Top 20 detective novels reviewed

The 20 detective novels listed below may not be the 20 “best” detective novels, even by my uniquely idiosyncratic criteria. I’d read a lot of work in the genre even before I began writing these reviews in January 2010—and there are tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of detective novels I’ve never read. But, for what it’s worth, I gave every one of these 20 books a rating of ★★★★★. And they’re the best of the more than 250 detective novels I’ve read over the past decade.

This post was updated on August 22, 2024.

In this list of the top 20, I’ve arbitrarily limited myself to one book per author, which is significant because several of the authors might easily appear here multiple times. Below, I’ve listed more than 200 other excellent detective novels reviewed here. I’ve assigned nearly all of them either a rating of ★★★★☆ or ★★★★★. In other words, you’ll find here only the best of those I’ve read and reviewed here to date. As you can see, many authors appear numerous times. When I find a series of novels that I like, I usually try to read them all from the first book to the latest.

In both lists, books are listed alphabetically by the authors’ last names.

Keep in mind that every one of these 200+ suspenseful detective novels is linked to the review I posted on this site.

Image of mystery writers who wrote many of the detective novels reviewed here — If you’re a mystery fan, you may not recognize any of the faces in this picture. But, chances are, you’ve read some of their books. The logo hovering above them recalls Edgar Allen Poe, whose eponymous award these people have all won. Image: Publishers Weekly

The 20 top detective novels reviewed here

A Conspiracy of Faith (Department Q #3) by Jussi Adler-Olsen (2013) 508 pages ★★★★★ — A captivating tale of religious fanaticism, blackmail, and serial murder

In the third novel in Adler-Olsen’s extraordinary Department Q series, the three misfits of the Copenhagen Police’s cold case department wrestle with fiendishly complex investigations involving a message in a bottle, religious fanaticism, kidnapping, serial murder, arson, and gang warfare. Carl Mørck heads the team. He is assisted by Hafez el-Asaad, a brilliant Syrian refugee with a mysterious past, and a schizophrenic “secretary” named Rose who rarely follows orders. It sounds foolishly complicated and more than a little silly, but it works beautifully. Read the review.

A Stained White Radiance (Dave Robicheaux #5) by James Lee Burke (1992) 394 pages ★★★★★ — A penetrating look at lowlife on the bayou

James Lee Burke is hands down the most accomplished literary stylist in the crime genre. His series of novels featuring Detective Dave Robicheaux of the New Iberia Parish (Louisiana) Sheriff’s Department evokes the rural South in all its lyrical beauty and suppressed violence. A Stained White Radiance, the fifth book in the series, involves Klansmen, Nazis, and Mafia wiseguys. Dave takes on the bad guys with the support of his loving family and of his former partner on the New Orleans Police Department, Cletus Purcell. Read the review.

The Crossing (Harry Bosch #8) by Michael Connelly (2015) 272 pages ★★★★★ — A police procedural and courtroom drama rolled into one excellent novel

In one of the most recent entries in Michael Connelly’s bestselling series featuring LAPD Detective Harry Bosch, the now-retired investigator teams up with his half-brother, Mickey Haller, the protagonist of another of Connelly’s long-running series of crime novels. In this hybrid work—a police procedural and a courtroom drama rolled into one—Harry has “crossed over” to the defense to work with Mickey on a fascinating capital murder case. Read the review.

And Justice There is None (Duncan Kincaid & Gemma James #8) by Deborah Crombie (2002) 416 pages ★★★★★ — A murder mystery unfolds against the backdrop of the antiques trade

Detective Inspector Gemma James and her former partner and current lover, Superintendent Duncan Kincaid, make the big move into a home together in Deborah Crombie’s excellent murder mystery series chronicling their rise through the ranks in the Metropolitan Police. In this entry in the series, the mystery unfolds against the backdrop of the London antiques trade. Read the review.

A Banquet of Consequences (Inspector Lynley #19) by Elizabeth George (2015) 577 pages ★★★★★ — Elizabeth George’s latest is much more than a whodunit

The aristocratic Inspector Thomas Lynley and his brilliant but exasperating partner at New Scotland Yard, Detective Barbara Havers, become embroiled in a murder mystery involving a famous feminist author. Meanwhile, Lynley and Havers wrestle with their personal demons. On the surface, this is a simple whodunit, but the psychological depth of George’s character development lifts this (and other novels she’s written) far out of the realm of simplistic detective fiction. Read the review.

IQ (IQ #1) by Joe Ide (2016) 337 pages ★★★★★ — Sherlock in the hood: inner-city crimesolver

This is the only debut novel among the 15 books listed here. Japanese-American screenwriter Joe Ide writes about a brilliant, self-taught young man in East Long Beach, California, who puts to work his unique deductive skills to solve crimes involving poor people in African-American and Latino neighborhoods. IQ is Isaiah Quintabe. In this, the first book of a series, IQ shows up the police by solving a case forced on him by a wealthy rap star whose life has been threatened. All the while, he pursues the identity of the person who killed his older brother while IQ was in high school. Read the review.

A Man Without Breath (Bernie Gunther #9) by Philip Kerr (2013) 477 pages ★★★★★ — Mass murder in the Katyn Forest

Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther novels are all grounded in the history of Nazi Germany. They frequently feature historical figures, many of them famous. In the ninth book of the series, Bernie conducts a wartime investigation for the German military about the 1940 massacre of 22,000 Polish officers by Josef Stalin’s NKVD. The event entered into history as the Katyn Forest Massacre. The cast of characters includes Field Marshall Günther von Kluge, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, as well as Josef Goebbels and a host of lesser-known, real-world officials in World War II Germany. Even Adolf Hitler lurks behind the curtain, stage right, in a critical episode in the novel. Read the review.

How It Happened by Michael Koryta (2018) 368 pages ★★★★★ — A top-notch thriller set on the coast of Maine

As this standalone novel opens, a young woman named Kimberly (Kimmy) Crepeaux is confessing to taking part in a pair of gruesome murders. Rob Barrett, the FBI agent sent to Maine to interview her, has finally found his patience paying off. Now, after two months of interrogating Kimmy, he understands at last what happened. Or does he? When Rob and his local partner, Lieutenant Don Johansson of the Maine State Police, go to a nearby pond to uncover the bodies, there are no bodies to be found. Read the review.

The Preacher (Fjällbacka #2) by Camilla Läckberg (2004) 436 pages ★★★★★ — A great example of Swedish noir

Camilla Läckberg writes about the partnership between Detective Patrik Hedström and real-crime writer Ericka Falck in the Swedish seaside town of Fjällbacka. In The Preacher, Patrik is drawn into a seemingly unsolvable case involving the murder of three teenage girls decades apart. His efforts are frustrated by two older, incompetent police officers and a boss of limited intelligence who claims every success as his own. Meanwhile, Ericka is struggling through a difficult pregnancy. The preacher of the title is a Bible-thumping fundamentalist who plays a major role in the story. Läckberg is reported to be the most successful native author in Swedish history. Read the review.

Bluebird Bluebird by Attica Locke (2017) 318 pages ★★★★★ — A compelling tale of murder, race, and family secrets

Two bodies have turned up in quick succession in a small town in hardscrabble East Texas. The sheriff is inclined to treat them as unconnected. But not so Darren Matthews, a Texas Ranger who has come to town at the urging of a friend in the FBI who suspects larger forces at work there. An African-American, Darren fears a connection with the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas (ABT), a violent racist gang enriched by drug smuggling. Read the review.

The Galton Case (Lew Archer #8 of 18) by Ross MacDonald (1959) 255 pages ★★★★★ — A classic detective novel that’s hard to put down

Reading as much as I do, it’s highly unusual for me to come across a book I find so riveting that I lose track of time. But this masterpiece of detective fiction did that to me. Strangely, I had read the novel nearly half a century ago, when I was in the process of devouring all 18 of the Lew Archer tales. But Ross MacDonald’s plot was so fiendishly complex, and the book was stuffed with so many startling surprises, that I couldn’t possibly have remembered them all. Thus, “I (literally) couldn’t put it down.” Here’s a classic detective novel that fully merits the label.

In The Galton Case, an attorney in Santa Teresa summons Lew Archer to investigate the disappearance of a wealthy woman’s son. (Santa Teresa is MacDonald’s lightly disguised version of Santa Barbara, California, where he lived for decades.) Tony Galton vanished 20 years earlier, in 1936, at the age of 22. Now, as she nears death, old Maria Galton wants to reconcile with her long-lost son. Archer regards the case as a waste of time and money, but he’s got plenty of time, and he won’t turn down the money. Read the review.

The Double Comfort Safari Club (#1 Ladies Detective Agency #11) by Alexander McCall Smith (2010) 225 pages ★★★★★ — About cakes, cattle, and the passing of the old ways

For any reader looking for respite from the unrelenting violence of the world we live in, The Double Comfort Safari Club is a worthy antidote. The characters in this novel “. . . talked about all sorts of things . . .: about weddings and children and money. About cattle. About jealousy and envy and love. About cakes. About friends and enemies and people they remembered who had gone away, or changed, or even died. About everything, really.” About everything, indeed. The #1 Ladies Detective Agency Series is less a collection of detective stories than a continuing portrait of a fascinating worldview unfamiliar to most North Americans. Read the review.

The Leopard (Harry Hole #8) by Jo Nesbø (2011) 626 pages ★★★★★ — Is Jo Nesbø the world’s best crime novelist?

Detective Harry Hole of the Oslo Police Department is the protagonist of a long and ongoing series of bestselling novels by Jo Nesbø. Harry is an alcoholic who frequently descends into deep depression, sometimes over his difficult personal life, sometimes over the mysteries he is investigating. The Leopard portrays the conflicted homicide cop in the depth of his complexity, pursuing a fiendish serial killer from Norway to the Congo. Read the review.

The Ghosts of Belfast (Belfast #1) by Stuart Neville (2009) 337 pages ★★★★★ — A grim story of war and betrayal in Northern Ireland

You may never have read a murder mystery like this one. The protagonist, Gerry Fegan, is a former hit man for the IRA responsible for the deaths of twelve people (the “ghosts” of the title), and it’s never much of a mystery when he begins killing again. The mystery lies deeper, somewhere in the vicinity of his stunted family life and the treacherous relationships among the others in his violence-prone faction. As Fegan reflects, “You can’t choose where you belong, and where you don’t. But what if the place you don’t belong is the only place you have left?” Read the review.

Brush Back (V. I. Warshawski #17), by Sara Paretsky (2015) 475 pages ★★★★★ — A fascinating detective novel about big city corruption

Sara Paretsky’s excellent series of V.I. Warshawski detective novels revolves around the widespread political corruption in her hometown, Chicago. Though by no means a superhero, V.I. is sometimes referred to as “Chicago’s best investigator.” In Brush Back, she investigates an alleged murder committed by her much-revered cousin, the late Bernard “Boom-Boom” Warshawski, a legendary star on the Chicago Blackhawks hockey team. As V.I. pursues the case in the face of a painful media storm, she comes up against the powers-that-be in her old neighborhood—and their connections to much higher places in the firmament of Chicago politics. Read the review.

The Black Book (Inspector Rebus #5) by Ian Rankin (2011) 372 pages ★★★★★ — An Elvis-themed restaurant, a five-year-old murder, and Inspector Rebus

Read any one of the twenty-seven novels published to date in the Inspector Rebus series, and you will have no doubt that Ian Rankin, is a native Scotsman, and proud of it. You’ll rush to the dictionary from time to time to look up strange words known only to the inhabitants of that cold and rain-soaked land. And you’ll read about people actually eating haggis—willingly! (They even ask for it in restaurants!) This is all evident in The Black Book, the fifth entry in the series, a more mature effort than the four novels that precede it. John Rebus seems to have grown into his skin. Read the review.

Rough Country (Virgil Flowers #3) by John Sandford (2009) 404 pages ★★★★★ — John Sandford’s best Virgil Flowers novel?

Virgil Flowers is one of the most intriguing characters in detective fiction today. He’s the top investigator in the (fictional) Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. His boss, Lucas Davenport, gives him only the toughest cases. But he is in no way a stereotype. For one thing, he doesn’t like guns, and he hates shooting people. Rough Country, the third book in the Virgil Flowers series, opens with the murder of Erica McDill, a partner in a prominent Minneapolis advertising agency at a resort for women-only in the state’s lake country. Read the review.

Triptych (Will Trent #1) by Karin Slaughter (2006) 512 pages ★★★★★ — Karin Slaughter’s Will Trent: the first novel

Karin Slaughter’s ongoing series features Agent Will Trent of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. A functional illiterate due to profound dyslexia, Will has nonetheless acquired both a college degree and a doctorate in criminology. He is regarded as one of the bureau’s finest investigators. Triptych is the first novel in a series that now includes thirteen novels. In collaboration with his on-again, off-again wife, Angie Polaski, and two local cops, Will heads an investigation into serial rape and murder. Read the review.

Victory Square (Yalta Boulevard #5) by Olen Steinhauer (2008) 368 pages ★★★★★ — A powerful tale of life in Eastern Europe during the fall of Communism

Espionage novelist Olen Steinhauer earlier wrote a cycle of five detective novels set in a fictional Communist Central European country. The cycle spans the years from 1948, when the Soviet Empire consolidated its hold on the nations directly to its West, until 1990, when the USSR and the Warsaw Pact collapsed. Victory Square is the final novel in the cycle. The events in the book are based on the fall of Nicolae Ceausescu’s brutal dictatorial regime in Romania. An aging homicide cop, Emil Brod, now Chief of the Militia, is just days from retirement. A new case forces him to contend with an unraveling government, a series of shocking murders, and a best friend engaged at the very center of the revolutionary movement. Read the review.

The Crow Girl by Erik Axl Sund (2016) 770 pages ★★★★★ — Pedophiles, serial murder, and the Holocaust in a Swedish psychological thriller

If you favor mysteries and thrillers full of surprises, you’ll love The Crow Girl by the Swedish writing team that publishes under the name Erik Axl Sund. No matter how shrewd and analytical you might be, I predict you won’t figure out who’s who and what’s what until at least close to the end of this staggeringly complex novel. And, unless you read at a blistering pace, this is not a book you’ll finish at one sitting: the hardcover edition runs to 784 pages. To say that I enjoyed this novel would be misleading. At times it’s gruesome beyond belief. And I found the constant use of long Swedish place names distracting. Yet the writing is devilishly clever. It’s difficult to put the book down. In fact, I found it impossible. Read the review.

Among the Mad (Maisie Dobbs #6) by Jacqueline Winspear (2010) 319 pages ★★★★★ — Shell shock, madness, and the Great Depression

Jacqueline Winspear’s unusual historical detective novels feature the “psychologist and investigator” Maisie Dobbs, who operates as an “inquiry agent” in England during the 1930s. In Among the Mad, Maisie and her sidekick, Billy Beale, are pressed into service by New Scotland Yard’s secretive Special Branch, charged with finding a man who has threatened the Prime Minister himself. The action unfolds over the last week of 1931 and the first month of 1932, a time when Britain was experiencing the worst of the Great Depression. As its title suggests, one of the book’s overarching themes is the primitive care of mental illness in that era. The persistent impacts of World War I loom large, most immediately in the thousands of veterans suffering from what today we would call PTSD. Read the review.

200+ other excellent detective novels reviewed here

The list below includes several examples of series in which you’ll find many titles. Some are continuous. In others, one or more numbers in the series are missing. Possible reasons include that I read and assigned a rating lower than ★★★★☆ or ★★★★★, I’ve listed the title in the top 20, or I haven’t yet gotten around to reading the book.