Genre
The best Mystery books
Whodunits, hard-boiled detectives, amateur sleuths. The genre that pretends to be about the murder but is actually about the small town.
329 reviews in this genre.
Editor's picks
Highest-rated mystery on the shelf
The Lincoln Lawyer
by Michael Connelly
The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly 2005 review. Mickey Haller, a Los Angeles defense attorney who works out of the back of a Lincoln Town Car, takes a case that pulls him into something larger. The novel that launched a series and a film franchise.
The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
by Stuart Turton
The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton 2018 review. Aiden Bishop wakes in eight different bodies at a 1920s country house and must solve a murder. Costa First Novel Award winner.
Harlem Shuffle
by Colson Whitehead
Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead 2021 review. A Harlem furniture-store owner navigates three crime arcs across 1959-1964. Whitehead's pivot from Pulitzer-winning literary fiction to a Harlem crime trilogy.
Broken Harbor
by Tana French
Broken Harbor by Tana French 2012 review. A Dublin family is murdered in their half-finished suburban-development house. Fourth Dublin Murder Squad book and French's structural masterwork.
The Trees
by Percival Everett
The Trees by Percival Everett 2021 review. Brutal murders in Money, Mississippi, all link to the 1955 Emmett Till lynching. Booker Prize shortlist 2022.
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
by Olga Tokarczuk
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk 2018 review. A retired engineer in a remote Polish village investigates the deaths of local hunters. Tokarczuk's structural masterwork before her Nobel.
The Round House
by Louise Erdrich
The Round House by Louise Erdrich 2012 review. A thirteen-year-old Ojibwe boy investigates the rape of his mother in 1988 North Dakota. National Book Award winner.
Big Little Lies
by Liane Moriarty
Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty 2014 review. Three mothers at an Australian elementary school converge on a kindergarten Trivia Night where someone will die. The contemporary domestic-suspense novel that defined the late-2010s book-club shelf.
In the Woods
by Tana French
In the Woods by Tana French 2007 review. Dublin Murder Squad detective Rob Ryan is assigned to a child murder in the same woods where his two best friends disappeared twenty years earlier. The Edgar winner that launched the strongest contemporary literary-crime series.
Tell No One
by Harlan Coben
Tell No One by Harlan Coben 2001 review. A pediatrician receives an email containing a video clip of his murdered wife, eight years after her death. The single best Coben standalone and the one that defined the contemporary domestic-thriller register.
The Frozen River
by Ariel Lawhon
The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon 2023 review. Maine midwife Martha Ballard examines a frozen-river body in November 1789. Lawhon reconstructs the four-month murder investigation from Ballard's actual surviving diary.
Cold Steel Rain
by Kenneth Abel
The first Danny Chaisson novel. Kenneth Abel writing New Orleans politics and corruption with a New Orleans-specific moral exhaustion you cannot fake.
Down in the Flood
by Kenneth Abel
The third Danny Chaisson novel. Kenneth Abel writing Hurricane Katrina before Katrina happened.
The Rainaldi Quartet
by Paul Adam
Paul Adam's classical music mystery at its best. Four amateur musicians, a stolen Stradivarius, and a story that takes its setting fully seriously.
The Keeper of Lost Causes
by Jussi Adler-Olsen
The first Department Q novel. Detective Carl Morck goes down to the basement and finds a five-year-old missing-politician case. The series begins here.
Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories
by Jack Adrian
The Jack Adrian and Bill Pronzini-edited hard-boiled crime anthology. One of the best curated anthologies of the form ever assembled.
Enough Rope
by Lawrence Block
Lawrence Block's collected short fiction. Eighty-plus stories. The case for Block as one of the most versatile American crime writers of his generation.
Five Great Novels
by Lawrence Block
A Lawrence Block omnibus collecting Scudder, Bernie Rhodenbarr, and Keller. The form on multiple registers in one volume.
A Century of Noir : Thirty-Two Classic Crime Stories
by Max Allan Collins
Max Allan Collins and Mickey Spillane co-edit a century of noir. Curated with care and historical seriousness. A reference shelf in one volume.
Demolition Angel
by Robert Crais
Robert Crais's 2000 standalone. A LAPD bomb squad detective with a damaged past and a serial bomber. One of the best police procedurals of its decade.
Suspect
by Robert Crais
Robert Crais's standalone with K-9 dog Maggie and ex-Marine handler Scott James. The book that broke me and most other Crais readers I know.
The Promise: An Elvis Cole and Joe Pike Novel
by Robert Crais
Robert Crais bringing Maggie the K-9 dog back into the Cole and Pike series. The crossover I did not know I needed.
Eye of the Beholder
by David Ellis
David Ellis's 2007 thriller. A childhood friendship, a serial killer, and one of the cleanest psychological-thriller structures of its decade.
T is for Trespass
by Sue Grafton
The 20th Kinsey Millhone. Sue Grafton writing the late-series novel that almost no one writes well. A neighbor's elderly father, a new nurse, and one of the best villains of the form.
U is for Undertow
by Sue Grafton
The 21st Kinsey Millhone. A 1967 child-kidnapping case reopened by an adult recovered memory. Grafton at her structural best.
W is for Wasted
by Sue Grafton
The 23rd Kinsey Millhone. Sue Grafton near the end of the alphabet, writing two parallel cold cases and one of the most emotionally resonant entries in the series.
Crashed
by Timothy Hallinan
The first Junior Bender novel. Timothy Hallinan writing an LA burglar-turned-investigator with a stolen-art crisis and a teenage daughter. One of the most underread comic-crime debuts of the 2010s.
Little Elvises
by Timothy Hallinan
The second Junior Bender novel. A 70s music-industry investigation, a senior-citizen Mafia kingpin, and Hallinan tightening every dial.
The Fame Thief
by Timothy Hallinan
The Fame Thief by Timothy Hallinan review. The 3rd Junior Bender LA comic-crime novel. A 1950s Hollywood blacklist mystery, an ensemble of nonagenarian Mafia, the series at its absolute peak.
Herbie's Game
by Timothy Hallinan
Herbie's Game by Timothy Hallinan review. The 4th Junior Bender comic-crime novel. Junior's mentor Herbie Mott dies. Hallinan's most emotionally weighty entry yet.
The Fear Artist
by Timothy Hallinan
The Fear Artist by Timothy Hallinan review. The 5th Poke Rafferty Bangkok thriller. A travel-writer father, a dying CIA contact, and the Thai military police as the antagonist. Genuinely terrifying.
Human Remains
by Elizabeth Haynes
Elizabeth Haynes's 2013 psychological thriller about an epidemic of solitary deaths. Genuinely terrifying, beautifully written, severely underread.
Into the Darkest Corner
by Elizabeth Haynes
Into the Darkest Corner by Elizabeth Haynes review. The 2011 debut about a young woman rebuilding her life after escaping a violent partner. Genuinely terrifying domestic suspense.
The Late Show
by Michael Connelly
The Late Show by Michael Connelly 2017 review. Renee Ballard works the LAPD late shift in Hollywood after being banished from the elite Robbery-Homicide Division. The novel that launched the strongest new Connelly series in twenty years.
Mad Honey
by Jodi Picoult
Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan 2022 review. A New Hampshire beekeeper's teenage son is accused of murdering his girlfriend. The Picoult-Boylan co-authored breakout.
The Maid
by Nita Prose
The Maid by Nita Prose 2022 review. A neurodivergent hotel maid finds a guest dead in his suite and becomes the primary suspect. New York Times bestseller and the basis for the Florence Pugh film.
The Thursday Murder Club
by Richard Osman
The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman 2020 review. Four Kent retirees who discuss cold cases weekly land an actual murder in their retirement village. Canonical contemporary British cozy mystery.
Along Came a Spider
by James Patterson
Along Came a Spider by James Patterson 1993 review. Alex Cross, a Washington D. C. detective and psychologist, hunts a kidnapper who has taken two children from an elite Georgetown school. The first Alex Cross novel and the entry point to the highest-selling American thriller series of its generation.
Postmortem
by Patricia Cornwell
Postmortem by Patricia Cornwell 1990 review. The debut Kay Scarpetta novel that invented the modern forensic-pathologist thriller. A Richmond, Virginia serial killer is targeting women, and the chief medical examiner is the one who can stop him.
The Silent Patient
by Alex Michaelides
The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides 2019 review. A forensic psychotherapist works with an artist who has not spoken since the night she shot her husband. The thriller debut that topped the New York Times bestseller list for over a year and became the most-discussed contemporary psychological thriller of its decade.
Where the Crawdads Sing
by Delia Owens
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens 2018 review. Kya Clark raises herself in the North Carolina marshlands and becomes the suspect in a murder. The best-selling adult novel of 2019 and the 2022 Reese Witherspoon-produced film.
Collision
by Jeff Abbott
A Jeff Abbott standalone thriller. Two strangers, one very bad coincidence, and a fast-moving piece of mid-2000s suspense.
Fear
by Jeff Abbott
A Jeff Abbott standalone thriller. An amnesia premise that should not work and a writer who knows exactly how to make it.
Panic
by Jeff Abbott
Jeff Abbott writing a propulsive standalone thriller. Texas filmmaker discovers his real parents were not the people he thought they were.
Trust Me
by Jeff Abbott
A Jeff Abbott standalone thriller. The kind of high-concept hook with a satisfying execution that the form sometimes still delivers.
Queenpin
by Megan Abbott
Abbott's noir homage about a young woman apprenticed to an aging mob accountant. Reads like Cain in heels.
The Poet Game
by Salar Abdoh
Salar Abdoh's 2000 debut. Iranian-American intelligence thriller set in pre-9/11 New York. Quietly prescient, quietly elegant.
The Burying Field
by Kenneth Abel
The second Danny Chaisson novel. Kenneth Abel deepening the Louisiana political world with a parish-corruption investigation that earns its weight.
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