fiction
Mystery, crime, murder, unsolved cases. Contribute your own tales of crime to Criminal.
Poison in the Prayer Book
The year was 1523, and the air in the Abbey of Saint Margaret was thick with the scent of incense and damp stone. Tucked high in the Cotswold Hills, the abbey had weathered the storms of kings and commoners alike. Within its cloistered walls, the brothers followed the Benedictine rule, their days marked by silence, prayer, and routine.
By Said Hameed7 months ago in Criminal
The House Across the Street Hasn’t Turned Off Its Porch Light in Months. Content Warning. AI-Generated.
I first noticed in September. The warm glow spilling onto the empty porch night after night, cutting through the early autumn dark. I assumed someone had forgotten, or maybe they liked the security, the illusion of presence.
By Jesse Shelley7 months ago in Criminal
Dead Man’s Silence
Fog drifted in low across the marshlands, curling around gnarled cypress roots like pale, skeletal fingers. The town of Eddings Hollow lay beyond the mire, tucked away like a secret too terrible to speak aloud. It was the kind of place that wasn’t on maps anymore—not because it had been forgotten, but because people wanted it that way.
By Said Hameed7 months ago in Criminal
The Widow’s Ledger
Rain fell in icy sheets as Detective Mara Voss stepped onto the crumbling porch of the old Ashbury estate. The town of Greystone had nearly forgotten about Eleanor Hargrave — the reclusive widow of the late Charles Hargrave, a banker who’d drowned mysteriously in 1993. Nearly three decades later, Eleanor was found dead in her parlor, a glass of sherry in her hand and a dusty leather-bound ledger on her lap.
By Said Hameed7 months ago in Criminal
Echoes in the Rain: The Brighton Boy Who Walked Into the Sea
Brighton, with its salt-laced air and pastel-painted lanes, is the kind of place where mystery feels out of place. It’s a city of seagulls, surfboards, secondhand bookstores, and stony beaches where people gather with fish and chips under striped parasols. But in the early autumn of 2011, just as the summer crowds thinned and the skies began to frown, something happened that would ripple through the seaside town for years to come.
By Muhammad Wisal7 months ago in Criminal
Vanished in the Fog: The London Girl Who Was Never Found
It was a fog-choked morning in late November when 17-year-old Isobel Hart left her flat in Southwark and vanished. At first, no one noticed. Isobel was quiet, self-contained — the kind of girl who didn’t draw much attention. She wasn’t the sort to stir drama on social media or dominate group chats. Her world was small but stable: her mother, her best friend Ava, her part-time job at a café on Borough High Street, and her notebooks, which she carried everywhere.
By Muhammad Wisal7 months ago in Criminal
Echoes of Justice: Inside the Court of America
Washington, D.C., 7:42 a.m. The sun had barely crept over the horizon, casting long golden beams across the marble steps of the Supreme Court of the United States. It was a cold spring morning, but the air hummed with a certain electricity—as if the wind itself were whispering the significance of what was to come.
By Muhammad Wisal7 months ago in Criminal
A Killer’s Confession
The first snow of the season had just begun to fall when Detective Lila Grant stepped into the interrogation room. The harsh fluorescent light buzzed above, casting long shadows over the man seated across from her. He was calm—too calm for someone who had just turned himself in.
By Said Hameed7 months ago in Criminal
Chasing the Cipher
It started with a whisper in the code. Amira had spent most of her twenties neck-deep in encrypted strings, building security systems for companies that barely knew what they were guarding. But this—this was different. A month ago, while running diagnostics on a compromised academic server, she'd found a pattern buried in the noise. Not malware, not a backdoor—something else.
By Said Hameed7 months ago in Criminal
The Last Witness
The wind whispered through the broken windows of the courthouse, carrying with it the scent of decay and dust. Once a place of justice and law, the structure now stood hollow, like the bones of a forgotten giant. Outside, the city of Dorne lay in ruins, the skyline jagged with the skeletal remains of buildings and the scorched silhouettes of war.
By Said Hameed7 months ago in Criminal
