Detective Short Stories & Novels

Out of recognition for my achievements in the medical field, I've been made a member of the prestigious International Medical Institute. I return to the country after that. Yet, on my very first day at work, my niece, Angie Judd, ends up dying tragically in my ward. When she's found, the lower half of her body is covered in a sticky substance, and part of her uterus has dropped down. Her mother, Melanie Larson, has an emotional breakdown and jumps to her death. Her father, my adopted younger brother, Cody Judd, furiously stabs me in the abdomen. My wife, Serena Thompson, calls me a monster and immediately files for divorce. She ends up marrying Cody the moment the divorce is finalized. To make it up to Cody, my father, the police commissioner, uses his connections to forgo a proper investigation and have me imprisoned for sexual assault. My mother, the CEO of a company, takes it upon herself to transfer all of my assets to Cody. She also helps him become a renowned billionaire philanthropist in Crestbay. With no way of defending myself, I end up spending eight years in prison. The day I finally get released from prison, the entire family shows up at the prison entrance to wait for me. Serena, who's now my ex-wife, approaches with reddened eyes to hug me, but the look of concern on her face seems so fake to me. "All that matters is you've come back to us now, Hector. From now on, I'll always be by your side." The moment she finishes speaking, the nearby civilians swarm all around me. "Hector Judd! You got lucky with just an eight-year sentence! You should've been castrated and shot to death!" "That's right! To think you even hurt your own niece! You're a monster!" The endless torture and abuse I'd suffered in prison have left me feeling rather dazed. Eventually, a man who had once received financial aid from Cody rushes up and throws a bucket of sewage water at my face. "You monster! Mr. Judd even had to cancel his celebration party today just to welcome you home after your release from prison! You killed his wife and daughter, ruining his family, and now, you're even stealing the rest of the only family he still has? Go to hell!" Inhaling the putrid stench, I let out a sneer. They were the ones who falsified the evidence to throw me in prison back then. They broke my legs and injected me with a neurotoxic drug that addled my brain, making it impossible for me to protest. They did all of those things just to cover up the fact that Cody is the real murderer!

My husband, Xylo Green, fell in love with the locust tree in our yard. At night, he would wrap his arms around it and kiss it. One day, my dad decided to plant vegetables in the yard, so he cut the tree down. The tree died in the morning, and by midnight, our whole family was gone. Suddenly, I was reincarnated to the day when Xylo was passionately chasing after me. He looked at me lovingly and said, “Olivia, can I be yours?” I smiled flatly. I did not want him anymore, but I would definitely take his life!

Five years ago, my brother's fiancée died because of me. Five years later, I'm burned to a crisp and laid out on his autopsy table.

Yvette and I fought over who was the real heiress for two lifetimes. In my first life, my parents were convinced I was their true daughter. They coaxed me into going to the hospital for a blood test. However, when I woke up in the ward, weak from blood loss, I saw their faces twisted with hatred as they strangled me. “You fake! Just die!” “You’re not our child at all!” I could not fight back. In agony, I took my last breath. In my second life, I was certain Yvette was the real heiress. I pretended to be sick to avoid my parents. Still, I saw the news a few days later—Yvette’s body had been found in the wilderness, drained to a husk. When I opened my eyes again, I was reborn for the second time. Yvette was shaken with fear, while I was dragging my suitcase. Both of us were staring at each other. I looked at her and smiled. “How about we run away together?”

Each of my three ex-boyfriends ends up committing suicide right after eating food that my mother, Florence Winters, makes. Their deaths are very different from one another, with the only similarity being that they all eat food made by Mom before they die. Mom goes viral in an instant. She becomes the center of everyone's attention, and she is even taken away by the police. But they never manage to find anything wrong with any of the food she makes. I don't dare to get into another relationship. I pack my things and move out of the house, leaving Mom. Two years later, Mom shows up at my engagement party. She proceeds to feed my fiance, Lawrence Smith, some food…

I am a doctor. One day, I come across a weird patient when I am on duty. The first thing she says when she sees me isn't that she feels unwell somewhere. Instead, she says something hair-raising. "Dr. Cantrell, your girlfriend is a murderer." "What nonsense are you spouting?" I shoot back with widened eyes and shoot up from my chair. I feel offended. She calmly says, "She won't be home tonight because she needs to deal with the body. You will know whether what I say is true by tonight."

The heat apocalypse struck without warning, and the office turned into hell on earth. Global temperatures spiked past 126°F. Ellie Ramsey, the receptionist, collapsed against the water cooler, her skin fused to the plastic tank. When Frank Higgins tried to pull her free, a layer of skin tore away with his hand. Of the hundred-some people who'd worked in our building, only seven of us were left. The survivors retreated into the underground bunker beneath the building, sealed off from the heat above. Water and food ran out fast. We'd have fought over a single rat's blood just to wet our throats. Then Jake Collins, the technician who'd gone to check the UV lamp in the incubation unit, came sprinting back like he'd lost his mind. He was clutching a part in his hand, his face bone-white. "This temperature control module—" He shoved it in front of my face, his fingers shaking. "The manufacture date. It's from last March."

Two years ago, I got pregnant for the first time. At ten weeks, a silver lock-shaped charm appeared outside our front door. There was no shipping label and no sender. Ian Shaw laughed at me for worrying. He said a friend had probably sent us an early gift for the baby. But that night, I developed stomach pains. By the time I reached the hospital in the early hours, the baby no longer had a heartbeat. A year ago, I got pregnant again. I told no one, not even my mother. In the eighth week, an identical silver charm appeared in the nursery we hadn’t used yet. The doors and windows were locked, and the security cameras showed no one entering. That time, I fell in the bathroom and lost the baby too. Now I was pregnant again. Before dawn in my seventh week, a nightmare woke me. My fingers touched something cold beneath my pillow. A third silver lock charm lay there. I held it in my shaking hands. Who was trying to kill my baby?

During the five years I was in a vegetative state, all ten family soldiers assigned to guard me were murdered. One of them merely smoked a cigarette outside my hospital room. The next day, he was found upside down, drowned in a toilet. Another simply adjusted my pillow. The next day, he took a dive from a skyscraper rooftop. The Corleone family was in chaos, but they couldn't find a single trace of the killer. With no other choice, the ten executions, all textbook Mafia hits, became cold cases. Strangely, the very second the tenth guard's heart stopped, I opened my eyes. The first thing I did upon waking was call the FBI and turn myself in. The agents were stunned. "Miss Corleone, are you saying that while in a coma for five years, you planned and executed the murders of ten fully armed Mafia soldiers?" My fingers tapped lightly on the table, a faint smile playing on my lips. "That's right." "Being in a vegetative state only means I couldn't move." "Who ever told you that killing, something so crude, required me to get my hands dirty?"

On Father's Day, I received a heartwarming gift. My one-year-old son called me Dad for the first time. But moments later, he convulsed, foamed at the mouth, and died before we could reach the hospital. My wife was shattered, and I was devastated. The doctors couldn't identify the cause of his death. Three years later, my wife emerged from her grief, and we welcomed our second child. But the moment this child called me Dad, they, too, died instantly. To spare her further pain, I suggested adoption. Yet, even our adopted children met the same fate. Unable to bear the losses, my wife divorced me. Everyone said I was cursed, never meant to be a father. Defiant, I remarried and had another child, vowing never to let them call me Dad. For years, we adhered to this rule. But when our daughter turned four, she came home from preschool, eager to celebrate Father's Day. Holding a card, she read aloud, "Dad."

I am a real estate agent. For the past three years, I have been the top seller in the industry. It is not because I am a smooth talker; it is because I can hear houses speak. The houses will chatter about a hollow wall, a leaking pipe, or a window with a bad seal. During move-out inspections, I point out exactly what tenants try to hide. When showing a place to renters, I warn them about hidden red flags. I have been doing this so long that both sides treat me like family. Then, one Friday, a regular client, Eleanor Wilson, shows up. "Devan, the tenants at the Eastmere place are moving out." Eleanor is in her 60s. Her husband is long gone, and she lives off the rental income. She is a sweet soul. She charges 20% below market rate and even makes cookies for her tenants during the holidays. The couple moving out this time is Henry Johnson and his wife. They run a fruit stand at the local market and have a six-year-old daughter, Lea Johnson. "Lea is missing," Eleanor says, her eyes welling with tears. "She vanished outside the market last month. Just like that, in the blink of an eye. Henry and his wife have been searching for a month. They're worn out and broke. They just can't take it anymore." A heaviness settles in my chest at her words. I grab the keys and head out with her. Eleanor gasps for air with every flight of stairs we climb. I walk ahead of her. The moment I slide the key into the lock of Apartment 602, the doorknob vibrates violently against my palm. A second later, I dial 911. "I want to report a case of murder. There's a hidden body on the sixth floor of 18 Montclair Heights, Eastmere. The victim is their daughter."

On the third day after my death, my body was sent to the police station in different packages. Jonathan Walsh, my husband, and Frank Stone, my junior at work, saw my corpse and frowned. “If only Elena were here, she would have been able to find some clues.” Frank sighed as he stared at my horribly mangled remains. “Don’t mention her. She’s not even worthy of being a forensic scientist!” I stared at my husband with a conflicted look. He analyzed each part of my body and deduced the manner of my death with familiar ease. “The murderer is a monster…” Frank’s face turned pale, and he sighed again. Jonathan calmly used all that I had taught him and perfectly pieced out the entire process of my death based on the clues from my dismembered body. I could not help but feel proud. Unfortunately, he was still a little off the mark. He did not manage to figure out that this body belonged to me, his wife.

At 2:00 am, after a passionate night with my girlfriend, I casually drop a selfie into a WhatsApp group chat with my buddies. The chat blows up instantly. Mack Slater: "Damn, Harv. Those hickeys on your neck are kinda artistic." Keith Oldman: "Ivory's back for Embercoil Solstice, huh? I bet you two went wild tonight." I stare at the screen, feeling smug. Then Will Anderson, who hasn't said anything so far, suddenly tags me in the group and sends a creepy message. "You're in trouble. Those aren't hickeys on your neck. They're marks left by a drowned wraith looking for a substitute!" My hands are trembling as I clutch my phone.

I'm attacked after the murderer who took my sister's life is released from prison. He pins me to the forest floor, allowing me to scream and shout until I run out of strength. As the fireworks explode above me, blood pools around me. Two months later, my husband becomes his next victim. I burst into manic laughter when I see the torment he has to suffer.

It's nighttime, and I'm on the toilet with my phone. I fire up Battleborn Arena, ready to grind a few ranked matches. But an unknown number flashes on-screen and cuts me off. Annoyed, I decline the call, and a WhatsApp message pops up immediately. "Run! Edgar just snapped. He's going to kill us all!" My hands tremble. Edgar Maguire… Isn't he already dead?

At 11:00 AM, my husband, Silas Vexille, slowly drowned in our indoor thermal pool. At the time, I was having my usual morning tea with the other mafia wives in the estate's back garden. The pool room was directly above the garden, barely a dozen feet away. Originally, if I had gone back to the main house at 11:00 as usual, I would have had plenty of time to save him. But as fate would have it, Victoria Harrison insisted on inviting us over to her nearby home to see her new pink diamond. At 11:20 AM, my daughter April and I pushed open the doors to the pool room. By then, Silas was already gone. At the lavish funeral, I was devastated, fainting several times. The mourners murmured in sympathy. "Don Vexille and his wife always had such a beautiful marriage..." "Yeah, what is she going to do now that the Don is dead?" Silas's mother, Martha—a tough woman who ran a Texas farm alone after her divorce—flew in overnight. Under the watchful eyes of everyone present, she walked straight up to me. Her expression was stone-cold, and she spat out every word: "You are the one who murdered my son."

During a long holiday, my husband booked flights for a family vacation. On the way to the airport, I suddenly saw numbers appearing on everyone’s head. The numbers on my husband’s head indicated sixty years, but my parents and I had only six hours indicated on our heads. While I was puzzled over the meaning of those numbers, I noticed that the driver next to us only had six seconds indicated over his head through the car window. Five… Four… Three… Two… One. When the number turned zero, a massive truck immediately rammed into the car next to us. I saw flickers of fire, flesh and blood exploding before my eyes. People were screaming for help, but I could not hear anything. I trembled as cold sweat drenched my entire body. It was because my flight would be taking off in six hours.

A handprint on the glass window in the bathroom leads to me discovering my husband's betrayal. I want to find that woman and make her and my husband pay.

The day I got fired, I received a trial pass from an AI cosmetic clinic. It required neither surgery nor recovery time, yet it could deliver a flawless celebrity face overnight. But there was a catch. The face only lasted seven days after the complimentary trial. To keep it, I signed a contract to become the actress' body double, trading my time, identity, and freedom for another week of beauty. As the years passed, I kept paying the price to maintain a face that wasn't mine until one day, I realized I no longer wanted to live in someone else's shadow.

I could always hear strange noises coming from the room next to me. A cacophony of people having intercourse. The noise kept me awake all night. But the strange thing was, he lives alone.