Recommendations based on "Face of Death"

It is fall in Philadelphia and the mutilated body of a man is found in one of the poorest neighbourhoods of the city. The victim has been viciously tortured to death. It's the work of a sadistic mind in free fall. When homicide detectives Kevin Byrne and Jessica Balzano investigate, they soon realise that their crime scene is linked to the past. Eight years ago, another body was found in the same place, in the same position, killed in the same manner. That case was never closed. Apart from their killer's unusual calling cards, the crime scene photos - past and present - are identical. As another brutalised body appears, then another, it becomes horrifyingly clear that someone is recreating unsolved murders from Philadelphia's past in the most sinister of ways. And the killer is closer than they think...

Still grieving over the accidental death of an innocent child caught in crossfire, Matthew Scudder privately takes on the case of a mass-murder victim and begins a search for a phantom psychotic killer. Reissue.

LAPD Lieutenant Peter Decker reluctantly agrees to do a big favour for an old friend, Teresa McLaughlin, but when she and her husband disappear, Decker's search is interrupted by the suspicious death of a young health care worker.

Detective Superintendent Roy Grace is forever haunted by the unexplained disappearance of his wife, Sandy, nearly ten years ago. Ever since she went missing, he's been consumed with finding out what happened to her. Finally, he may be moving on. He has fallen in love and is going to marry his girlfriend, Cleo, who is pregnant with their child.  But his life is put on hold when, after a wild New Year's Eve ball, a woman is brutally raped as she returns to her hotel room. A week later, another woman is attacked. Both victims' shoes are taken by their attacker. Grace soon realizes that these new cases bear remarkable similarities to an unsolved series of crimes in the city back in 1997. The perpetrator had been dubbed "Shoe Man" and was believed to have raped four women before murdering his fifth victim and vanishing. Could this be a copycat, or has Shoe Man resurfaced? When more women are assaulted, Grace becomes increasingly certain that they are dealing with the same man. By delving back into the past—a time when Sandy was still in his life—he may find the key to unlocking the current mystery. Soon Grace and his team find themselves in a desperate race against the clock to identify and save the life of the new sixth victim, as he struggles with a chapter in his life he thought he had put behind him at last. Dead Like You is Peter James at his best—"Possibly the most engrossing thriller since The Silence of the Lambs" (Washington Post Book World).

“In this series about gambling, the main character is a big winner.”–Janet Maslin, The New York Times“Bask in Swain’s Las Vegas without having to set foot in the place and risk being skinned alive.”–The Washington Post Book WorldA blind poker player named Skip DeMarco is scamming the world’s largest poker tournament in Las Vegas, and cheating-expert Tony Valentine and his son, Gerry, have been hired to find out how. DeMarco is tied to some dangerously desperate characters who will go to extremes–even cold-blooded murder–to ensure that the obnoxious DeMarco wins big.While Gerry flies to Atlantic City to suss out DeMarco’s secret, Valentine stays in Vegas and teams up with an aging grifter named Rufus Steele, who has his own score to settle with DeMarco. On opposite sides of a deadly game, father and son work their way through a colorful landscape of conmen and hitmen. Together, they will have to prove there’s more to any game of chance than meets the eye.Featuring insider tips for catching poker cheats, as well as a glossary of card hustler terms!

It's a typical cold November night and Detective Sergeant Dennis Milne, a very atypical policeman, waits in the Traveller's Rest Hotel parking lot for the arrival of three men. Cynical and jaded, Milne earns money on the side by doing what he does best: punishing the bad guys. But this time he's been duped. Instead of blowing away drug dealers, he kills three innocent people, their deaths starting an investigation that sees him and his conscience heading for trouble.Less than twelve hours later, Milne is out on the streets again. Eighteen-year-old Miriam Fox has been found dead by Regent's Canal---her throat slashed. Desperate to find Miriam's killer, Milne uncovers a web of depravity far more shocking than he could ever have imagined. Can he evade arrest for his own crimes and solve a case so sickening that it may provide the key to his personal redemption?The clock is ticking and everyone's watching their backs as a war of morality is fought in the mind of one renegade policeman in this gripping first novel by a talented young crime writer.

Dr. Bill Brockton, the founder of the world-famous Body Farm, is hard at work on a troubling new case. A young man's battered body has been found in nearby Chattanooga, and it's up to the talented Dr. Brockton to assemble the pieces of the forensic puzzle. Brockton is brought into the case by the rising star of the state's mechanical examiners, Jess Carter. Just as they're on the verge of breaking the case open, events take a terrifying turn. Brockton has re-created the Chattanooga death scene at the Body Farm, but a killer tampers with it in a shocking way: placing another corpse at the setting, confusing authorities and putting Brockton's career and life in jeopardy. Soon Brockton himself is accused of the horrific new crime, and the once-beloved professor becomes an outcast. As the net around him tightens, Brockton must use all of his forensic skills to prove his own innocence . . . before he ends up behind bars with some of the very killers he's helped to convict. Flesh and Bone is another roller-coaster ride into the world of forensic anthropology, its twists and turns marked by drama and pathos, humor and grief, families and friends and enemies. With captivatingly real characters, plus fascinating scientific insights drawn from the case files of a living forensic legend, this astonishing novel confirms Jefferson Bass as one of our most talented authors of suspense.

Detective Carson Ryder faces a cunning and inventive adversary in this terrifying thriller from the bestselling author of Her Last Scream. Young men in Miami are being abducted and tortured after their drinks are spiked with a cocktail of drugs that leaves them unable to recall their ordeal. Despite this, Detective Carson Ryder knows the predator's name, height, age, colouring ... everything. It's impossible for the perpetrator to avoid detection. Yet he does. When Carson seeks answers from his brother, a wanted criminal intimate with twisted minds, Jeremy's odd behaviour sparks even more questions. With each abduction, the violence becomes more horrific, and it's only a short time until torture turns to murder. But how do you catch an invisible man?

Jane Whitefield takes on the mafia—and its money—in this “downright dazzling” (The New York Times Book Review) crime thriller from the award-winning author of The Butcher’s Boy. “A terrifying ride . . . a terrific, pell-mell book.”—Minneapolis Star-Tribune Even before she heard the teenager’s story, Jane Whitefield’s Native American intuition whispered danger. For a year, Rita Shelford kept house for an old man in Florida. When he disappeared, other men came and tried to kill her. That was before she knew that her employer was the Mafia’s brilliant moneyman, recently reported murdered. Now the mob suspects Rita of stealing the only record of a shady investment worth billions. Unless Jane, Rita’s last hope, can spirit Rita into a new identity, she’s a dead woman. As the mafioso army converges on airports and hotels, highway and city streets, there seems to be no exit—except from life itself. . . .

"Lean forward, grab on, and ride for adventure." So says Library Journal of J. A. Jance's last J. P. Beaumont mystery, Without Due Process. Now Jance's veteran police sleuth is back in Failure to Appear, tracking an insanely clever killer through the well-heeled world of actors, stage folk, and arts patrons. Beaumont doesn't exactly have a simple life, solving murders as one of the Rainy City's finest, staying sober one day at a time, and dealing with his frustrating new girlfriend. But when his eighteen-year-old daughter, Kelly, runs away to join a theatrical commune and announces her plans to marry a krumhorn-playing thespian, Beau hits the wall. He has no choice but to follow her south to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, thereby landing himself a part in a modern-day Greek tragedy. Murder enters stage left. One of Beau's unsavory acquaintances turns up very messily dead, and the Festival's beloved Juliet, Tanya Dunseth, is the star suspect. Trying to please a headstrong daughter, a difficult girlfriend, and an implacable exwife, Beau agrees to do what he can to clear the actress of the charge. Then a second corpse makes an appearance soon after the mysterious arrival of a kiddie porn tape featuring a very young Tanya in the leading role. Way off his beat, and faced with a territorial local cop who doesn't appreciate out-of-town help, Beau races against time to sort through the tangled plot lines before the final act of this deadly revenge play comes to life. With fascinating characters and tight plotting, Jance tells the story in the unflappable Beaumont style that her readers love and have come to expect. In Failure to Appear, she takes us to new turns in Beau's life and new heightsof storytelling magic.