I’ll Be Gone in the Dark - Michelle McNamara

I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer - Michelle McNamara

The shining girls - Lauren Beukes

The shining girls - Beukes, Lauren

Summary: "A time-traveling serial killer is impossible to trace-- until one of his victims survives. In Depression-era Chicago, Harper Curtis finds a key to a house that opens on to other times. But it comes at a cost. He has to kill the shining girls: bright young women, burning with potential. He stalks them through their lives across different eras until, in 1989, one of his victims, Kirby Mazrachi, survives and starts hunting him back. Working with an ex-homicide reporter who is falling for her, Kirby has to unravel an impossible mystery"--Publisher's web site.


Booklist Reviews
Harper Curtis isn't your run-of-the-mill serial killer. He gets to time travel from the 1920s through the 1980s, killing girls in different decades, all to satisfy a bloodthirsty Chicago bungalow. Yes, you read that correctly: the house makes him do it. In this genre-bending novel, Beukes never explains the origins of this evil house or how it manages to transport Harper from year to year. All we know is that Harper is compelled to track down and murder specific "shining girls" in gruesome ways (usually evisceration), and he gets away with it since he can escape across time. Until he leaves Kirby Mazrachi behind in 1989, that is. Kirby miraculously recovers from the vicious attack and is determined to track down her assailant, even if the police consider it a closed case. She enlists the help of Dan, a reporter at the Sun-Times, and they slowly uncover odd clues left behind in a dozen unsolved murder cases; it turns out Harper has been leaving behind items from the future. Not for all tastes, but fans of urban fantasy may be interested in this clever and detailed supernatural thriller. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.

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The bad seed - William March

The bad seed - March, William

Summary: What happens to ordinary families into whose midst a child serial killer is born? This is the question at the center of William March's classic thriller. After its initial publication in 1954, the book went on to become a million-copy bestseller, a wildly successful Broadway show, and a Warner Brothers film. The spine-tingling tale of little Rhoda Penmark had a tremendous impact on the thriller genre and generated a whole perdurable crop of creepy kids. Today, The Bad Seed remains a masterpiece of suspense that's as chilling, intelligent, and timely as ever before. - (HARPERCOLL)

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The silence of the lambs - Thomas Harris

The silence of the lambs - Harris, Thomas

Summary: FBI Academy trainee Clarice Starling hopes that Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a criminally insane psychiatrist imprisoned in a Boston hospital, can lead her to the serial killer known only as Buffalo Bill - (Baker & Taylor)


Library Journal Reviews
In this intelligent, fast-paced thrillerwhich is also brutal and gruesomeagent Clarice Starling of the FBI's behavioral science section is assigned to conduct a psychological profile of Hannibal Lecter, a psychiatrist imprisoned for serial murder. Uncooperative at first, Lecter then says he can help identify a serial killer who has eluded authorities for months. Lecter's aid proves invaluable, and Starling soon finds herself using one madman to catch another. Harris ( Black Sunday, 1975; Red Dragon , 1981) has written a story, although not for the squeamish, that is hard to put down. Lonnie Beene, West Texas State Univ. Lib., Caynon Copyright 1988 Cahners Business Information.

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The silence of the lambs (DVD)

The silence of the lambs - Harris, Thomas

Summary: FBI agent Clarice Starling is assigned to help find a missing woman to save her from a psychopathic serial killer who skins his victims. Clarice attempts to gain a better insight into the twisted mind of the killer by talking to another psychopath Hannibal Lecter, who used to be a respected psychiatrist.


Review
Based on Thomas Harris's novel, this terrifying film by Jonathan Demme really only contains a couple of genuinely shocking moments (one involving an autopsy, the other a prison break). The rest of the film is a splatter-free visual and psychological descent into the hell of madness, redeemed astonishingly by an unlikely connection between a monster and a haunted young woman. Anthony Hopkins is extraordinary as the cannibalistic psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal Lecter, virtually entombed in a subterranean prison for the criminally insane. At the behest of the FBI, agent-in-training Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) approaches Lecter, requesting his insights into the identity and methods of a serial killer named Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine). In exchange, Lecter demands the right to penetrate Starling's most painful memories, creating a bizarre but palpable intimacy that liberates them both under separate but equally horrific circumstances. Demme, a filmmaker with a uniquely populist vision (Melvin and Howard, Something Wild), also spent his early years making pulp for Roger Corman (Caged Heat), and he hasn't forgotten the significance of tone, atmosphere, and the unsettling nature of a crudely effective close-up. Much of the film, in fact, consists of actors staring straight into the camera (usually from Clarice's point of view), making every bridge between one set of eyes to another seem terribly dangerous. --Tom Keogh amazon.com

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The man from Beijing - Henning Mankell

 The man from Beijing - Mankell, Henning

Summary: Hudiksvall, January 2006, police find eighteen people massacred in a small village. They think it's the work of a mad man but Birgitta and August believe they were killed by the same person who killed their mother.




Booklist Reviews
Mankell's latest stand-alone thriller lacks the tight focus of his Wallander novels, but it still delivers plenty of suspense and a compelling protagonist. Birgitta Roslin, a district-court judge in the Swedish city of Helsingborg, finds herself involved in the horrific slaughter of 19 people in a small hamlet in rural Sweden. Roslin, who has a family connection to one of the victims, travels to the scene of the crime and makes inquiries with the local police. In two short days, she traces the only clue—a red silk ribbon—to a local Chinese restaurant and to a Chinese man who stayed at a hotel near the restaurant. That small strand of ribbon takes Roslin to Beijing, where she attempts to trace the mystery man, is assaulted, and encounters a government official, Hong Qui, who is conducting her own investigation into corruption at the highest levels of Chinese society. But China is only the beginning of Mankell's narrative globe-trotting. The plot also careens to Mozambique and to London, not to mention lengthy flashbacks to the nineteenth-century U.S., where two Chinese brothers, sold into slavery, are building railroads. The various strains of this massive plot are skillfully interconnected, but there are too many stories—each of which could have been its own novel—and Mankell spends far too much time laying out his position on modern Chinese and African politics. Still, the opening set piece, in which the murders are discovered, is a stunner, and the finale, in a London restaurant, is equally gripping. Yes, Mankell overextends himself here, but he also shows why he remains a must-read for anyone interested in the international crime novel. Copyright 2010 Booklist Reviews.


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Darkly dreaming Dexter: a novel - Jeffry P. Lindsay

Darkly dreaming Dexter: a novel - Jeffry, Lindsay P.

Series Title: Dexter

Summary: Hiding a secret life as an assassin while working as a murder analyst for the Miami police, Dexter Morgan is intrigued by the work of a new serial killer whose style mimics his own.


Booklist Reviews
/*Starred Review*/ After finishing this debut novel, readers will have only one thing to say: wow! This is a mystery about the efforts of the Miami police to capture a serial killer who cuts up the bodies of his victims. One police officer, Deborah Morgan, is hoping that her participation in the investigation will help her make the leap from Vice to Homicide. Meanwhile, her adopted brother, Dexter, a blood-spatter expert who works for the police department, feeds her information about the case that he hopes will help her. Oh, and did we say that Dexter narrates the novel? And did we mention that Dexter is also a serial killer? (But not the serial killer his sister is trying to catch.) Dexter, a likable fellow on the surface, firmly in touch with his own inhumanity, is one of the genre's most original, compelling characters to appear in years. He makes a fascinating narrator, appealing, articulate, and ghoulish all at the same time. He is probably not the type of guy you could build a series around, but, oh boy, does he make an impression. Long after readers finish this gripping novel, they will still be thinking (or dreaming) about Dexter. ((Reviewed May 15, 2004)) Copyright 2004 Booklist Reviews.

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