Crime Mystery Novels Police Suspense Thriller Young Adult

DI Haig Crime Thrillers #1

The Somerset Slayings

Name: The Somerset Slayings
Rating: 4.33 (3400 reviews)
Author: David J. Gatward

David J. Gatward September 30, 2024

4.33 3.4k Ratings

Ongoing Status

12 Views

Start Reading

Synopsis

A fresh start filled with ghosts and heartache. Can she face her own demons and stop a malevolent murderer?

Somerset, England. DI Gordy Haig is drowning in grief. Devastated and heartbroken, the dedicated Scot questions her decision to transfer and take on a new role in a town full of strangers. And just as she’s tempted to give up, a body is found gruesomely displayed in the ruins of a castle.

Digging into the grisly crime, while still living out of a suitcase, the tenacious investigator puzzles over the staged homicide and its apparent mirroring of a death scene from a horror movie. As she battles with nightmares and little sleep, and struggles to focus on the day job, a second body is found – once again mirroring another grotesque cinematic murder.

As the clues reveal a link to an unfinished horror movie, can Gordy roll the credits on a mystery steeped in history and deceit?

The Somerset Slayings is the gripping first book in the DI Haig Crime Thrillers series. If you like wounded but dogged heroines, twisted tales of retribution, and the past returning with a vengeance, then you’ll love David J. Gatward’s heart-stopping procedural.

Books similar to The Somerset Slayings

Judas Child

★ 4.08

Carol O'Connell

It is three days before Christmas, and two young girls have disappeared from the local academy. This hasn't happened for fifteen years, since Rouge Kendall's twin sister was murdered. The killer was found, but now Rouge, twenty-five and a policeman, is forced to wonder: was he really the one? Also wondering is a former classmate named Ali Cray, a forensic psychologist with scars of her own. The pattern is the same, she says: a child called out to meet a friend. The friend is the bait, the Judas child, and is quickly killed. But the primary victim lives longer. . .until Christmas day. Rouge doesn't want to hear this. He's spent the last fifteen years trying to avoid the memories. A little girl has haunted his dreams all these years - and he has three days to finally put her to rest. Filled with rich prose, resonant characters, and knife-edged suspense that have won so many fans, Judas Child is Carol O'Connell's most powerful novel yet.

Journey’s Paradox

★ 4.57

Mary Stone

I spy with my little eye…

For the past two months, FBI Special Agent Journey Russo has had nothing to focus on except working with her therapist to heal the lingering trauma caused by the fire that claimed her family. Until back to school at a nearby university has her grappling with a different kind of tragedy.

Murder.

The victim, a sophomore at a small local college, was raped and stabbed in her first-floor apartment. Unfortunately, she’s not the first. The crime eerily echoes the death of another female student just two weeks before. Local police arrested the woman’s boyfriend. But if he was in jail, who committed the second crime?

Suddenly, what seemed like an open-and-shut case is far from it.

Both women attended the same university, were the same age, had several classes together, looked almost identical to each other, and were killed shortly after their date left their apartment. One homicide could be an isolated incident. Two deaths with similar modus operandi and signatures means more murders are imminent. Unless Journey can catch the killer roaming Mason University before he spills more blood.

School is back in session. And Journey’s Paradox, book six of the Journey Russo FBI series by bestselling author Mary Stone, will have you pulling an all-nighter.

On Her Watch

★ 4.5

Melinda Leigh

Sheriff Bree Taggert becomes a target when she follows the twisting trail of a serial killer in a bone-chilling novel of suspense by #1 Wall Street Journal bestselling author Melinda Leigh.

A pair of hikers find a tarp-wrapped body in a clearing in the woods. When a search in the surrounding area yields two more, Sheriff Bree Taggert knows they’ve stumbled onto a serial killer’s dumping ground.

With the help of investigator Matt Flynn, Bree works the case. They go to interview Jana, the best friend of one of the victims. But when they arrive at her apartment, it’s been ransacked and set on fire. And Jana is missing.

It’s clear the killer is escalating. To make matters worse, he threatens Bree’s family and a young mother vanishes. Will Bree and Matt uncover the link between the victims before more women die?

American Tabloid

★ 4.19

James Ellroy

We are behind, and below, the scenes of JFK's presidential election, the Bay of Pigs, the assassination—in the underworld that connects Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago, D.C....

Where the CIA, the Mob, J. Edgar Hoover, Howard Hughes, Jimmy Hoffa, Cuban political exiles, and various loose cannons conspire in a covert anarchy...

Where the right drugs, the right amount of cash, the right murder, buys a moment of a man's loyalty...

Where three renegade law-enforcement officers—a former L.A. cop and two FBI agents—are shaping events with the virulence of their greed and hatred, riding full-blast shotgun into history....

James Ellroy's trademark nothing-spared rendering of reality, blistering language, and relentless narrative pace are here in electrifying abundance, put to work in a novel as shocking and daring as anything he's written: a secret history that zeroes in on a time still shrouded in secrets and blows it wide open.

Chosen by Time magazine as one of the ten best books of the year.

"Hard-bitten ... ingenious ... Ellroy segues into political intrigue without missing a beat." —The New York Times

"Vastly entertaining." —Los Angeles Times

"One hellishly exciting ride." —Detroit Free Press

"A supremely controlled work of art." —The New York Times Book Review

Clockers

★ 4.09

Richard Price

Award-winning author Richard Price here offers a viscerally affecting and accomplished portrait of inner-city America.

Veteran homicide detective Rocco Klein's passion for the job gave way long ago. His beat is a rough New Jersey neighborhood where the drug murders blur together, until the day Victor Dunham — a twenty-year-old with a steady job and a clean record — confesses to a shooting outside a fast-food joint. It doesn't take long for Rocco's attention to turn to Victor's brother, a street-corner crack dealer named Strike who seems a more likely suspect for the crime.

At once an intense mystery, and a revealing study of two men on opposite sides of an unwinnable war, Clockers is a stunningly well-rendered chronicle of modern life on the streets.

Dead End Girl

★ 4.18

L.T. Vargus

Her body is broken. Wrapped in plastic. Dumped on the side of the road. She is the first. There will be more.

The serial killer thriller that "refuses to let go until you've read the last sentence."

The most recent body was discovered in the grease dumpster behind a Burger King. Dismembered. Shoved into two garbage bags and lowered into the murky oil.

Now rookie agent Violet Darger gets the most important assignment of her career. She travels to the Midwest to face a killer unlike anything she's seen. Aggressive. Territorial. Deranged and driven.

Another mutilated corpse was found next to a roller rink. A third in the gutter in a residential neighborhood.

These bold displays of violence shock the rural community and rattle local law enforcement.

Who could carry out such brutality? And why?

Unfortunately for Agent Darger, there's little physical evidence to work with, and the only witnesses prove to be unreliable. The case seems hopeless.

If she fails, more will die. He will kill again and again.

The victims harbor dark secrets. The clues twist and writhe and refuse to keep still. And the killer watches the investigation on the nightly news, gleeful to relive the violence, knowing that he can't be stopped.

A page-turning thriller packed with heart-stopping suspense. Fans of John Sandford, Jeffery Deaver, Karin Slaughter, and Lisa Gardner should get to know Violet Darger.

The Alchemy Fire Murder

★ 4.3

Susan Rowland

Former Archivist Mary Wandwalker hates bringing bad news. Nevertheless, she confirms to her alma mater that their prized medieval alchemy scroll, is, in fact, a seventeenth century copy. She learns that the original vanished to colonial Connecticut with alchemist, Robert Le More. Later the genuine scroll surfaces in Los Angeles. Given that the authentic artifact is needed for her Oxford college to survive, retrieving it is essential.

Mary agrees to get the real scroll back as part of a commission for her three-person Enquiry Agency. However, tragedy strikes in Los Angeles. Before Mary can legally obtain the scroll, a young man is murdered, and the treasure stolen.

Murder and theft are complicated by the disappearance in the UK of a witch mysteriously connected to the scroll. While Mary's colleague, Caroline, risks her sanity to go undercover in a dodgy mental hospital, her lover, Anna resorts to desperate measures. These, and Anna's silence over blackmail, threaten the survival of the Agency. Mary teams up with the victim's brother to track the killer, and the real alchemy scroll. Solving crimes on two continents will involve a rogue pharmaceutical corporation, Janet the witch, the Holywell Retreat Center near Oxford, plus the trafficked women they support, a graduate school in California, and a life-threatening mountain-consuming wildfire. Can these inexperienced detectives triumph over corrupt professors and racist attempts to rewrite history? Can they remake their fragile family? Will the extraordinary story of Robert Le More prove a source of hope for today?

Scavenger Hunt

★ 4.29

Chad Boudreaux

WHEN JUSTICE IS BLIND, SCAVENGERS DO THE HUNTING

Blake Hudson just wants to serve his country well as a lawyer for the United States Justice Department—but when an unknown threat begins plotting his downfall, he must find who is setting him up before it costs him his life.

Scavenger Hunt is a suspense novel chronicling the plight of Blake Hudson, a Justice Department lawyer assigned to a clandestine counterterrorist group created to bypass onerous legal requirements. After the group mysteriously disbands, Hudson becomes the scapegoat and is transformed from hunter to hunted. As he searches for answers and attempts to piece the puzzle together, people are following him, trying to kill him.

Written for fans of fast-paced thrillers, dry humor, political gamesmanship, and Clue-like twists and turns, Scavenger Hunt carves out a distinct niche best described as a hybrid of the Robert Ludlum classics and works by Brad Meltzer. Blake Hudson’s story addresses issues that have shaped recent elections and continue to frustrate interest groups and government leaders, while featuring the inner workings of the U.S. Department of Justice Building—arguably the most important and misunderstood agency in the federal government. Author Chad Boudreaux’s unique voice and page-turning storytelling packs a plot-driven punch that readers won’t be able to put down.