to play a role and pray her cover holds.

The origin story of Hannibal Lecter: from his aristocratic Lithuanian childhood through the traumatic events of the Second World War that broke something fundamental, to the first murders in post-war Europe and Japan. A prequel that traces the specific losses and grievances that created the most celebrated fictional cannibal.

Thierry Mulch has Alex Cross's entire family — Bree, Nana Mama, and the children — and forces Cross to dance to his commands or watch them die. Desperate and half-broken, Cross must obey a madman's escalating demands while racing to find the people he loves before it's too late.

After Michael Bennett helps capture a ruthless South American crime lord, the man swears vengeance from his cell — and makes good on it. With his family in danger, Bennett flees the city for a small town upstate, but his enemy's reach is long, and the war he has started will not stay behind him.

A town in the Nevada desert is wiped off the map as a demonstration of power, and a mastermind threatens to destroy the world's great cities unless he is paid billions. Alex Cross joins forces with MI6 and Interpol to stop the Wolf — and the returning Weasel — in a globe-spanning race against catastrophe.

A killer who signs emails 'Mary Smith' is murdering Hollywood stars and sending taunting accounts of each crime to a celebrity reporter. Alex Cross, pulled from a family vacation, hunts a murderer whose motive proves more painful and personal than the glamorous victims suggest.

A widow hires Kinsey Millhone to find out what was troubling her husband, a respected detective, in the weeks before he died. The job takes Kinsey to the small Sierra town of Nota Lake, where the questions she asks are not welcome — and where someone is willing to hurt her badly to keep the answers buried.

A respected doctor vanishes nine weeks before Kinsey Millhone is hired to find him, his nursing-home empire already under investigation for Medicare fraud. As Kinsey untangles his disappearance, a separate danger creeps in from a charming new acquaintance whose interest in her turns out to be anything but innocent.

A wealthy woman's daughter vanishes, and soon young people in the Twin Cities Goth scene begin turning up dead. The only witness describes a shadowy figure no one else can find — a phantom. Lucas Davenport must determine whether the killer is real, imagined, or something stranger still.

A wealthy father hires Kinsey Millhone for a simple job: collect his wayward daughter Reba from prison and ease her back into respectable life. But Reba is wild, loyal to the wrong people, and tangled with a married money launderer — and Kinsey finds herself caught between minding her client and helping the woman she's come to like.

The fifth and final Ripley novel. An American couple, David and Janice Pritchard, move to the village near Ripley's Belle Ombre and begin investigating the disappearance of Dickie Greenleaf — whose killing, thirty years earlier, is the foundational crime of the entire series. Ripley must manage this threat with the same composure he has brought to every crisis, in a novel that is both a thriller and a late meditation on how long a constructed life can hold.