Have you been craving stories about serial killers lately? Me too! And it turns out there are reasons for that. According to the fabulous author Tana French, who wrote an essay on this very subject for Time Magazine, readers are drawn to mysteries for two reasons: they are about restoring order and/or they are about dealing with unanswerable issues: truth and justice, life and death. With that in mind, here are three books that will definitely take your mind off of what’s worrying you.
The Perfect Husband by Lisa Gardner
Jim Beckett was everything she’d ever dreamed of. . . . But two years after Tess married the decorated cop and bore his child, she helped put him behind bars for savagely murdering ten women. Even locked up in a maximum security prison, he vowed he would come after her and make her pay. Now the cunning killer has escaped—and the most dangerous game of all begins.
After a lifetime of fear, Tess will do something she’s never done before. She’s going to learn to protect her daughter and fight back, with the help of a burned-out ex-marine. As the largest manhunt four states have ever seen mobilizes to catch Beckett, the clock winds down to the terrifying reunion between husband and wife. And Tess knows that this time, her only choices are to kill—or be killed.
The Alienist by Caleb Carr
I read this book when it first came out in 2001, but I’d forgotten how good it was. Teddy Roosevelt is swept up into a hunt for a serial killer. When The Alienist was first published in 1994, it was a major phenomenon, spending six months on the New York Times bestseller list, receiving critical acclaim, and selling millions of copies. This modern classic continues to be a touchstone of historical suspense fiction for readers everywhere.
The year is 1896. The city is New York. Newspaper reporter John Schuyler Moore is summoned by his friend Dr. Laszlo Kreizler—a psychologist, or “alienist”—to view the horribly mutilated body of an adolescent boy abandoned on the unfinished Williamsburg Bridge. From there the two embark on a revolutionary effort in criminology: creating a psychological profile of the perpetrator based on the details of his crimes. Their dangerous quest takes them into the tortured past and twisted mind of a murderer who will kill again before their hunt is over.
Jackal by Erin Adams
Liz Rocher couldn’t wait to get away from her small Pennsylvania hometown. And she’s not thrilled to be back. But she promised her best friend she’d come to her wedding. When her friend’s daughter disappears near the woods after the wedding, Liz realizes this case reminds her of something similar that happened to one of her classmates. And as she digs deeper, she discovers that something similar has been happening to Black girls — and being ignored by the police — for a longer time than anyone realized.
Do you have any good suggestions? Please let me know.
SUSAN BREEN is the award-winning author of The Fiction Class and the Maggie Dove mystery series. She is the 2024 winner of the Margery Allingham Short Mystery Competition. Her new novel, MERRY, is forthcoming from Alcove Press in Fall 2025.
While I am definitely not dreaming about serial killers, the books do sound amazing.
Thanks, Connie.
These all sound fantastic, Susan, and thanks for the link to the Tana French essay. I’ve never read The Alienist, so that’s going on my list. Now that I think about it, I don’t read a lot of books about serial killers, but I would recommend Meg Gardiner’s Unsub series.
Thanks for the recommendation, Kate. I haven’t read that series, but I’ll look for it.
The Alienist is a book I recommend time and again to readers. Rich with period details and a whopping good mystery.
I just finished Cath Staincliff’s The Fells. Her detectives are on the case when old bones are found in a cave and it’s suspected the victim’s killer was down to an incarcerated serial killer who’d been active in the area. Time jumps follow the victim to a truly unexpected climax.
Oooh, that sounds good, Marni.
Well, if the other two are as gripping and consuming as The Alienist, count me in! I will be checking them out. Thank you for the recommendations and the link to the Tana French article! I would add Bright River by Liz Moore to this list. Also a really good serial killer novel where the focus is on relationships and the community within which he operates.
Thanks, Emilya. I just read Liz Moore’s God of the Woods and loved it.
Adding all three to my TBR list!