Seven Atmospheric Mystery Suspense Novels Set in the South

It's 1920, and Thatcher Hutton has returned home from the war looking for a new start. Unfortunately for him, he lands in Foley, Texas on the same day that a local woman goes missing and the coincidence is too much for local authorities to ignore. Thatcher finds himself in a tight spot, but a missing woman is just the beginning of the town's secrets. And when Thatcher's path crosses with Laurel Plummer's, the two find themselves in a cutthroat situation that could be deadly for them both.

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In Bloodless, the latest Pendergast novel, Agent Pendergast finds himself in Savannah, GA investigating a series of crimes that are stirring up rumors about the notorious Savannah Vampire—bodies are abandoned, drained of blood. Savannah is haunted by secrets and ghosts of the past, but the connection that Pendergast and his partner dig up is to a car seemingly far removed from the South: a decades-old hijacking case thousands of miles away.

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Set in East Texas, Moon Lake follows Daniel Russell, a man haunted by a traumatic past. When he was just thirteen years old, he and his father were driving along when his father tried to kill them both by driving into the lake. Now, Daniel returns to the scene of that horrific moment hoping to recover his father's body and find closure. What he instead discovers are repressed memories and new twists that have him reconsidering everything he thought about his father's death and motives.

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Lila is an up and coming prosecutor who is more than happy with her life. She's recovered from a traumatic incident in her past, she has a great boyfriend, and her career is flourishing. But when a woman is attacked and dumped in the Mississippi River, Lila's life takes a turn. The police identify a local photographer as the woman's assailant but no matter what Lila does, she can't get the charges to stick. It appears this man planned this attack, and he's always one step ahead of Lila...and he reminds her too much about the past she's worked hard to move on from.

Ten years ago, Nina Morgan's car was found in Florida, covered in her blood. Her body was never recovered, but police declared her dead nonetheless. In reality, Nina staged her death in order to save her family, as they were all targets after she witnessed a brutal crime. Now, she's reinvented herself on the other side of the country, but she misses her children, who have grown up thinking their mother is dead and that she's their distant aunt. Until her husband dies, and Nina gets custody of her kids...but she's not convinced this isn't a plot for her old enemy to flush her out.

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Darren Matthews, a Texas Ranger, finds his career in a precarious position after a previous investigation got complicated, but he's hoping for a little distraction and redemption when a nine-year-old boy goes missing in a small lakeside town. The town is like a time capsule into the past, racial attitudes included, and Matthews is intrigued and disturbed to find that the missing boy's family is a bit more interested in protecting their business than finding their missing child.

Erva, Alabama is the quintessential Southern town, and crime isn't really very serious...or so it would seem. Despite the fact that most of the people in the local jailhouse are in for petty crime and misdemeanors, for some reason people aren't getting out of jail as easily as they are going in. So when a young lawyer decides to take on the judge that is slowly and insidiously ruining her hometown, she finds herself behind bars and decides to take on the system from within.

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