In this batch, we’re favoring both ongoing series and stand-alone stories, where the puzzle of a crime drives the plot more than a race against time. You’ll find classic locked-room mysteries, amateur detectives, cops on the beat and a few curve balls to keep you on your toes. Oh, and we’re sticking to one title per author, so you won’t find five Agatha Christies or Ruth Rendells here—just one legendary book that stands in for their body of work. To help us narrow down the list to the absolute best mystery novels, we reached out to acclaimed and bestselling authors, bookstores around the country that love murder mystery, critics who review detective novels and the like. We’ve even scoured crowd-sourcing sites like Goodreads to see what you’ve loved the most. Whether you’re looking for the perfect murder mystery set in your vacation destination, a classic to recommend to a book club or a great spooky series to dive into, it’s all here. Grab your magnifying glass, your library card and a pen and paper—you’ll want to take notes! Leave a comment telling us which books on here you love, which you’re dying to read and which ones you are astonished to find missing. Here at Parade.com, we’re all about sharing products we love with our audience. When you make a purchase on an item seen on this page, we may earn a commission, however, all picks are independently chosen unless otherwise mentioned.
The 101 Best Mystery Books of All Time
Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
Of course, the Queen of Crime would top the list. (Not that it’s in any particular order!) But which Christie to choose? On Goodreads, the various rankings of best mystery books feature more of her titles than the body of a gangster-turned-rat has bullet holes. Should we choose The Murder At The Vicarage, her amusing introduction of Miss Marple? Christie’s groundbreaking The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd? Heck, her stand-alone puzzler And Then There Were None is probably the bestselling mystery of all time, with more than 100 million copies sold. But we chose Hercule Poirot’s Murder On The Orient Express. The solution to the crime is so elegant, so simple and so audacious we imagine every other mystery writer alive that read it smacked their foreheads and said, “Why didn’t I think of that?”
Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley
When it comes to a series, we gravitate to the first title because, well, if a series is great, that’s where you want to start. No series is greater than the Easy Rawlins books, launched in 1990 about an African-American private investigator and WWII vet. The series has it all: great mysteries, a great and complex hero and—as the books unfold and document decades in L.A.—a great history of life in America as rich and ambitious as the U.S.A. trilogy by John Dos Passos or August Wilson’s Century Cycle. At its core is this mystery: How does a Black man survive in America with his dignity intact?
The Bat by Jo Nesbø
Nordic noir, where have you been all our lives? The flood of marvelous mystery and suspense books from chilly Oslo and its sister cities is one of the great joys for fans of the best mystery books around, whatever their accent. Nesbø’s Harry Hole is the latest in a long line of sleuths who are train wrecks in their personal (and often professional) lives. Ironically, in this first Hole story, the Oslo inspector is consulting in Sydney, Australia. Not to fear: Australia has its fair share of serial killers and deep-dark secrets. Yes, this could just as easily be in thrillers, but watching Hole track down his prey by worrying about every stray clue like a dog with a bone is very satisfying.
The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley
“Possibly the most influential crime novel of the past half-century, and probably the best private eye novel ever written—in a world blessed with Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett,” says Otto Penzler, proprietor of The Mysterious Bookshop. The poetry of the prose, he says, transcends the complex plot in which C.W. Sughrue (pronounced ’Shug’ as in sugar, honey, and ‘rue’ as in rue the goddamned day”), is hired to find a missing author but winds up searching for a girl who’s been missing from Haight-Ashbury for a decade. “Best line? There are a dozen, including the best opening line since Rebecca. But my favorite is ‘Nobody lives forever, nobody stays young long enough.’”
Death at La Fenice by Donna Leon
Down below on this list, author Leon offers pithy praise for the legendary Ruth Rendell’s classic Judgement In Stone. She needn’t toot her own horn because so many others will do it for her. Leon’s bestselling Commissario Brunetti books will have you falling in love with the city of Venice and her decent, redoubtable hero. The 31st book came out in 2022, but Leon nailed her cultured, thoughtful and usually successful protagonist right at the start: “His clothing marked him as Italian. The cadence of his speech announced he was Venetian. His eyes were all policeman.” Grab an espresso, sit down and savor.
The Seven-Per-Cent Solution by John H. Watson M.D. (as edited by Nicholas Meyer)
We could make a list of the 100 best mystery novels about Sherlock Holmes not written by Arthur Conan Doyle and it would be shockingly good. Indeed, you’ll find a few of them on here, including this one, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution. It’s the granddaddy of them all. There’s the frank treatment of drug addiction alluded to in the canon and the clever weaving of real-world figures like Sigmund Freud. Pure joy for fans who never imagined they would learn more about the world’s most famous private investigator.
Postmortem by Patricia Cornwell
Do you love TV shows like C.S.I.? You can thank Cornwell and her greatest creation: Medical examiner Kay Scarpetta, who’s a bit like Jack Klugman’s Dr. Quincy of TV fame, just turbocharged with the latest tech. Twenty-five books and counting feature Scarpetta tracking down killers, cutting through office politics and dealing with a cranky but brilliant niece, not always in that order. On the side, Cornwell also spent years researching Jack the Ripper and delivered her own solution to the coldest case of them all. Scarpetta means “little shoe,” but Cornwell is leaving a big imprint on the genre.
The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett
Why not The Maltese Falcon or Red Harvest or a number of other Hammett classics? Because none of his other books spawned a cottage industry quite like the irresistible husband-and-wife team of Nick and Nora Charles. They drink, they banter, they drink, they outwit criminals and the police, they drink some more and when the bottle runs dry, they reluctantly get around to solving the murder. The book led to the classic films starring WilliamPowell and MyrnaLoy and that led to everything from the TV shows Hart To Hart and Moonlighting to charming copycat mysteries featuring Mr. and Mrs. North and far too many more to mention.
Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem
Is this even a curveball? The acclaimed novel by Lethem features a noir-ish mystery worthy of the movie Chinatown, an unexpected protagonist in detective Lionel Essrog (who lives with Tourette’s syndrome) and dazzling wordplay we’re unaccustomed to finding in the just-the-facts-ma’am world of crime fiction. The result is a classic that embraces and enlivens the genre. The Crime Writers Association agreed: they gave Motherless Brooklyn its top prize—the Gold Dagger—in 2000. (It also won the National Book Award, but that honor doesn’t have a body count requirement, so who cares, right?)
A Christmas Journey by Anne Perry
Perry is prized for her historical detective fiction featuring the likes of Thomas Pitt, William Monk and most recently her between-the-wars protagonist Elena Standish. But in 2003, Perry pulled off her own heist in plain sight by stealing Christmas. Starting with A Christmas Journey, Perry has made a tradition of holiday mayhem and for many fans, December wouldn’t be the same without a new one. Eggnog, It’s A Wonderful Life on TV and a new Christmas-themed mystery from Perry aren’t just nice: they’re essential.
The Alienist by Caleb Carr
Police commissioner Teddy Roosevelt shows up at the door of an alienist (a proto-psychiatrist) and confides that a shockingly brutal murder has taken place. Our hero uses cutting-edge technology like fingerprinting and what would become profiling to track down the killer, but not before more people die. This historical detective tale proved a true phenomenon, hugely popular even among readers who couldn’t tell a cozy mystery from a police procedural.
Something Wicked by Carolyn Hart
Cozies are mysteries where sex and violence take place offstage and an amateur sleuth solves the crime, usually in an intimate setting like a bookstore or cafe or small town. Think Miss Marple. And cozies don’t often get the respect they deserve. They aren’t just comfort food; they’re a challenge for a smart writer—just like making a sitcom for a network is different than making one for HBO. No cursing! No sex! You have to be … clever. Surely Carolyn Hart is one of the queens of cozies and her early adventure starring mystery bookstore owner Annie Laurance is a treat, complete with a summer stock production of Arsenic and Old Lace, a dead body and a love interest under suspicion of murder. Quick, someone grab a Poirot; Annie needs a little guidance!
Laura by Vera Caspary
One of the great mysteries, Laura is now inseparable from the classic 1944 film of the same name starring Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews and the never-better Clifton Webb. But the novel holds its own nicely thanks to the story of a seen-it-all detective who finds himself slowly falling in love with a dead woman he’s never met but trying to avenge. Delicious twists keep it surprising. Caspary sold the movie rights not once but twice and then turned it into a play. No wonder: None of her other novels came close to replicating its success. That’s OK though, you only have to get it right once to achieve happiness. Isn’t that right, Laura?
The Laughing Policeman by Maj Sjöwal & Per Wahlöö
An early salvo in the crime wave of Nordic fiction, this was the fourth outing for Stockholm police detective Martin Beck. Someone shoots up a busload of people, but Beck realizes this shocking assault is mere cover to disguise the real target: a fellow officer. It took the world by storm, winning awards everywhere, including the Mystery Writers of America’s top prize, the Edgar Award, in 1971. Maj Sjöwal and Per Wahlöö enjoyed considerable success alone and together as writers. Romantically, she was twice divorced when they met and he was still married, so they just lived together for 12 years. Hey, it’s Sweden! When Wahlöö died in 1975, the series died with him.
The Man With a Load of Mischief by Martha Grimes
You have to love a series of murder mystery novels named after pubs. This British-set charmer stars the grumpy but handsome chief inspector Richard Jury. It begins with several gruesome murders. One body is actually stuffed into a beer keg, and if you’re offended by the idea that this is a shocking waste of good ale, Grimes may not be for you. The village is Long Piddleton and Jury is always aided and abetted by the blue-blooded Melrose Plant and various others. Like so many of our favorite heroes, Jury is a total washout when it comes to love but awfully good at solving crimes.
Blood Shot by Sara Paretsky
Ok, mysteries let us indulge in some fantasies. Who wouldn’t want to be V.I. “Vic” Warshawski? She’s a crusading private investigator who invariably takes on tough cases, even when the client can’t pay her full rate (or any rate at all). Why? Because an injustice has taken place! Vic handles a Smith & Wesson with ease, though she’s just as handy with karate. She roams Chicago like a knight errant, righting (or is that writing?) wrongs, singing arias to relax and taking long, hot baths. But that’s not the fantasy part. The fantasy part is the eating. Vic has a ravenous appetite and doesn’t mind telling us in detail about particularly delicious meals. Each night’s battle is followed by a big greasy breakfast the next morning. And she looks great. Is this fair? Little in her world is, so let Vic have one indulgence.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John Le Carré
A towering masterpiece, even on a list of classics. This is the spy novel to end all spy novels, and the action takes place almost entirely in the probing mind of George Smiley. It marks the full flowering of that character and is the first in a trilogy by Le Carré that remains a benchmark for other writers to measure themselves against. Here, Smiley is discreetly asked to sniff out a mole, the bane of the existence of secretive government agencies. He gathers information. He talks to people. He observes. And he sits and thinks. Rarely has a novel been so subtle and gripping at the same time. At some point, you realize Smiley is way ahead of you and think, “I really need to pay attention!” That attention is fully rewarded. A brilliant miniseries starring Alec Guinness and the even more unlikely but successful distillation of the novel into a two-hour film starring Gary Oldman are classics in their own right.
From The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg
This is it: The gateway drug that turns generations of children into mystery addicts. Two kids run away from home and take residence in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. That leads them to obsess over a new acquisition, a statue that may or may not be attributed to Michelangelo. They begin researching the mystery and their conclusions lead them to the home of the wealthy Mrs. Basil. Before you know it, with her blessing, the kids are digging into her files to investigate even further and prove the truth once and for all. Innocently read this as a kid, and you’re led to Encyclopedia Brown and Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys and The Westing Game and before you know it, you’re hooked for life and taking up residence at 221B Baker Street. Let this be a warning!
The Neon Rain by James Lee Burke
The rundown, seedy but glamorous world of New Orleans is matched by the ravaged heart and mind of detective Dave Robicheaux. Alcoholism? Check. PTSD from the Vietnam War? Probably. Unstable, semi-dependable sidekick via bond bailsman Cletus Purcel? Yes, hopefully at arm’s length. Romantic travails to match? Naturally. In other words, this debut has all the ingredients that fans of detective novels love. James Lee Burke’s writing grows in complexity and skill over the years and his Holland Family Saga is surely a peak. But Robicheaux is not to be missed.
The Tiger in the Smoke by Margery Allingham
Originally a spoof on Lord Peter Wimsey, gentleman detective Albert Campion began as a supporting player, soon took center stage and quietly developed into his own marvelous character. So why do we choose the 14th entry when Allingham only continued for four more books? Well, the series improved mightily as it went along (just like Dorothy L. Sayers’ Wimsey!) and J.K. Rowling named it her favorite crime novel of all time. Mind you, like so many other successful series, the death of Margery Allingham hasn’t stopped Campion from fighting crime. So far, two writers have added 11 more titles to the total, including 2021’s Mr. Campion’s Coven.
Raven Black by Ann Cleeves
If you love the Brenda Blethyn TV series Vera, you’re already reading the Vera Stanhope mysteries, starting with The Crow Trap. If you love mysteries and birding, then Cleeves’ Palmer-Jones series starting with A Bird In The Hand is pure heaven, even if the author was just getting on her feet, writing-wise. But she soared to new heights with the Shetland Island books, starting with the Four Seasons quartet, which began with Raven Black. Inspector Jimmy Perez deals with a murder that links to an older cold case and eventually leads to the secrets you invariably find when digging deeper. Gloomy, gripping and as good a place to start with Cleeves as any other. She keeps getting better.
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
It doesn’t get any bigger than The Big Sleep, the detective novel Time magazine named one of the 100 best novels of all time. Paris’s newspaper Le Monde agreed, even if no one can make sense of the plot, including Chandler himself. At least, that’s the story of the classic 1946 film starring Humphrey Bogart. You can blame censorship because the novel offers a lot more clarity than the movie. It doesn’t shy away from the seedier aspects of the erotica and orgies trade or the then-illegal homosexuality of a key character. You’ll read the book and say, ahhh! Chandler was a master of atmosphere and character, so maybe plotting is for chumps after all.
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley
A writer who spends his teenage years reading books in a cemetery is surely fated to write mysteries and very good ones, at that. That’s the backstory of Toronto native Alan Bradley, who launched this mystery series set in an English village even though he’d never been to England. Our intrepid investigator is 11-year-old Flavia de Luce, a very clever child who loves chemistry, calls her bike Gladys and takes matters into her own hand when her stamp-collecting father is wrongly accused of murder. Droll doesn’t begin to capture the quirky charms of Flavia or this delightful throwback of a story.
The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
There are hits and then there are blockbusters. In the modern era of mysteries, only Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None sold more copies than The Da Vinci Code. With 80 million copies in print and a new TV series continuing the adventures of Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon, Dan Brown’s gold mine is still proving a rich vein. Combining more conspiracy theories than you can shake a stick at, The Da Vinci Code is widely imitated (we see you, National Treasure!) but never matched in terms of popularity. From the Mona Lisa to the Holy Grail to Westminster Abbey, this is the ultimate scavenger hunt.
The Black Echo by Michael Connelly
This debut novel by Connelly was an immediate hit, earning commercial and critical praise. It launched the character of Harry Bosch, another Vietnam vet turned crime fighter, this time serving in homicide in the LAPD. Bosch has a haunted past (mom was a prostitute killed when he was 11-years-old), a problem with authority and love interests that rarely last more than a book or two. You know, the typical embattled hero determined to dig up the truth. Black-eyed but clear-hearted, Bosch is a troubled guy who can’t help but do what’s right, whatever the price.
In a Lonely Place by Dorothy Hughes
“Dorothy B. Hughes isn’t interested in your run-of-the-mill noir gumshoe who goes around L.A. or San Francisco solving murders and attracting “dames,” says Bennard Fajardo, bookseller at Politics and Prose Bookstore. “Hughes is more interested in the psychology of her characters and the motivations that force people to do what they do.” In A Lonely Place is a novel about the killer, his motives and the history that led him to commit violence against his victims, most of whom are women. “Beyond being a noir novel, it’s also an exploration of postwar anxiety in 1940s Los Angelos and of the misogyny that deems women as fodder for the egos of men,” Fajardo says.
The Moving Toyshop by Edmund Crispin
A gem of mystery’s golden age in the 1940s, this novel inspired the merry-go-round sequence in Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers On A Train. It’s a pity Hitch didn’t adapt the entire book, since author Crispin delivers wit, thrills and a wrongly accused man with similar panache to the Master of Suspense. In this case, think The Lady Vanishes. The accused murderer is a famous poet who stumbles on a dead body in a toyshop, is knocked out, wakes up somewhere else and immediately contacts the police to show them the body…which is gone, along with the toyshop! Instead, they find a grocery store, leaving the coppers to shake their heads over the strangeness of poets. Naturally, he turns to Oxford don and amateur sleuth Gervase Fen to figure it all out. Read it and you’ll realize just how many marvelous mystery novels there are waiting to be discovered.
The Beekeeper’s Apprentice by Laurie R. King
The nerve! The sheer audacity! King doesn’t just deliver another Sherlock Holmes adventure like so many others. She doesn’t just give him a love interest. King actually marries him off! And he loves it. That’s the bold arc for easily the best ongoing series of Holmesian spin-offs. It very much stars Mary Russell as the worthy spouse for the great detective. But not so fast! In this first adventure, Russell is a 15-year-old girl who realizes the local beekeeper is the world’s most famous private investigator. Impressing him with her own nascent powers of deduction, Holmes takes the girl under his wing and trains Russell as his protege. Imagine having Holmes as your tutor in crime-solving and you begin to appreciate the pleasures on tap here. Their apprenticeship blossoms into friendship, which blossoms into love over a series of novels. And 17 books in, the series is still going strong.
Jar City by Arnaldur Indriðason
Yet another Nordic mystery that took the world by storm, and rightly so. The protagonist is Detective Erlendur, based in Reykjavik, Iceland. He’s morose, has a daughter he’s determined to protect from the vagaries of life (good luck with that) and a dead body of an old man that may be linked to a crime committed decades ago. What makes Indriôason’s work unique this time is his righteous exposure of the dangers of genetic information being widely disseminated and the not-so-unique idea that Icelanders’ stock is superior—all neatly woven into an absorbing mystery. This was the first of Erlendur’s cases to be translated into English, but far from the last.
Still Lifeby Louise Penny
Have you been drawn in by the cheeky new thriller Canadian Louise Penny just wrote with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton? If so, stay for her ongoing series featuring Chief Inspector Gamache, based in the village of Three Pines. Like all such locales, the bodies pile up. But what makes the series special is Gamache’s kindly approach to life and modest demeanor. All new detectives on his team are offered “four sayings that can lead to wisdom: I was wrong. I’m sorry. I don’t know. I need help.” Though closer to a gentle, non-violent cozy than most of the books achieving critical acclaim these days, the Gamache books hoovered up awards from the start, which is very un-Canadian of Penny. Undoubtedly, she feels a little abashed about all the success and praise, which would be very Canadian indeed.
The Complete Tales & Poems by Edgar Allan Poe
OK, we may have cheated a bit here, since this collection features all of Poe’s poetry and fiction in a single volume. But where else would you find short stories like The Masque of the Red Death? “The poetic prose rackets up the tension and terror as more is revealed until you literally can’t keep from screaming,” says Kathy Harig, bookseller at Maryland’s own Mystery Loves Company bookstore. “Poe is the master of the macabre, the gothic and the godfather to all mystery writers.” Indeed, he virtually invented the genre with the detective C. Auguste Dupin. One of the mystery world’s top honors — the Edgar — is even named after him. Harig adds, “Poe was and is a big influence on my love of mysteries.”
Thus Was Adonis Murdered by Sarah Caudwell
A perfect bon-bon of a novel. Caudwell was a very successful barrister in London, bursting through glass ceilings, pipe in hand. But on the side, she delivered four delightfully funny murder mysteries over a 20-year period. Thus Was Adonis Murdered (1981) is the first, though any one of the four is a treat. All feature exceptionally witty, understated dialogue, more tax law than one would expect from your usual dead-body-found-on-holiday novel and the singular sleuth Hilary Tamar, a professor of medieval law whose gender remains amusingly unspecified throughout. The cover of some editions mimics the Edward Gorey artwork from the PBS Mystery! anthology series. Either that description has you reaching eagerly for a copy, a smile already crossing your face, or Caudwell is not your cup of tea.
L.A. Confidential by James Ellroy
Hammett. Chandler. Ellroy. That’s the Hard-Boiled Gods of Mystery company that James Ellroy joined with the L.A. quartet, four novels that raised his game considerably. The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential and White Jazz cemented a reputation that grew even more with his Underworld USA trilogy. But you’ve got to start somewhere, so why not L.A. Confidential, the novel that inspired one of the best crime films of all time in 1997? It depicts a 1950s Los Angeles so corrupt and violent it makes Deadwood seem like Disneyland. In other words, it’s thrilling.
The Last Kashmiri Rose by Barbara Cleverly
We need a 40 Over 40 list, folks who changed careers or found success as the years went on. Cleverly (love the name!) published her first book as she hit her 60s. Maybe that explains why her talents were at their peak right from the start. The Last Kashmiri Rose is delightfully old-fashioned, set in 1920s India and stars a WWI hero (or should I say survivor?) turned Scotland Yard Inspector. And it’s exactly what you want. Cleverly hasn’t branched out much—she began another series, but it too is set between the wars. All of them feature sharply drawn characters, solid plotting and satisfying resolutions that surely make the Queens of Crime (Christie, Sayers, Marsh and Allingham) smile approvingly.
Cotton Comes to Harlem by Chester Himes
You can praise Chester Himes for knocking down walls and offering diverse voices that flourish in the mystery genre. You can celebrate the film made from Cotton Comes to Harlem, probably the best-known novel he wrote. You can champion his importance. But all of that diverts from the rip-roaring fun of his Harlem detective series, the classic duo of Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson, the marvelous balance of humor and horror and how Himes captures the texture of 1950s Harlem. That makes the eight books in the series essential reading of the most enjoyable sort.
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
This is the virgin spring, the novel that established forever so many elements of the modern mystery novel, especially the British wing. Short stories by Edgar Allan Poe and others came before, as did rickety stabs at the mystery novel. But Collins did so many things so well that the result is not just influential but still readable and fun today. Bungling local police, red herrings, the setting of a country estate, a famed investigator, a reconstruction of the crime and so on and so forth all take pride of place in the plot. The Moonstone really did it all. Collins never came close again to duplicating its success, but then again, a 19th-century laudanum addiction will do that to a fellow.
One for the Money by Janet Evanovich
Another great reason to love New Jersey: Stephanie Plum is a former lingerie buyer from Trenton turned bounty hunter in this first hilarious entry in Evanovich’s bestselling series. Modeling her books on the classic comedy Midnight Run, Evanovich made bounty hunting sexy and fun and really a viable career path even for people who don’t know the first thing about bounty hunting. People like Plum. (She gets better.) The only mystery here is how Hollywood botched the 2012 film version and why no one has tried again.
Time and Again by Jack Finney
Writer Stephen King declared Time and Again “the great time travel story,” and heck, that was upon the publication of his own acclaimed time-travel thriller 11/22/63. And no wonder. While the science is silly (people just will themselves into the past), author Finney combines with great effect the mystery of a half-burned letter warning of danger, a decades-spanning romance and a jump back from 1970s-era New York City to the horse-drawn carriages of the Big Apple circa 1882. Sure, the time travel aspect is bunk. But everything else is convincingly done, from the actual period photos peppered throughout for a subtle legitimacy to the desire for escape into a sepia-toned past. No one’s ever made a film version, though the similar-themed Christopher Reeve romance Somewhere In Time comes close.
Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell
Some mystery novels let you escape from the world. Others hold up a mirror to the world and insist you take a closer look. That’s certainly the style of Mankell, a committed activist on social issues who brought that same passion to the Inspector Kurt Wallender series of novels. Kenneth Branagh captured him well in the BBC series, but you need to head to the books, starting with the series launch Faceless Killers. Set in Sweden, it critiques that country’s famed tolerance by showing it doesn’t always apply to the most recent wave of foreigners. Indeed, “foreign” is the last word of a woman beaten to death by intruders, which sets off a wave of hate crimes as police detective Wallander and his team race to reveal the truth.
The Deep Blue Good-By by John D. MacDonald
“Although written in 1964, Travis McGee, MacDonald’s protagonist in this opener to the series, is as much a 21st-century man as any I’ve met. I was in love with him 30 years ago, and I am in love with him each time I read one. A classic endures because of its humanity common to us all. The Travis McGee books are true classics in every sense.” —Joanne Sinchuk, manager, Murder on the Beach bookstore, Delray Beach, Florida.
A Great Deliverance by Elizabeth George
It’s a classic trope: Two partners who are horribly mismatched buttheads and yet somehow do their jobs and develop a grudging, if unspoken, respect. In this case, one is the upper crust, the eighth earl of Asherton Detective Inspector Lynley and the other is the working class, irascible Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers. Class, gender, temperament—their pairing has every culture clash imaginable. It’s not for sheer comedic effect. The duo’s relationship is complex and real, as are the crimes they investigate. With the 21st mystery out in 2022, the Lynley stories haven’t flagged a bit.
Clark and Division by Naomi Hirahara
We certainly could have celebrated Hirahara by choosing any of the three mystery series she has penned: the Edgar award-winning Mas Arai series about a Japanese-American gardener and sleuth, the Ellie Rush stories about a rookie member of the LAPD or the recently launched series starring Leilani Santaigo set in Hawaii. But we’ll boldly suggest the just-out and widely acclaimed historical mystery Clark and Division. This WWII-set story of a woman trying to uncover the truth about her sister’s death against the backdrop of the brutal internment of Japanese-Americans is simply Hirahara’s most deeply felt and satisfying book to date.
A Is for Alibi by Sue Grafton
Her dad wrote mysteries. Her parents battled each other when they weren’t battling the booze. She was all but orphaned. While not the perfect background, it is one for a mystery author like Grafton and the perfect grist for the creation of private investigator Kinsey Millhone. She’s a petite, no-nonsense sort who favors jeans, friends over family and peanut butter and pickle sandwiches. And if that ain’t Mystery 101 enough for you, Grafton set her heroine’s business in the fictional town of Santa Teresa, California, a city founded by fellow writer Ross Macdonald and also occupied at times by the late Roberto Bolaño. Breezy, sharp and hugely popular, Grafton’s alphabet series began with A Is For Alibi and came to an abrupt end with Y Is For Yesterday when she passed away from cancer. As her family beautifully put it, as far as they were concerned, “the alphabet now ends with Y.”
I.Q. by Joe Ide
How do you become Sherlock Holmes? In Ide’s marvelous debut set in Los Angeles, our hero Isaiah Quintabe seems gifted with preternatural smarts, wholly deserving of his nickname IQ. But it’s the flashbacks to the still-young IQ’s childhood that really fascinate me. We see the calm and collected and morally righteous IQ when he was just a kid, still just as likely to choose to use his brains for a quick buck rather than righting wrongs. He hones his formidable deductive skills, but Ide makes IQ’s moral growth even more fascinating. Oh and like many an errant knight, IQ devotes just as much energy to the little problems of the neighborhood that cross his path as the violent and dangerous task that drives the plot. It’s a funny, sharp, dying-to-be-made-into-a-movie-or-tv-show book that’s led to four more novels so far.
1st To Die by James Patterson
A one-man publishing industry in his own right, Patterson has a string of ongoing series for adults and kids. His most popular one in the mystery genre is surely the Women’s Murder Club. In the first entry, we watch this unofficial team come together. Inspector Lindsay Boxer is suicidal, diagnosed with a deadly illness and burdened with a new partner she’s reluctantly finding attractive. But first thing’s first: The brutal murder of a honeymooning couple has her full attention. At the crime scene, Boxer finds a rapport with Cindy Thomas, a reporter assigned to cover the crime. Soon, medical examiner Claire Washburn is working with the two to crack the case. And before you can say “the four musketeers,” Assistant D.A. Jill Bernhardt has joined the Women’s Murder Club with 2nd Chance and 3rd Degree on the horizon. So far, the series has hit 22 entries, a TV movie, a TV series and numerous game spin-offs. Unless Patterson runs out of numbers, you can bet there will be more.
Bootlegger’s Daughter by Margaret Maron
Maron’s Deborah Knott was introduced in this novel, a rural North Carolina criminal defense attorney who, after witnessing an unjust verdict by a racist judge, decides to run for judge. “In this deeply atmospheric series debut, Deborah, the daughter of a well-known local moonshiner, must not only overcome her father’s notorious legacy but also solve a decades-old cold case involving a young mother who disappeared with her three-year-old daughter for a three-day period,” says author Mary Kay Andrews. “Eventually, the daughter is found alive, but her mother has been murdered. Exploring themes of racism, homophobia and class divide in the Deep South, Bootlegger’s Daughter has a meticulously plotted puzzle with a richly drawn cast of characters.” Plus, in 1993 it became the first novel to win the Edgar, Anthony, Agatha and Macavity awards (all four major mystery prizes) for best novel in the same year. For Andrews, Bootlegger’s Daughter is a modern classic not only because of the lyrical writing, but also “because it knocked down barriers in the mystery genre, which until then, was dominated by male writers of hard-boiled novels. It opened the doors for dozens of other female novelists whose careers were mostly inspired—and assisted—by Maron, who died this year at the age of 82.”
The Doorbell Rang by Rex Stout
Is there a greater armchair detective than Nero Wolfe? He lives on West 35th Street in New York City, and unlike the wiry active Sherlock Holmes, Wolfe is so voluminous in size it’s hard to imagine him even getting out of that armchair, much less out of his home. Instead, he dines on gourmet meals prepared by his personal chef, fusses over his orchids and sends young Archie out and about when Wolfe desires more information or eyes on the ground. Ask fans for their favorite Wolfe and you’ll get a dozen different answers, a credit to Stout’s overall quality. We tossed a dart and it landed on The Doorbell Rang with Wolfe going up against a particularly formidable foe: the FBI.
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
Without The Name of the Rose, there would be no The Da Vinci Code. This earlier, brainier mystery was itself an international phenomenon, selling a reported 50 million copies, putting it third on the list of the bestselling mysteries of all time, right behind the 100 million copies of Christie’s And Then There Were None and the 80 million copies of The Da Vinci Code. Unlike Brown, author Umberto Eco also enjoyed marvelous reviews for his historical murder mystery set in a monastery in the 1300s. Yes, Eco offers up some semiotics. But he also serves up secret rooms, the Inquisition and some especially violent monks. And you know you’re in friendly hands when our hero is called William of Baskerville.
The Strange Case of Peter the Lett by Georges Simenon
Some of the best-loved mystery series are comfort food, pure and simple. No matter how well-written, no matter how ingenious and puzzling each new crime may be, their greatest pleasure comes from routine. Here is French detective Jules Maigret. He shakes off the cold and sits down to smoke a pipe. He consults with his fellow colleagues, the Faithful Four. He heads home to Madame Maigret for a meal. He is almost always simply Maigret and rarely called Jules, even by Madame. Yes, Maigret solves crimes and he matures and changes just a little over the course of 75 novels. But the real power of Simenon’s achievement is a world as comforting and unchanging as 221 B. A recent plus for fans: fresh translations of all 75 novels have been published in the past decade.
Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters
For Sarah Young, bookseller at The Raven bookstore, this was her gateway to the treasure trove of Barbara Mertz’s books written both as Peters and Barbara Michaels. “Amelia Peabody is the quintessential Peters heroine: sassy, resourceful, and whip-smart,” she says. “Nineteenth-century Egypt comes alive with Amelia and the ‘greatest Egyptologist of this or any other era, Radcliffe Emerson.’”
Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow
Blanche on the Lam by Barbara Neely
Barbara Neely’s amateur sleuth and Black maid Blanche is so engaging and forthright that you may not realize how deftly the author weaves in issues of race, class and gender into her stories. That’s no surprise for a writer who took as her primary model, not Christie or Doyle but Toni Morrison. From being accused of writing bad checks to going on the lam, Blanche is unexpected and memorable. With just four books from 1992 to 2000, Neely left an indelible mark on the genre.
The Coroner’s Lunch by Colin Cotterill
Exotic? Not to the people living there. But for most readers, a mystery set in Laos in 1976 just after the Communist takeover of the country is a fascinating milieu indeed. Our hero is Dr. Siri Paiboun, a man given the unenviable task of state coroner. He’s not trained as a coroner but he’s practically the only doctor left who hasn’t fled the country, so the job is his, whether Paiboun wants it or not. With little funding and even less equipment, Paiboun must tackle the murder of a party official’s wife, a crime almost no one wants him to solve. Toss in shamans, dreams in which Paiboun speaks to the dead and other delicious details, and you have the makings of a series as fresh and unique as any in years.
The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin
For Rhianna Walton, managing editor at Powell’s Books, The Westing Game is easily the cleverest mystery on the market—for kids or adults. “Raskin sends 16 intriguing characters on a wild goose chase to win a multimillion-dollar inheritance from tycoon Sam Westing,” she says. “A send-up of the American obsessions with bootstrap capitalism and financial windfalls; a brilliant character study; and a compulsive riddle that’ll confuse you as much as the characters (no cheating!), The Westing Game is sheer brilliance.
Dead Cert by Dick Francis
Jockey turned author Dick Francis proved almost any setting is rich material for a murder mystery. His knowledge of the racing world is deep and hard-earned, with Francis retiring from the sport of kings after a horse he was riding in The Grand National (for the Queen Mother, no less) collapsed just as he was about to win. Enough of that, said Francis, who turned to journalism, a well-received memoir and finally Dead Cert, the first in a string of bestselling books set in the world of racing. The turf is central, but invariably, the story dives into other interesting fields like transcontinental train service and photography, all brought to life via fascinating details unearthed by Francis’s partner in crime, his wife Mary.
Cover Her Face by P.D. James
The Baroness James of Holland Park (the British do like their titles), P.D. James took 46 years to write 14 mysteries starring her greatest creation, police commander (and poet!) Adam Dalgliesh. Each one is deeply admired by fans and critics alike; indeed, few mystery writers enjoyed such universal acclaim. She’s the sort of writer even people who don’t care for mysteries devour. From her first Dalgliesh, Cover Her Face (1962), to the last, The Private Patient (2008), James maintained the highest standards. And if the series ends with a Jane Austen-like flourish for the brooding, handsome, widowed Dalgliesh, who can blame James for wanting a happy ending?
The Moving Target by Ross Macdonald
Private eye Lew Archer was modeled after Philip Marlowe and named by grabbing the last name of an assistant to Sam Spade. Tipping his fedora to Hammett and Chandler, Macdonald didn’t just follow in the footsteps of those giants, he equaled them. We boldly declared the Easy Rawlins books as good as any, but the 18 Lew Archer mysteries are often named the pinnacle of the detective novel. Starting with 1949’s The Moving Target, Macdonald took the elaborate plotting of those two masters and added in a new psychological depth, along with a little Greek tragedy. Archer often unearths past deeds that haunt wealthy families for generations. Besides, he’s not so hard-boiled after all and this penetrating series is all the better for it.
Dead Time by Eleanor Taylor Bland
Bland was an innovator in the genre. Her police detective Marti MacAlister and her situation is comfortingly familiar: Marti’s a big city copy transferred to a small town (the fictional Lincoln Prairie, Illinois); a woman paired with a man; a person quick to make intuitive leaps alongside a partner who is meticulous and precise; a Baptist with a Catholic and so on. But in the not-so-distant past of 1992, an African-American woman like Marti brought to life as a complex and compelling character with a vibrant private life while kick-ass at her job? That was still something new in mystery literature. Bland died too soon, but her legacy lives on, thanks to an award named after her by the Sisters In Crime group, which champions inclusion and equity in the mystery/crime community.
Anatomy of a Murder by Robert Traver
Perhaps the ultimate courtroom mystery, Anatomy of a Murder is almost entirely overshadowed by the classic 1959 Otto Preminger film starring Jimmy Stewart. That’s wrong. Lawyer (and later Judge) John D. Voelker, a.k.a. Robert Traver, based his greatest novel on a real-life murder trial in which Voelker successfully defended a military man accused of murder. Telling it like it is, Voelker detailed for the first time in a book the entire process of the trial, from preparation to jury selection and finally the trial itself, with exacting and gripping detail. The book was a huge sensation, spending more than one year on bestseller lists. Countless books followed in its wake—no Anatomy Of A Murder, no John Grisham or Scott Turow.
The Blessing Way by Tony Hillerman
This is the first in the late Hillerman’s Edgar award-winning series with Navajo policemen Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee, which is continued today thanks to Hillerman’s daughter Anne, who has added a female (Bernie Manuelito) to the police squad. “Landscape and culture are the main characters, along with the cops and the victims, and Robert Redford is even producing a TV adaptation of the beloved series, one of the most important in our 32-years as booksellers,” says Barbara Peters, owner of the Poisoned Pen bookstore in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Fletch by Gregory McDonald
Forget the movie starring Chevy Chase. The book by McDonald is just as funny but with a sharper edge and less goofiness, making it all the more enjoyable. Fletch remains a journalist and ex-Marine. When he’s not avoiding alimony payments to his multiple wives, the first in the series has him looking into drug deals. Then a man assuming the in-disguise Fletch to be a down-on-his-luck bum asks our hero to kill him. Intrigued, Fletch digs deeper…and deeper…until he’s up to his neck in misdeeds and double-crosses. A new film version starring Jon Hamm is out, but do yourself a favor and read the original first.
The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey
Back to 1920s India we go! This time, we’re not in the company of British invaders or wayward Scotland Yard inspectors. No, our hero is Perveen Mistry, the only female lawyer in all of Bombay. Her suspicions are raised when the three widows of a Muslim mill owner sign away their considerable inheritances to a charity. Really? Since the women are hidden away from the world in seclusion known as purdah, Mistry can barely even contact them. And then the murders begin. Massey made a stir with her first contemporary books focused on the Japanese-American Rei Shimura, a woman caught between two worlds in Tokyo. But these India-set stories put her concerns with fairness and equality into a sparkling setting that shows how universal the fight for justice must be.
I, the Jury by Mickey Spillane
Originally planned as a comic book hero, the violent, tough private investigator Mike Hammer sneers at the law, hates criminals and commies and uses his fists with relish. Think Dirty Harry without even the pretense of a badge and you’ll get where creator Mickey Spillane is coming from. In the first of many vigilante tales, Hammer’s close friend Jack Williams is brutally killed. Hammer doesn’t just vow revenge—he promises to kill the killer in the same excruciating way Jack died. Does he do it? Oh yeah. You can cheer Hammer on, or you can view him warily as an outdated idea of real manhood. Just don’t turn your back on him.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
Anyone who’s seen the Keanu Reeves movie John Wick knows the death of a dog can be an awfully powerful hook for a story. That’s also the MacGuffin driving the plot of Haddon’s unique book (first pitched to young adults but soon discovered a massive worldwide audience). Like Motherless Brooklyn, the hero here is an unconventional one. It’s a 15-year-old boy on the autism spectrum, determined to figure out who killed his neighbor’s dog. The real focus is our amateur sleuth and the intriguing way he puzzles out the emotions and desires of the people around him. It’s a marvelous way of empathizing with someone facing emotional challenges and how all of life can be a mystery when you really pay attention. Since Holmes and countless other fictional detectives have been diagnosed by fans as high-functioning people living with enough chronic issues to fill the Merck Manual twice over, it’s not so curious to include Haddon’s modern classic on this list.
The Killings at Badger’s Drift by Caroline Graham
The long-running TV series Midsomer Murders features Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby solving brutal crimes in the county of Midsomer. Its villages are filled with so many shocking murders and scheming and backstabbing, you’d happily move to Miss Marple’s St. Mary Mead or invite Jessica Fletcher over for the weekend and count yourself safe. It all began with The Killings at Badger’s Drift, the first of seven Midsomer mysteries by Graham. An immediate success, her novels have been surpassed in body count by the TV show but never surpassed for cleverness and charm.
A Morbid Taste for Bones by Ellis Peters
You can keep your doddering Father Brown by G.K. Chesterton. We much prefer the more muscular adventures of Brother Cadfael, the amateur sleuth at the heart of Ellis Peters’ 20 historical mysteries. A one-time soldier and sailor, the worldly Cadfael enters orders in his 40s and has a lifetime of experience to draw upon, not just Father Brown’s modest intuition. Oh and he’s an expert herbalist, useful when diagnosing a poisoning or two. Set in the 1200s, the novels feature major historical events and fascinating insights into pilgrimages, the making of wool and other facts of life familiar to those at the time but engrossing to us today. Those who yearn for a sense of completion will appreciate that Peters wrote the final volume shortly before her death and clearly intended it as a swan song.
The Tattoo Murder Case by Takagi Akimitsu
Too many of Japan’s great mystery novels remain inaccessible to us so far. The great Edogawa Rampo (a successor to Edgar Allan Poe) is more well known for his short stories, but Takagi Akimitsu is an heir to his work, and the kinky murder mystery The Tattoo Murder Case gives a glimpse into a rich body of work waiting to be discovered (or at least translated into English). It took 50 years for this novel to reach our shores but it feels thoroughly modern. A young doctor in post-war Tokyo helps his brother working on a classic locked-room murder. A young woman is killed and dismembered—except for the part of her body containing one of the most beautiful tattoos ever rendered. Is it a murder? Or a theft?
Not to Disturb by Muriel Spark
The Baron and the Baroness have locked themselves in the study with their young male secretary. “We know where this is going, and so do a troupe of loyal servants, who begin preparing for the inevitable murder with the same ice-cold care and deadpan scheming with which they do everything,” says author Daniel Handler (also known as Lemony Snicket). “Meanwhile, strange noises are coming from the attic, and this mystery, or thriller, or satire, whatever it is, locks itself in your head and screams to get out.”
The Monkey’s Raincoat by Robert Crais
Screenwriter and novelist Crais would be admired forever by fans of crime novels for his Emmy-nominated work on TV alone. He wrote scripts for the likes of Cagney & Lacey, L.A. Law, Miami Vice, Quincy and the greatest cop show of them all, Hill Street Blues. Then in 1987, he stepped out on his own and delivered The Monkey’s Raincoat, an immediate success and the launch of the Elvis Cole series. Another Vietnam vet turned private eye (was deductive reasoning and fingerprinting a requirement at Parris Island?), Cole and his partner Joe Pike are driven to do the right thing, just like Marlowe and Spade and so many others before them. It never gets old when it’s done this well.
The Bride Wore Black by Cornell Woolrich
This novel started the career of one of the most important writers in the history of mystery. “Cornell Woolrich’s The Bride Wore Black is a hybrid of suspense and detective fiction that remains, to this day, stylistically fresh and unique,” says Charles Perry, bookseller at Mysterious Bookshop. “The episodic structure, which alternates between a series of murders and the investigation that follows each, presents a tense game of cat-and-mouse that builds to one of the most shocking and tragic twists in the genre.” Woolrich’s tales inspired numerous films, including titles by Francois Truffaut and Quentin Tarantino. “This one is the best of the bunch.”
Death in a Tenured Position by Amanda Cross
At Harvard in the 1970s, it’s expected that talent will rise to the top, as long as said talent is wielded by a man. Women are most decidedly not in the running. That is, until a bequest funds a chair in the English department for a female professor. The new hire is drugged and ultimately killed (giving new meaning to the idea of publish or perish). But in comes fellow academic Kate Fowler to figure it all out. Cross was a pseudonym for Carolyn Gold Heilbrun, who delivered 15 Fansler mysteries in all, not to mention her own acclaimed work in various academic areas, such as feminist studies—she was the first tenured professor in the English department at Columbia.
Promised Land by Robert B. Parker
Parker revolutionized the detective novel not through crusading but via great entertainments that cast an even wider net of diversity and acceptance. The Spenser novels were set in Boston, and we’re starting with the fourth book Promised Land because that’s the one that introduces Hawk, Spenser’s one-time boxing opponent and good friend. Written in every novel are a diverse cast of characters from different ethnic backgrounds and sexual orientation. Oh and he’s in a committed relationship! That makes Spenser a real rarity for a private eye.
Finding Nouf by Zoë Ferraris
There’s Nayir, a Palestinian guide living in Saudi Arabia; Nouf, a teenage girl that a coroner declared died from drowning—even though her body was found in the desert. And most shocking of all to the pious Nayir, there’s a female lab tech named Katya Hijazi at the medical examiner’s office who doesn’t shroud her face and works in public. But Nayir needs her help to uncover this crime in the first of a series starring these two unlikely partners. Empathetic to people of faith yet quietly critical of the oppression women face in the oil kingdom, Finding Nouf is a singular debut.
Ratking by Michael Dibdin
In the first Aurelio Zen mystery, our out-of-favor Police Commissioner hero is transferred to Perugia and assigned a case no one really wants. Mordant, dour and never caring about his career, Zen is precisely the sort to ignore not-so-subtle hints and solve the high-profile kidnapping before he’s removed entirely from the job. Wryly humorous, the 11 Zen novels grow darker as they go along, so like many of the best series on this list, it’s best appreciated from start to finish.
A Judgement in Stone by Ruth Rendell
This was named a favorite mystery of author Donna Leon (Commissario Guido Brunetti series). “The first sentence of Ruth Rendel’s A Judgment in Stone gives the name of the victims, the killer and the motive,” she says. “The reader spends the next three hundred pages hoping to find a way to stop it happening, to somehow prevent these poor lambs from leading themselves to the slaughter.”
Death of A Red Heroine by Qiu Xiaolong
Author Qiu was stranded in the U.S. after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre of student protestors. Along with his many achievements as an academic, poet, translator and critic, Qiu launched a detective series with Death Of A Red Heroine. It’s done in the style of a traditional Chinese novel, which means chapters begin and end with snatches of poetry, alongside historical allusions, Chinese idioms and other literary touches that illuminate a Chinese perspective from the inside out. Oh, and there’s the murder in Shanghai of a young woman in the Communist Party who led a double life—a double life some authorities would prefer to remain hidden. In typical gumshoe style, our hero must solve the crime in a way that keeps the higher-ups at bay until justice of a sort can be done. With 11 books and counting, it’s another reminder of how the mystery genre can open up countless worlds.
Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz
It still amazes us that the acclaimed TV series Foyle’s War wasn’t based on any mystery novels. It’s that rich and good. But it sprang from the mind of creator Anthony Horowitz, who also co-created Midsomer Murders (based on books by Caroline Graham, of course). The prolific Horowitz also delivered young adult thrillers starring a teenage James Bond called Alex Rider, two new authorized Sherlock Holmes mysteries, three authorized James Bond adventures and too many other works to count. And perhaps best of all is Magpie Murders, a fiendishly clever meta-mystery in the style of Agatha Christie. It should be too smart for its own good, what with the story within a story format and all those sly nods to a genre it’s celebrating and spoofing at the same time, but you’ll have too much fun reading it to complain.
The Collaborator of Bethlehem by Matt Rees
Exploring a little-known society via crime is a great way to make your mystery novel a cut above the rest. That’s as true for journalist Matt Rees as anyone else. His Palestinian quartet starring Omar Yussef proves it yet again. Starting with The Collaborator of Bethlehem, Rees set his books against the backdrop of the Palestinian First Intifada for tension, raising comparisons to Graham Greene and John Le Carré. He shows the Palestinians in all their complexity—good, bad, corrupt, kind, and every shade in between. Acclaim and three more books soon followed. Rees moved on to historical mysteries and modern thrillers with similar success, but it’s this captivating quartet that remains his best achievement. So far.
Hallowed Murderby Ellen Hart
The trailblazing Ellen Hart is a treat for both fans of cozy mysteries and fans of seeing the real world reflected in fiction, thanks to her queer heroine Jane Lawless. A Twin Cities restauranteur by trade, Jane is forever stumbling into murder investigations. In her first case, the body is found at a sorority where the accusations and thefts spill out almost as quickly as the blood. Joined by her sidekick Cordelia Thorn (a very amusing Watson to Jane’s Holmes), the Lawless books are a delicious treat that toss in some foodie details as a bonus.
Roman Blood by Steven Saylor
Saylor studied history and classics at the University of Texas at Austin and then he delivered a series of historical mystery classics. Set in ancient Rome, it begins with 1991’s Roman Blood. We’re immersed in the life of Gordianus the Finder, the best sleuth since Brother Cadfael, though to be accurate Cadfael wouldn’t appear for another 1200 years. Historical figures like Cicero, Marc Antony and Pompey The Great pop in with regularity. And most recently, Gordianus is tangled up in one of the most famous murders in history: the assassination of Caesar on the Ides of March.
Smallbone Deceased by Michael Gilbert
Lawyers cum authors are nothing new, apparently. English solicitor and WWII veteran Gilbert famously wrote his many novels only while daily commuting to and from Kent and Lincoln’s Inn on the train. The result? Some 30 spy novels, thrillers and mysteries, dozens of short stories and at least one classic. Smallbone Deceased is set in a lawyer’s office and delights in the windbaggery of solicitors who can’t help holding forth even when they’re the focus of a murder investigation. It’s tight, funny, focused and nigh on perfect.
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Historical fiction. A coming-of-age tale. A romance. A fantasy. A crime thriller. An international bestseller. The Shadow of the Wind is all of these things and more. In 1945 Spain, a boy is introduced to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books by his antiquarian father. Choosing one title to save and protect, Daniel realizes it may be the last copy of a marvelous book written by an author almost entirely erased from history. Plumbing that mystery leads Daniel to a dangerous story of revenge, star-crossed lovers, political intrigue, a violent Inspector Fumero on his trail and murder. This novel is compared to everything from Gabriel García Márquez to Umberto Eco but best to savor it as a rarity, a genuinely unique work.
The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey
“Tey is not as well-known as Christie and Sayers but she’s a key Golden Age of Mystery figure,” says Barbara Peters of The Poisoned Pen. “A theme she explores in most of her mysteries is reputation, fear of losing it. The Franchise Affair not only embodies the country house mystery structure, but it also paves the way for Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train and the tsunami of trust-no-one mysteries published since.”
Theodore Boone: The Accused by John Grisham
A Man Lay Dead by Ngaio Marsh
One of the original Queens of Crime alongside Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers and Marjery Allingham, Marsh is surely the first to be inspired by them and then reach their heights. She read a story by Christie or perhaps Sayers on a rainy Saturday, wondered if she could do something similar and went at it. The result? A Man Lay Dead and the introduction of the blue-blooded bobby (ok, Chief Inspector) Roderick Alleyn. He is erudite, handsome and as big a fan of the theater as Marsh. This first case revolves around a country estate where guests indulge in a popular pastime of playing a murder game. Needless to say, things go horribly wrong—or right, since Alleyn continued for almost 50 years and 32 novels until Marsh’s death in 1982.
Fadeout by Joseph Hansen
Readers enjoy seeing themselves in stories, and diverse protagonists and locales aren’t just enjoyable, they’re necessary. Heading to a new country or century and making your sleuth a Mormon mother or Botswanan lady offers countless opportunities for fresh perspectives. Meet Dave Brandstetter, one of the first gay heroes of a detective novel. In this case, the WWII vet and ruggedly handsome Brandstetter is an insurance investigator looking into the death of a folk singer and radio personality. None of it adds up, especially since a body was never found. Brandstetter gets to work, using his two fists when necessary just like Spade and Marlowe.
Bullet for a Star by Stuart M. Kaminsky
If you love Sara Paretsky, check out Kaminsky: Paretsky dedicated her first V.I. Warshawski novel to this fellow Chicagoan and kindred spirit. A denizen of Hollywood, Kaminsky was left adrift when a planned biography of CharltonHeston fell through in 1977. With nothing to do, he delivered the first Toby Peters book, starring a guy Kaminsky called the anti-Marlowe. (Jim Rockford may have been an influence, too.) Set in Hollywood during the 1940s, it finds our hero working to clear the name of Errol Flynn after a photograph shows the swashbuckler unbuckling in front of an underage girl. (“It’s a fake!” insists Flynn. “Fix this problem!” say the doubtful Warner brothers.) Wandering onto the production of The Maltese Falcon and other glorious set pieces, this establishes the tone for Kaminsky’s next 23 adventures with Peters. If you love movies and mysteries, this is a slam dunk.
Watchmen by writer Alan Moore, artist Dave Gibbons and colorist John Higgins
“One of the greatest achievements in comic books, Watchmen by Moore, Gibbons and Higgins is also a classic mystery. After all, it begins with New York City detectives getting nowhere in a murder investigation until costumed vigilante Rorsharch digs deeper,” says Geoff Boucher, journalist, writer and host of the podcast Geoff Boucher’s Mindspace. “Watchmen ranks alongside Frank Miller’s noir-drenched Sin City and Moore’s own V For Vendetta (with artist David Lloyd) as great mysteries from the comic book world. But maybe the greatest of all for hardcore comic book fans is writer Alan Moore and artist Curt Swan’s Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?, a two-issue tale from September 1986. It’s like the 1949 classic noir film D.O.A. with x-ray vision as Superman tries to solve his own impending murder.”
Blind Goddess by Anne Holt
Holt worked as a member of the Oslo police department, a lawyer, a journalist, a TV anchor and even a member of government when she served briefly as the Minister of Justice before poor health forced her to resign. One wonders how she found time to write novels, but write them she has. Her heroine is Hanne Wilhelmsen, also a police officer in Oslo, also like Holt in a long-term relationship with a woman and also very good at her job. A case that begins with a confession (“I did it!”) soon collapses into a web of conspiracy, dirty lawyers and drugs. It’s another great example of Nordic noir, but anyone anywhere can identify with Wilhelmsen as she does her job and struggles to pay the bills.
Wolf in the Shadows by Marsha Muller
We take our tough, no-holds-barred female private eyes for granted. But it’s a long road from Miss Marple to the present bounty of great distaff protagonists. A number of people paved the way, like San Francisco’s Sharon McCone. She’s been packing heat and kicking ass since her 1977 debut. In Edwin of the Iron Shoes, McCone worked for others while looking into an antique dealer stabbed to death by a vintage dagger. Over the years, she’s grown ever more resourceful and headed out onto her own. Along the way came peaks like 1993’s award-winning Wolf in the Shadows right up to 2021’s Ice and Stone, where McCone ventures farther afield to bring justice for two murdered Indigenous women. Miss Marple and Vic Warshawski are surely proud to know her.
Full Dark House by Christopher Fowler
The Peculiar Crimes Unit series by Fowler is a winning combination of classic detection, dry humor, London history and the moving friendship between two detectives of a certain age. Twenty volumes strong so far, it begins beautifully with Full Dark House. A bombing rips through the lives of Bryant and May, prompting the memory of how this team first met and worked together during the Blitz. Successive volumes chart decades of British history, culture and the byways of London from the sewer system to St. Paul’s Cathedral. It’s delightful, droll and ultimately rather touching when one of them begins to succumb to dementia, a cruel fate for a man who lives by his brains. Thoroughly satisfying.
The Chinese Maze Murders by Robert van Gulik
Inspired by an 18th century crime novel he discovered in an antique store, van Gulik wrote new adventures in a classic Chinese style for the historically-based character Judge Dee. That meant Dee solved three unrelated cases each time out (as is traditional) and with less emphasis than usual on identifying the criminal as the climactic act. Never imagining Westerners would care that much, van Gulik had it published in Japan (it was a hit!) and then China (again, a hit!) and finally in the West (yet again, a hit!). More than a dozen novels and various short stories followed, all of them opening Western eyes to the philosophy and world of China in the 1700s. When Fu Manchu loomed large as a symbol of the wicked Orient, characters like Dee and Charlie Chan offered welcome humanistic and intelligent heroes to cheer on, whatever the ethnicity of their creators.
Vanishing Act by Thomas Perry
“This book quickly made Jane Whitefield one of my favorite characters!,” says Deb Leonard, bookseller at Literati Books. “She is half-Seneca and half-white, with an Ivy-League education, and she is a ghostmaker—someone who helps people in trouble disappear. She isn’t afraid to bend the law, but she has her own strict moral code rooted in her Native heritage. Jane is smart, self-possessed and can be extremely dangerous. Prepare to compulsively read the whole series.”
Last Bus to Woodstock by Colin Dexter
Geniuses can be insufferable and DCI Endeavour Morse is too clever for his own good. He is irascible, irritated by authority, infuriated by grammatical and spelling errors, patronizing to women but wrapped around their fingers, besotted by classical music and above all joined at the hip to his slightly younger partner Lewis, the not-so-dim Watson to his Holmes. It’s a great friendship, despite Morse’s inevitable groans of “Lewis!” when the man doesn’t keep up with Morse’s train of thought. And it’s a great series of books made even more popular by the TV series Inspector Morse and its spin-offs. If we can’t help thinking of actor John Thaw when we read the mysteries, well, there are worse fates for a character.
Gaudy Nights by Dorothy L. Sayers
If there’s anyone to recommend a Sayers novel, it’s Dr. Crystal L. Downing, author of award-winning books on Sayers and co-director of the Marion E. Wade Center, home of the world’s largest Sayers collection. Downing says that after several novels, Sayers was weary of the fictional sleuth she created in Lord Peter Wimsey, marrying him off to Harriet Vane, whom she introduced in her sixth novel Strong Poison (1930). “Sayers valued Harriet so much she decided to write two more books in order to change Lord Peter into a partner worthy of her. This culminated in what many consider to be Sayer’s best detective novel, Gaudy Night (1935), which challenges the very genre,” Downing says. “Unlike most detective fiction, there’s no murder to solve. Instead, Harriet investigates mysterious activities at her alma mater, an Oxford University women’s college. Crimes committed against female students and faculty highlight the ultimate mystery at its heart: whether a woman can balance a career and marriage in 1930s England.”
The Steam Pig by James McClure
It’s every writer’s dream: Finish that novel you keep in the bottom drawer of your desk at work and when said book is rightly a huge whopping success, quit your job in triumph. That actually happened for McClure, who set his murder mysteries in South Africa and paired off the Afrikaner Lieutenant Kramer with the Bantu Detective Sergeant Zondi. An immediate success, McClure published two more of their adventures and then quit his job. Clearly, journalism was in his blood, however. McClure later took a “brief” break from mystery writing to return to newspapers—which lasted for another 17 years. But while today’s newspaper might be tomorrow’s birdcage liner, the eight detective novels of Kramer and Zondi will last forever.
Home Sweet Homicide by Craig Rice
Often called the Dorothy Parker of detective fiction, Rice had a gift for combining the hard-boiled genre with screwball comedy to a unique effect. Her zippy series starring John J. Malone, Jake and Helene are notoriously nutty. But we’re plonking for Home Sweet Homicide, a stand-alone comedy about the children of a mystery writer who plunge themselves into solving the murder next door when mother is too busy pounding out her latest bestseller. After said investigation turns up an annoying cop, a dead stripper, blackmail and kidnapping, well, mother decides maybe they’re onto something. Zany to say the least.
Knots and Crosses by Ian Rankin
A classic of Tartan Noir, the Inspector Rebus books of Rankin are astonishingly popular in the United Kingdom, sometimes accounting for 10 percent of all crime books sold in a year. They’re also astonishingly good and the series gets better as it goes along. Edinburgh is a living, breathing character as familiar to readers of the series as the damaged but determined Rebus himself. The storylines grow more confidently elaborate, the people in his world more vivid and the sense of cumulative power as the series builds is impressive. Like many authors before him, Rankin tried to retire Rebus, but you can’t keep a good man down: the 23rd murder mystery came out in 2020.
Naked In Death by Nora Roberts, writing as J.D. Robb
A sci-fi procedural romance series? When you’re Nora Roberts, an astonishingly successful author who can do anything, why not? Her franchise, led by Lieutenant Eve Dallas of the NYPSD, was set 60 years in the future when Naked In Death came out in 1995. Now, more than 50 entries later, the books are as popular as ever and that futuristic setting is just 30 years out. By the time Roberts hits book No. 100 in the series, will it be set in the present? Maybe by then someone will realize the torrid, complicated and fascinating relationship between Dallas and her uber-wealthy love Roarke is the stuff long-running TV dramas were made for.
Wobble to Death by Peter Lovesey
Some countries are rich in diamonds. Others drill for oil and come up a gusher. In the United Kingdom, its cash crop is great mystery writers, to say the least. Maybe it’s the beer? Or the fog? One more delightful example is this Victorian-set mystery by Lovesey. Slightly daft and bursting with period detail even devotees of history will find surprising, Wobble to Death was an immediate hit in 1970. Who can resist a murder set at a speedwalking (or “wobbling”) competition in London circa 1879? Not us, surely. And once you’ve fallen for Lovesey, you’ll have the ongoing contemporary mystery series starring “the last detective” Peter Diamond to savor as well. Wobble to your nearest bookstore or library!
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Well, you knew he’d make the list, didn’t you? We began with Dame Agatha Christie and end with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the alpha and omega of detective fiction and amateur sleuths. The Hound of the Baskervilles is the bestselling Holmes novel, but Sherlock is offstage a bit in that story; while it’s nice to see Dr. Watson get his due, it’s just not the definitive Holmes. That would be the short stories, starting with this first, great collection. It’s almost all here: the landlady Mrs. Hughes, Watson’s amazement, 221 B, the hapless Inspector Lestrade and even the woman, Irene Adler. This book is where many people begin when falling hard for mysteries—and it’s where we’ll end. Next up, the American Library Association’s ranking of the 100 most banned books.
