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Crime, Thrillers and Mystery — page 7
362 public-domain crime, thrillers and mystery books, summarised. Page 7 of 8.
Monsieur Lecoq, v. 2
Emile Gaboriau
Driven by political fury, secret shame, and relentless jealousy, two noble families and an army of conspirators tear themselves apart in post-Napoleonic France.
The Mysterious Murder of Pearl Bryan, or: the Headless Horror
Unknown
A pregnant young woman vanishes from her Indiana home, only to be found beheaded in a Kentucky orchard, igniting a sensational, coast-to-coast nineteenth-century murder investigation.
Kastle Krags: A Story of Mystery
Absalom Martin
A lonely manor on the Florida coast guards a secret far darker than its inhabitants realize. What begins as a retreat for wealthy sportsmen descends into a nightmare of disappearances and unexplained violence.
The Blue Lights: A Detective Story
Frederic Arnold Kummer
A seasoned detective and his intrepid wife are drawn into a high-stakes investigation when a wealthy banker’s son is abducted in Paris. The ensuing search hinges on a series of cryptic signals and a web of hidden identities.
The Red Lady
Katharine Newlin Burt
The haunting of a secluded North Carolina estate is not the work of spirits, but of a desperate, golden-red-haired woman who discovers that her own doppelgänger is pulling the strings of a deadly scheme.
Ham Sandwich
James H. Schmitz
This brisk, clever tale follows a police detective infiltrating a fraudulent psychic institute to dismantle a sophisticated confidence scheme. It explores the blurred lines between genuine latent power and the manipulative power of suggestion.
Punchinello, Volume 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870
Various
A weekly chronicle of 1870s New York, this periodical captures the pulse of the Gilded Age through a kaleidoscopic lens of biting satire, absurd fiction, and the relentless, colorful commerce of a city in full, noisy stride.
Stories of Tragedy
Unknown
*Stories of Tragedy* gathers classic tales that explore the thin, often invisible line between order and catastrophe. It is a collection that finds the profound within the terrifying, the mechanical, and the deeply human.
The Homicidal Diary
Earl Peirce
A brilliant criminologist finds his life unraveling when he discovers an ancient, cursed diary that compels him to reenact the gruesome murders of a long-dead predecessor.
Punchinello, Volume 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870
Various
This seventeenth issue of a late-Victorian satirical weekly captures the frantic, witty, and often biting spirit of Gilded Age New York. It functions as both a literary laboratory and a sharp-eyed mirror held up to the political and social absurdities of 1870.
The House in the Mist
Anna Katharine Green
The mist-choked atmosphere of a secluded, ominous mansion sets the stage for this gripping tale of inheritance, greed, and hidden identities. A young traveler stumbles into a gathering of desperate relatives, only to find himself caught in a web of dark family secrets and a long-deferred reckoning.
Heist Job on Thizar
Randall Garrett
The galaxy’s most daring jewel thieves are not merely interested in wealth; they thrive on the sophisticated, high-stakes game of outsmarting an enemy who believes they are already one step ahead.
The rat trap
William Le Queux
A restless, cosmopolitan traveler finds his elegant lifestyle at European resorts shadowed by a web of deception involving a beautiful woman, an eccentric older husband, and a series of high-stakes financial swindles.
The unseen ear
Natalie Sumner Lincoln
The quiet, domestic life of a young bride is shattered when a murder occurs within her own home, revealing that her seemingly peaceful household is a web of secrets, stolen bonds, and hidden identities.
Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 152, February 21, 1917
Various
A singular window into the anxieties, absurdities, and grim endurance of British home life during the deep winter of the Great War.
The Disappearing Eye
Fergus Hume
A gentleman driver stumbles into a rural shop for petrol, finds a dead woman missing her glass eye, and finds himself accused of her murder.
Allworth Abbey
Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
A young woman accused of a heinous crime finds her life saved when a courageous friend risks everything to break her out of prison.
The Case of the Registered Letter
Auguste Groner
A disgraced man uses his own suicide to frame a rigid engineering executive for murder, leaving an unassuming Viennese detective to untangle a dark plot of judicial pride and delayed vengeance.
The Lost Parchment: A Detective Story
Fergus Hume
A quiet English village becomes a tangled web of greed and suspicion when a hidden parchment threatens a wealthy young squire’s fortune, leading directly to a midnight murder.
'Farewell, Nikola'
Guy Boothby
The shadows of Venice stretch long and deep in this tale, where a charismatic, dangerous occultist commands the fates of those foolish enough to cross his path. Secrets of the past collide with the anxieties of the present in a city built on water and hidden horrors.
Nor Iron Bars a Cage
Randall Garrett
HOOK A seasoned New York detective manages a secret, borderline-magical psychiatric program to neutralize repeat offenders, only to discover that the "cure" he oversees hides a deeply personal and tragic burden.
Strange Alliance
Bryce Walton
A psychology professor and his student discover they share an ancestral, supernatural inheritance that transcends their academic rationalism. They flee a provincial town, only to face a final confrontation with the superstitions they both loathe and embody.
Ashton-Kirk, Secret Agent
John T. (John Thomas) McIntyre
A brilliant, unconventional private investigator navigates a web of international espionage and murder to recover a missing state secret hidden in a plain, domestic setting.
The 'Phone Booth Mystery
John Ironside
A young secretary’s wedding eve is shattered by the murder of his employer’s wife and the theft of state documents, casting him into a web of circumstantial evidence that threatens his freedom and his future.
Jim Hanvey, detective
Octavus Roy Cohen
HOOK A massive, slow-moving detective with fish-like eyes outwits the most sophisticated criminals not through force, but through a patient, disarming, and relentless psychological game.
The Long Arm
Franz Nabl
A man returns to his hometown after decades away, only to be trapped in a terrifying conversation with an old acquaintance who confesses to murdering people through a horrific, supernatural reach.
Number Seventeen
Louis Tracy
A rainy night in London sparks a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse between a young journalist and a shadow organization of criminal fanatics.
The silver blade: The true chronicle of a double mystery
Charles Edmonds Walk
When a Mexican national is stabbed to death with a physician’s paper-knife in a locked suite of offices, a quiet Southern family finds itself ensnared in a web of murder, missing papers, and long-buried greed.
Oscar the Detective
Old Sleuth
A master of the quick change and the sharp observation, a gentleman detective navigates the seedy underbelly of New York to untangle a web of international theft and hidden lineage.
The hellflower
George O. (George Oliver) Smith
HOOK A disgraced pilot takes on a dangerous mission to infiltrate a clandestine drug ring, only to discover that the enemy’s reach extends far beyond human borders.
The Mysteries of Paris, illustrated with etchings, Vol. 6
Eugène Sue
Beneath the glittering facade of nineteenth-century Paris lies a desperate, hidden world of misery, where a powerful prince descends into the shadows to serve as an unseen hand of justice and redemption.
At War with Society
James M'Levy
The shadows of mid-nineteenth-century Edinburgh hold more than just grime; they contain a relentless, unspoken war between a seasoned detective and the criminal class he observes with both grit and surprising empathy.
Dead Men's Money
J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
The quiet life of a clerk in Berwick-upon-Tweed is shattered when a series of mysterious strangers and a brutal murder pull him into a lethal, international web of deception and greed.
The Babbington case
Nicholas (House name) Carter
The master detective faces his most elusive adversary yet, unmasking a conspiracy of impersonation, murder, and sudden, desperate transformations of heart. In this high-stakes game of shadows, the truth proves as treacherous as the villains.
The clue of the silver key
Edgar Wallace
A master of disguise and a relentless detective clash in a high-stakes hunt through the fog-drenched streets of 1930s London. This is a classic cat-and-mouse mystery defined by rapid pacing and a series of lethal surprises.
The haunter of the ring
Robert E. (Robert Ervin) Howard
A lingering curse from a past life threatens a young couple, until a man with a dark history intervenes to confront the occult architect of their misery.
The Mandarin's Fan
Fergus Hume
A crumbling estate, a missing Chinese fan, and a string of suspicious deaths pull a young man into a dangerous game of greed and hidden history.
Punchinello, Volume 1, No. 23, September 3, 1870
Various
This nineteenth-century periodical offers a sharp, satirical window into the post-Civil War American zeitgeist. It blends biting social commentary with irreverent literary parody, capturing a nation obsessed with industrial progress, scandalous news, and moral posturing.
The Great Taxicab Robbery: A True Detective Story
James H. (James Hiram) Collins
In the heart of a bustling, modernizing New York, a brazen daylight robbery of a taxicab leaves the city in a panic and the police under fire. This true account follows the methodical, often psychological, hunt to reclaim $25,000 and restore public faith in the law.
The Lone Wolf Returns
Louis Joseph Vance
A man who has finally traded his life as a notorious jewel thief for the peace of domestic love finds his past forcibly exhumed by a blackmailing criminal syndicate.
The Pink Shop
Fergus Hume
A young woman’s quest for justice following her mother’s murder leads her into a labyrinth of secrets involving her wealthy father, a mysterious shop, and a determined investigator.
Two Wonderful Detectives
Old Sleuth
A retired banker entrusts a stranger’s fortune to a detective, launching a decades-spanning search to identify the rightful heir before the money is lost to time. This mystery unfolds through the keen instincts of Jack Alvarez, a master of disguise and deduction.
Midnight In Beauchamp Row: 1895
Anna Katharine Green
The isolation of a winter storm provides the backdrop for a chilling confrontation between a young bride, a mysterious intruder, and a secret that threatens to destroy everything. A single night of terror unravels the foundations of a marriage, revealing the dark lengths to which one man will go to secure a fortune.
Rayton: A Backwoods Mystery
Theodore Goodridge Roberts
An outsider's playful introduction of low-stakes card games to a wilderness settlement unwittingly sets off a chain of dark superstitious dread, hidden rivalries, and unhinged vengeance.
Annihilation
Isabel Ostrander
A body found in a sodden New York alley pulls a retired cop into a gated enclave of hidden fires, poison experiments, and quiet madness.
Tempest-Driven: A Romance (Vol. 2 of 3)
Richard Dowling
A seaside mystery of stolen money, spectral apparitions, and romantic entanglement turns the rocky coast of Ireland into a battleground for truth and sanity.
Zero Data
Charles Saphro
Lonnie Raichi stole the world’s greatest treasures behind an invisible suit, but forgot that light never lies to a cop who understands physics.
No Shield from the Dead
Gordon R. Dickson
An ambitious official learns too late that the ultimate immunity of a high-tech shield provides no protection against the psychological reckoning of his past.