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Discover weekly, the best short stories

Looking for a steady supply of crime short stories? Every week thousands of writers submit stories to our writing contest.

150+ Crime Short Stories to read

Submitted by writers on Reedsy Prompts to our weekly writing contest. Feed your fascination with the latest crime short stories. From thrilling accounts of lovable burglars to chilling tales of stone-cold murderers, these bite-sized pieces are so addictive, they should be illegal.

Crime Short Stories – Page 3 of 10

The worst kind of time capsule

Michaelah M

Weekly Contest #347

Thunk. The shovel’s progress through the dirt ceases. It’s replaced by two soft hands scrabbling at the dirt. A finger nail bends, breaks, leaving a trail of blood. Undaunted by this, dirt is flung away to reveal a braided tan handle. The body belonging to the hands heaves itself out of the hole and then yanks and wiggles the handle. Years of decomposing unsurprisingly has affected it. One end breaks, leaving only one end of the rope barely hanging on to the metal surface it is attached to. The hands swipe sweaty hair falling out its ponytai...

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Tennessee mind reader's Federal Agent

Weekly Contest #348

As the days turned into nights, and the events that surrounded Delta's home grew into something more serious. Delta's family and a few other locals, who knew She was connected to surveillance and the underground started in to drive her crazy. Delta and her daughter Matilda which was still just a couple months old was pretty much held hostage in here dads' home both physically and mentally. After she started hearing she had felt like everyone was in her attic, she had already boarded all doors and entrances up in fear of them coming out on he...

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The Drunk Fish

JF Bacon

Weekly Contest #347

The Drunk Fish was no different from other Yorkshire pubs in the late nineties. Divided into two rooms – or ‘bars’ – they were separated by doors, but shared the same bar counter. Both rooms generously offered worn, sticky carpet underfoot; aged oak furniture littered with torn beermats; tatty chintz curtains; and faded floral wallpaper throughout.In the public bar, a TV fought to be heard over the high-pitched sound of two jackpot machines and darts thumping a dart board. Raucous chatter about restrictions imposed on the steel factory which...

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Something There

Nick Matsas

Weekly Contest #347

I live a different life. One thing my family does not know about, and if I told you, we’d both be killed. When I sit at the table with my boys and girls, it is for such a short time that you could say that it is not my life, or at least where I spend it. I took an oath, and rule five says: If your wife is giving birth and we call you, you come, and it is true. I live that life. My life. Our life. I know Vito Corleone says a man who doesn’t spend time with his family is not a man, but he’s a character, and I’m the real thing. I run brothels, ...

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NIGHTMARISH CUSTOMERS AND CUNNING PLOYS TO STEAL THE OWNER'S DATA

Anna Cuccuru

Weekly Contest #347

The room and breakfast in Ferrara, in the Emilia-Romagna region, represent a category of structure as a guesthouse very clear in the description: it is an apartment with two or six rooms with bathroom, kitchen, apartment shared in the common areas with other guests, where self-service detergents and breakfast are provided, complete with pdf information downloadable from the website of the Emilia-Romagna region where the owner does not reside and therefore a morbid curiosity Created Placed by the customers to know where he lives, if he owns o...

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Cause and Effect

Vanessa Osbourne

Weekly Contest #347

CW & A/N: Mentions of past child abuse, gaslighting/coercion, mentions of past drug/alcohol abuse, OD, cursing, absent parents, religious psychosis???, matricide.) (Also kind of ties into the prompt of: Center your story around someone who finally achieves their biggest goal — only to realize it cost them everything.) The sky’s the color of someone else’s faded memory, muted to a grey as bleak as the outcome of all life. It begins and ends the same way: with a bright light, and with a perpetual darkness. In between we fill it with th...

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The Last Straw Of Schadenfreude

Adam Wilson

Weekly Contest #347

My name is unimportant. The players are the opposite. The events that I transcribe are real. Let me set the stage. I dwell in the heart of Stalithe, a city not unlike Los Angeles, Chicago, or New York City. Especially the latter, as the Towers only were toppled a year prior. I have seen monsters of the two-legged and four-legged variety. And at the center, is the Kestrel. I have made a study of this "hero." His dedication to the public good is very questionable. He has only been in operation for 4 years. I am convinced of his identity. As...

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The Notebook

Weekly Contest #347

DANIELSlow is steady and steady is fast. That’s Daniel’s philosophy. Take your time. Be patient. Do it right. He picked the lock to the front door with ease, and siddled inside the house. He doubted whether the home had power, but wasn’t going to flip the switch regardless. He brandished a flashlight and carefully made his way through the building. The home was a complete mess - it had clearly been abandoned for quite some time. Daniel found evidence of squatters, likely homeless or drug addicts. Some old, dirty towels. An overturned chair, ...

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One of the Best People

Weekly Contest #347

Three days ago, I was bitten by a mosquito. It was an especially painful bite, and the mark it left was more swollen and itchy and alarming than anything I’d ever seen on my hand. I even spent time researching online to learn if there are different kinds of mosquito bites. Like, had this one decided to lay eggs in me? Or, is there such a thing as a queen mosquito? Oh and, does malaria show up in the bite mark? It was a painful and sort of desperate three days.Until the morning when it was gone and I realized that I am strong. Not just “I fee...

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A Little Salt

Deavera Delvane

Weekly Contest #347

Trigger Warning: hints at physical/mental abuse, mention of death The sunlight streams into their bedroom.The wife, Margaret, always wakes up before her husband just as she did today.“Paul, darling?” she turns towards him, as he is unmoving in his slumber. “You look quite pale, dear. I’ll let you rest, alright?” she whispers, “Let me just open the windows for some fresh air.”Margaret, or as he likes to call her, Maggie, steps into the bathroom. Paul must have been very exhausted from work to suddenly fall sick like this, she thought to hers...

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Neon Point

Weekly Contest #347

Detective Inspector Carl Kay sat in a metal room, with metal walls and a metal chair beneath him. Various hums and groans of thingy-ma-bobs and whatcha-ma-call its surrounded him. He doubted there was anyone in the galaxy who actually knew what they did, if anything at all. A solitary light, which was far too complex to be practical, hung above the desk he was sitting at in the middle of the room. At the opposite end of the desk, was a toaster. He glared at it, analysing its every sound. He was trying to pressure it into admitting its guilt....

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Wanted

A Fields

Weekly Contest #347

He found her hiding behind a cloud of cigarette smoke. The empty beer bottles clustered on the scratched plastic table like flies on a carcass might have explained the red rimming her eyes and the tremble in her hands as she lifted another half-empty bottle with resigned habit.Her mascara must have been waterproof, because there were no smudged tear tracks, but her face had recently been scrubbed, bare of the blush she always wore, paled and gray in contrast to the scalding red of her lips. That was how he knew she had been crying, half her ...

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It's About Your Father.

James Scott

Weekly Contest #347

My phone rattled its shrapnel hammer, waking me like a shot to the heart. I was vertical and lifting the cold receiver well before the fog of sleep had even begun to recede, my body autonomous without the burden of a waking mind. Words uttered in a tired monotone down the wire dragged me to full consciousness. I heard a familiar phrase repeated for yet another rendition. The one that had plagued the entirety of my living memory.“Hey, Banner,” Detective Wright mumbled, “It’s about your father…” I pulled the collar of my coat high and tucked m...

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The Detective who solves nothing

Robert Radcliff

Weekly Contest #347

Brackmere is a town that lives by the sea and the market. Its cobbled square bustles with fishmongers, bakers, and gossiping matrons, while gulls wheel overhead, shrieking like heralds of doom. Fog rolls in most evenings, wrapping the harbor in a shroud that make even the most ordinary lamppost look conspiratorial. It is the sort of place where stories cling to the stones, and one man is determined to uncover them all. Mr. Horace Pilbeam, age seventy‑two, sprightly despite his creaking knees, runs a one‑man detective agency called Sherlock a...

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FALLEN ANGEL

Charles Corkery

Weekly Contest #347

The shutters, clattering against the bedroom window, wake him though he struggles to recognise his surroundings; vaguely recalling the faceless whore he’d picked up in a bar in Teotihuacan. Instinctively, he realises he is alone. Sitting up, head hammering, he glances around the room: clothes scattered everywhere, ashtrays piled high with weeks old butts, empty liquor bottles; none of which he’d noticed in the darkness of the previous night. The sheets, he now realises, are grimy, redolent of the sweat of numerous bodies who had fucked he...

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