People of Interest · Every Magazine Needs a List
Ten Novels, All Called Hide and Seek
Why are novelists, who spend their entire working lives making things up, unable to think of an original title? Strong Words would like to declare "Hide and Seek" no longer available.
Søren Sveistrup
Michael Joseph 2026
1 Hide and Seek
A grim Danish thriller featuring the unsolved historic murder of a woman found dead in a body of water, thirty years before a woman is haunted by text messages of a children's rhyme, first heard in the woods, possibly chanted by a maniac, around the time of the cold case killing.
Sheridan Anne
Podium 2026
2 Hide and Seek: A Dark Stalker Romance
Should "stalker" and "romance" appear hand in hand in a title? Hmm. A woman is completing her training in pathology on the night shift at the morgue. A stalker is keen to play games by sending messages via the corpses. Lady pathologist is curious, but gets off with her step-uncle instead.
Andrea Mara
Penguin 2022
3 Hide and Seek
In tranquil suburban Dublin, a game of hide and seek goes badly wrong when a small girl proves impossible to locate. Ten years later, a woman moves into the house where the child used to live and thinks she might know what happened to her, although is a little shy about coming forward.
Chris Carter
Simon & Schuster 2026
4 Hide and Seek
A woman who has been long doormatted by her revolting husband takes him to court and sees him jailed — an outcome he's not happy about at all. Even though she then moves across country and assumes a new identity, he decides to make it his life's work to track her down and express his disappointment.
MJ Arlidge
Penguin 2016
5 Hide and Seek
A top female detective with a difficult background is framed for murder and finds herself living long term among the ladies of Holloway prison. Neither guards nor inmates are keen to see her housed there, but then a carefully murdered body is discovered in a locked cell, and suddenly her clue-sifting talents are required after all.
Ian Rankin
Orion 1994
6 Hide and Seek
A junkie has been murdered with elaborate precision and laid out decoratively in a revolting Edinburgh squat. In the up and coming capital, there's little concern for another dead scrounger. But Inspector John Rebus is tuned into a different frequency, and finds plenty in the killing to interest him.
Mary Burton
Montlake 2019
7 Hide and Seek
Keen to break into the FBI's elite profiling unit, agent Macy Crow isn't going to let an inconvenience like being badly run over by a vehicle hold her back. She's put to the test with the cold case of a missing high school girl whose remains have recently been discovered — could this be the work of a cleverly camouflaged stalker?
Willow Dixon
Independent 2025
8 Hide and Seek
This claims to be "the second book in a new dark romance series set at an elite, invite-only college, and is a stranger/stalker to lovers story between an introverted hacker and the frat boy who awakens his darker side." The only comprehensible part of this summary is "second book."
Amy Shojai
Independent 2017
9 Hide and Seek
At last! "A dog lover's medical thriller suspense" and "a creepy must-read mystery for animal lovers." After a brush with a kidnapper, an animal behaviourist's trust boundaries shrink to include just her dog and her cat. But the dog also has issues, while the human has to battle both a maniac and the spread of a contagious disease.
Cristin Harber
Independent 2026
10 Hide and Seek
Callum, booted out of the army for his casual attitude to following orders, has reinvented himself in personal security. Assigned to protect "quiet illustrator" Grace from her asshole ex-husband, she's starting to trust again when she only goes and gets kidnapped. It's big question time for Cal: how much of his heart is he prepared to risk?