What If Social Media Turns Murderous?

Social media use has become so ubiquitous that it's no wonder mystery plots are mining social networking for clues, motives and even psychological weaponry. One example is the Social Media Murders Series by Angela Clarke, starting with Follow Me. If you think social media feeds fame monsters, you'll appreciate a plot in which recent graduate Freddie, who is trying to get her journalism career started via online contacts and posts, bumps into old friend Nasreen, now a police officer, and seeks a scoop by following her to a crime scene where a dead man lies slumped over his computer. Social media-savvy Freddie realizes the victim was a troll and finds the Twitter account of the "Hashtag Murderer," who takes credit for the murder and posts cryptic clues to the next target, titillating press and public. Freddie and Nasreen are soon in the crosshairs as they race to catch the fame-crazed killer. Or, maybe you fear that some folks in your social network of "friends" are playing unfriendly games. Then you won't find any comfort in The Other Twin by L.V. Hay. In the British thriller, Poppy returns home after her sister India dies from a fall off a railway bridge and hacks into her sister's laptop seeking the truth about her death. Poppy finds a social media world where resentments are played out online, identities are made and remade, and secrets outnumber truths. Now if you're a person who feels vulnerable to online-savvy miscreants, join tech-impaired, retired Detective Bill Hodges of Mr. Mercedes, the first entry in Stephen King's Bill Hodges Trilogy. In an unsolved case at the end of Hodges' career, the "Mercedes Killer" used a stolen Mercedes to mow down a crowd of people waiting outside a job fair. Miserable in retirement, Hodges is jolted back to life by taunting messages from the killer and drawn into a cat-and-mouse game on an anonymous social media chat site, leading to a race to stop a psychopath. Maybe you're worried social posts are attracting undesirable followers who'll try to move from virtual to actual contact. Then you'll be terrified by The Secrets She Keeps from Michael Robotham. Unwed and pregnant Agatha, who works part-time stocking shelves at a grocery store, is fascinated by chic customer Meghan, who writes a droll parenting blog and boasts two perfect children and a happy marriage. When Agatha learns her blog idol is pregnant again, and that their due dates fall within the same month, she approaches the unsuspecting Meghan and sets something terrible in motion. Or test your social nerves with Caroline Kepnes' novel You. Beautiful Guinevere Beck shops in a New York bookstore where smitten employee Joe "Googles" the name on her credit card. Joe soon finds all he needs to know from her public Facebook account and constant Tweets. He begins to orchestrate meetings and events designed to push her into his arms, and removes any obstacles to his passion--even if it means murder. For thrillers featuring social media, check out https://strandmag.com/seven-thrillers-featuring-social-media/

Hospital Settings: Scary Prescriptions for Murder

I've been taking some time off from blogging during my summer vacation, but I got a burst of inspiration after spending a day last week in the hospital with my elderly father. It was nothing serious, but the visit reminded me why hospital settings are so chillingly apt for murder mysteries: so many potentially lethal means at hand, so many plausible explanations for death, and so much institutional and personal power over life and death. What could go wrong? Medical murder mysteries answer that question with truly inventive plots. And it's no surprise that many best-selling medical mystery authors are medically trained. Start with physician-turned-novelist Robin Cook. In his first best-seller, Coma, set in a Boston hospital, a young woman intern begins investigating suspicious comas following routine surgery and is soon marked for death herself. Best-selling physician-writer Michael Palmer also plays on our fears of medical power run amok in Extreme Measures, which is about an ambitious young doctor confronted by an elite medical clique who will stop at nothing--including murder and mutilation--to protect their secrets. Harvard Medical School-trained Michael Crichton, of Jurassic Park and Andromeda Strain fame, actually started his writing career with the Edgar Award-winning A Case of Need, in which the pathologist protagonist tries to prove the innocence of a friend accused of killing a woman in a botched abortion (then illegal). Another medico-turned-writer is urologist Kelly Parsons; his first mystery, Doing Harm, is about an ambitious hospital chief resident playing cat and mouse with a killer, and it won good reviews from the likes of Stephen King. So what about female authors? At the top of any list is multi-award-winning author P.D. James, who put her experience in hospital administration to good use in books such as A Mind to Murder (set in a psychiatric clinic), Shroud for a Nightingale (set in a nursing school), and The Private Patient (set in a plastic surgery clinic). Also on the distaff side, physician author J.L. DeLozier offers a unique protagonist in Dr. Persephone Smith, a psychologist with the gift (or curse) of enhanced empathy. In Storm Shelter, Smith is deployed to an abandoned air hangar turned medical shelter during a massive hurricane, but she soon has something more terrifying to deal than the storm as staff and evacuees begin disappearing--and turning up as mutilated corpses. For more ideas, check out these blogger suggestions: https://storify.com/sillynarra399/the-17-best-medical-mystery-books-ever-written