Short True Crime Thrillers

When acclaimed mystery writer Dorothy L. Sayers first began compiling anthologies of the best crime stories in the 1920s and ’30s, the genre was in the flush of its first golden age. While it is hard to imagine today - after every possible mystery plot has been told, retold, subverted, and played straight again by hundreds of writers over nearly a century - in Sayers’s day there were still twists that had never been seen, and machinations of crime that would shock even jaded Jazz Age fans.

On January 15, 1947, the tortured body of a beautiful young woman was found in a vacant lot in Hollywood. Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia, a young Hollywood hopeful, had been brutally murdered. Her murder sparked one of the greatest manhunts in California history.

Psychic Jeff Resnick has no expectations when investigating the disappearance of a four-year-old, until he confronts the mind responsible - a shattering experience for all involved. L.L. Bartlett's "Cold Case" tells the emotionally packed story of Jeff Resnick, a psychic, who is asked to solve the disappearance of a four-year-old boy. The conclusion to this story is bound to have you questioning those around you.

One case that stood out to Flowers for its sheer brutality as well as shocking aftermath was that of Karla Faye Tucker and Daniel Garrett, who used a pickaxe to hack to death two people. It began in the wee hours of June 13, 1983, in Houston, Texas, as lovers Tucker and Garrett broke into the apartment of Jerry Lynn Dean. By the time the couple left, Dean and his companion, Deborah Thornton, were dead following a vicious attack with a pickaxe and hammer.

Just when the residents of Crest Hill are getting past a shocking unsolved murder in the nearby groves, their greatest unspoken fear materializes a string of serial killings amongst their own citizens. There is now no mistaking the fact that one member of their small population is not what they seem to be. Detective Anita Heath finds herself perplexed at the crime scenes when the bodies begin turning up. Something about these murders just doesn’t profile right. As her suspicions are soon bent in unusual directions, she discovers she has attracted the attention of the culprit.