These Small Town Mystery Books Will Have You Looking Twice at Your Neighbors

Some towns are just quintessential small-town America. Wayward Pines, Idaho is one of them.

At least, that’s what Secret Service agent Ethan Burke thinks when he first arrives. He’s there to find two missing federal agents.

But things in Wayward Pines are stranger than they seem. After he gets in a violent accident, he has no ID, no cell phone, and can’t seem to contact anyone outside of the town.

And the electric fences keep anyone from leaving.

His investigation leads to more questions than answers, until Ethan has to face the horrifying truth that he may never leave Wayward Pines alive.

Life in the desert means facing daily life or death choices. Especially in the worst drought of the century.

Federal Police Investigator Aaron Falk is brought back to his small hometown farming community of Kiewarra after three members of a local family are found dead. It doesn’t help that one was his childhood friend.

The town turned their collective back on Aaron 20 years ago. But Aaron shared a secret with his friend—a secret he thought was buried and forgotten.

A secret these deaths threaten to bring to the surface and cause the small Australian town to bleed all over again.

In this southern noir, Darren Mathews left his East Texas roots as soon as he could. Duty called him back.

Now he’s a Texas Ranger, called out to the small town of Lark to investigate two murders—a black lawyer from Chicago and a local white woman. The crimes have taken Lark’s racial tension from a simmer to an outright boil.

East Texas has always played by its own rules when it comes to law and order. But if Darren wants to save himself, he has to find a killer and confront his own allegiance to his roots before Lark witnesses more deadly violence.

Stoneham, New Hampshire is everything the big city isn’t. That’s why Tricia Miles moved there.

At first, it was all friendly faces. But when she opened her mystery bookstore, a cook book shop opened right next door.

Good thing a little competition never scared Tricia—until she finds the owner dead in her own store, stabbed with her own carving knife. Soon, Tricia finds herself in hot water when the motive turns out to be a rare cookbook that everyone believes Tricia would kill for.

To clear her name, Tricia has to turn to her beloved mysteries to help her find a killer.

When a young college professor is brutally murdered in a local diner, it sets the small Georgia town into a panic. Especially after local pediatrician and coroner Sara Linton reveals exactly how sadistic the killer is.

As her police chief ex-husband leads the investigation, another body is found crucified. And to make his life even more complicated, the first victim’s sister—the town’s only female detective—is out for vengeance.

But the key to the entire investigation might hinge on a secret buried in Sara’s past. One that will either reveal a killer or end in more bloodshed.

Charon County, Virginia has only had two murders. But that doesn’t mean something isn't festering under the surface.

Titus Crown learned that lesson after years working as an FBI agent. He learns it all over again when the day after he’s elected the first Black sheriff, a school teacher is killed and the student responsible is gunned down by one of his deputies.

As Titus investigates the shootings, he uncovers some of those secrets. It leads to buried crimes and a serial killer hiding in plain sight.

With racial tension rising and a killer deeply entrenched in the local community, Titus has to close the case before it all spirals violently out of control and someone else ends up dead.

This is a gripping Agatha Christie classic.

St. Mary Mead is a sleepy village in the English countryside. But beneath the peaceful exterior, one man is the cause of discontent.

Everyone wishes Colonel Protheroe was dead. So when he's shot in the head in the vicar’s study, everyone has a motive.

Thankfully Miss Marple is up to the task. With clear thought and careful deliberation, she untangles the web of clues as they lead her right to the killer.

Nothing much happens in Midnight, Texas. It’s a small town where locals are more likely to be strangers than friends, and more buildings are boarded up than open.

It may be a typical washed up Western town, but that doesn’t mean it’s dead. There’s the pawnshop, a diner, and a new resident setting up shop.

Some are only seen at night. Others only in passing.

To an outsider, everything looks normal. But if you stay awhile, you might just learn the strange truths lingering under the surface.