The serial killer has a special place in crime fiction and true crime. Blame Jack the Ripper and his acolytes—without him, the category would not have such a neat lineage. The serial killer is an optimal foe in as much as he is completely amoral and usually preternaturally intelligent. Some are handsome and charismatic, like Ted Bundy, who used his good looks and charm to lure his victims. Others live off the grid, like the Unabomber. In fiction, the serial killer is a tempting trope because if the story slows, the writer can just drop another body to create more fear and suspicion in the mind of the reader.
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Whatever your reasons for seeking out stories of serial killers, we’ve compiled a list of some of the best true crime and crime fiction featuring repeat predators of every stripe in narratives that are equal parts insightful and chilling.
Hannah is bored. As she watches her friends get married and move to the suburbs, she finds a new social circle online in a true-crime forum devoted to solving the murders of four women in Atlanta. When the culprit, William, is caught, Hannah starts writing him letters to process her frustration and rage (if you want to know why she possesses a surplus of these feelings, ask a woman whose friends are all breeding and moving to the suburbs). When William writes back, she finds herself slipping from curiosity to obsession.
The genius of You and its sequels (Hidden Bodies, You Love Me and You and Only You) is that the serial killer is so affable and attractive. He is also the narrator of the series, a device that could be either salacious (see Jo Nesbo’s Harry Hole novels) or silly. Yet Joe Goldberg is neither of those things; his victims are also his girlfriends. Yes, plural—each book is about a relationship with a woman who Joe is sure is the one. As they disappoint him, he’s forced to do unspeakable things for love.
McDermid is an OG when it comes to serial killer thrillers. Don’t get overwhelmed by choice: the formidable McDermid now has three series under her belt, but the one most relevant here is known by fans as the Tony and Carol series. Dr. Tony Hill is a brilliant criminal profiler with no personal life. His partner, DI Carol Jordan, is a no-nonsense detective with an impressive solve rate largely due to Hill’s techniques. The Wire in the Blood features a case of missing teens and the murder of one of Hill’s team. It ends—as these books often do—in a game of cat and mouse, and the serial killer is no cat.
I’ll Be Gone in the Dark has a tragic origin story and a remarkable afterlife. McNamara spent a decade putting the research together for the book. When she died suddenly, her assistant took over and put the book together using McNamara’s drafts and notes. She was convinced there was a serial killer—dubbed, by her, the Golden State Killer—active in several California towns. The killer was smart enough to know that police often didn’t conference with other jurisdictions. However, with the introduction of statewide and FBI protocols to share information, the Golden State Killer’s crimes were eventually recognized as being the work of one person. And there is a happy ending: the Golden State Killer was caught in 2018 using familial DNA—a resource police did not have when serial rapist and murderer Joseph D'Angelo was active in the 1970s and 1980s.
It’s hard to read Creep without hearing Radiohead’s “Creep” as a soundtrack. Hillier is one of the best thriller writers around, and this, her first book, already establishes her as one of the most creative. In Creep, Dr. Sheila Tao is having a foolish affair with a grad student, Ethan Wolfe. Tao knows it was lust that drove her to it, and it’s lust that she can’t quite cut him loose. But Ethan suspects his lover wants out, and he has plans of his own. He has a sex video to release. He knows her most closely held secrets. And did he just frame her for the stabbing of a female student at her workplace, Puget Sound State University? Maybe it’s scorned men we should be worried about.
Have you ever heard of Lonnie David Franklin, Jr.? Not your fault, but you probably should have. An active serial killer from 1984 through 2007, Franklin also raped his victims: nine women and one teenage girl. He got the name because he was dormant for fourteen years (from 1988 to 2022). His victims were overwhelmingly sex workers and mostly African Americans. In the mid-1980s, he was known to police as the Southside Strangler, responsible for stabbing and strangling at least thirteen sex workers between 1983 and late 1985. Black activists demanded the authorities notify the Black community that women should be especially careful. Pelisek, a reporter, really gets under the skin in this recounting of Franklin and his crimes.
Author Gillian Flynn‘s 2009 novel is as much about the aftermath of a serial killer as it is about the terrible night Libby Day’s family was annihilated. Her sister, Michelle, aged 10; her sister, Debby, aged 9; and her mother, Patty, were slaughtered in what appears to be a Satanic cult ritual. (Note: it’s never a Satanic cult ritual; it’s a family member). Libby’s brother, Ben, a teenager then, was convicted of the massacre. Fast-forward to Libby, running out of money, attending a meeting of amateur investigators who bombard her with questions and buy whatever she can find around the house. Told partially in flashback, Dark Places has the kind of characters Flynn perfects in her blockbuster novel Gone Girl.
Have you ever wondered why we hear so little about crime in Japan? In part—as Parry’s book demonstrates—it’s because the police are trained to minimize crimes (of which there are not many in placid Japan). This smooth surface is smashed by the disappearance of an English woman in Japan as a hostess at a kyabakura club, which mainly employs foreign hostesses: Lucie goes on a date with a high roller and is never seen by her friends and family again. Parry’s long involvement in the case and his ability to communicate with both the police and her devastated family puts this book a cut above the average true crime story. Parry, a longtime foreign correspondent in Asia, gets to the heart of both Japanese culture’s refusal to see how horrible the crimes of Joji Obara, accused of killing Lucie in 2000; disappointingly, he was acquitted of her rape and murder. Yet Obara has been convicted as a serial rapist who raped between 150 and 400 women in Japan and Korea. He videotaped many of these, and that need to relive his crimes is what did him in.
Ann Rule was not always Ann Rule, and Ted Bundy was not always Ted Bundy. In The Stranger Beside Me, Rule describes how she picked up the pieces after her divorce left her a single mom of four children without a whole lot of skills. Rule starts volunteering at a local crime hotline in Washington state, and in 1971, she meets the quiet, good-looking Ted Bundy, also a volunteer. The two struck up a friendship, and Rule gives us the unfettered, unmannered Bundy, whose self-control was legendary. They lost touch in 1973, and in 1974, young women started turning up dead. First, Bundy hunts around Seattle, but he moves on to Salt Lake City, Utah, and suddenly, women are murdered in Utah, Colorado and Idaho. Rule has written a book that serves as the blueprint for all of the books about knowing a serial killer, and not knowing what (or who) to believe.
