There's a particular pleasure in a good mystery: the click of a plot locking into place, the company of a detective you'd happily read forever. Our crime shelf now runs eighteen deep, walked in the order we'd recommend it: the cosies and classics first, then the detective series worth committing to, then the psychological end where things get darker.
Editor's Picks
- And Then There Were None - the best-selling crime novel ever
- The Appeal - you play the detective
- A Murder Is Announced - the most ingenious Marple
Cosy & Classic
The gentle end and the golden age - puzzles first, gore never.
01The Thursday Murder Club
Four sharp-witted retirees investigate cold cases until a real killing lands on the doorstep. Warm, funny and cleverer than it looks - the book that made cosy crime a phenomenon. Book one of five, so far.
02Magpie Murders
A classic village whodunnit nested inside a modern one, each as satisfying as the other. A love letter to Golden Age crime that also outsmarts it. Read it before the sequel, Moonflower Murders, which plays the same trick from a new angle.
03Still Life
The first Inspector Gamache mystery, in a Québec village you'll long to move to. Penny writes crime with rare warmth - and this is the start of a whole series to disappear into. Start at book one and go in order, because the village and its people are the real draw.
04And Then There Were None
Ten strangers on an island, picked off to a nursery rhyme. The best-selling crime novel of all time, and it still plays completely fair. No detective, no comfort, no equal.
05The Appeal
A murder mystery told entirely in emails and texts, with you cast as detective. Ingenious, moreish and a little bit addictive. Give it to someone who says they have gone off crime fiction; the format wins them back.
06A Murder Is Announced
A newspaper notice invites the village to a murder - at a stated time and place. Then it happens. The most ingenious Marple of them all. Post-war rationing detail makes it sing.
Detective Series
First books of series worth a shelf of their own - pick a detective, settle in.
07Case Histories
Three cold cases converge on private investigator Jackson Brodie. Atkinson writes crime like literary fiction with a body count - the thinking reader's detective series. First of five Jackson Brodie novels, and best read in order for the running jokes alone.
08The Cuckoo's Calling
A supermodel falls to her death; a one-legged veteran PI doesn't buy suicide. The start of the Strike series - old-fashioned detection done supremely well. Seven Strike novels follow this one.
09Knots and Crosses
The first Rebus: a killer taunting Edinburgh's least manageable detective. Twenty-plus books follow - the great British police series. Early Rebus is leaner than later.
10In the Woods
A detective investigates a child's murder in the same woods where his own childhood friends vanished. French writes the most beautiful sentences in crime fiction. The Dublin Murder Squad opener, and be warned that it deliberately leaves one thread hanging.
11The Dry
A federal agent returns to his drought-stricken hometown for a funeral that doesn't add up. You will feel the heat coming off the pages. Read it in a heatwave for the full effect, then move on to Force of Nature.
12A Rising Man
A Scotland Yard veteran takes a posting in colonial Calcutta and lands a political murder. Sharp on empire, wonderful on place - a series that gets better and better. Excellent on 1919 Calcutta, and the series improves with each book rather than settling.
Psychological
The darker end - unreliable narrators, moral vertigo and slow-closing traps.
13The Secret History
A clique of classics students at a Vermont college and the murder they commit. The modern campus classic - you know the killing from page one and read on anyway. The definitive dark academia novel.
14The Talented Mr Ripley
Tom Ripley is sent to bring a rich man's son home from Italy - and decides to become him instead. The most seductive villain in fiction. Four sequels, all worth your time.
15We Need to Talk About Kevin
A mother writes letters about the son who did the unthinkable. Uncomfortable, brilliant and impossible to stop discussing. Not one for a fragile week.
16Snow
A body in a Wexford country house, 1957, and a detective the Church would rather went away. An atmospheric locked-house mystery in prose worth slowing down for. Slow by design; come to it for the atmosphere rather than the puzzle.
17The Woman in White
A midnight encounter with a woman in white begins the original psychological thriller - asylums, identity and one of literature's great villains. Still gripping after 160 years. Serialised originally, so the pace never flags.
18The Turn of the Key
A nanny takes a too-good-to-be-true job in a Highlands smart-house that watches her back. Modern gothic done with real pace - and a killer final page. Ware's tightest, and very fast.
Frequently Asked Questions
What's the best crime novel for a beginner?
The Thursday Murder Club for warmth, And Then There Were None for the classic puzzle. Both are gateway drugs - see our cosy crime guide for the full path in.
Which detective series should I commit to?
Case Histories if you want beautiful writing, Knots and Crosses if you want the definitive British police series, The Cuckoo's Calling if you want pure detection.
How dark does this shelf get?
The psychological section earns its warnings - We Need to Talk About Kevin especially. The cosy section, by design, never does.
What is the difference between crime, mystery and thriller?
A mystery asks who did it and invites you to work it out. Crime is the broader category and often follows the investigation or the criminal rather than a puzzle. A thriller asks whether it can be stopped in time - the tension comes from what happens next rather than from what already happened.
Shelf 01Fiction
Literary novels, contemporary storytelling and the books everyone's talking about.
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Shelf 03Nature & Countryside
Nature writing, walking, farming and the wild places - our house speciality.
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Shelf 04History
Popular history, biography and the stories behind the stories.
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Shelf 05Cookery
Seasonal cooking, baking and the kitchen books worth the shelf space.
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