Crime fiction, detective story, murder mystery, mystery novel, and police novel are terms used to describe narratives that centre on criminal acts and especially on the investigation, either by an amateur or a professional detective, of a crime, often a murder. It is usually distinguished from mainstream fiction and other genres such as historical fiction or science fiction, but the boundaries are indistinct. Crime fiction has several subgenres, including detective fiction, courtroom drama, hard-boiled fiction, and legal thrillers. Most crime drama focuses on crime investigation and does not feature the courtroom. Suspense and mystery are key elements that are nearly ubiquitous to the genre.
Patricia Cornwell is an American crime writer. She is known for her best-selling novels featuring medical examiner Kay Scarpetta, of which the first was inspired by a series of sensational murders in Richmond, Virginia, where most of the stories are set. The plots are notable for their emphasis on forensic science, which has influenced later TV treatments of police work. Cornwell has also initiated new research into the Jack the Ripper killings, incriminating the popular British artist Walter Sickert. Her books have sold more than 120 million copies.
Valarie McDermid, is a Scottish crime writer, best known for a series of novels featuring clinical psychologist Dr. Tony Hill, in a grim sub-genre known as Tartan Noir.
Anne Perry was a British writer best known as the author of the Thomas and Charlotte Pitt and William Monk series of historical detective fiction.
Ann Rae Rule was an American author of true crime books and articles.
Lisa Gardner is a #1 New York Times bestselling American novelist. She is the author of more than 20 suspense novels, published in more than 30 countries. She began her career writing romantic suspense under the pseudonym Alicia Scott, before the publication of her breakout domestic thriller, The Perfect Husband, in 1997. TV and movie credits include At the Midnight House (CBS), Instinct to Kill, The Survivors Club (CBS), and Hide (TNT) as well as personal appearances on TruTV's Murder by the Book and CNN.
Lois Duncan Steinmetz, known as Lois Duncan, was an American writer, novelist, poet, and journalist. She is best known for her young-adult novels, and has been credited by historians as a pioneering figure in the development of young-adult fiction, particularly in the genres of horror, thriller, and suspense.
Kim Harrison is a pen name of American author Dawn Cook. Harrison is best known as the author of the New York Times #1 best selling Hollows urban fantasy series, but she has also published over two dozen books spanning the gamut from young adult, accelerated-science thriller, anthology, and a unique, full-color world book, and has scripted two original graphic novels set in the Hollows universe. She has also published traditional fantasy under the name Dawn Cook.
Roger Jon Ellory is an English thriller writer.
Amulya Malladi is an author. She earned her bachelor's degree in electronics engineering from Osmania University, Hyderabad, India and her master's degree in journalism from the University of Memphis, Tennessee, United States.
Carol Anne Davis, is a Scottish crime novelist and a writer on crimes, especially those committed by children or young people.
Sarah Pinborough is an English author and screenwriter who has written YA and adult thriller, fantasy and cross-genre novels. She has had more than 20 novels published by several companies and in several countries. They have also been translated into a number of languages.
Kerry Isabelle Greenwood is an Australian author and lawyer. She has written many plays and books, most notably a string of historical detective novels centred on the character of Phryne Fisher, which was adapted as the popular television series Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries. She writes mysteries, science-fiction, historical fiction, children's stories, and plays. Greenwood earned the Australian women's crime fiction Davitt Award in 2002 for her young adult novel The Three-Pronged Dagger.
Kelli Stanley is an American author of mystery-thrillers. The majority of her published fiction is written in the genres of historical crime fiction and noir. Her best known work, the Miranda Corbie series, is set in San Francisco, her adoptive hometown.
S. J. Rozan is an American architect and writer of detective fiction and thrillers, based in New York City. She also co-writes a paranormal thriller series under the pseudonym Sam Cabot with Carlos Dews.
Megan Abbott is an American author of crime fiction and of non-fiction analyses of hardboiled crime fiction. Her novels and short stories have drawn from and re-worked classic subgenres of crime writing from a female perspective. She is also an American writer and producer of television.
Ronald Barri Flowers is an American writer of mystery novels and non-fiction books, as well as a criminologist. He lives in Honolulu, Hawaii.
Mette Ivie Harrison is an American novelist. She writes young adult fiction and in 2014 began publishing an adult mystery series. Her background as a Mormon has influenced her topics of interest as a writer, especially in the A Linda Wallheim Mystery series which focuses on a Mormon woman within her religious community. Her novel, Mira, Mirror won the Utah Letters About Literature award in 2006, and three other novels were finalists for the AML Awards in 2007, 2014 and 2015.
Point of Violence is a 1966 thriller novel by Lois Duncan. It is one of Duncan's few novels written primarily for adults. It follows a young widow who finds herself being stalked while hiding at a remote beach house after the murder of her husband.
Wendy Corsi Staub is an American writer of suspense novels and young adult fiction. She has written under her own name as well as Wendy Brody, Wendy Markham, and Wendy Morgan.
