The 30 Best Mystery Books of All Time

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The 30 best mystery books of all time.

The 30 Best Mystery Books of All Time

When you flip open a mystery novel, what do you expect? Probably a thrilling tale that keeps you wondering who the culprit was. The best mystery books are those with ingenious sprinklings of clues along the way that brings out the inner detective in you. Arguably, the best feeling when reading a crime novel is being faced with a sufficiently difficult puzzle and yet still being able to jump up and shout “I knew it!” when the final reveal comes around. 

A good murder case will always rank high on a list of mystery novels, but other stories also have their merits. From true crime books to espionage odysseys (of course, including whodunnit riddles) here are the 30 best mystery books that you cannot miss out on if you’re looking for twisted stories to keep you on the edge of your seat.

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1. And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

It’s impossible to talk about mystery novels without immediately thinking of the legendary Agatha Christie. Amongst all of her works , none has a story quite as impeccably crafted as And Then There Were None , which explains why it is the best selling mystery book of all time. 

The story follows ten people who are brought together, for various reasons, to an empty mansion on an island. The mysterious hosts of this strange party are not present, but left instructions for two of the ten to tend the house as the housekeeper and cook. As the days unfold in accordance with the lyrics of a nursery rhyme, each invitee is forced to face the music (literally) and bear the consequences of their troubling pasts, as death will come for them one by one. 

2. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

Raymond Chandler’s idea of mystery strays from conventions — for him it’s less about the intricate plot and more about the atmosphere and characters. As such, The Big Sleep is no ordinary story: private eye Philip Marlowe gets hired to investigate the blackmailing of Carmen Sternwood, the second daughter of a wealthy general. The further he digs into this messy business, the more complicated the story gets, as Carmen continues to be blackmailed by others in a web of unexpected relations between the characters. 

Chandler’s work is complex: his characters are multi-faceted and his language rich with premonitions of the tragedy about to fall on this family. While the signs he drops are not exactly there to help you find out “who done it”, it will definitely give you a foreboding awareness that makes it hard to put the book down. 

3. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Perhaps better known by its major motion picture adaptation, Gone Girl is the ultimate mystery puzzle for the modern media age. Devoted wife Amy’s sudden disappearance throws Nick Dunne into a hailstorm of suspicion — from her parents to his neighbours to the investigators, everyone leans towards believing that he is somehow responsible. Nick himself becomes aware of how his wife viewed him, as well as how little he knows of her, when stories of her emerge from friends he’s never heard of. 

Even if you’ve failed to keep the media buzz regarding the movie adaptation from spoiling you, the experience of reading the minds of these unreliable narrators is well-worth picking this one up. 

4. The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain

The Postman Always Rings Twice is often lauded the most important crime book of the 20th century, and it's not hard to see why. Short, racy, and full of surprises, it will leave you no time to catch your breath. In fact, the language used by Cain was so unprecedentedly explicit, the book was banned in Boston for a while. 

The story follows Frank Chambers and his roadside encounter with diner owner Cora Papadakis. Frank ends up working for Cora and her husband and then falling in love with her, despite her marriage. Frank’s spontaneity gets the better of him when he and Cora decide to sinisterly plot for the breakup of her marriage. Once the plan succeeds, they can stay happily ever after in each other’s arms
 or so they think. 

5. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

As it’s based on a real-life case that has already been solved, you might think all the mystery is taken out of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood . Fortunately, that couldn’t be more wrong, because this nonfiction novel is one of the best-selling crime stories of all time. 

Capote had closely followed the investigation of a quadruple murder in Kansas, and was doing a bit of inerviewing himself before the murderers were caught. As a result, his book is filled with twists and turns you would not expect — surely such vile behaviors must be works of fiction?

6. Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

This Wilkie Collins’s late Victorian novel is among the earliest psychological thrillers ever written. It follows what first appears to be a simple story of two star-crossed lovers — Walter Hartright and Laura Fairlie — who weren’t meant to be together. Laura was betrothed to Sir Percival Glyde and yet she was mysteriously warned not to proceed with the marriage. Meanwhile, the city is gripped by the story of a strange woman clad in white who’s roaming its dark street.

As the title suggests, this final character is the key to the mystery that will enshroud these characters. Set in dimly-lit streets, The Woman in White is as much Gothic horror as it is mystery book, and that’s precisely why the clarity you get when the riddle is solved is so incredibly satisfying. 

7. Anatomy of a Murder by Robert Traver

Before there was How To Get Away With Murder and Suits , lawyer-related entertainment came in the form of criminal cases. Anatomy of a Murder , written by a Supreme Court Justice under the pseudonym Robert Traver, is such a classic. It follows lawyer Paul Biegler and his defense of Frederick Manion, who’s accused of murdering an innkeeper. While the case is overwhelmingly against Manion, his unreliable behavior leaves room for challenges against conviction, and that’s where Biegler and his seemingly laid-back attitude comes in. This thrilling courtroom drama will keep you on the edge of your seat, wondering how this lawyer can argue such an impossible case. 

8. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré

Packed with interesting codenames and stressful covert actions, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is about an ex-spy, George Smiley (codename Beggarman), who is pulled out of retirement, to his relief, to weed out a Soviet mole in the British Intelligence Service. You’ve probably never seen the motto “Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer” in better action than this, as Smiley attempts to distinguish the double-agent amidst old partners. There are plenty of clever hints and details about these cryptically named characters that you can pick up on, thus joining Smiley on the race to safeguard his country. 

From deceit to elaborate tricks, le Carré’s espionage masterpiece will not only keep you on your toes because of the constant suspicion, it will also shed some light on the incredible social tension that existed in the 1970s at the height of the Cold War.

9. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

Dan Brown knows how to write up a riddle — just read The Da Vinci Code and you’ll see. In this volume, Professor Robert Langdon is brought to Paris on a whirl to shed some light on a bizarre murder in the Louvre. As he and sidekick cryptologist Neveu tries to decode the artistic riddles left at the scene, all of which are related to the works of Leonardo da Vinci, Dan Brown takes readers scrambling through the City of Love, speechless (because of the shrewd puzzles and not Paris’ beauty, of course). 

You can imagine Dan Brown spending hours meandering between paintings and statues in Paris before coming up with this elaborate quest that Langdon embarks on. The story thus produced is shockingly satisfying to read, and it will no doubt leave you wanting to travel to France’s capital just to retrace Langdon’s steps. 

10. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

It appears a mark of a good mystery book is that it has been made into a movie. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is no exception. The first book of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series introduces us to journalist Mikael Blomkvist and freelance hacker Lisbeth Salander. Following two separate strings of events, the characters eventually find themselves both trying to find the person who, forty years ago, supposedly killed Harriet Vanger — niece of one of the wealthiest men in Sweden. Blomkvist is invited to stay over at the wealthy family’s island, where he comes into contact with other family members who were present at the scene years ago, and begins to wonder if any of them were involved. 

As Blomkvist decodes the copious amount of decades-old notes and newspaper clippings, he slowly fills in the missing pieces of the puzzle about this dysfunctional family. Larsson’s story takes classic mystery tropes — family feud, blackmailing sequences — and spices them up with additional developments in the protagonists’ personal lives. 

11. The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey

Delve into the past once more as we explore the story of King Richard III in The Daughter of Time . Scotland Yard Inspector Alan Grant takes time off from modern-day cases to recover from an injury, but still he searches for puzzles to occupy himself. Subsequently, he stumbles upon the mystery of King Richard III, a monarch accused of being a murderer but who Grant can only see as kind and wise. Following his strange physiognomic intuition, Grant rummages historical records to solve a complex case that occurred decades ago. 

Josephine Tey brings to life in this novel the intricacies of the past, and the way history is interpreted to reopen a case that was once done and dusted. The political intrigue and peculiar records make for a good dramatic story that is incredibly informative and intriguing, thereby winning The Daughter of Time tremendous love from the readers and praise from the critics. 

12. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Gothic mystery Rebecca is a classic when it comes to telling bone-chilling stories set in an old, grand mansion. The unnamed protagonist of the tale becomes the wife of a widowed, wealthy man, Mr. de Winter, and moves into the Manderly, his stately home. Rather than promising a peaceful and happy marriage, the grand house holds the shadow of the first Mrs. de Winter over the new lady, and threatens not just her happiness but her life. 

Elegantly crafted and movingly told, Rebecca’s beauty will remind you of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre , only more sinister and enigmatic. 

13. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

Returning to detective stories we have The Maltese Falcon , which follows Sam Spade’s journey to find his client’s sister and her unwelcomed partner. Spade and his business partner, Miles Archer, are on their tail when things go off the track and Archer is found dead. Spade goes on trying to uncover the mystery surrounding the sisters while becoming a suspect for the death of his partner. 

Spade’s sleuthing opens his eyes, and yours, too, to a worldwide system he had never thought he’d walk into. Told without a single paragraph dedicated to the thoughts of any of the characters, this is truly an enigma that keeps you guessing.

14. The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth

“The Jackal” is the codename of the assassin hired to kill French President Charles de Gaulle in this enthralling tale. What’s more thrilling is the fact that this kill order came from within the government and thus must be covered up well. The Jackal’s challenge is thus two-fold — to circumvent the heavy safeguarding reserved for one of the most important men on Earth, and to protect his own identity, even from his employers. 

Inspired by an actual failed assassination attempt on the French President and politcally developments in Europe at the end of the Cold War, The Day of the Jackal is intriguing on many fronts. Prepare for some serious espionage, meticulous planning, and political infighting.

15. Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty

Single mother Jane sends her son to kindergarten and befriends two mothers — Madeleine and Celeste. Along with their friendships is an array of family dramas, from ex- or abusive husbands to dark pasts. Jane doesn’t know it, but there’s a piece of her past that makes her fit perfectly into this wild puzzle. No one ever displays their domestic problems in their totality to others, not even to friends, and that makes Big Little Lies so much more captivating. 

16. In the Woods by Tana French

In the Woods takes readers to the woody outskirts of Ireland, where a 12-year-old girl is found dead. Two detectives, Rob and Cassie, are assigned the case, and the case forcibly reminds the former of the mystery that haunted his childhood — a mystery which happened in these same woods. As they make their way through the crime scene and interrogate dysfunctional parents and friends, Rob’s past keeps coming back to him, begging the question of whether it is related to this sad event. 

As haunting as it is alluring, In the Woods is more than just a mystery book. It is also a poignant tale of family ties and childhood trauma — a reminder of the importance of growing up in a safe and loving environment. 

17. The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris

In this iconic suspense novel, FBI agent Clarice Stirling investigates a serial killer, “Buffalo Bill,” who preys on young women, and who potentially is linked to psychiatrist and cannibalistic murderer Hannibal Lecter. In order to weed a clue out from Lecter about Bill’s whereabouts, Stirling visits the psych ward where Lecter is imprisoned. However, her shuddering exchanges seem to reveal less about the killer on the loose, and more about Lecter’s astounding ability to get into the head of his victims. Follow Clarice Stirling on her bone-chilling mission, juggling two sociopathic criminals, in The Silence of the Lambs .

18. The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The Hound of the Baskervilles is one of the best mystery books ever written; it’s certainly one of the most-read books of all time. Conan Doyle's legendary detective, Sherlock Holmes , presumed dead, returns to the land of the living to shed light on the petrifying death of his friend, Charles Baskerville. The Baskerville family estate is located on the moors of Devon, where legend has it there’s a demonic beast roaming about. Sinister supernatural forces appear to be the only explanation for this mystery, but the supremely rational Sherlock Holmes is not going to give up on his quest to find the one and only truth. 

19. The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

Aristocrat Rachel Verinder receives a beautiful gem, the Moonstone, from her uncle, a soldier returning from India, for her eighteenth birthday. She decides to wear it to the big party celebrating her adulthood, after which the jewel disappears from her room. Distraught, Rachel and her family seek the help of Sergeant Cuff to find the thief and recover the treasure. The case is more complicated than it seems, especially since the Moonstone has a mysterious history Rachel doesn’t yet know of. 

The Moonstone is widely regarded as the first mystery novel ever published, and Wilkie Collins paved the way for subsequent books in this genre by introducing hallmark elements such as the large number of suspects, an incompetent constabulary force, and an exceptionally brilliant detective.

20. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

Rachel Watson takes a train from her home into the city center everyday, and to kill the time, she often spends much of it looking at the same houses that pass by her. She makes up stories for the lives she observes, stories that are better than her own, free of divorce and alcoholism. One day, she witnesses something that turns Rachel from a mere observer of the lives of this particular street to an active participant in it. 

The Girl on the Train is yet another suspenseful read that uses unreliable narrators to the full. Its intertwining perspectives will take turns changing your mind as to who is the real threat in this domestic drama. 

21. Eye of the Needle by Ken Follett

Historical fiction novelist Ken Follett’s critical success is set during the turning point of World War II, when D-Day plans were being carried out. German spy Henry Faber, codename “The Needle,” stations himself in London, and is transmitting information back to Berlin. He’s the cream of the crop when it comes to this trade: only him and a few other German agents are still at large in Britain. Faber soon catches on to a crucial operation that the British are about to embark on — one that, if successful, will turn the table against Germany. The problem is the British are coming closer and closer to uncovering him
 

If you’ve read any of Ken Follett’s books, you’ll know he has a talent for vividly reviving the past in his pages. Eye of the Needle is no exception — the tension and secrecy that plagued this tumultuous time is captured skillfully in this volume. 

22. Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

Journalist Camille Preaker returns to work from her “break” at the hospital with a project that will take her back home: there is a girl who had been murdered, and another missing, in the little town she grew up in. Homecoming proves harder than she thought: Camille had been estranged from her family, and must now reconnect with them. The more she and the detective on the case, Richard Willis, delve into the mysteries, the closer to home Camille appears to be — much closer than she would hope. In probably the most unpleasantly satisfying way possible, Sharp Objects will leave you shivering with wonders about how far the effects of a broken family can reach.  

23. My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

On a similar note, let’s watch as a saucy sibling drama unfurls in My Sister, the Serial Killer . Korede has a sister who has a tendency to date horrible men — men so bad she has to kill them, “in self-defense”. Korede doesn’t report or question this — her sister is family, after all, and Korede goes to great lengths to protect her family. But when her sister starts approaching a coworker that Korede likes, she begins to wonder how far is too far. Braithwaite’s novel is bleakly humorous and as wild as Lagos, the city it’s set in. 

24. Case Histories by Kate Atkinson

If you still are in need of a good domestic thriller, Case Histories is your book. Get ready for three gruesome backyard tales: the disappearance of a young child in one home, the slaughter of a husband in another, and the murder of a solicitor’s daughter in the last. Beyond exploring the hurt and loss of each of these unfortunate families, Kate Atkinson also expertly tied all three together — how exactly, you’ll have to read to find out. 

25. The Detective by Roderick Thorp

The Detective is a classic when it comes to mystery novels — Thorp’s work is inspiration for several famous movies, including Die Hard . This story follows private eye Joe Leland as he is asked by a widow to look into the circumstances of her husband’s death. As he delves into the entangling relationships of this man who he happens to have known from his fighting days in World War II, Leland uncovers details about the victim he never would’ve guessed. 

26. The Alienist by Caleb Carr

Maybe you’ve heard of The Alienist before in the form of the Netflix original that takes the audience back in time to 1890s New York. Crime reporter John Moore takes the lead on the grisly and peculiar serial killing of teenage boys. The first victim who is found, and whose case Moore covered in the news, was dressed up like a girl and disturbingly mutilated, so much so that Moore believes there must be someone mentally sick behind it all. Moore turns to his friend and famous psychologist — then known as an alienist — in order to figure out this mystery and catch the murderer. This mystery book has everything from psychological analysis to breath-taking chases through New York’s grimy streets. 

27. Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane

When Rachel Solando, a patient at the Ashecliffe Hospital for the criminally insane, disappears from the facility, Marshal Teddy Daniels and his partner are summoned to investigate and recapture her. Upon arriving at the island on which the hospital is located, the two detectives found traces that Solando left behind regarding the ill-boding operations of the institution. The investigation takes several sharp turns before finally unveiling the true conspiracy. In emulating Gothic elements by isolating the case from technology and the outside world, and combining it with modern-age psychology, Shutter Island fosters an eerie yet captivating atmosphere that makes it impossible to put down. 

28. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

Not all of the best mystery books have to leave a heavy sense of dread at the bottom of your stomach, and The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie is proof of that. The sleuth who saves the day in this novel is Flavia, an intuitive 11-year-old whose father is accused of murder. A stranger has ended up dead in the family’s yard, one who happened to have been seen arguing with Flavia’s dad days before. Determined that her stamp-loving father, who has been heart-broken since the death of his wife, would never kill anyone, Flavia tours the town to try and prove his innocence. Light-hearted as it may sound, this novel’s puzzle is incredibly well-crafted and its classical mystery style, reminiscent of the works of Agatha Christie and Josephine Tey, makes it easy to finish the volume in one sitting. 

29. The Deep Blue Good-by by John D. MacDonald

The Deep Blue Good-by is the first novel of MacDonald’s series about private investigator Travis McGee. As we are introduced to this tall, charming, and righteous character, he is swept away on a mission to find military man Junior Allen, a serial rapist and murderer. Allen has also discovered a smuggled treasure buried somewhere in Florida, and is using that to fund his malicious exploits. The difficult responsibility of trying to locate this psychopath falls onto McGee’s shoulders, the only person with the methodological patience to pick up Allen’s trace. Too often, the protagonist of detective stories are portrayed as being rational to the point of cold-hearted; it’s probably worth your while to change it up a little with Travis McGee’s quest for goodness.

30. Killing Floor by Lee Child

In another first book to a detective series we have Killing Floor , a novel full of action and secrets. Former policeman Jack Reacher gets arrested the moment he comes into the town of Margrave, for a murder he is sure he did not commit. As he tries to convince the detectives in charge of his innocence, Reacher initially only wants to get out of this mess and go on with his travels. The stakes, however, are raised when he found out that his own brother is somehow involved in the mystery, and the murder he is falssely accused of is nowhere near as simple as he thought. 

If you’re looking for more books to send chills down your spine, check out this list of best suspense books of all time ! Or have a look at our guide to Kindle Unlimited if you want to boost your reading game.

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The 50 Best Mysteries of All Time

If you have a crime, a question, and someone looking for answers, then you've got a mystery. Our all-time favorites include whodunits, horror novels, police procedurals, and more.

best mysteries

Every product was carefully curated by an Esquire editor. We may earn a commission from these links.

Selecting the 50 best mysteries of all time is an impossible task. There, I said it. Mysteries are narratives in which the who, why, or how of an event, usually a murder or some other type of crime, remains unknown until the end and drives the story forward. To write a successful mystery, authors must perform literary magic tricks—which is to say literary sleight of hand. They have to create a mystery, populate their story with believable characters, and then sustain the suspense while simultaneously giving readers clues and distracting them with the ever-so-tricky red herrings. In other words, mystery fiction is the art of juggling the unknown and all of its answers in front of readers, all while making sure they become obsessed with the latter and only see the former when the time is right.

Dracula, by Bram Stoker

Dracula is mostly known as a horror novel 
 and a thriller
 and an epistolary novel. It’s also a quintessential piece of Gothic fiction, the novel that defined the vampire the way we all know it today, and one of the most influential narratives of all time. Oh, and it’s a mystery, too. Yes, that’s right: Dracula is a detective story in which Professor Abraham Van Helsing tracks down Count Dracula. With everything it’s been called, it’s no surprise that Dracula also kicks off this list, which contains more novels that have traditionally been considered horror.

My Annihilation, by Fuminori Nakamura

Literary noir maestro Fuminori Nakamura has always been interested in understanding the psychology of crime, and in My Annihilation , a labyrinthine story that contains a mystery inside another mystery, he allows that obsession to shape the entire narrative. The result is a dark novel that’s the literary equivalent of a puzzle box; an experimental, cerebral story in which questions reign supreme, secret agendas slither under everything, every narrator is unreliable, memory is shaky at best, and reality is a shifting thing that refuses to be pinned down.

Celadon Books The Silent Patient, by Alex Michaelides

This one hooked me on the premise alone. Alicia Berenson had what seemed like a great life. She had a great career as a painter and was married to Gabriel, a fashion photographer who was popular in his field. They lived in a big house in a good area of London and got along well. Then one night, Gabriel came home late from work, and Alicia shot him in the face five times. After that, she refused to speak again. Theo Faber, a criminal psychotherapist, has been eager to work with Alicia, but once he gets the chance, cracking the case becomes an obsession that threatens everything else.

The Little Death, by Michael Nava

A ground-breaking novel about a gay Latino defense lawyer who becomes a sleuth when his new lover is murdered under strange circumstances, The Little Death did for the Latino community, and especially for LGBTQ+ Latinx folks, what the work of authors like Chester Himes and Eleanor Taylor Bland did for the Black community.

Berkley Tourist Season, by Carl Hiaasen

There’s a lot of darkness on this list, but Hiassen makes up for that with his humor. A zany send-up of Florida, this novel follows reporter-turned-private investigator Skip Wiley as he gets to the bottom of a case the locals want to keep hushed in order to keep the tourist money flowing. Few mysteries contain scenes and dialogue capable of making readers laugh out loud, but Hiaasen has made that his calling card. Tourist Season delivers an entertaining mystery while also perfectly capturing the zeitgeist of the place.

William Morrow & Company Rebecca, by Daphne Du Maurier

A mainstay on most lists of best mysteries, Rebecca is also a creepy ghost story and a romantic suspense novel. When a young woman marries a recent widower and moves in with him, she soon realizes that his late wife's shadow is a constant presence threatening to destroy what they’re trying to build. In Rebecca , which is incredibly atmospheric, not knowing is at the center of the story, but there’s much more; the mystery itself is a presence and a threat. Published in 1938, this novel also feels incredibly prescient in terms of mixing genres, as it brought together mystery, romance, and horror.

Flatiron Books The Dry, by Jane Harper

Federal agent Aaron Falk is forced to return to his Australia hometown for the first time in years to attend his best friend’s funeral. The friend’s death stirs up Falk’s past, and he suspects that a secret they concealed way back when might have something to do with his friend’s death. Atmospheric and superbly paced, The Dry has won many awards and been turned into a film, but the most impressive thing about it is that it was Harper’s debut.

Pushkin Vertigo The Decagon House Murders, by Yukito Ayatsuji

This celebration of traditional whodunits plays with the mystery genre in a wonderfully self-referential way. Originally published in Japan in 1987, The Decagon House Murders follows a group of mystery enthusiasts who are picked off one by one while visiting an island where a murder happened a long time ago. With each new murder, the remaining members of the group must use their knowledge of the genre to find the killer and try to stay alive.

Penguin Books The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz ZafĂłn

A worldwide sensation, The Shadow of the Wind is a great example of a mystery that involves books. It follows Daniel, the son of an antiquarian book dealer, who discovers a mysterious book by Julian Carax. Obsessed with the author and the book, Daniel tries to track down all his other books, but instead discovers a secret that sends him on a wild journey through the streets of post-war Barcelona. At once a murder story, an adventure narrative, and a love story, The Shadow of the Wind remains a superb read from a great talent lost too soon.

Vintage The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon

Christopher John Francis Boone has a very logical mind, and he has no trouble solving puzzles and finding patterns everywhere he looks. Unfortunately, understanding people and their emotions is an entirely different thing. When Christopher’s neighbor’s dog is killed, he takes it upon himself to find the killer using Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes —also on this list—as his guide. Unexpectedly funny and tender, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time takes a classic crime and gives it a new, memorable, wildly entertaining spin.

Bitter Lemon Press Havana Red, by Leonardo Padura

The first in the Havana quartet, a great series featuring Cuban Inspector Mario Conde, Havana Red follows Conde as he investigates the death of a cross-dresser whose body was found in a park in Havana. Full of social and political commentary, this Hammett Prize-winning novel is a dark slice of international mystery with a distinct Cuban flavor.

Random House Trade Paperbacks The Deep Blue Good-by, by John D. MacDonald

The Deep Blue Good-by is the first novel in MacDonald’s Travis McGee series, which spans 21 books. McGee is a righteous man tasked with finding a serial sex predator and killer who’s bankrolling his crimes with money from the buried treasure he discovered in Florida. There are many broken, hard-drinking, depressed investigators in the genre, but McGee is a good guy worried about doing the right thing.

Vintage Crime/Black Lizard The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson

This Swedish mystery/crime novel, translated into English in 2008, became an international bestselling phenomenon. The trilogy was translated in more than 50 countries and turned into a series of popular films. In this, the first book of the Millennium trilogy, which Larsson planned to stretch for ten books before his untimely death in 2004, journalist Mikael Blomkvist teams up with hacker Lisbeth Salander to solve a mystery, leading them to uncover a deep web of corruption. It had been done before and would be done after, but this novel brought mysteries into the future, adding not only a subculture element, but also giving computers and the internet a central role in the narrative.

William Morrow & Company Maximum Bob, by Elmore Leonard

No crime fiction list is complete without an Elmore Leonard, regardless of the sub-genre being discussed. More than plots, which were all wildly entertaining, Leonard excelled at creating unique characters and writing some of the best dialogue in fiction. In Maximum Bob , someone is trying to kill Judge Bob Gibbs, known as Maximum Bob, but when one has as many enemies as he does, finding the one aiming for his life proves to be extremely difficult.

Pocket Books Postmortem, by Patricia Cornwell

Originally titled Postmortem: A Mystery Introducing Dr. Kay Scarpetta , this novel kicked off a great series that now contains 27 books and is still going strong. In Richmond, Virginia, someone is strangling women and leaving no clues behind. Scarpetta, a medical examiner, engages the latest technology in forensic research to find the killer. It’s a relatively simple premise, done very well. Cornwell also tackled a real mystery in Ripper: The Secret Life of Walter Sickert , where she used the same technology Scarpetta uses in her novels to offer an answer to the mystery of Jack the Ripper’s identity.

Whose Body?, by Dorothy L. Sayers

Sayers was one of the original queens of the mystery genre. In this, her debut novel, she introduces readers to Lord Peter Wimsey, a man who collects old books and solves mysteries for fun in his free time. Originally published in 1923, Whose Body? has stood the test of time and shows that Sayers understood what the genre was all about.

Penguin Classics The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins

Collins walked a fine line between mystery and the supernatural, and this novel is a perfect example of that. It follows a star-crossed couple. The woman, Laura Fairlie, married someone else, but not before being warned not to do so. Meanwhile, there are rumors of a strange woman dressed in white roaming the city’s dark streets, who might have something to do with the warning. Atmospheric and dark, this is a mystery that’s also a Gothic horror novel. It shows just how blurry the line between the two can be.

Vintage Crime/Black Lizard The Snowman, by Jo Nesbo

There are a few first novels in a detective series on this list, but this one isn’t one of them. The Snowman is the seventh book in Nesbo’s Harry Hole series, but it’s widely regarded as his best. In this one, Inspector Harry Hole suspects a link between a woman who went missing from his home in the middle of the night and a strange letter he received. As he investigates the disappearance, he realizes that over the past decade, eleven women have vanished after the first snow of the year. An entertaining take on the serial killer trope, this one shows Nesbo as a master of complex, surprising storytelling.

Vintage Crime/Black Lizard The Last Good Kiss, by James Crumley

Mysteries and noir make for great dancing partners, and that’s exactly what Crumley delivers in this influential novel. C.W. Sughrue is a private investigator who also works at a topless bar to make ends meet. He gets hired to find a broken-down author, and in the process, he ends up on the trail of a girl who’s been missing in Haight-Ashbury for a decade. Dark, sleazy, full of broken characters, and beautifully written, The Last Good Kiss is a perfect example of the grittier side of the mystery genre.

Berkley Killing Floor, by Lee Child

The first novel in Child’s Jack Reacher series introduces readers to Reacher, an ex-military policeman who’s arrested for murder while passing through Margrave, Georgia. Reacher is a drifter with a shady past, which doesn’t make him the most unique character in crime fiction, but the way Child filled the novel with tension and twists made this an incredibly popular and undoubtedly influential book, leading it to become a best-selling series and eventually a successful television show.

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The 100 Best Mystery and Thriller Books of All Time

With a panel of celebrated authors—Megan Abbott, Harlan Coben, S.A. Cosby, Gillian Flynn, Tana French, Rachel Howzell Hall, and Sujata Massey—TIME presents the most gripping, twist-filled, satisfying, and influential mystery and thriller books, in chronological order beginning in the 1800s

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Why Mystery Books Are So Satisfying

By tana french.

'When we fall in love with mysteries,' writes Tana French, 'it’s both those things we’re falling in love with: the hard-won sense of order, and the unanswerable questions.'

The Woman in White

By wilkie collins.

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Crime and Punishment

By fyodor dostoevsky.

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The Leavenworth Case

By anna katharine green.

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The Turn of the Screw

By henry james.

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The Hound of the Baskervilles

By arthur conan doyle.

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The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

By agatha christie.

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The Crime at Black Dudley

By margery allingham.

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The Patient in Room 18

By mignon g. eberhart.

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The Maltese Falcon

By dashiell hammett.

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The Conjure-Man Dies

By rudolph fisher.

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A Man Lay Dead

By ngaio marsh.

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Gaudy Night

By dorothy l. sayers.

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The Three Coffins

By john dickson carr.

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by Daphne du Maurier

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A Coffin for Dimitrios

By eric ambler, the rich, underappreciated history of mystery writers of color, by rachel howzell hall.

'Readers visiting from Mars would assume that only white folks were murdered, solved crimes, righted wrongs,' writes Rachel Howzell Hall

Double Indemnity

By james m. cain.

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If He Hollers Let Him Go

By chester b. himes.

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In a Lonely Place

By dorothy b. hughes.

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The Daughter of Time

By josephine tey.

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Beat Not the Bones

By charlotte jay.

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Casino Royale

By ian fleming.

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A Kiss Before Dying

By ira levin.

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The Long Goodbye

By raymond chandler.

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Beast in View

By margaret millar.

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The Quiet American

By graham greene.

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The Talented Mr. Ripley

By patricia highsmith.

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We Have Always Lived in the Castle

By shirley jackson.

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The Spy Who Came in From the Cold

By john le carré.

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The Honjin Murders

By seishi yokomizo.

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Where Are the Children?

By mary higgins clark.

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The Shining

By stephen king.

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The Last Good Kiss

By james crumley.

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The Name of the Rose

By umberto eco.

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The Hunt for Red October

By tom clancy.

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A Dark-Adapted Eye

By barbara vine.

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The Decagon House Murders

By yukito ayatsuji.

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The Silence of the Lambs

By thomas harris.

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Devil in a Blue Dress

By walter mosley.

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Mean Spirit

By linda hogan.

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by Patricia Daniels Cornwell

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Faceless Killers

By henning mankell.

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by Eleanor Taylor Bland

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The Secret History

By donna tartt.

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Smilla’s Sense of Snow

By peter hĂžeg.

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When Death Comes Stealing

By valerie wilson wesley.

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by Harlan Coben

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Killing Floor

By lee child.

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by Kaoru Takamura

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by Yasmina Khadra

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by Natsuo Kirino

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Inner City Blues

By paula l. woods.

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A Place of Execution

By val mcdermid.

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Those Bones Are Not My Child

By toni cade bambara.

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Blanche Passes Go

By barbara neely.

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Death of a Red Heroine

By qiu xiaolong.

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The Redbreast

By jo nesbĂž.

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Mystic River

By dennis lehane.

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The Shadow of the Wind

By carlos ruiz zafĂłn.

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The Surgeon

By tess gerritsen.

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The Emperor of Ocean Park

By stephen l. carter.

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Fingersmith

By sarah waters.

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The Ice Princess

By camilla lÀckberg.

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by Roberto Bolaño

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Case Histories

By kate atkinson.

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The Devotion of Suspect X

By keigo higashino.

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The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

By stieg larsson.

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The Lincoln Lawyer

By michael connelly.

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Snakeskin Shamisen

By naomi hirahara.

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by Megan Abbott

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What the Dead Know

By laura lippman.

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The Yiddish Policemen's Union

By michael chabon.

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Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

By olga tokarczuk.

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Wife of the Gods

By kwei quartey.

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Bury Your Dead

By louise penny.

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Faithful Place

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The Plotters

By un-su kim.

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The Sound of Things Falling

By juan gabriel vĂĄsquez.

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by Gillian Flynn

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The Round House

By louise erdrich.

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by Hideo Yokoyama

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Ordinary Grace

By william kent krueger.

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Big Little Lies

By liane moriarty.

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Everything I Never Told You

By celeste ng.

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Land of Shadows

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The Sympathizer

By viet thanh nguyen.

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Bluebird, Bluebird

By attica locke.

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Hollywood Homicide

By kellye garrett.

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My Sister, the Serial Killer

By oyinkan braithwaite.

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The Widows of Malabar Hill

By sujata massey.

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Miracle Creek

By angie kim.

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by Helen Phillips

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The Other Americans

By laila lalami.

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The Turn of the Key

By ruth ware.

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Your House Will Pay

By steph cha.

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Blacktop Wasteland

By s.a. cosby.

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Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line

By deepa anappara.

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Mexican Gothic

By silvia moreno-garcia.

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When No One Is Watching

By alyssa cole.

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Winter Counts

By david heska wanbli weiden.

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Survivor’s Guilt

By robyn gigl.

This project is led by Lucy Feldman, Annabel Gutterman, Megan McCluskey, and Meg Zukin, with writing, reporting, and additional editing by Eliza Berman, Tessa Berenson Rogers, Kelly Conniff, Leslie Dickstein, Eliana Dockterman, Mahita Gajanan, Cady Lang, Lily Rothman, Rachel Sonis, Armani Syed, Karl Vick, Elijah Wolfson, Lucas Wittmann, and Laura Zornosa; photography editing by Whitney Matewe; art direction by Katie Kalupson and Victor Williams; video by Brian Braganza, Andrew Johnson, Jeannie Kopstein, and Sam McPeak; production by  Nadia Suleman ; illustrations by Michelle Urra for TIME.

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Best Mysteries and Thrillers of 2023

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MARCH 14, 2023

by Christopher Bollen

A gripping thriller with lingering emotional effects. Full review >

books fiction mystery

APRIL 4, 2023

by Christianna Brand

Hands down one of the best formal detective stories ever written. It’s a treat to have it back in print. Full review >

BLAZE ME A SUN

JAN. 3, 2023

by Christoffer Carlsson ; translated by Rachel Willson-Broyles

A brainy page-turner from a rising star in Scandinavian crime fiction. Full review >

ONE LAST KILL

OCT. 3, 2023

MYSTERY & DETECTIVE

by Robert Dugoni

Dugoni brilliantly folds murders past and present into his heroine’s earlier cases and her troubled history. Full review >

NIGHT WILL FIND YOU

JUNE 20, 2023

THRILLER & SUSPENSE

by Julia Heaberlin

Mysterious, sexy, and smart. Full review >

REYKJAVÍK

SEPT. 5, 2023

by Ragnar JĂłnasson & KatrĂ­n JakobsdĂłttir ; translated by Victoria Cribb

A slow-burning, spellbinding whodunit. Agatha Christie, to whom it’s dedicated, would be proud. Full review >

EVERY MAN A KING

FEB. 21, 2023

by Walter Mosley

A strong second outing by Mosley's new hero. Full review >

BRIGHT YOUNG WOMEN

SEPT. 19, 2023

by Jessica Knoll

A stunning, engaging subversion of the Bundy myth—and the true-crime genre. Full review >

THE STOLEN COAST

JULY 18, 2023

by Dwyer Murphy

A shrewd, offbeat original. Full review >

CODE OF THE HILLS

JUNE 13, 2023

by Chris Offutt

Another love letter to Appalachia with a high body count. Another bloody delight. Full review >

A LINE IN THE SAND

MAY 16, 2023

by Kevin Powers

Masterful in its structure and pacing; a great read. Full review >

CROOK MANIFESTO

by Colson Whitehead

It’s not just crime fiction at its craftiest, but shrewdly rendered social history. Full review >

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books fiction mystery

The 10 best mystery novels of 2023

Richard osman, brendan slocumb and elly griffiths are among the authors who kept us happily guessing whodunnit this year.

It was a great year for mystery readers, with notable books by longtime-favorite authors and a crop of new voices whose stories added depth and breadth to the genre. Here are 10 titles that stood out.

‘The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies,’ by Alison Goodman

Lady Augusta and Lady Julia Colebrook, 40-something twin sisters in 19th-century England, may be dismissed as inconsequential old maids, but using their smarts, wealth and grit, they create a secret “benevolent society” focused on alleviating, one case at a time, the society-sanctioned maltreatment of women. Goodman skillfully blends mystery, adventure and a dash of romance in this first-of-a-series book.

‘Blood Sisters,’ by Vanessa Lillie

Syd Walker, a Cherokee archaeologist for the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Rhode Island, reluctantly leaves her wife, Mal, to return to her native Oklahoma after her sister vanishes. Despite increasingly murderous attempts to stop her, Syd refuses to give up her quest to find her sister. Lillie, a member of the Cherokee Nation, presents a vividly written mystery centered on the real-life issue of the many missing and murdered Native American women.

‘The Body by the Sea,’ by Jean-Luc Bannalec

Commissaire Georges Dupin’s holiday plans are rudely interrupted when someone pushes a noted doctor out of a top-floor window in the French harbor city of Concarneau. As the cantankerous but brilliant Dupin searches for the killer, he uncovers hidden, cutthroat political and social rivalries that roil beneath the surface. In the end, it is Georges Simenon’s “The Yellow Dog,” a classic Maigret mystery set in Concarneau, that helps Dupin solve the case.

‘Glory Be,’ by Danielle Arceneaux

This debut mystery introduces the unforgettable Glory Broussard, who decides to investigate the death of her best friend, Sister Amity Gay, after police call it a suicide. Glory, however, is certain it was murder, and she sets off, with the help of her lawyer daughter, to find the perpetrator, ignoring violent efforts by the top drug boss in Lafayette, La., to get her to drop the case.

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‘Hollow Beasts,’ by Alisa Lynn ValdĂ©s

When her husband suddenly dies, Boston academic Jodi Luna moves back to the rugged New Mexico wilderness where she was raised, and she trains to become a game warden. Jodi’s first case involves an extremist group, operating out of the nearby mountains, that kidnaps young minority women to torture and kill them as a political statement. ValdĂ©s, a native New Mexican, delivers a suspenseful tale highlighting issues of racism and white supremacy.

‘The Last Devil To Die,’ by Richard Osman

This fourth volume in Osman’s beloved Thursday Murder Club series, starring a quartet of septuagenarian sleuths, may be his best yet. Once again, Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron must use their wits to track down a killer, but this time the danger they face also serves as a valuable distraction from a tragic situation close to home. Keep a hankie handy for this one.

‘The Last Remains,’ by Elly Griffiths

Griffiths offers readers a splendid parting gift as she concludes her popular series featuring English archaeologist/detective Ruth Galloway. In her final outing, Galloway must not only figure out the story behind a human skeleton discovered during the renovation of a cafe but also resolve her long-term, roller-coaster relationship with Chief Inspector Harry Nelson.

‘The Sunset Years of Agnes Sharp,’ by Leonie Swann

With its wildly veering plot, witty writing and unconventional characters that include a tortoise and a dog named Brexit, “The Sunset Years of Agnes Sharp” reads more like a screwball comedy than a murder mystery. Don’t be fooled, however: There’s a murder — actually three of them — to be solved, and the elderly residents of an informal English retirement home called Sunset Hall are on the case. First published in German in 2020 and translated by Amy Bojang, Swann’s mystery is different, delightful and deep.

‘Symphony of Secrets,’ by Brendan Slocumb

“The Violin Conspiracy” author presents another page-turner exploring race, greed and obsession in the music world through two intertwined stories. The first, set in the 1920s, tells how a mediocre White composer named Frederick Delaney becomes famous when he passes off the extraordinary music of Josephine Reed, a neurodivergent Black woman, as his own. The second story takes place in the present, as two young Black researchers stumble on Delaney’s secret and vow to ensure that Reed gets the credit she deserves, thus becoming targets of the rich, powerful foundation Delaney created before his death.

‘Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers,’ by Jesse Q. Sutanto

When 60-year-old widow Vera Wong finds a man’s body on the floor of her San Francisco teahouse, the police say it’s an accidental death. But the plain-spoken Vera firmly believes that the man was murdered, and she fearlessly sets out to find the killer, using her specially chosen teas and home-cooked meals as bait. As she did in her best-selling “Dial A for Aunties,” Sutanto uses her Indochinese heritage to add further interest to a fast-paced and often hilarious mystery.

Correction: In an earlier version of this article, the title “Glory Be” was mistakenly written as “Glory B.” This version has been corrected.

Karen MacPherson is the former children’s and teen coordinator at the Takoma Park Maryland Library and a lifelong mystery fan.

books fiction mystery

13 Best Mystery Books of All Time

13 Best Mystery Books of All Time

Ahh, mystery books. Bloody and perplexing crimes, clever detectives, and plot twists that’ll break your neck.

There’s really nothing that can compare!

Even though I’ve been a die-hard fantasy and science-fiction reader ( and author ) for 20+ years, my first and oldest love will forever be mystery books.

From the age of eight when I was gifted the Complete Works of Sherlock Holmes (the book that started my lifelong journey to loving fiction), mysteries have been an absolute joy, a pleasure that I’ll go back to time and again. Sometimes the classics, sometimes the latest-and-greatest, but always an enjoyable read guaranteed.

  • My list is guaranteed to be incomplete . I could spend my entire life reading and never have enough time to complete every mystery on the planet. With so many new books being released on a daily basis, it’s impossible to keep up. So if a book you loved didn’t make it onto this list and you believe it deserves to, please accept my apologies.
  • “Best” is very much a matter of taste . A book I love may not work for you, while a book you think is spectacular may only be “meh” for me. Art is so subjective. Keep that in mind when reading over my list below.
  • The list won’t stop changing . It’s likely that every year this list will be updated because of how many spectacular new books are published. But that’s the great thing: every time we update it, you can discover a new murder mystery to fall in love with!

Below, I’ve put together a list of what I consider to be the “Best Mystery Books of All Time”. With these books, you might just find the love of mysteries that sparked my passion for reading and writing, and have a bloody good time escaping into a twisty, turny, jaw-dropping great story.

books fiction mystery

The Complete Works of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

This was the book to start it all off for me, so it will always hold the “best” spot in my heart.

There was something wonderful and fantastical about Sherlock Holmes, the enigmatic, brooding, seemingly superhumanly intelligent detective of 221B Baker Street. Every story was a puzzle that I tried my hardest to solve, but they were just so complicated—and often illogical to my fledgling mind—that I never could figure it out.

Right up until the end, when he pulled some truly fascinating and macabre discovery out of his hat and unmasked the murderer in truly spectacular ways.

No detective will ever quite compare with Sherlock Holmes for me, and I still keep the complete volume with all of his stories sitting on my bookshelf to this day.

Published: 1892

books fiction mystery

Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie

Many will argue that Murder on the Orient Express is the pinnacle of Agatha Christie’s works, but for me, it will always be Death on the Nile .

There was something so colorful and exotic about the setting—a steamboat chugging down the Nile—and so memorable about the cast of characters Monsieur Poirot must interrogate and investigate.

I’d argue that Death on the Nile also has some of Agatha Christie’s most memorable quotes, including the one that has influenced detective novels and mystery fiction as a whole every since: “They conceive a certain theory, and everything has to fit into that theory. If one little fact will not fit it, they throw it aside. But it is always the facts that will not fit in that are significant.”

Published : 1937

books fiction mystery

Father Brown by G.K. Chesterton

Where Sherlock Holmes was energetic and enigmatic and Hercules Poirot was charm and cunning, Father Brown played a simple, humble parish priest who happened to be very good at solving murder mysteries.

No detective in fiction is more lovable than the quirky, genuine, kind Father Brown, but few can match his sharp wits, either. His stories are far less exotic and colorful than Sherlock Holmes tales, but it’s in their simplicity and “cozy” flavor that they do what G.K. Chesterton did best: showcasing the humanity behind the crimes.

Published : 1910-1936

books fiction mystery

The Spy Who Came In From The Cold by John LeCarre

The Spy Who Came In From the Cold is John LeCarre’s third novel, but the first to really put him on the map. This one is set in the West Berlin vs. East Berlin divide, at a time when the Cold War was reaching its pinnacle. Clever, insightful, and filled with plot twists that even a seasoned mystery reader will never see coming, it’s a true masterpiece of the genre.

And what makes his works truly fascinating is that much of it is derived from his real-life experience in the British Intelligence service.

Published : 1963

books fiction mystery

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

Centuries before Father Brown, there was Brother William de Baskerville. Set in an Italian abbey in the 1300s, it’s a truly fascinating—and sometimes macabre—look into religion, society, and culture of a long-bygones era, a beautifully rendered period piece that is absolutely engaging from start to finish despite its slower pace.

There is something wonderful about the priest’s endless curiosity, dry humor, and particularly his fondness for saying, “The most interesting things happen at night.”

Published : 1980

books fiction mystery

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

In Cold Blood is the only true-crime book on this list, but it stands up to all the other works of fiction because of the bizarre nature of the crime, as well as the detailed, insightful writing that slowly teases out the truth from the lies.

The suspense of this novel will leave you breathless, and you’ll find yourself shaking your head as more and more strange revelations come to light. It’s a truly transcendent work of fiction that rightfully makes Truman Capote a master of the genre.

Published : 1959

books fiction mystery

The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammet

Sam Spade begins the story much like every other Private Detective in fiction, but quickly takes on a life of his own and becomes a character apart.

A bit cockier, cooler, and more “manly” than a lot of the detectives before him, he is very much a “guy’s guy” that you can’t help but love. Plus, the fact that he was brought to life by Humphrey Bogart in the 1941 film noir by the same name just makes him all the more enjoyable to read and watch on screen.

Published : 1929

books fiction mystery

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is a riveting, if sometimes disturbing, look into the human psyche—particularly the psyche of a woman who has been battered and abused to the point that she is willing to fight back.

It’s a departure from many of the classic mystery novels, but that both sets it apart and above many of its contemporaries. Though not an easy or pleasant read, it’s one well worth adding to your reading list for the year.

Published : 2005

books fiction mystery

The Black Echo by Michael Connelly

Ahh, there’s nothing quite like a Harry Bosch novel to get your heart pounding and your blood racing.

Bosch is the “maverick detective” you love to read about, the man who is willing to do anything in the name of solving the crime and bringing the culpable to justice. He’s also a man plagued by the horrors of his past and burdened by the gruesome things he witnesses day after day.

The Black Echo , the first of the Bosch novels, is definitely a more “modern” mystery story, but is a true staple of the genre in every sense.

Published : 1992

books fiction mystery

The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

The Da Vinci Code plays into everything that we as humans love: ciphers, puzzles, enigmas, riddles, secret societies, conspiracies, and, of course, murder.

Set in Paris, in the spectacular Louvre Museum, it takes you on a wild ride along with Robert Langdom—not a detective, but a symbologist—to unmasking dark secrets that date back hundreds of years and solving a puzzle that has been hidden in plain sight all that time.

For those who love looking for the bizarre and fascinating among the mundane, it’s a book you absolutely have to read.

Published : 2003

books fiction mystery

Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley

Devil in a Blue Dress introduces us to Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins, one of the first African American hardboiled detectives to be published in the mainstream.

Though he starts out as a simple day laborer, his keen insights and tenacious temperament lead him down the path to solving the crime of the missing Daphne Monet. Set in Houston, Texas, it’s one of the most unique detective novels on my list—and one of the most enjoyable.

Published : 1990

books fiction mystery

Anatomy of a Murder by Robert Traver

In Anatomy of a Murder , there is no real mystery: everyone knows who killed the victim, as well as why he did it. The mystery, then, is will the defendant be punished for his crimes, or can his lawyer find a way to get him off for what he—and many readers—consider a “justified killing”?

This book is slow compared to many of the other mysteries on our list, but don’t let that fool you: the characters are riveting, the legal battle fascinating, and the ending will leave you satisfied yet questioning what you know to be “right and wrong”.

Published : 1958

books fiction mystery

Sweet Silver Blues (Garrett Files #1) by Glen Cook

My list of mysteries can’t be complete without at least one fantasy book!

The Garrett Files is a detective-noir story set in a fantasy world, where the titular detective (Garrett) teams up with a 500-year old dead man, a half-dark-elf assassin, and, eventually, a parrot, to solve crimes in a world of ogres, fairies, dwarves, vampires, and living, breathing gods.

The humor is sharp and bone-dry, the character a perfect blend of hard-boiled badass and stumbling idiot, and the city of TunFaire is absolutely fascinating. One of the funniest and most engaging mystery fantasy series I’ve read to this day.

Published : 1987

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The Best Mystery Books: 2023 Upcoming Titles

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Michelle Regalado

Michelle Regalado is a New York-based digital writer and editor. When she's not hunting down her next must-read book (recommendations are welcome!) or writing about all things pop culture, you can probably find her drinking iced coffee and hanging out with her dog, Lola. Follow her on Twitter: @mar8289

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There are plenty of exciting new book releases to look forward to in 2023, particularly when it comes to mystery novels . While the upcoming year is set to bring plenty of highly anticipated new titles to shelves from across all genres, including sci-fi, fantasy, romance, and nonfiction, it will be a particularly rich year for some of the best mystery books. 2023 promises pulse-pounding murder mysteries and cozy whodunits. You’re sure to find a title that suits your interest on this list.

As you await these buzzy novels to hit shelves in the coming months, there are also several books from the last few weeks of 2022 that are worth adding to your nightstands and bookshelves. This list includes captivating reads from late 2022 that you can pick up in stories now, as well as several anticipated 2023 releases that are still on the way. From a thrilling debut novel set on a college campus to a captivating sci-fi mystery located on a remote colony in Jupiter, these engrossing page-turners will keep you hooked until the very end.

So break out your TBR list, and read on for some of the best new mysteries that you won’t want to miss out on in 2023, below.

The Best Mystery Books: 2023

cover image for the storyteller's death

The Storyteller’s Death by Ann Dávila Cardinal

This stunning family saga follows an 18-year-old teenager in Puerto Rico who uncovers a strange and mysterious ability after the death of her grandmother. When her grandmother passes away, Isla inexplicably finds herself getting visions of the tales she’s heard from her family throughout her life. But one vision presents her with the case of an old murder mystery, Isla realizes the stories she once found fascinating could actually be dangerous. 

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Book cover of Jackal by Erin E. Adams; image of young Black woman with night sky superimposed over one side of her face.

Jackal by Erin E. Adams

Liz Rocher reluctantly returns to her predominately white home town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, to attend her her best friend’s wedding. She braces herself for a weekend of awkward reunions. But on the day of the wedding, the couple’s daughter, Caroline, disappears, leaving behind nothing but a piece of white fabric covered in blood.

cover image for The Last Party

The Last Party by Clare Mackintosh 

On New Year’s Day, Rhys Lloyd, a developer of exclusive lake vacation homes for wealthy outsiders, is found dead in a small village on the border between Wales and England. DC Leo Brady of Cheshire Major Crimes takes on the case, partnering with Ffion Morgan of the North Wales Police. Told through the perspectives of a large cast of characters, this page-turner moves between past and present to reveal the truth about Rhys and his murder. 

cover image The Resemblance

The Resemblance by Lauren Nossett

This atmospheric mystery set in the world of academia follows the case a fraternity brother who is hit by a car at the University of Georgia. The twist: all the witnesses say the driver looked identical to the victim and was smiling. The detective on the case, Marlitt Kaplan, is the daughter of a professor and knows all the school’s shameful secrets. But as she investigates the hit-and-run, she must dig even deeper into the university’s Greek system, finding some long-buried secrets that have made their way off campus.

cover image for A World of Curiosities

A World of Curiosities by Louise Penny

Your Inspector Gamache fix has arrived! In the latest installment from Louise Penny, the now adult children of a murdered woman have returned to Three Pines, alarming the local detective and the rest of the town. Their worry only deepens after the discovery of a letter written by a long dead stone mason, which reveals the location of an attic room filled with curiosities.

cover of a dangerous business

A Dangerous Business by Jane Smiley 

Set in 1850s Gold Rush California, this historical mystery follows Eliza Ripple, who began working at the local brothel as a means of gaining financial security after her husband died. When the dead bodies of young women start appearing outside of town, Eliza, fueled by her love reading and Edgar Allan Poe’s detective Dupin, recruits her best friend, Jean, to try to catch the killer.

cover of the widowmaker

The Widowmaker by Hannah Morrissey 

The Reynolds family name has become synonymous with murder and mystery ever since mogul Clive Reynolds went missing 20 yeas ago. After receiving a cryptic note, photographer Morgan Mori reluctantly returns home to Black Harbor and into the web of their family secrets. The night she photographs the latest Reynolds holiday get-together, Morgan becomes witness to a shocking crime that could crack open the cold case.

death in Tokyo book cover

A Death in Tokyo by Keigo Higashino

This is the third entry in Higashino’s Detective Kyoichiro Kaga series that has been translated into English. After a man is found stabbed on a famous bridge in the center of Tokyo, Detective Kaga is assigned to the team investigating the murder. When a prime suspect is located, the Tokyo Police Department thinks this could be a simple open and shut case. But as Kaga looks into the suspect,  his investigation takes him down unexpected roads and reveals the dark truth of what really happened and why.

liar, dreamer, thief book cover

Liar, Dreamer, Thief by Maria Dong (January 10)

Both a surreal mystery and an intimate exploration of mental health, Liar, Dreamer, Thief follows Katrina Kim, who forms an obsession with her co-worker Kurt as one of her many coping methods. While riffling through his things one day, Katrina finds evidence that someone is aware of what she’s been doing and she runs to her ritual spot at the bridge to soothe herself. But when she arrives, she finds Kurt, who slams her with a horrifying accusation before jumping to his death. Spiraling from his indictment, Katrina revisits everything she knows about him — only to discover that Kurt was watching her, too. As she dives further into Kurt’s life, she faces more shocking revelations about her own. 

city under one roof book cover

City Under One Roof by Iris Yamashita (January 10)

In this gripping debut, detective Cara Kennedy sets out to investigate a teen’s murder in Point Mettier, Alaska, where all 205 citizens live in a single high-rise building. After a blizzard causes the only tunnel into the building to close indefinitely, Cara is stuck among the odd and suspicious residents, each of which seems to have their own secrets to hide. 

decent people book cover

Decent People by De’Shawn Charles Winslow (January 17)

Winslow follows up his powerful debut, In West Mills, with another historical mystery set in segregated West Mills, North Carolina. In the compelling follow-up, former resident who has recently moved back to town is determined to help solve the triple homicide of three siblings. Though the crime is the first reported murder in the area in decades, the white authorities don’t seem to have any interest in solving the case. When Jo Wright realizes her childhood sweetheart, the half-sibling of the murder victims, could be named a prime suspect, she sets out to prove his innocence.

cover image for Exiles

Exiles by Jane Harper (January 31)

Federal Investigator Aaron Falk travels to his small home town in Southern Australia with plan to enjoy his vacation and attend the christening of a friend’s baby. What he doesn’t realize is that the timing coincides with the one-year anniversary of the disappearance of Kim Gillespie, who went missing during a town festival with no leads. After Kim’s daughter makes a plea for information, Aaron finds himself drawn to the case and slowly begins to infiltrate his way into Kim’s circle of friends and family.

cover of last seen in papas

Last Seen in Lapaz by Kwei Quartey (February 7)

Last Seen in Lapaz marks the third installment in the Emma Djan Investigation series. After a whirlwind romance leads to the disappearance of a young Nigerian woman and the brutal murder of her boyfriend, Emma Djan embarks on a dangerous undercover mission to uncover what really happened and track down the missing woman.

cover of I have some questions for you

I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai (February 21)

Now a successful podcaster and film professor, Bodie Kane has worked hard to leave her difficult past behind, including a family tragedy and the murder of a classmate at the New Hampshire school she attended. When the boarding school offers Bodie the chance to teach a two-week course, her memories of that year begin to resurface, and she can’t help but start investigating the details of the murder, realizing she may be more connected to the case than she though.

scorched grace book cover

Scorched Grace by Margot Douaihy (February 21)

The first novel from Gillian Flynn’s new imprint, Scorched Grace tells the story of Sister Holiday, a chain-smoking, heavily tattooed, queer nun, who joins a convent in New Orleans. After Sister’s convent becomes the target of an arson spree, she puts her sleuthing skills to work and launches her own investigation to pinpoint the culprit before it’s too late.

cover of the angel maker

The Angel Maker by Alex North (February 28)

Growing up, Katie Shaw seemed to live a charmed life — until the day a violent stranger changed the fate of her family forever. Years later, Katie still struggles to live with  the guilt surrounding what happened to her brother, Chris. Her life is upended once again when she gets a phone call that Chris has gone missing. At the same time, Detective Laurence Page uncovers a connection between the recent murder of a professor and the gruesome attack Chris suffered as a teenager.

cover of the maids diary

The Maid’s Diary by Loreth Anne White (March 1)

Kit Darling is a maid with a habit of snooping. It’s always been a harmless hobby — until Kit sees something dark in the home of her brand-new clients: a secret that could destroy the privileged couple expecting their first child. When homicide cop Mallory Van Alst is called to the scene of a bloody attack at a luxury waterfront home, she knows there is little chance the victim is alive, even though there is no body. With the homeowners gone and their maid missing, Mal sets out to uncover the secret that altered everyone’s lives.

cover of mimicking of known successes

The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older (March 7)

In this science fiction murder mystery, a man goes missing on a remote outpost of a human colony on Jupiter. When Investigator Mossa follows his trail, it leads her to Valdegeld, the location of the colony’s erudite university, where her former girlfriend, Pleiti, works. Pleiti is an expert on Earth’s pre-collapse ecosystems. When Mossa shows and requests her assistance in her latest investigation, the two of them team up to uncover the mystery.

cover of vera Wongs unsolicited advice

Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto (March 14)

Vera Wong is a lonely elderly lady who lives above her mostly forgotten tea shop in the middle of San Francisco’s Chinatown. One morning, she comes downstairs to find a curious thing — a dead man in the middle of her tea shop, holding a flash drive in his hand. After calling the cops, Vera decides to keep the flash drive to figure out which of the customers of her shop is the murderer. What she doesn’t expect is to begin form friendships with her customers.

cover of what remains

What Remains by Wendy Walker (June 13)

Cold case detective Elise Sutton prefers to maintain a careful sense of order in both her work life and professional one. But that all changes one day in a department store when Elise is forced to make a decision in which to save one life, she has to take another. Though Elise is hailed as a hero by many, she feels steeped with guilt — until she connects with Wade Austin, the man whose life she saved. But Elise soon realizes Wade is far from who he appears to be.

Looking for more mysteries? Check out 15 of the best mystery thrillers ever and 19 of the best award-winning mysteries .

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The ultimate summer reading list: 15 crime thrillers and mysteries to keep you guessing

From Mick Herron’s Slow Horses and Ian Rankin’s Rebus to new books from Bret Easton Ellis and Emma Cline, your beach reads are sorted courtesy of Guardian Australia’s staff and critics

  • This is part of a new series of summer reading guides. Please share your own picks in the comments
  • See our lists for romantic books , funny books and sci-fi and fantasy books

The Sean Duffy series by Adrian McKinty

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Blackstone Publishing, $26.99

Hard-boiled Troubles noir

What better to read about on a warm Aussie beach than a wet Belfast winter? The Sean Duffy series has an inspired premise: a bohemian Catholic cop serves in the Protestant Royal Ulster Constabulary, solving murders in a place where everyone knows and nobody tells. I knew from the first page of The Detective Up Late , the last in the series, that it was a towering masterpiece; it hits with all the force of well-hidden semtex. McKinty has to be the best crime writer working in Australia since Peter Temple.

Where should I start? The Duffy series kicks off with the Cold Cold Ground and that’s where you should start. Look forward to In the Morning I’ll Be Gone, an explosive story in more ways than one, and Rain Dogs, a classy locked-door mystery. – Andrew Messenger

The Shards by Bret Easton Ellis

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Allen and Unwin, $32.99

Pulpy sex-crime thriller

Charting his valedictory school year in 80s uptown LA, this deranged psychosexual page-turner from American Psycho bad boy Bret Easton Ellis weaves his Less Than Zero biographical details into a compelling serial killer narrative that’s as insane as it is enthralling.

The sex scenes are waxy but erotic; the pop references are exhaustive; and the steam coming off the heated pools is weirdly intoxicating. Oozing studied cool, it’s a tale of privilege, paranoia and ultraviolence that will leave you reeling. – Tim Byrne

The Secret of Chimneys by Agatha Christie

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HarperCollins, $19.99

Murder spy romcom

With Agatha Christie you can’t miss. (Yes, her books are dated , but you know that – enter at your own risk.) I don’t know why this is my favourite but I do know it’s the book I most frequently reread. Will-they-won’t-they plot lines galore. Red herrings for days.

Prefer a series? Poirot is king. (I would die for David Suchet – Sad Cypress! Five Little Pigs! Books wise, Dumb Witness is excellent, plus sublimely nasty about bad taste. And The Murder of Roger Ackroyd? Believe the hype.) I have a soft spot for Superintendent Battle (my pick is Towards Zero ; Sparkling Cyanide with Colonel Race investigating is also great). Miss Marple is obviously fine . – Imogen Dewey

The Searcher by Tana French

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Penguin Random House, $22.99

Masterful slow burn

The US-Irish author Tana French is a crime writing powerhouse, best known for her Dublin Murder Squad novels – astute, pacy procedurals. The Searcher is a different creature: hushed, simmering and atmospheric. A tale of watchers watching.

Cal Hooper, a retired Chicago detective, has moved to rural Ireland in search of inner quiet. But he has the heart of a police officer and a boy is missing. Crime fiction is stuffed with tales of sharp-eyed strangers in small towns. This is one of the best. – Beejay Silcox

Yellowface by RF Kuang

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HarperCollins, $32.99

Can’t look away

I like to compare reading Yellowface to watching the Netflix series You – you’re in the mind of a protagonist who has so clearly done the wrong thing but, as they constantly attempt to justify their actions, you have to remind yourself they’re the bad guy. The bad guy in question this time is June, who steals her friend Athena’s unpublished manuscript upon her death and publishes it as her own. This book is utterly twisted but so hard to put down. – Emily Wind

Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam

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Bloomsbury, $22.99

Apocalypse via Airbnb

I don’t think I’ve ever been more scared and thrilled to turn a page than I was when reading this book on an eerily empty beach during the first wave of the pandemic. It’s since been adapted into a film starring Julia Roberts and Mahershala Ali but I’d recommend reading the novel first. It’s about a smug white family who book an isolated holiday house in Long Island just before a mysterious global catastrophe shuts down communications and sends magnetic fields haywire. The owners of the house – a black couple – knock on the door seeking refuge in their own home, and the caustic race satire that transpires made me physically recoil almost as much as the scene with the teeth. – Steph Harmon

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

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Hachette Australia, $22.99

Pulpy literary mystery

Gillian Flynn writes frustratingly rare books – engrossing, exceptionally plotted thrillers that are actually well written . Gone Girl is the best of her bunch, a page-turner about a missing woman and a marriage on the rocks. Of course, thanks to its hit movie adaptation and subsequent pop culture ubiquity, you’d have done well to come this far in life without learning the shocking midpoint twist. But even if you go in knowing that big reveal, Gone Girl will still keep you enraptured. – Katie Cunningham

The Guest by Emma Cline

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Cool girl spirals

Watching a manipulator from afar is dazzling; catching them spiral is even better. When 22-year-old Alex’s dream summer arrangement with an older man in luxurious Long Beach falls apart, she lingers. Unable to go home, she spends a week homeless, homing in on weak links she meets. But she can’t tread water forever, her desperation eroding the cool demeanour she needs.

Throughout Cline keeps Alex at a magnetic distance: just like her targets, we’re intrigued even as we sense danger. – Jared Richards

My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

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Allen and Unwin, $27.99

Rollicking black comedy

“A friend will help you move house,” the old joke goes, “a true friend will help you move a body.” My Sister the Serial Killer takes that gag for a joyride around the streets of Lagos.

Ayoola doesn’t break up with her boyfriends, she dispatches them. And when she does, it’s her dutiful sister Korede who ends up scrubbing the bloodstains out of the carpet. Now Ayoola has her heart set on Korede’s crush. This is Nigerian noir at its best: raucous, sardonic and oh-so-smart. – BS

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

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Sumptuous sinister dreamworld

Silvia Moreno-Garcia knows her gothic horror tropes. Secluded mansion: check. Fearful new bride: check. Treacherous secrets: check. And that’s just the beginning of this tale of gaslighting, ghosts and high-society glamour.

Set in the 1950s, Mexican Gothic is the literary love child of Daphne du Maurier and Frida Kahlo. There are echoes of Shirley Jackson here too, and the ink-hearted alchemy of Angela Carter. You don’t read this book so much as surrender to it. A dark and heady swoon. – BS

Corinna Chapman series by Kerry Greenwood

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Allen and Unwin, $22.99 each

Tasty, quirky, delightful

I feel Corinna Chapman has been overshadowed a little by Greenwood’s more glamorous Phryne Fisher. But what’s not to like about baked goods, cats and a hot lover combined with a cast of quirky characters and odd events, all set in a slightly seedy but familiar Melbourne setting? Crime writing is often dominated by old white blokes, so a feisty woman as a lead character (and author) is a nice change of pace.

Where should I start? Each book is self-contained but it’s easier to follow the evolving cast of characters by reading chronologically and starting with Earthly Delights. – Ellen Smith

Slow Horses by Mick Herron

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Grubby spy thrillers

You may have already enjoyed the rollicking Apple TV adaptation of Herron’s spy novels, starring Gary Oldman having a lovely old time as the cranky, flatulent Jackson Lamb. But its worth cracking open the novels they’re based on. They follow a team of MI5 agents who have somehow screwed up and subsequently been exiled from the agency’s sleek headquarters to a creaky old office in Slough House. The newest “slow horse”, River Cartwright, ropes Lamb and the rest of his colleagues into a breakneck mission as part of his efforts to redeem himself with HQ. Great fun.

Where should I start? Start with Slow Horses – you should read this series in order. But my personal favourite is book five, London Rules. – Sian Cain

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

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Penguin Random House, $24.99

Sumptuous campus mystery

Donna Tartt’s debut – a maze of cliques, classics and cold-blooded killers – made her an instant superstar when it was published in 1992. In the intervening years many have tried and failed to film adaptations: no surprise for a novel so dense with winking references to the baroque and the arcane; so precisely studied, with its sextet of New England college students who spend as much time debating literature as they do colluding for power, pleasure and status. A bacchanal of a book. – Michael Sun

Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead

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Humorous hapless hustling

The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys won Colson Whitehead his Pulitzers, but Harlem Shuffle is by far his most fun book. Set in 1960s New York, it follows Ray Carney, a furniture salesman who is embroiled in a double life, with his scheming cousin Freddie enlisting him to fence his stolen goods.

Harlem Shuffle has been likened to a Tarantino film but tonally it reminds me more of Noah Hawley’s excellent Fargo series: so much of the humour and pleasure comes from Ray’s constant scramble to stay ahead. – SC

The Rebus novels by Ian Rankin

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Hachette, $22.99

Hard-boiled Scottish sleuth

All I want, all I ever really want, is a broody alcoholic cop, too smart for the job and battling his own demons while he solves eye-wateringly bleak mysteries. Sue me. Inspector John Rebus is this man. These books are Friday-night TV crime in printed form. Murders. Hangovers. Gangsters. Old mistakes. (Side note: I also have a great deal of time for Ian Rankin , who is right that The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is “a perfect gem”.)

Where should I start? Pick literally any. Whatever you can find at the bookshop. Individual plots are very much not the point here, and Rankin is nothing if not consistent. But if you want to start at the beginning, start with Knots and Crosses. – ID

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Book Reviews

You'll savor the off-beat mysteries served up by 'the kamogawa food detectives'.

Maureen Corrigan

Maureen Corrigan

The Kamogawa Food Detectives, by Hisashi Kashiwai

For me, it's a sip of blackberry brandy, the bargain bin kind that my mother kept in the back of a kitchen cabinet. She would dole out a spoonful to me if I had a cold. The very words "blackberry brandy" still summon up the sense of being cared for: a day home from school, nestled under a wool blanket on the couch, watching reruns of I Love Lucy . That spoonful of brandy is my Proust's madeleine in fermented form.

In The Kamogawa Food Detectives , by Hisashi Kashiwai, clients seek out the Kamogawa Diner because their elusive memories can't be accessed by something as simple as a bottle of rail liquor. Most find their way to the unmarked restaurant on a narrow backstreet in Kyoto, Japan, because of a tantalizing ad in a food magazine.

The ad cryptically states: " Kamogawa Diner – Kamogawa Detective Agency- We Find Your Food ." Entering through a sliding aluminum door, intrepid clients are greeted by the chef, Nagare, a retired, widowed police detective and Koishi, his sassy 30-something daughter who conducts interviews and helps cook.

In traditional mystery stories, food and drink are often agents of destruction: Think, for instance, of Agatha Christie and her voluminous menu of exotic poisons. But, at the Kamogawa Diner, carefully researched and reconstructed meals are the solutions, the keys to unlocking mysteries of memory and regret.

The Kamogowa Food Detectives is an off-beat bestselling Japanese mystery series that began appearing in 2013; now, the series is being published in this country, translated into English by Jesse Kirkwood. The first novel, called The Kamogowa Food Detectives , is composed of interrelated stories with plots as ritualistic as the adventures of Sherlock Holmes: In every story, a client enters the restaurant, describes a significant-but-hazily-remembered meal. And, after hearing their stories, Nagare, the crack investigator, goes to work.

Cozy up in Tokyo's 'Midnight Diner' for the TV version of comfort food

Cozy up in Tokyo's 'Midnight Diner' for the TV version of comfort food

Maybe he'll track down the long-shuttered restaurant that originally served the remembered dish and the sources of its ingredients; sometimes, he'll even identify the water the food was cooked in. One client says he wants to savor the udon cooked by his late wife just one more time before he remarries; another wants to eat the mackerel sushi that soothed him as a lonely child.

But the after effects of these memory meals are never predictable. As in conventional talk-therapy, what we might call here the "taste therapy" that the Kamogawa Food Detectives practice sometimes forces clients to swallow bitter truths about the past.

Celebrities Need Comfort Food Too: A Hollywood Hangout Turns 100

Celebrities Need Comfort Food Too: A Hollywood Hangout Turns 100

In the stand-out story called "Beef Stew," for instance, an older woman comes in hoping to once again taste a particular beef stew she ate only once in 1957, at a restaurant in Kyoto. She dined in the company of a fellow student, a young man whose name she can't quite recall, but she does know that the young man impetuously proposed to her and that she ran out of the restaurant. She tells Koishi that: "Of course, it's not like I can give him an answer after all these years, but I do find myself wondering what my life would have been like if I'd stayed in that restaurant and finished my meal."

'Eat Joy': Top Authors Serve Up Recipes That Gave Them Comfort In Dark Times

'Eat Joy': Top Authors Serve Up Recipes That Gave Them Comfort In Dark Times

Nagare eventually manages to recreate that lost beef stew, but some meals, like this one, stir up appetites that can never be sated.

As a literary meal The Kamogawa Food Detectives is off-beat and charming, but it also contains more complexity of flavor than you might expect: Nagare sometimes tinkers with those precious lost recipes, especially when they keep clients trapped in false memories. Nagare's Holmes-like superpowers as an investigator are also a strong draw. Given the faintest of clues — the mention of a long-ago restaurant with an open kitchen, an acidic, "[a]lmost lemony" taste to a mysterious dish of longed for yellow rice, some Bonito flakes — Nagare recreates and feeds his clients the meals they're starving for, even as he releases others from the thrall of meals past.

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The Best Fiction Books » Science Fiction

The best sci-fi mysteries, recommended by mary robinette kowal.

The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal

The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal

When the rules for technology, geography and even personal identity can be changed, murder mysteries get complicated – and fascinating. Mary Robinette Kowal , award-winning novelist and author of the Hugo-nominated mystery The Spare Man , talks to us about her top five sci-fi mystery books – and takes us on a tour of the whodunnits, howdunnits, and whydunnits available to us in science fictional worlds.

Interview by Sylvia Bishop

The Best Sci-Fi Mysteries - Station Eternity by Mur Lafferty

Station Eternity by Mur Lafferty

The Best Sci-Fi Mysteries - Lock In by John Scalzi

Lock In by John Scalzi

The Best Sci-Fi Mysteries - The City & the City by China Miéville

The City & the City by China Miéville

The Best Sci-Fi Mysteries - The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson

The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson

The Best Sci-Fi Mysteries - A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine

A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine

books fiction mystery

1 Station Eternity by Mur Lafferty

2 lock in by john scalzi, 3 the city & the city by china miéville, 4 the space between worlds by micaiah johnson, 5 a memory called empire by arkady martine.

There are of course many types of mystery story and many types of sci-fi story, which can be recombined for a whole range of effects. What is the general appeal of this mystery-plus-sci-fi approach?

I tend to break genres into two overarching categories. There are structure-driven genres like mystery, heist, thriller, or romance. And then there are aesthetic-driven genres like science fiction, fantasy, and historical fiction. Those don’t have any inherent structure on their own, but what they’re really good at is creating an atmospheric sense of wonder. So when you take a mystery, which can be sometimes predictable, and you layer science fiction on top of it, it gives a structure to a genre that doesn’t otherwise have one. And you have this whole new range of tools that you can play with, that can cause the mystery to go in different directions.

Could you introduce us to your first sci-fi mystery recommendation, Station Eternity by Mur Lafferty?

First of all, I love Mur’s writing. And the thing that I particularly love about this book is that it explores one of the conceits of a standard cosy mystery
 No one would ever go anywhere with Murder She Wrote ’s Jessica Fletcher, because there are dead bodies everywhere she goes. So Mur’s main character Mallory has this syndrome: everywhere she goes, someone gets killed. To deal with that, she takes refuge on a space station where there are no humans, to avoid getting anyone killed. And then, of course, someone comes to the station – and murder happens.

So we have this great whodunnit . It’s a delightful romp. It has the witty banter that you want from this kind of thing. And then also, there’s her dealing with all of the baggage of having seen and witnessed so many deaths.

I just thought it was a hoot, and had all the twists and turns that I wanted from a murder mystery .

Can the answers be deduced?

Definitely! I think that she plays fair – even with the science fiction that she has created, she presents it so you always have the knowledge you need before you get to doing the thing. I think all of the books that I’ve picked play fair.

Some mysteries feel more like thrillers , like they aren’t meant to be solved


Yes. Dashiell Hammett talks about this – that there’s a difference between what he does, and what Agatha Christie was doing. With an Agatha Christie, the reader was meant to be able to figure it out. With a hard-boiled detective novel, it’s more about the mood and the tone – everything is supposed to be confusing and moving at a really rapid pace. So it’s starting to pick up some of that thriller vibe; you’re not supposed to be able to figure it out.

In fact, when they were filming The Big Sleep , they got Chandler on the phone. They said, “We figured out who kills everybody else. But there’s this sixth death – who did that?” And he’s like, “I don’t know, doesn’t matter. It’s just there for the tone.” I watched the film, and I said, “So which was the murder that they didn’t know?” And my husband told me, and I realised – oh, yeah, that isn’t resolved at any point, is it? That doesn’t make any sense. But you just don’t care.

Is there ultimately an explanation for Mallory’s syndrome? It seems that often in sci-fi mysteries, alongside the whodunnit, there’s a mysterious phenomenon to be solved as well


There are! There’s more than one mystery happening in this, which is one of the things that I think I enjoy about it, and some of the additional mysteries are specifically science fiction based. Not just the whodunnit, but howdunnit and whydunnit.

There’s a mysterious phenomenon front and centre in your next sci-fi mystery choice: Lock In by John Scalzi.

So Lock In takes the idea of locked-in syndrome, which is a thing that actually happens to people; but he’s imagining that there’s a highly contagious virus called Haden’s syndrome. There’s been a global pandemic that caused people to get locked in. So instead of having a small handful of society who’ve been locked in by something like Lou Gehrig’s disease, this is a huge, huge amount of the population. People are still completely awake and alert.

They come up with these C-3POs, they call them ‘threeps,’ which are basically robots that people can put their brains in. Their body still exists, but they can wirelessly connect and move the body around so that they can interact and move through the world. There’s also a kind of virtual space that people can be in. Finally, there are integrators: an integrator can let someone with Haden’s syndrome borrow their body. So instead of just having a robot body, you have a flesh and blood body. You get to have different sets of feelings.

Chris Shane, a rookie FBI agent, gets assigned to this murder. It’s committed by an integrator – so, the integrator had a client. You have to figure out who the suspect is: is it the integrator? Is it the client, and then which client is it?

It gets so much more complicated as it goes on. There’s a bigger problem. Every answer that Chris finds unlocks a different question. It’s sitting somewhere in the police procedural , hardboiled detective area. He plays fair in that, if you read it a second time, all of the things are there; but often you are in a this-is-very-confusing state, which he borrows from the hardboiled detective novel.

Messing around with personal identity feels like such an appealing reason to mix sci-fi and mystery – it’s such a classic sci-fi trope.

Yeah! Speaking of identity, one of the things that I particularly enjoy and admire in these books is that Scalzi has chosen a deliberately androgynous name, Chris, and he never genders the character. You do not know at any point where Chris lands on the gender spectrum. When they did the audiobook, they had two different versions, one with a male narrator and one with a female narrator. And different readers will make different assumptions.

Your own mystery, The Spare Man , also uses technologies to confuse your reader around identity. And also treats gender a little differently


Yes, so there’s a couple of things. One is the technology that my main character Tesla uses. She was in a horrific accident in her backstory, so she has what’s called a deep brain pain suppressor. It’s based on a device that my mother had in her head, which was a deep brain stimulator for Parkinson’s. When Mom activated it for the first time, I said, “Oh, this is a miracle.” Because she had been tremoring; she had needed to use a walker to go in into the building; her voice, her speech was slushy
 and they activated it, and her symptoms just stopped. The tremor just cut off. Her speech was back to the way it was before the disease. So I thought, “What happens if we could manage pain that way?” It’s one of those technologies that is around the corner. And at some point, this book will not be science fiction anymore – at least that part of it won’t be.

I wanted to give her that, but I also wanted to honour the choices that you still have to make – any medication, any device, any sort of adaptation always has a side effect. With Tesla, her side effect is she feels pain-less, but she also feels sensitive touch-less. So she has to make a decision: back doesn’t hurt, or can feel my husband touched me. So that was fun to play with. In the ways that novelists like to torture characters.

For gender – the book is set, in my brain, in about 2074. I wanted to be far enough in the future that I could imagine things having changed, but also choose a time when people who are alive today would still be alive, so that you have more than one generation of experience. I’ve been struck by the way, at science fiction conventions and over Zoom, we do pronouns – when you do a panel, you say, “My name is Mary Robinette Kowal, she/her.” It’s listed on my Zoom account. So I thought, maybe that just becomes part of natural speech – you just do that when you introduce yourself to someone.

The way we’re headed with AI , one of the things that I would love is something that would immediately tell me someone’s name, because I’m terrible with them. And they would also just tell me the gender so that there’s no guessing. Someone who had grown up in that would then grow up with the default that you don’t make any assumptions until the person tells you. So I wanted to play with that.

I had to hire a sensitivity reader to work with me on that, because I’m also a 54-year-old woman who grew up in the binary and still have things that I default to, completely unconsciously. So I wanted to get someone in there to help me not do that. For instance, a small thing, but my main character’s husband did not do needlepoint in the original. In my first draft, Tesla did that. My reader, Christine Sandquist – who is available for hire, and very, very good – she said, “You know that this is gendered? Everybody who’s doing crafts in this book is female presenting.” And I had not noticed that! So I just shifted which spouse was doing it – and then it gave me opportunities later.

There were so many different small speculative elements, social and technological, that all bled into the mystery in different ways – as opposed to one central concept, like in Lock In . I was really struck by the fact that space travel and the spaceship don’t matter at all – they just made it a locked room mystery , right?

Yeah. So it is a locked room murder mystery, technically, but also this spaceship has around 3000 people on it that I just ignore. Part of it is that my characters are in the very fancy suite section, which does limit it to eight cabins of passengers that could have been at the scene of the crime. But otherwise, I just ignore exactly how many people are on that ship.

Your next choice takes us more broadly into speculative fiction . Could you tell us about The City and The City by China Miéville?

Yeah, I wavered on whether The City and The City was science fiction or fantasy or
 it’s one of those books where you just don’t even know what genre it is. This book messed with my brain so much.

There’s a murder investigation and there are two cities that exist side by side, overlapping each other. Their relationship is unclear right at the beginning: they occupy the same geographical space, theoretically in Eastern Europe, but they are two different cities by custom and law. If something comes from one city into the other, it’s called breaching. And breaching is considered a crime worse than murder.

There’s a moment we arrive at the scene of the initial crime, where the detective looks up, and sees through into the other city. Then he has to unsee the person that was there. It’s so unsettling. The nature of the crime is such that we have to involve detectives from both cities, so they are working in parallel, and having to make decisions about which city they’re in at any given moment. It’s so twisty on so many different levels.

It’s stuck with me so much because it is so familiar – it is how we inhabit cities, certainly British cities. There are parts of the city we just don’t see.

I remember that there was language for it. The Twin Cities are composed of ‘crosshatched,’ ‘alter,’ and ‘total’ areas. Total areas are just one city. Alter areas are totally in the other city. And then, in between those areas, are cross hatches, which would have different names depending on which city you lived in.

In your next choice we go from small city politics out into the multiverse… Could you introduce The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson?

Micaiah Johnson has imagined a world in which the multiverse exists, and you can hop from one universe to another, but you can only do that if you don’t have a counterpart there. So if you have died or were just never born, you can go there. If you attempt to go there, and you exist, you suffer a horrible death. This means that people who are very likely to have died young, basically from being a marginalised member of society, then become extremely highly valued – they can go to a lot more universes than someone who had all of the privilege of a safe upbringing.

Our protagonist Cara can go to 372 worlds, and there are only eight that she can’t go to. Then one of her eight remaining doppelgangers dies under mysterious circumstances, in ways that make her think that this person was murdered, and probably murdered by someone that she herself had a past with. But maybe not – because every doppelganger is a little bit different. So trying to figure out who did the murdering and how, and what the circumstances are around it, is really interesting.

There’s more than one murder, and each question unlocks a different question. It’s dealing with class and race and corporate greed. I think it’s wonderful.

To put it in the terminology of your podcast, Writing Excuses , this sounds like a thriller as much as a mystery


Yes! There are parts of it that are definitely a thriller, which give it that clipping-along momentum… But a lot of it is character portrait. In one of the worlds, she has the opportunity to see family members who had died in her own world. She has an extremely complicated reaction – they are expecting her to be someone else, and she has to be that someone else; and she’s seeing these people who are almost the people that she loves, but not quite. There are parts of it that are really, really moving, exploring all the emotional and social implications of the initial science fiction setup.

And messing around with personal identity again


Yeah, I do tend to lean towards that apparently!

We’ve come to your last sci-fi mystery book: A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine. It previously appeared on Five Books when it was shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2020 . Could you re-introduce us?

This is a pretty straight-up murder mystery, but the world-building in it is so compelling. Mahit Dzmare is an ambassador from Lsel station, which is a 30,000-person space station, and it’s independent. There’s a massive, massive Empire, the Teixcalaanli Empire. Lsel is constantly having defend itself – not with weapons, but with diplomacy – to try not to be annexed. So Mahit has been sent to be the ambassador at the Empire’s city-state planet, the seat of the Empire. Her predecessor has been killed.

On of the technologies that Lsel station has is something called an imago, which is basically a recording of a person. Let’s say that you’re a pilot, and you have very specialised skill; your successor gets given your memories. They pick people who have close personalities, and they go through this year-long integration process, so that the memories don’t override the person whose body it is. The idea is that it’s like having a mentor who can go along with you, and has all of the ingrained, internalised knowledge that takes years or decades to acquire. You have someone that you can ask questions; you remain yourself, but with a partner, or this other aspect of self.

Mahit doesn’t get to do that. She has three months to integrate. And she’s working within an imago that’s 15 years out of date – the person who was murdered has not been back to Lsel for 15 years – so she’s dealing with out-of-date information. When she arrives, she’s immediately confronted with this corpse, and it’s clear that he didn’t die of natural causes, no matter what people are saying. He was murdered. And she has to figure out who did it. While also being the ambassador.

The Empire’s word for people who are not from there is ‘barbarian.’ So she’s this barbarian, to them. But she’s also spent her entire life studying Teixcalaanli literature and society, and she speaks the language fluently. Sometimes she has to pretend to be a full-on barbarian, because that gives her a tool that she can use to get the information that she wants. Other times she has to dial it all the way up, and be as sophisticated and polished as she can be.

She’s attempting to defend her home from this empire using diplomacy , and she loves her home. But also, the reason she’s a good fit to go to the Empire is that she loves Teixcalaanli culture. How those two things pull on her as she’s investigating this mystery is really delicious. The world-building is also just lovely. It’s interesting, because it gives the sense of being this really big, sprawling empire – but really you’ve got a pretty small cast, and only a few locations that you actually go to. The culture is so rich that you can feel the rest of the galaxy.

It must be a hard balance writing this kind of novel – you’re already asking your readers to do so much detective work just to understand a sci-fi world, but that’s got to feel effortless, so that they’re happy to do the additional work of following you on the mystery.

She does it very cleverly. Just as an example, when Mahit first arrives and she has the imago with her, her predecessor says that he had the same feelings that she did when he arrived – being overwhelmed by the grandeur, and how beautiful it was – and then she finally gets up off her ship into the spaceport, and what Arkady describes is basically every airport lounge ever. It’s just high-tread carpets and glass and steel. So she grounds you with things that are really familiar to anyone who’s travelled. There’s another point right before she gets off the ship where, even though she speaks the language fluently, she is rehearsing what she’s supposed to say. And if you speak another language, and you travel to another country, this is a thing that you do! You sit there and think: ok – I want to buy a stamp. Stamp, stamp, I want to buy a stamp . You just keep saying it over and over in your head, until you can go up there and say: “I want to buy a stamp.”

We’ve covered a whole range of different flavours of sci-fi, and a few different flavours of mystery. There are no real cosy mysteries here, where the detectives are in no danger and it’s all just a puzzle . Is that out of fashion in general? Or is it just not really touching sci-fi?

I think it’s definitely still in fashion in straight-up mystery. I think that in science fiction and fantasy, we have such an assumption that there must be an evil overlord that we tend to go straight into conspiracy theory. So there’s always some larger thing that’s going wrong. I think some of that is because we have inherited a lot of our science fiction from Cold War stuff or from Westerns: there’s the bad guy, then there’s the big bad guy, and there’s got to be a shootout at some point. So I think some of that is in the DNA of how we unconsciously tend to write with science fiction: there has to be something bigger and badder going wrong. The other factor is that doing that gives you more room to explore the world, because it pushes the character out of their comfort zone.

Oh actually, when The Martian Contingency comes out – which is the fourth book in my Lady Astronaut universe , and won’t come out until 2025 – it’s got cosy baked into it. My main character’s life is never threatened because of the mystery. It is threatened because she’s on Mars, but not because of the mystery. So maybe it becomes the B-plot in science fiction and fantasy, if it doesn’t have the character’s life in danger. I’m going to have to examine that


January 11, 2024

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Mary Robinette Kowal

Mary Robinette Kowal

Mary Robinette Kowal is the author of  The Spare Man, Ghost Talkers, The Glamourist Histories  series, and the Lady Astronaut Universe. She is part of the award-winning podcast Writing Excuses and a four-time Hugo Award winner. Her short fiction appears in  Uncanny ,  Tor.com , and  Asimov’s .

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Town and Country

Town and Country

The 17 Best Cozy Mystery Books to Read This Winter

Posted: December 23, 2023 | Last updated: December 23, 2023

<p class="body-dropcap">Winter is the ideal time to read a <a href="https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/arts-and-culture/best-cozy-books/">cozy book</a>, and if you're looking specifically for a cozy <a href="https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/arts-and-culture/g45326982/best-classic-murder-mystery-books/">murder mystery</a>, we have you covered. As writer Anthony Horowitz <a href="https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/arts-and-culture/a41316947/anthony-horowitz-magpie-murders-interview/">told <em>Town & Country</em></a>, "Murder mystery is an opportunity to close the shutters, to draw up the bed clothes, to make yourself that hot chocolate with marshmallows and sit back and like Sherlock Holmes, just revel in the intellectual pursuit of truth." That doesn't sound like summer—mystery is definitely a wintertime genre. (If this list doesn't suffice, check out <a href="https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/arts-and-culture/g45326982/best-classic-murder-mystery-books/">classic murder mystery books</a> and <a href="https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/arts-and-culture/g45897220/best-winter-books/">classic winter books</a>.) </p><p>Here, 20 of the best cozy mysteries to read this winter:</p>

Winter is the ideal time to read a cozy book , and if you're looking specifically for a cozy murder mystery , we have you covered. As writer Anthony Horowitz told Town & Country , "Murder mystery is an opportunity to close the shutters, to draw up the bed clothes, to make yourself that hot chocolate with marshmallows and sit back and like Sherlock Holmes, just revel in the intellectual pursuit of truth." That doesn't sound like summer—mystery is definitely a wintertime genre. (If this list doesn't suffice, check out classic murder mystery books and classic winter books .)

Here, 20 of the best cozy mysteries to read this winter:

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1) The Murder at the Vicarage: A Miss Marple Mystery

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Read more: The Best Agatha Christie Books, According to Agatha Christie

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Read more: Anthony Horowitz Thinks Murder Mysteries Can Make the World a Better Place

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6) The Windsor Knot: A Novel

In The Windsor Knot , Queen Elizabeth secretly solved crimes during her reign. As she's preparing for her 90th birthday party, a guest atWindsor Castle dies, and she ropes in her Assistant Private Secretary, Rozie Oshodi, to help solve the murder. It's a delightful royal mystery.

<p><strong>$14.26</strong></p>

7) Finlay Donovan Is Killing It

Finlay Donovan, a single mom and novelist, is talking about her mystery novel in a coffee shop when someone overhears her and mistakes her as a killer-for-hire. Finlay inadvertently accepts, and has to figure out how to get rid of this woman's husband. It's the first in a very fun, silly mystery series.

<p><strong>$14.51</strong></p><p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0593549228?tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C10067.g.45865195%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p><p>This cozy mystery features Vera Wong, an older woman who lives above her tea shop in Chinatown in San Francisco. When Vera uncovers a dead body on her floor, she's determined to solve the mystery, thinking she knows better than the police. And! If you like reading the book before it becomes a show, <a href="https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/warner-bros-tv-jesse-q-sutanto-vera-wongs-unsolicited-advice-for-murderers-harpo-films-kaling-international-1235578305/">a TV show adaptation</a> is in the works.</p>

8) Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers

Vera Wong, a lonely widow who lives above a tea shop in San Francisco's Chinatown, finds a dead man in her shop one morning, holding a flash drive in his hand. After she calls the cops, she decided to steal the drive, knowing her investigation skills are better than the police.

<p><strong>$7.13</strong></p><p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1984880985?tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C10067.g.45865195%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p><p>This mystery novel (and the three others in the series) follows four elderly residents of a retirement community who discuss cold cases. When a body turns up, they suddenly find themselves with a real, live case. What results is a delightful cozy mystery that you won't be able to put down. </p>

9) The Thursday Murder Club

The Thursday Murder Club series (there's four) feature a group of friends at a retirement village who discuss unsolved murders—and then find themselves solving live cases. The fourth (and possibly final) book in the series, The Last Devil to Die , came out this fall.

<p><strong>$14.99</strong></p><p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BP2G8JVD?tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C10067.g.46147590%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p><p>This book is advertised as "Think: <em>Gilmore Girls</em>, but with murder," so we were obviously immediately in. In <em>Mother-Daughter Murder Night</em>, businesswoman Lana finds herself stuck in her daughter Beth's sleepy coastal town. When Beth's daughter discovers a dead body while kayaking and becomes the prime suspect, Lana springs into action to protect her grandchild. </p>

10) Mother-Daughter Murder Night

This book is advertised as "Think: Gilmore Girls , but with murder," so we were obviously immediately in. In Mother-Daughter Murder Night , businesswoman Lana finds herself stuck in her daughter Beth's sleepy coastal town. When Beth's daughter discovers a dead body while kayaking and becomes the prime suspect, Lana springs into action to protect her grandchild.

<p><strong>$14.99</strong></p><p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09Y94K74X?tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C10067.g.46147590%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p><p>In this fun page-turner, narrator Ernest Cunningham's family gathers at a ski resort to celebrate Ernest brother Michael's release from prison. But when someone turns up dead, Ernie knows that everyone in his family could be the murderer. Ernest breaks the fourth wall throughout the novel, which is filled with references to the Golden Age of British mystery fiction (think: Agatha Christie and Margery Allingham). </p>

11) Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone: A Novel

In this fun page-turner, narrator Ernest Cunningham's family gathers at a ski resort to celebrate Ernest brother Michael's release from prison. But when someone turns up dead, Ernie knows that everyone in his family could be the murderer. Ernest breaks the fourth wall throughout the novel, which is filled with references to the Golden Age of British mystery fiction (think: Agatha Christie and Margery Allingham).

<p><strong>$9.59</strong></p><p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09W2PK61K?tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C10067.g.46147590%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p><p>Conrad is a cat, and he's also a detective. You're either in or you're out from that summary, as that's basically the plot of <em>The Cat Who Caught a Killer</em>, where Conrad helps newly widowed Lulu Lewis solve the suspicious death of her mother-in-law. </p>

12) The Cat Who Caught a Killer

Conrad is a cat, and he's also a detective. You're either in or you're out from that summary, as that's basically the plot of The Cat Who Caught a Killer , where Conrad helps newly widowed Lulu Lewis solve the suspicious death of her mother-in-law.

<p><strong>$12.99</strong></p><p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1471415333?tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C10067.g.46147590%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p><p>Nell Ward didn't intend to solve crimes. But when she overhears a murder, and becomes the main suspect, she sets out to clear her name—using her training as an ecologist. (A classic cozy mystery set-up is the reluctant detective.) </p>

13) A Murder of Crows

Nell Ward didn't intend to solve crimes. But when she overhears a murder, and becomes the main suspect, she sets out to clear her name—using her training as an ecologist. (A classic cozy mystery set-up is the reluctant detective.)

<p><strong>$13.99</strong></p><p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1982187468?tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C10067.g.44567024%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p><p>Season three of <em>Only Murders in the Building</em> revolves around the cast of Oliver's play—and if you love the theater-infused plot, you should definitely read <em>The Appeal </em>by Janice Hallet, where a tragedy strikes a local theater group. It's told in epistolary format (with emails messages, letters) as lawyers try and figure out what happened. The reader will try and solve it right along with them. </p>

14) The Appeal: A Novel

This creative murder mystery takes the form of a series of letters, emails, messages that lawyers are combing through to figure out who killed a member of a local theater group. As the publisher writes, "the evidence is all there, between the lines, waiting to be uncovered"—but can you, the reader, figure it out?

<p><strong>$14.99</strong></p><p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C5LRCM2F?tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C10067.g.46147590%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p><p>Nita Prose's <em>The Maid </em>was a bestseller, featuring Molly Gray, a hotel maid, who ends up a lead suspect in the murder of a wealthy hotel guest. Molly returns in <em>The Mystery Guest</em>, when a famous mystery author dies in the hotel's tearoom. He has links to Molly's past, and Molly must solve the mystery before anyone else can figure out her secrets.</p>

15) The Mystery Guest

Nita Prose's The Maid was a bestseller, featuring Molly Gray, a hotel maid, who ends up a lead suspect in the murder of a wealthy hotel guest. Molly returns in The Mystery Guest , when a famous mystery author dies in the hotel's tearoom. He has links to Molly's past, and Molly must solve the mystery before anyone else can figure out her secrets.

<p><strong>$7.59</strong></p><p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00Y6RC1SC?tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C10067.g.46147590%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p><p>Carlene O'Connor's entire <em>Murder in an Irish Village </em>series is cozy and delightful, so it's best to begin with the first one, where 22-year-old SiobhĂĄn O'Sullivan runs her family's bistro with her five siblings. When they open one morning and find a man dead at a table, it's up to SiobhĂĄn and her siblings to find the murderer and clear the O'Sullivan name.</p>

16) Murder in an Irish Village

Carlene O'Connor's entire Murder in an Irish Village series is cozy and delightful, so it's best to begin with the first one, where 22-year-old SiobhĂĄn O'Sullivan runs her family's bistro with her five siblings. When they open one morning and find a man dead at a table, it's up to SiobhĂĄn and her siblings to find the murderer and clear the O'Sullivan name.

<p><strong>$15.19</strong></p><p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1473685508?tag=syndication-20&ascsubtag=%5Bartid%7C10067.g.46147590%5Bsrc%7Cmsn-us">Shop Now</a></p><p>It's New Year's Eve in Bombay in 1949, and Inspector Persis Wadia, India's first (and only) female police detective, is on the midnight shift. When the murder of English diplomat Sir James Herriot occurs, Persis takes the sensational case, and must prove herself.</p>

17) Midnight at Malabar House

It's New Year's Eve in Bombay in 1949, and Inspector Persis Wadia, India's first (and only) female police detective, is on the midnight shift. When the murder of English diplomat Sir James Herriot occurs, Persis takes the sensational case, and must prove herself.

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Book review: A gritty family mystery in The Disappearance Of Patrick Zhou

books fiction mystery

The Disappearance Of Patrick Zhou

By Ally Chua Mystery/Epigram Books/Paperback/280 pages/$26.90/Epigram Bookshop ( str.sg/aNQz ) 4 stars

The Zhou family has a long list of enemies, any of whom could have been responsible for Patrick Zhou’s disappearance 15 years ago.

Layla’s grandmother is on her deathbed and her final wish is to know what happened to her eldest son.

A skilled journalist and the only one not involved in the family’s palm oil business, Layla investigates her uncle’s disappearance and realises her family keeps many secrets.

Upon realising some of the darkest ones, she concludes: “The Zhous are morally ambiguous. The Zhous are morally bankrupt.”

The book is divided into four sections, each part marking a shift in how Layla sees herself and her family over the course of her investigation.

At the end of the first part, nearly halfway through the book, journal entries from Layla’s father appear, filling in the backstory of his relationship with Layla and the rest of the Zhous.

Boston-based Singaporean author Ally Chua transitions successfully from poetry to prose, a skill that does not come easily to many writers.

A finalist for the 2023 Epigram Books Fiction Prize, this debut novel retains a similar sense of grit and gore present in her poetry collection Acts Of Self Consumption (2023) without coming across as unsavoury or perverse. Rather, the elements add to the uneasy sense that digging into the past can only lead to unwelcome revelations.

No one in the novel is truly likeable, a collection of characters forced to connect with their dark sides to survive the cut-throat business environment created by Layla’s grandfather, Joseph.

Layla thinks to herself: “We are all horribly depraved. My father and his heartlessness, my grandfather and his poisonous words, my uncle and his manipulation. I cannot say I am clean – I know, from the way I experimented with the chickens and how I watched Sayang (the family cat) die, that I have my own morbid fascination with death. Our family and our litany of sins and small crimes.”

As she digs into the people who knew Patrick best, she encounters lies, threats of physical harm and illegal employment.

From his former assistant to his ex-fiancee, each person reveals that the uncle she once loved for telling her horror stories might not have been as good of a man as she thought.

Ramping up the action in the last 90 pages, Chua skilfully weaves together 15 years of secrets in a manner that leaves one flipping pages for more answers. Tensions grow as Layla pieces together the inconsistencies of Patrick’s final day and discovers a particularly dark secret that reframes the way she views her family.

While the conclusion is not satisfying, it is realistic and befits the story. The fallout Layla and the Zhou family face speaks volumes not only to how power and money have kept them safe from public hate, but also the lengths the family is willing to go to protect its own.

If you like this, read: The Sun Down Motel by Simone St James (Berkley, 2020, $16.63, Amazon SG, go to amzn.to/3SWrQiy ). Haunted by the disappearance of her aunt Viv in 1982, Carly finds work at the Sun Down Motel, where Viv was last seen. As she attempts to solve the mystery, Carly discovers that forces beyond her imagination could be linked not only to the motel, but also other crimes in town.

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  5. 23 BEST BOOKS OF 2023

  6. ANOTHER GIANT BOOK HAUL

COMMENTS

  1. 27 Best Mystery Books You Won't Be Able to Put Down

    via merchant 1. Pay Dirt Road by Samantha Jayne Allen There's no mystery like a small-town mystery. Billed as Mare of Easttown meets Friday Night Lights, Allen's debut novel, published in 2022,...

  2. The Best Mystery Novels of 2021

    The Best Mystery Novels of 2021 Our crime fiction columnist picks the books that wowed her this year. Weegee, via Getty Images 103 By Sarah Weinman Published Dec. 7, 2021 Updated Dec. 9, 2021...

  3. Best Mystery & Thriller 2023

    Best Mystery & Thriller New to Goodreads? Get great book recommendations! Start Now Want to Read Rate it: Open Preview WINNER 86,468 votes The Housemaid's Secret by Freida McFadden (Goodreads Author)

  4. The 30 Best Mystery Books of All Time

    📚 Which mystery book should you read next? Discover the perfect mystery for you. Takes 30 seconds! Start quiz 1. And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie Buy on Amazon Add to library It's impossible to talk about mystery novels without immediately thinking of the legendary Agatha Christie.

  5. Mystery Books

    The mystery genre is a genre of fiction that follows a crime (like a murder or a disappearance) from the moment it is committed to the moment it is solved. Mystery novels are often called "whodunnits" because they turn the reader into a detective trying to figure out the who, what, when, and how of a particular crime.

  6. Best Mystery Books of 2022

    The Best Fiction Books » Mystery » Best Mystery Books of 2022 2022 was a decent year for mystery books. We track new books in the genre throughout the year as they were published, adding them whenever we think they're worth reading.

  7. 50 Best Mystery Books of All Time

    Mysteries are narratives in which the who, why, or how of an event, usually a murder or some other type of crime, remains unknown until the end and drives the story forward. To write a successful...

  8. Best Mystery Books of 2021: Recommended by Bestselling Authors

    Girl A: A Novel by Abigail Dean (Recommended by Karin Slaughter) Viking is publisher. Author's photo by Alison Rosa. " Girl A follows Lex Gracie, a now-grown woman who, as a teenager, escaped her...

  9. Best Mystery Books of 2023

    Exiles is by Jane Harper, one of our favourite writers of mystery novels. All have been set in Australia in a genre some refer to as 'Outback noir.'. Her last book was The Survivors, set by the ocean in Tasmania, her best book (according to two of our interviewees) is The Lost Man. This book, Exiles, is set in South Australia's wine country.

  10. The Best Mystery Novels of 2022

    It should be part of every discerning mystery reader's library. A version of this article appears in print on , Page 18 of the Sunday Book Review with the headline: The Year's Best Crime Novels .

  11. Best Sellers

    The New York Times Best Sellers are up-to-date and authoritative lists of the most popular books in the United States, based on sales in the past week, including fiction, non-fiction, paperbacks ...

  12. Best Mysteries and Thrillers of 2021

    Weekly book lists of exciting new releases, bestsellers, classics, and more. ... Science Fiction & Fantasy Mystery & Thriller Romance. Browse by Content Type. ... Featuring 334 industry-first reviews of fiction, nonfiction, children's, and YA books; also in this issue: Casey McQuiston and other romance authors making space in the genre ...

  13. The 100 Best Mystery and Thriller Books of All Time

    The 100 Best Mystery and Thriller Books of All Time With a panel of celebrated authors—Megan Abbott, Harlan Coben, S.A. Cosby, Gillian Flynn, Tana French, Rachel Howzell Hall, and Sujata...

  14. Best Mystery & Thriller 2020

    Lucy Foley ran away with this year's Mystery & Thriller award by inviting us to the best wedding ever! And by "best" we mean "most terrifying.". Jules and Will have chosen to hold their wedding on a remote island off the coast of Ireland. Then the storm hits. Then the body is found.

  15. Best Mysteries and Thrillers of 2023

    OCT. 3, 2023. MYSTERY & DETECTIVE. ONE LAST KILL. by Robert Dugoni. Dugoni brilliantly folds murders past and present into his heroine's earlier cases and her troubled history. FULL REVIEW >. get a copy. bookshelf. JUNE 20, 2023.

  16. 101 Best Mystery Books of All Time

    Michael Giltz Updated: Sep 7, 2023 To craft a list of the 101 best mysteries of all time you must first define "mystery," a genre we believe puts its emphasis on solving a puzzling event—often a...

  17. Best Mystery & Crime Books

    The Best of Mystery, Mayhem & Murdle Explore All Lists We've collected The Best Books of 2023 into dozens of unique 3-book lists, featuring superlative titles across genres, sorted into categories that range from the expected to the decidedly un expected. See all 70 of our Best Books of 2023 lists here. QUICK ADD

  18. 10 Best Mystery Book Series to Read in 2024

    The mystery book series was adapted into a TV show (Dublin Murders) in 2019, but we always suggest reading the books before streaming. ... In this top fiction book, The Lost Ones, Sheena Kamal's ...

  19. 7 Best Mystery Books to Read Right Now (According to Mystery Experts)

    Sandrine's Case by Thomas H. Cook (Mysterious Press, 2013) is the story of a man on trial for murdering his wife. He refuses to defend himself and his young daughter, having just lost her mother,...

  20. The 10 best mystery novels of 2023

    The 10 best mystery novels of 2023 - The Washington Post Advertisement Books Fiction Nonfiction Ron Charles Becca Rothfeld Michael Dirda The 10 best mystery novels of 2023 Richard Osman,...

  21. 13 Best Mystery Books of All Time

    Ahh, mystery books. Bloody and perplexing crimes, clever detectives, and plot twists that'll break your neck. From the age of eight when I was gifted the Complete Works of Sherlock Holmes (the book that started my lifelong journey to loving fiction), mysteries have been an absolute joy, a pleasure ...

  22. The 20 Best Mystery Books To Read In 2023

    There are plenty of exciting new book releases to look forward to in 2023, particularly when it comes to mystery novels.While the upcoming year is set to bring plenty of highly anticipated new titles to shelves from across all genres, including sci-fi, fantasy, romance, and nonfiction, it will be a particularly rich year for some of the best mystery books. 2023 promises pulse-pounding murder ...

  23. The ultimate summer reading list: 15 crime thrillers and mysteries to

    The ultimate summer reading list: 15 crime thrillers and mysteries to keep you guessing From Mick Herron's Slow Horses and Ian Rankin's Rebus to new books from Bret Easton Ellis and Emma Cline,...

  24. 'The Kamogawa Food Detectives' review: You'll savor Hisashi ...

    The Kamogowa Food Detectives is an off-beat bestselling Japanese mystery series that began appearing in 2013; now, the series is being published in this country, translated into English by Jesse ...

  25. Mystery Fiction Books

    Mystery Fiction Books Showing 1-50 of 11,180 The Girl on the Train (Hardcover) by Paula Hawkins (Goodreads Author) (shelved 38 times as mystery-fiction) avg rating 3.96 — 2,909,784 ratings — published 2015 Want to Read Rate this book 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars And Then There Were None (Paperback) by

  26. The Best Sci-Fi Mysteries

    When the rules for technology, geography and even personal identity can be changed, murder mysteries get complicated - and fascinating. Mary Robinette Kowal, award-winning novelist and author of the Hugo-nominated mystery The Spare Man, talks to us about her top five sci-fi mystery books - and takes us on a tour of the whodunnits, howdunnits, and whydunnits available to us in science ...

  27. The 17 Best Cozy Mystery Books to Read This Winter

    The first book in a culinary cozy mystery series, Arsenic and Adobo finds 0ur protagonist, Lila, moving back home from a horrible break-up. But when her ex-boyfriend, a food critic, drops dead ...

  28. Book review: A gritty family mystery in The Disappearance Of Patrick

    Ally Chua's debut novel was a finalist for the 2023 Epigram Books Fiction Prize. Read more at straitstimes.com. ... Mystery/Epigram Books/Paperback/280 pages/$26.90/Epigram Bookshop (str.sg/aNQz ...