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Crime, Thrillers and Mystery — page 4
543 public-domain crime, thrillers and mystery books, summarised. Page 4 of 12.
The perfume of the lady in black
Gaston Leroux
An atmosphere of impending tragedy hangs over a sun-drenched Mediterranean retreat, where a freshly married couple finds that an inescapable, ghostly adversary has shattered their honeymoon before it can truly begin.
The Brightener
C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson
A high-society widow uses her wit and charm to solve mysteries, save her friends from ruin, and light up dark lives.
The Yellow Face
Fred M. (Fred Merrick) White
A master criminal terrorizes London with bizarre frauds and gruesome tricks until an ambitious lawyer and a scarred phantom dismantle his shadowy empire.
The Bittermeads Mystery
E. R. (Ernest Robertson) Punshon
An unsightly drifter forcibly enters an isolated house, concealing his true identity to uncover a dark murder plot.
The Case of the Lamp That Went Out
Auguste Groner
A humble detective investigates the shooting of a middle-class clerk in suburban Vienna, unspooling a web of upper-class jealousy, secret signals, and hidden sacrifice that leads all the way to Venice.
The Gloved Hand
Burton Egbert Stevenson
A dead eccentric, a dark cult, and framed innocence intersect when a lawyer tries to unravel a murder in an secluded mansion.
The hand of power
Edgar Wallace
A treacherous gale on Dartmoor launches an orphan into a labyrinth of identity theft, criminal cults, and ocean-going murder.
The Message
Louis Tracy
Two lives entangle over a cryptic West African artifact, launching a high-stakes chase from the English coast to the perilous, war-torn jungles of Nigeria.
Prince Zaleski
M. P. (Matthew Phipps) Shiel
A recluse operating from a ruined mansion solves three seemingly impossible mysteries using sheer intellectual deduction.
The Voice in the Fog
Harold MacGrath
The London fog conceals more than just the streets, as a chance encounter in the mist binds a young steward to a wealthy family’s unraveling mystery. A quiet, honest man finds his life irrevocably altered when he is swept into a high-stakes game of identity, theft, and romance.
Witching Hill
E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
A young estate agent and his enigmatic friend unearth dark secrets beneath the veneer of a respectable London suburb, where the past seems to repeat itself in haunting, dangerous ways.
The Strand Magazine, Vol. 07, Issue 42, June, 1894: An Illustrated Monthly
Various
This collection of Victorian journalism and fiction offers a window into the late nineteenth-century British mind, blending serious professional profiles with whimsical detective stories and lighthearted observations on natural history. It serves as a quintessential artifact of its era's popular reading habits.
Master tales of mystery, Volume 2 (of 3)
Unknown
A singular, analytical mind unravels the impossible, turning the cold calculations of science against the shadows of human desperation. These investigations dissect the anatomy of crime with surgical precision, revealing that even the most baffling enigmas have logical, if chilling, origins.
Shadowed by a detective
René de Pont-Jest
A seasoned detective orchestrates a elaborate ruse to ensnare a murderer who has escaped the reach of the law. This tale of vengeance navigates the dark underbelly of nineteenth-century New York.
The Champdoce Mystery
Emile Gaboriau
A journey from the provinces to Paris unravels a tangled web of long-hidden secrets, where a father’s cold neglect and a woman’s calculated ambition collide. Lives are reshaped by the sudden discovery of a lost heir, proving that the past is never truly buried.
Mississippi Outlaws and the Detectives: Don Pedro and the Detectives
Allan Pinkerton
These accounts of mid-nineteenth-century criminal investigation offer a rare, unfiltered look into the operations of a legendary detective agency. They reveal the gritty, often tedious reality of tracking lawbreakers across a rapidly expanding American landscape.
A Successful Shadow
Old Sleuth
A detective hunts for a missing girl and a hidden inheritance in this fast-paced Victorian mystery, navigating a labyrinth of false identities and criminal schemes. The story moves with the urgency of a pursuit, where every conversation is a gamble and every stranger a potential enemy.
Silver .41
W. C. (Wilbur C.) Tuttle
A rookie Western sheriff and his deputy use plain sense and small clues to unravel a counterfeiting syndicate and clear an innocent man of murder.
No. 13 Toroni
Julius Regis
A reclusive photographer’s murder in a quiet Stockholm district triggers a high-stakes maritime hunt for the long-lost gold of a sunken ship.
Room Number 3, and Other Detective Stories
Anna Katharine Green
Greed, malice, and quiet human frailty collision across hidden rooms, stolen jewels, and deadly mechanical toys in these classic Gilded Age mysteries.
In a Glass Darkly, v. 3/3
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
A predator in beautiful form draws her victim into an intimate, suffocating bond while preying on the life force of isolated young women.
Murder Point: A Tale of Keewatin
Coningsby Dawson
A solitary trader in the frozen north lies to shield a runaway killer who once saved his life, only to find himself entangled in a web of murder, debt, and betrayal.
Police Your Planet
Lester Del Rey
Corruption rules the red planet, and the line between law and outlaw is paper-thin.
The Case of the Pool of Blood in the Pastor's Study
Auguste Groner
A hidden passage behind a bookcase leads from a quiet country study directly into the crypt of an ancient church. When a beloved clergyman vanishes leaving only a massive pool of blood, a unassuming Austrian detective must untangle a mystery of cold calculation and exploited madness.
Final Proof
Rodrigues Ottolengui
A master of analytical deduction and a veteran police detective clash and collaborate across twelve linked mysteries, pitting pure intellect against practical investigation.
The documents in the case
Dorothy L. (Dorothy Leigh) Sayers
A quiet London suburb hides an affair, a delusional houseguest, and a death by poisonous toadstools that looks entirely accidental.
The Most Extraordinary Trial of William Palmer, for the Rugeley Poisonings, which lasted Twelve Days
Anonymous
When a young turf enthusiast dies in agony at a provincial inn, suspicions of foul play immediately point to his closest companion, a debt-ridden country surgeon whose financial salvation depends entirely on the dead man's fortune.
Out Like a Light
Randall Garrett
A mysterious rash of thefts around New York City leads to an absurd discovery: the culprits are teenage gang members who can magically vanish into thin air.
The Great Court Scandal
William Le Queux
Trapped in a web of malicious court rumors, a exiled royal finds herself fleeing for her freedom alongside a charismatic thief.
The Risk Profession
Donald E. Westlake
A space-age insurance investigator heads into the Asteroid Belt to verify a suspicious claim, only to unearth a cold-blooded murder hidden inside a sealed pressure suit.
A Chain of Evidence
Carolyn Wells
A high-stakes parlor mystery set in a New York apartment, where a locked door and a series of planted clues turn a quiet residence into a scene of cold-blooded murder.
The curse of Yig
H. P. (Howard Phillips) Lovecraft
The shadow of an ancient, vengeful deity looms over the Oklahoma frontier in this chilling tale of how deep-seated fear and cultural superstition can curdle into a literal, waking nightmare.
The Red Mouse: A Mystery Romance
William Hamilton Osborne
A marriage unravels against the backdrop of high-stakes gambling and political corruption, forcing a husband and wife to redefine their lives through the harsh lens of poverty and redemption.
The Master Mystery
Arthur B. (Arthur Benjamin) Reeve
A ruthless business tycoon faces a terrifying, mechanical nemesis when a scorned inventor returns from exile with a steel-clad monster fueled by a human brain.
The Pointing Man: A Burmese Mystery
Marjorie Douie
A colonial port town teems with secrets, where the humid air and shifting loyalties of a cosmopolitan bazaar mask a disappearance that threatens the social order of the ruling elite.
The Uttermost Farthing: A Savant's Vendetta
R. Austin (Richard Austin) Freeman
A brilliant but broken man transforms his scientific expertise into a cold, methodical campaign of vengeance against the criminal who destroyed his life.
The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons: Being one of the exciting episodes in the career of the famous detective Hemlock Holmes, as recorded by his friend Dr. Watson
James Francis Thierry
A brilliant detective and his loyal companion navigate a maze of absurdity and stolen jewels, proving that high society is often as thick with crime as it is with hubris.
The Ghost Breaker: A Melodramatic Farce in Four Acts
Charles Goddard
A self-assured American adventurer finds himself unexpectedly enlisted to solve a supernatural mystery in a remote Spanish castle. He quickly discovers that the most dangerous ghosts are those who walk in the flesh.
A servant of Satan: Romantic career of Prado the assassin
Louis Berard
This account chronicles the descent of a high-born Prussian officer into a life of professional predation and cold-blooded murder. It is a grim, fast-paced survey of a singular career built on deception, betrayal, and violence.
The Rome Express
Arthur Griffiths
The Rome Express is a classic of early railway detective fiction. A brutal murder on a sleeper train sets off a high-stakes, race-against-time investigation that keeps its passengers and the reader guessing until the final station.
Golden Stories: A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers
Various
Strangers, lovers, rogues, and honorable men navigate sudden turns of fortune across a world bound by love, duty, and quiet ambition.
Havoc
E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
A shadow-world of imperial secrets collides with the cold arithmetic of London high finance.
Elusive Isabel
Jacques Futrelle
In the diplomatic shadowland of early twentieth-century Washington, a international conspiracy threatens to reshape the global order, setting a taciturn American agent against a brilliant, mysterious foreign operative.
The Mystery of the Iron Box: A Ken Holt Mystery
Bruce Campbell
When a cold midnight draft inside his home leads high school reporter Ken Holt to suspicious footprints in the snow, a stolen watch repair tag puts him and his friend Sandy Allen on the trail of a massive counterfeiting ring.
Anthony Trent, Master Criminal
Wyndham Martyn
A frustrated writer discovers that committing real burglaries is far easier than inventing fake ones, leading him into a high-stakes life of crime across American high society.
The Amethyst Cross
Fergus Hume
An inheritance bound to a stolen heirloom unravels a tangle of old betrayals, identity fraud, and secret parentage along the Thames.
The Thirteenth Chair: A Play in Three Acts
Bayard Veiller
Ghosts, knives, and dark rooms make for a thrilling parlor game, until a dead man is left sitting in the circle. In The Thirteenth Chair, Bayard Veiller crafts a closed-room mystery where spiritualism meets cold, hard murder.
A Man Obsessed
Alan Edward Nourse
A man pursues his father's alleged killer into the depths of an underground medical facility, only to learn that his murderous compulsion is the telepathic projection of a long-dead madman.