15 of the Best Mystery Books of All Time

This mystery-thriller received the Best Novel award from the Mystery Writers of Japan in 1997, and it received an Edgar Award nomination after it was translated into English in 2004. After a young mother working a night shift at a Tokyo box lunch company strangles her abusive husband, her co-workers help her conceal the crime. Which, as it turns out, they have a knack for doing. When the yakuza catch wind, they employ these women to dispose the evidence of their own crimes.

Roseanna, the first novel in the Martin Beck police procedural series, established many of today’s conventions in the Nordic noir genre. When the body of a woman is discovered in Lake Vattern, Swedish detective Martin Beck is called in to investigate. But not only does Beck need to uncover the killer — he must start with discovering the victim’s identity.

While short stories like the C. Auguste Dupin series by Edgar Allan Poe came before, The Notting Hill Mystery is considered to be one of the first ever detective novels (even before Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone). Originally serialized and published in one volume later on, this novel follows insurance investigator Ralph Henderson as he solves the suspicious death of the Baron R__’s wife.

Considered one of the best mystery-thrillers of all time, Bluebird, Bluebird follows Black Texas Ranger Darren Matthews who returns to his hometown Lark while on suspension and separated from his wife. Here he investigates the recent murders of a man and a woman that, despite what the local authorities say, he knows were racially motivated.

Newbery Award–winning novel The Westing Game is notable for engaging many children in the mystery genre from its publication in 1978 to the present day. After the eccentric millionaire Sam Westing dies, his will reveals that the 16 tenants of the Sunset Towers are named as his potential heirs. But only one of the tenants will inherit his fortune by unraveling the clues Sam Westing left behind.

Written in 1986, this novel is the first in the Lambda Award–winning Henry Rios series.

Henry Rios is a gay Latino defense lawyer determined to serve clients that his straight, white colleagues refuse to represent. After falling for a recovering drug addict named Paris, Rios is devastated when his lover is killed in a way that the police call “accidental.” But Rios sees the signs that point to murder as the cause, and he starts his investigation by unraveling the family secrets alluded to by Paris while he was still alive.

This thoughtful and character-driven novel is the first in the Edgar-Award winning Mas Arai mystery series. Gardener and widower Mas Arai is visited by a stranger who, like him, is a survivor of the Hiroshima bombing. The bombing and racism towards Japanese American immigrants brings back traumatic memories for Mas. But when the stranger is found dead, Mas must unravel a murder connected to secrets that he himself has fought to keep hidden.

Originally called to investigate heresy allegations, medieval monk Brother William of Baskerville soon finds himself entangled in a serial murder case. It’s up to Brother William, with his philosophical knowledge and logical mindset, to catch the killer himself in this award-winning historical mystery.

This chilling mystery-thriller is a novel where nobody can be easily trusted. U.S. Marshall Teddy Daniels is called to investigate a disappearance of a patient at the Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane, located on the remote Shutter Island, who is convicted for murder. When a hurricane strikes, Teddy is forced to confront not only the trail Rachel Soldano left behind but a dark, disturbing tragedy from his past.