Books like Murder with a Past by Ellery Queen

Richard Hannay, a bored Londoner who returns from South Africa, is thrust into a high‑stakes espionage chase after a murder tied to an assassination plot, forcing him to flee to Scotland and outwit his pursuers.

Sixteen‑year‑old Ree Dolly of rural Missouri must track her fugitive father through the harsh Ozark landscape before his missing‑court‑date threatens the family’s home.

Harlan Coben’s thriller follows a man’s desperate search for his missing brother, spiraling into a painful hunt for a killer and the truth behind betrayal and family secrets.

A contemporary romance set in Virginia’s horse farms, blending a summer mystery and the perspective of women veterinarians who become witnesses in a missing‑persons case.

Ellery Queen returns to the Catskill town of Wrightsville to investigate a 12‑year‑old murder amid the town’s troubled Fox family.

An unexpected encounter in Washington leads to a thrilling adventure for a young woman trying to finish her first novel.

A gripping psychological thriller where psychiatrist Hildegard Wolf confronts a potential murderous fugitive and her own shadowy past, blending mystery, psychotherapist dynamics, and a tense chase across Europe.

It’s Christmas in Chicago, and Inspector Richard Queen is enjoying a busman’s holiday at a conference on gangland violence—but his son, amateur sleuth Ellery, is bored silly. Until, that is, Ellery reads of an unusual killing in rural Arroyo, West Virginia: A schoolmaster has been found beheaded and crucified. Ellery hustles his father into his roadster and heads east, since there is nothing he’d like better for Christmas than a juicy, gruesome puzzle. When the Queens arrive in Arroyo, they learn that the victim was an eccentric atheist, but not the sort to make enemies. What initially looks to be the work of a sadistic cult turns out to be something far more sinister. In the months ahead, more victims will turn up all over the world—all killed in the same horrifying manner. It will take several bodies before Queen divines the clue that unlocks the mystery of the Christmas crucifixion.

In Baltimore, seasoned private investigator Tess Monaghan is hired to locate a famous Orthodox Jewish man's missing wife and children, uncovering a web of betrayal, vengeance, and murder.

In the second act of a theatre production, a blackmailer is found murdered in the back row. Inspector Queen and his son Ellery investigate, focusing on the victim’s missing top hat.