Simon Beckett Books In Order

The Chemistry of Death

Three years ago, David Hunter moved to rural Norfolk to escape his life in London, his gritty work in forensics, and a tragedy that nearly destroyed him. Working as a simple country doctor, seeing his lost wife and daughter only in his dreams, David struggles to remain uninvolved when the corpse of a woman is found in the woods, a macabre sign from her killer decorating her body. In one horrifying instant, the quiet summer countryside that had been David’s refuge has turned malevolent and suddenly there is no place to hide.

The village of Manham is tight knit, far from the beaten path. As a newcomer, Dr. Hunter is immediately a suspect. Once an expert in analyzing human remains, he reluctantly joins the police investigation and when another woman disappears, it soon becomes personal. Because this time she is someone David knows, someone who has managed to penetrate the icy barrier around his heart. With a killer s bizarre and twisted methods screaming out to him, with a brooding countryside beset with suspicion, David can feel the darkness gathering around him. For as the clock ticks down on a young woman s life, David must follow a macabre trail of clues all the way to its final, horrifying conclusion.

From the Hardcover edition.

Written in Bone

I took the skull from its evidence bag and gently set it on the stainless steel table. Tell me who you are…
. With this silent plea, forensic expert Dr. David Hunter ignites a harrowing murder investigation on a windswept Scottish island, and a tale of menace, sexuality, and revenge unravels along with the chilling message that a killer has

Dr. David Hunter should be in London with the woman he loves and a past he can t quite shake off. Instead, as a favor to a beleaguered cop, Hunter travels to a remote island in the Outer Hebrides to inspect a baffling set of remains. A forensic anthropologist, he has seen bodies destroyed by all forms of violence, but even he is surprised at what he finds: human remains burned beyond recognition all within the confines of an otherwise undamaged, unoccupied cottage. Local police want to rule the death accidental. But Hunter’s examination of the victim s charred skull tells him that this woman, no doubt a stranger to the close knit island of Runa, was murdered by someone nearby.

Within days, two more people are dead by fire. Hunter s job is to coax the dead into telling their stories but now that he s beginning to hear them, he is staggered by the truth. Working with only the barest of clues, he peels back the layers of mysteries past and present, exposing the tangle of secrets at the heart of this strange community from the deceptions of a wealthy couple to the bitterness of an ex cop and the secrets of a lonely single mother as a tale of rage and perversion comes full circle then explodes in a series of violent acts and shocking twists.

Whispers of the Dead

A field of corpses, laid out in a macabre display A serial killer who confounds even the most seasoned profilers A doctor whose life has been shattered by crime plunged into the heart of a shocking investigation In this masterful new novel by Simon Beckett, 1 internationally bestselling author of Written in Bone and The Chemistry of Death, forensic anthropologist David Hunter is thrust into his first murder investigation on U.S. soil and his most devastating case yet.

In the heat of a Tennessee summer, Dr. Hunter has come to Knoxville’s legendary Body Farm the infamous field laboratory where law enforcement personnel study real corpses to escape London and the violence that nearly destroyed his life. He s also here to find out if he s still up to the job of sorting through death in all its strange and terrible forms. Hunter will soon find his answer when he s called to a crime scene in a remote Smoky Mountain cabin a scene as grisly as it is bizarre.

The body is taped to a table. Everything about the crime scene the wounds, the decomposition, the microscopic evidence quickly short circuits the tools and methods of forensic experts. Within days, Hunter knows he s dealing with a serial killer, someone intimately familiar with the intricacies of forensics. All around him, egos and hierarchies clash from the boasts of a renowned criminal profiler to the dogged work of a young female investigator but fate keeps pushing Hunter further into the heart of the manhunt. And the killer keeps coming up with surprises: booby trapping corpses, faking times of death, swapping bodies finally turning his sights on after Hunter himself.

An electrifying race against time, a fascinating journey into the world of forensic science, and a terrifying portrait of a killer in love with death itself, Whispers of the Dead is a thriller of the highest order.

The Calling of the Grave

‘At first glance it could have been anything a stone, a knotted root until you looked more closely. Thrusting out of the wet earth, its bones visible through rags of flesh, was a decomposing hand…
‘ It was eight years ago that they found the body buried on the moor. They were certain that this was one of psychotic rapist and multiple murderer Jerome Monk’s teenage victims. Which left just two more bodies to find. But the ill conceived search ended badly. And with Monk safely behind bars, the momentum faltered. For forensics expert David Hunter, and those others who were part of the recovery team, life moved on. And the dead were left undisturbed. Now, though, a nightmare scenario unfurls. Monk has escaped and seems to be targeting anyone involved in that original ill fated operation. Lured back to the moors by a desperate call for help, Hunter begins to realise that neither the events unfolding now nor those of eight years ago are quite what they seem. And as the maniac’s violent trail edges ever closer, the past is suddenly anything but dead and buried…

Fine Lines

A wealthy, slightly sinister London art dealer develops a voyeuristic obsession with his assistant, Anna, and hires an amoral male model to seduce her while he watches from behind a screen but his impulses lead to nasty surprises including murder. A first novel.