Books like Irène — picked by fans

The book is centered around an FBI trainee (Clarice) sent to interview an imprisoned, sophisticated, cannibalistic psychiatrist (Hannibal Lecter) to help her catch an active serial killer.

Their meetings are brilliant and tense exchanges within a psychological game in which Lecter will only offer clues if Clarice reveals deeply personal details about herself. The tone of these conversations, using dialogue to navigate an intellectual and emotional battlefield, was brilliantly crafted.

"I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti."  In lesser hands, this single spoken sentence might have been replaced with several paragraphs of exposition to describe Hannibal Lecter.

So good it was made into a movie. The movie however didn’t catch the suspense, and the investigation took far longer in the book.

Set in Stalinist Russia, the book is depressing, as was Commie Russia. The investigator, Leo Demidov’s friend has a child gone missing and a cursory investigation by the state goes nowhere. Leo Demidov, a Moscow investigator looks into it and is told to lay off—or else—because he makes the state look incompetent.

He and his family are exiled far away from Moscow and scorned by everyone. But he continues and discovers 44 children have been murdered along a railway line. Suspense and peril in this story combined with a vengeful Communist bureaucracy and its astounding ego make for a real thriller.

I visited the USSR in the late 70s and that bureaucracy is not to be challenged in any way or form.

Blends psychological thriller, historical fiction, and detective mystery, set in New York City in 1896.

Journalist John Schuyler Moore and psychologist Dr. Laszlo Kreizler, aided by a young Theodore Roosevelt, investigate brutal murders that shock the city. Carr’s meticulous research brings Gilded Age New York vividly to life, from opulent drawing rooms to grim tenements.

The novel explores the roots of criminal profiling and human darkness, reflecting techniques I use in my own book's character’s investigations, including incorporating real historical figures for authenticity.

Because Greg Iles is one of my all-time favorite writers and this book is terrifying. I’ve read it twice, and it cooked even faster the second time around. The family dynamics between Harper Cole and his wife really gripped me, but when this came out in 1997, it really hammered home how evil the internet could be, and how killers could lurk in complete disguise and hide themselves behind facades and masks and computer screens. Greg Iles has so much range in his storytelling it's scary. If you haven’t read him, start with his first and work your way through! You won’t be disappointed!

Who doesn't want to be Posey Parker? She’s smart, she eats loads, and never gets tubby. She’s always gorgeous, though she’s not at all arrogant about it. Give Posey a compliment or a sandwich; she’ll take the sandwich every time.

On the negative side, she lives in the 1920s with the world still reeling from the first world war, and women’s rights decidedly sketchy. Also, she’s trapped on the Night Train to Paris with a sense of impending doom. (I totally identify with that, having traveled on the Glasgow to London sleeper.)

L.B. Hatheway has crafted a book that offers the best kind of mystery and a great understanding of the time's history, and Clare Wille voices it flawlessly. 

The biggest strength of this book is a large spoiler, which is a shame. I’d love to gush about it. You (should you choose to read it) get to learn about it as the work unfolds, though. For that, I’m jealous. Who doesn’t love to enjoy something so fun for the first time? The choice of victims and the reason for the kills makes the serial killer so compelling I rooted for the detective to always be one step behind. I loved him, don’t get me wrong. He is flawed and damaged, and I wanted him to succeed eventually. Thomas Holgate makes it easy to do that—want them both to “win”—as both have a point-of-view. The book was fun, interesting, and just a little brutal. 

I read this within 12 hours; no one could pry this book from my hands.

There is something so truly shocking and morbid about how as women we love to read books on true crime, I personally believe it’s because we know that the possibility for this terror to become our reality is a possibility. 

And with Noelle’s brilliant writing, I truly couldn’t put the book down. Three women are brutally murdered by the same serial killer, and the story follows their perspectives as they haunt their killer and become ghosts.

Eighteen-year-old Mac is still coming to terms with the murder of his best friend, Connor, the fourth and final victim of a serial killer who terrorized their community the previous summer. Stumbling upon a note Connor wrote to him the night he died that suggests Connor knew the identity of the killer, Mac embarks on his own investigation to learn what the victims may have had in common. The author deftly threads throughout his story tantalizing clues that draw readers deeper into the mystery, building wire-taut tension as the characters move inexorably toward a resolution that readers won’t see coming but is ultimately satisfying. Far more than a skilfully crafted whodunit, Keep This to Yourself is a compelling coming-of-age story that explores the evolution of friendship and the consequence of truth.

This serial killer thriller will have you up all night, even after you’ve finished it! Full of blood, gore, and shocking scenes, it tells the story of The Echo Man, who appears to be copying the world’s most famous, or infamous, serial killers, such as Jeffrey Dahmer, Charles Manson, and Ed Kemper. Will the police catch up with him before he strikes again? Keep the lights on, this one is not for the faint-hearted!

From the very first pages describing one of the most brutal killings I’ve ever read about, I was hooked on this story.

I love how the author effortlessly weaves together different perspectives, giving me a holistic view of the story from multiple angles. What I found most intriguing were the subtle elements of the paranormal interspersed throughout, adding layers of unreliability to the narrative that made this book simply unputdownable.

This is a great read for anyone who loves psychological thrillers with a hint of horror and the supernatural.