I’m a true crime buff and always have been. My generation grew up in an era without podcasts, Dateline, or Hulu, though we had Anne Rule and Unsolved Mysteries to get us through. But if we wanted the deep dirt on a notorious crime (and didn’t care about validity), we hit the supermarket tabloids. As a kid, I bought them with spare change along with my Pop Rocks and bubble gum, and the tabloid stories about devil-worshipping teachers and rampant child sacrifices planted the seeds that eventually grew into my latest book, Bald-Faced Liar.
Today we have far more choice in our true-crime consumption, spanning a wild frontier from meticulously researched documentaries to citizen sleuths trying to right historical wrongs to exploitative podcasts produced to glorify violence. Is it too much? Probably. Though it is exhilarating to see old crimes solved due to new public interest and the push to use genetic genealogy.
If you find crime stories featuring real victims and true monsters too disturbing, or if you’re impatiently waiting for a new season of your favorite podcast to drop, how about a few fictional stories that read like real cases? A crime that exists only in the mind of the author makes it a little easier to bear witness, and you’ll get every detail it takes to solve the mystery. Here are a few of my recent reads that feel like they were plucked from the headlines:
First Lie Wins by Ashley Elston
There are long cons and short cons, and Evie Porter is up for either. Working at the direction of her mysterious boss, Mr. Smith, she assumes a new identity whenever she’s ordered to target a chosen victim. But this time around, she’s not sure if her new boyfriend is the mark or she is. Will the man she’s falling for wind up dead? Or will she? First Lie Wins is your favorite two-hour Dateline, the one that makes you yell at the TV and frantically google more information as soon as the episode ends, because you just need more.
Mask of the Deer Woman by Laurie L. Dove
This stunning debut reminds me of a heart-wrenching, honest podcast like Someone Knows Something. There’s nothing glossy or glossed over here, just real people dealing with real life. I always love delving into the strength and heartbreak of a gritty protagonist, and Carrie Starr, a disgraced Chicago police detective, is a complicated mess. When she retreats to her father’s rural reservation to sink into her own misery, she can’t help but feel the grief of the community and is unwillingly pulled into the mystery of missing indigenous women. Evocative and heartbreaking.
Missing White Woman by Kellye Garrett
You can’t get more true crime than a missing woman, a murder, and a social media influencer broadcasting every rumor she hears to her millions of followers. All while Bree Wright is trying to enjoy her first vacation in years. Like the protagonist, I’m suspicious of strangers even before anything disturbing happens, so I was right there with Bree as she tried to figure out what crime actually occurred and why her new boyfriend is the prime suspect. This was a great, quick suspense that could easily play out on social media just as it’s written.
Who Is the Liar by Laura Lee Bahr
If Who Is the Liar were a true crime story, it would be written decades later as an eerie and horrifying memoir. Ten-year-old Topaz is living a normal Midwestern life in the 1980s when her teenage sister confesses that she’s trapped a monster in their basement. Topaz doesn’t believe it until she sees the monster for herself, a man she’s supposed to know from church but can’t recognize past the injuries to his face. Is this man really a child-killer, or is her sister the monster here? This is a fantastically creepy tale that cuts close to the bone. (Out September 2025.)
Missing in Flight by Audrey J. Cole
How about a book that reads like a livestream of a crime playing out in real time? Wow. Missing in Flight is the definition of fast-paced, as the whole story unspools in the space of a few hours. A woman’s infant goes missing mid-flight when she leaves him unattended to use the restroom. If a kidnapping on a plane thousands of miles above the ground isn’t the ultimate locked-room mystery, I don’t know what is. Unless, of course, the baby was never there. This is a story you won’t be able to walk away from (even if you’re not strapped into an airplane seat during turbulence).
Too Old for This by Samantha Downing
This story is a delicious exploration of exactly how much can go wrong behind the scenes of a true crime podcast production. After all, podcasters should be very careful when looking into a suspected killer, especially if they think the accused is innocent. A suspect who’s never been caught has a lot to protect, even if that suspect is facing hip-replacement surgery and high cholesterol. I didn’t think I was capable of sinking so comfortably into the point of view of a murderer, but Samantha Downing made this serial killer tale…horrifyingly fun? (Out August 2025.)
Tell Me What You Did by Carter Wilson
Tell Me What You Did is true crime. Fictionalized yes, but half the story is a podcast episode being broadcast live and under duress. Poe Webb hosts a show that invites criminals to call in and confess. When a man calls to claim he murdered Poe’s mother, Poe isn’t just horrified at his confession, she’s confused. The man who stabbed her mother is dead. She knows because she killed him herself. Is it possible she targeted the wrong man? Poe is about to find out the truth along with all her listeners in this perfectly structured white-knuckle ride.
Jill Is Not Happy by Kaira Rouda
Do you love a story so juicy it would play out as a limited series documentary that’s immediately followed by a hit docudrama? Then this book is for you. There’s a lot to dig into in the seemingly perfect twenty-two-year marriage of Jack and Jill, who live in a beautiful house in a beautiful town. There’s a long-ago hit and run. A couple of suspicious fires. Money missing from the town budget. And now this very strange road trip to help the lovebirds reconnect. Or is the vacation meant to help a predator catch its prey? You’ll have to read Jill Is Not Happy to find out.
Exiles by Mason Coile
Finally… will there be podcasts in space? Regardless, this story, a locked-room mystery set in the near future, would be a hit on Earth. And by locked room, I do mean the uninhabited planet of Mars. If the first human colonizers of Mars arrived to find their base sabotaged, every person on Earth would be obsessed with finding out what happened via podcast, livestream, or unhinged internet forum… especially if things only got worse from there. A fast and riveting read. (Out September 2025.)
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Victoria Helen Stone is a Wall Street Journal bestselling author of ten suspense novels. Her latest, Bald-Faced Liar, follows the daily life of Elizabeth May, a charming woman who lies to everyone she meets in an attempt to protect herself after the trauma of a Satanic panic trial thirty years earlier. But can a woman who lies about everything be believed when she claims someone is stalking her? And how could a stalker know so much when Elizabeth holds her secrets so tightly?
