Sager’s most recent novel is “Lock Every Door.”

Peter Swanson

Image Credit... Golden Cosmos

My favorite murder is one committed by Lily Kintner in “The Kind Worth Killing.” Lily is an amiable sociopath, someone who tries to limit her murders to those who deserve it. Early in the book, she offs an unfaithful college boyfriend by first hiding his EpiPen, then crushing up some cashews (he’s very allergic) and adding them to a chicken korma. He comes home from a night of drinking, inhales the Indian food and dies while searching for the EpiPen that would save his life. Lily calmly watches. She’s gotten her revenge, and while his death may look suspicious, no one could ever prove that a murder has been committed. Death by cashew. A perfect crime.

Swanson’s next novel, “Eight Perfect Murders,” will be out in March 2020.

[ Read how novelist Lisa Gardner researches murder at The Body Farm. ]

Harlan Coben

I’m not big on unusual deaths, like by garbage compactor or air pressure chamber or something like that. Most of my books open with a disappearance or a surprise so that the killings I remember best are the ones that break your heart, the ones that resonate. They are also spoilers. In “The Stranger,” which we are currently filming for Netflix, we get to know a certain character, get to know his (or her) life, feel for them and their awful predicament, want well for them — and so bam, when it doesn’t work out, when they are murdered not even a third of the way through the book, we mourn that loss and want justice. Perhaps my most memorable murder occurs when the protagonist of a novel, the narrator who has told us the story from Page 1, gets shot and killed in the final pages. The book then skips ahead 25 years and we are seeing the aftermath from another perspective because the narrator is dead. I can’t list the books because, well, spoiler. In “Hold Tight,” a quiet 12-year-old girl saves the day by killing someone, thanks in part to the fact that she was snooping and misbehaving.

Coben’s most recent novel is “Run Away.”

Ruth Ware

As a writer it’s always tempting to be fondest of the book you’re working on, but since I haven’t actually committed the murder in my current work-in-progress yet, it would feel like a bit of a cheat to choose that one. My crimes usually take place off the page, which perhaps makes them harder to rank, but in terms of Christie-ish cleverness, I have a soft spot for the elaborate plan executed in “The Woman in Cabin 10.” Set on a cruise ship, it’s one of the most coldblooded crimes I’ve ever devised — a murder committed in international waters using a method designed to leave detectives wondering not just whodunit but did it happen at all? It’s a plan predicated on a single driving force: a desire to kill, and get away without even a stain of suspicion.