Best Detective Novel

Red Harvest is Dashiell Hammett's first novel, published in 1929 after appearing serially in Black Mask. Its unnamed Continental Op narrator travels to Personville, a corrupt western mining town nicknamed Poisonville, and manipulates rival criminal and political factions into destroying one another....

The Daughter of Time is a 1951 detective novel by Scottish writer Josephine Tey featuring Inspector Alan Grant. Confined to a hospital bed, Grant investigates whether King Richard III was responsible for the disappearance of the Princes in the Tower, using historical accounts and documentary evidenc...

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes is a collection of eleven Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, first issued in book form in 1893, with some editions dated 1894. Narrated principally by Dr. Watson, the cases include "Silver Blaze," "The Musgrave Ritual," and "The Final Problem." In the concl...

The Devotion of Suspect X is a 2005 Japanese crime novel by Keigo Higashino and a full-length entry in his Detective Galileo series. It presents the concealment of a killing early in the story, then follows physicist Manabu Yukawa as he tests the elaborate strategy devised by mathematician Tetsuya I...

The Hollow Man is a 1935 detective novel by John Dickson Carr, published in the United States as The Three Coffins. It features the scholar and amateur investigator Dr. Gideon Fell confronting two apparently impossible murders involving sealed or closely observed locations. The novel is especially n...

A Dark-Adapted Eye is a 1986 psychological crime novel by Ruth Rendell, published under her Barbara Vine pseudonym and awarded the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger. Narrated retrospectively by Faith Severn, it examines the history of the troubled Coverdale family after a journalist begins inve...

The Return of Sherlock Holmes is a collection of thirteen detective stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, first published in book form in 1905. Its opening story, The Adventure of the Empty House, reveals that Sherlock Holmes survived his apparent death at the Reichenbach Falls and follows his return to Lo...

In the Woods is a 2007 psychological crime novel by Tana French and the first book connected with the Dublin Murder Squad. Detective Rob Ryan investigates the killing of a girl near an archaeological site while concealing that, as a child, he was found in the same woods after two companions disappea...

"A Murder is Announced" is a detective novel by Agatha Christie, published in 1950, featuring the amateur investigator Miss Marple. The plot centers on a fictional English village called Chipping Cleghorn, where an advertisement in the local newspaper announces the exact time and location of a murde...

The Galton Case is a 1959 detective novel by Ross Macdonald featuring California private investigator Lew Archer. Archer is hired to locate Anthony Galton, the long-missing heir of a wealthy family, but the inquiry expands into questions of murder, inheritance, concealed identity, and competing vers...

A Fatal Inversion is a 1987 psychological crime novel by Ruth Rendell, written under the name Barbara Vine and awarded the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger. The story moves between the present and events surrounding a group of young people who shared an inherited English country house during t...

A Taste for Death is a 1986 detective novel by P. D. James featuring Scotland Yard commander and poet Adam Dalgliesh. The investigation begins when two men, one of them a government minister, are found with their throats cut in the vestry of a London church. The novel combines police procedure with...

Curtain: Poirot's Last Case is an Agatha Christie detective novel featuring Hercule Poirot and Captain Arthur Hastings. Christie wrote it during the Second World War and arranged for its publication near the end of her career; it appeared in 1975, before her death in 1976. Returning to Styles, the s...

Murder Must Advertise is a 1933 detective novel by Dorothy L. Sayers featuring the aristocratic investigator Lord Peter Wimsey. Wimsey enters a London advertising agency under an assumed identity after a copywriter dies in suspicious circumstances, then examines connections among office rivalries, d...

The Black Echo is Michael Connelly's 1992 debut novel and the first book featuring Los Angeles Police Department detective Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch. Bosch investigates the death of a fellow Vietnam War veteran found in a drainage pipe and discovers links to their wartime service as tunnel soldiers a...

Faithful Place is a 2010 crime novel by Tana French and the third book associated with the Dublin Murder Squad. Its narrator, undercover detective Frank Mackey, returns to the working-class Dublin neighborhood he left as a teenager after evidence emerges concerning the disappearance of his first lov...

Sidetracked is a crime novel by Swedish author Henning Mankell featuring police inspector Kurt Wallander. First published in Swedish in 1995, it follows Wallander and his colleagues as they investigate a sequence of ritualized killings while also confronting the death of a young woman who sets herse...

Strong Poison is a 1930 detective novel by Dorothy L. Sayers featuring Lord Peter Wimsey and introducing mystery novelist Harriet Vane. Harriet is tried for poisoning her former lover with arsenic, but the jury cannot reach a verdict, giving Wimsey limited time to identify another explanation before...

Journey Under the Midnight Sun is a crime novel by Japanese author Keigo Higashino, originally published in Japan in 1999. Beginning with the murder of a pawnbroker in an abandoned building in Osaka, it follows the consequences of the unresolved case across roughly two decades. The book uses shiftin...

Cards on the Table is a 1936 detective novel by Agatha Christie featuring Hercule Poirot. The victim, the collector Mr. Shaitana, invites four people he suspects of having committed undetected murders and four investigators to dinner, then arranges separate bridge games before being stabbed. Because...

Bluebird, Bluebird is a 2017 crime novel by American writer Attica Locke and the first book centered on Texas Ranger Darren Mathews. Mathews travels to the fictional East Texas town of Lark to investigate the deaths of a Black lawyer from Chicago and a local white woman. The novel combines a murder...

Endless Night is a 1967 standalone suspense novel by Agatha Christie, narrated in the first person by Michael Rogers. Michael dreams of building a house on a piece of English land known as Gipsy's Acre and marries the wealthy Ellie Goodman, despite warnings that the property is cursed. Rather than f...

The Underground Man is a 1971 detective novel by Ross Macdonald featuring private investigator Lew Archer. Set in Southern California during a destructive wildfire, it begins with a missing child and expands into an investigation of murder, inheritance, and concealed events from an earlier generatio...

Black Cherry Blues is a 1989 crime novel by James Lee Burke and the third book centered on Louisiana detective Dave Robicheaux. The story follows Robicheaux from New Iberia to Montana after he learns of a possible murder connected to oil exploration and becomes implicated in another killing. Combini...

Broken Harbour is a 2012 crime novel by Tana French and the fourth entry in her Dublin Murder Squad series. Detective Mick Kennedy investigates an attack on a family in an unfinished housing development outside Dublin, where a father and two children are dead and the mother is critically injured. Th...

Some Buried Caesar is a 1939 detective novel by Rex Stout featuring private investigator Nero Wolfe and his assistant and narrator, Archie Goodwin. After a roadside automobile accident, Wolfe becomes involved in events surrounding a prize bull and a murder at a rural exposition in upstate New York....

The Body in the Library is a 1942 detective novel by Agatha Christie featuring the amateur investigator Miss Marple. Colonel and Mrs. Bantry awaken to find the body of an unidentified young woman in the library of their country house near St. Mary Mead, prompting an inquiry into the victim's identit...

One Step Behind is a crime novel by Henning Mankell featuring Swedish police inspector Kurt Wallander. First published in Swedish in 1997, it follows the investigation of three young people murdered while wearing historical costumes near a nature reserve, alongside the death of one of Wallander's co...

The Crooked Hinge is a 1938 detective novel by John Dickson Carr featuring Dr. Gideon Fell. Set around an English country estate, its plot concerns two men who each claim to be the rightful heir and survivor of the sinking of the Titanic, followed by a seemingly impossible murder. The novel combines...