There’snothing that enthralls quite like a good mysterynovel. On some level, every genre of fiction motivates you to turn the page by making you wonder what’s going to happen next, but the stories that revolve most heavily around that element are often the most difficult to put down.
Mystery novels as we know them have existed for hundreds of years now, and in that time, the craft has gotten quite advanced, with various authors finding ingenious and sometimes insidious ways to hook us. If you’re looking to get lost in a nice mystery, here are some of the best mystery novels out there for you to check out.
The Complete Sherlock Holmes Novel Collection
Some of the oldest and most influential mysteries
Essentially the founder of the mystery genre, this collection contains several full-length novels featuring the original literary detective, Sherlock Holmes!
TheSherlock Holmesbooks essentially invented the mystery novel as we know it. Though some of the early works lack what are now regarded as staple elements of the genre, that’s only because it was these books that would ultimately define what would come to be regarded as the rules by which the genre operated.
This single volume collects the four novel-length Sherlock Holmes works: A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of Four, The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Valley of Fear. These are four of the oldest and most influential works inthe mystery genre, and, though elements of them have aged, the stories generally hold up to this very day.
Holmes may have laid the groundwork for the modern mystery novel, but Agatha Christie is the one who built on that foundation to give us the genre that we have today. She is responsible for dozens of the most popular works of the genre, and, given how excellent each of her works are, many of them could’ve reasonably been placed on this list.
In the end, we decided to go with And Then There Were None, one of her most suspenseful and enthralling works. In it, ten strangers are gathered on a private island by mysterious invitations, and are forced to enact a sort of early twentieth century game ofAmong Us, as they’re killed off one by one. Which of them is responsible, and why are they doing this? Obviously, we’re not going to spoil the surprise.
Though she is better known for Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn is the author of several amazing works of mystery, including this work, which we selected because there are a ton of little ways in which it feels the most like a classic mystery novel. After a pair of murders in her tiny home town in rural Missouri, a troubled reporter is forced to return to her birthplace, and the abusive home that came with it.
This novel has multiple amazing antagonists. We can’t say much more, because who does and doesn’t turn out to be an antagonist constitutes a spoiler, but each of them is complex, fascinating, and disturbing, while still being fun to hate in a way that’s difficult to pull off in a story as serious as this, but which this novel executes brilliantly.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
New books are still coming out
A modern classic, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is starting point in a thrilling and still-ongoing series of novels about intrigue, murder, and revenge.
Odds are, you’ve heard of this novel before. Not only is it a very successful work of suspense and mystery, it’s the beginning of a larger series of thrillers. Though the mystery element of these books drops off a tad later on, this work and its first few sequels are classic mysteries, and very well-crafted ones as well. This first one is about a cold case, the decades-old disappearance of a billionaire’s son.
This series is still going, by the way. The rights to the characters have changed hands a few times, and the author of the original trilogy is no longer in charge of them, but there are still new stories coming out, with the same characters this novel will make you love.
Those Empty Eyes
There are still good ones coming out, that’s for sure
This novel chronicles the efforts of a young woman to find the truth about her family’s massacre, a massacre she was once accused of perpetrating.
You know how those True Crime people get, eh? The protagonist of this novel certainly does. Not only was her entire family killed when she was a teenager, but she was originally pegged as the culprit. She was eventually exonerated, and she’s never given up on figuring out the truth about what happened.
Though this is not the only recent book on this list, it is the newest, being set in 2024. What’s more, it’s a book that feels extremely modern, with the internet and its often noxious True Crime culture playing a major role in proceedings.
Then She Was Gone
As much a romance novel as a mystery novel
An extremely affecting novel about grief and how we often fail to deal with it, Then She Was Gone tells a tragic yet gripping story.
Possibly the most emotionally compelling work on this list, Then She Was Gone is a romantic mystery about a grieving mother whose love interest’s child uncannily resembles the one she lost. This is a story about loss, and it does an excellent job exploring how it damages us.
It’s a bittersweet book, to be sure, and the ending isn’t totally happy (which purists would say means it technically doesn’t count as a romance novel), but it’s still an extremely worthwhile journey to go on. Its narrative is sure to take you on an engaging ride.
The Lake House
Mystery novels within mystery novels
A love letter to the mystery genre as a whole, The Lake House tells the story of an acclaimed mystery novelist whose baby brother vanished decades ago.
Though The Lake House is not the newest item on this list, it’s been placed last because it is a love letter to the entire mystery genre. One of this book’s two protagonists is an acclaimed mystery novelist, who fears that her fledgling efforts as a young writer, the same ones that would evolve into her now-successful career, played a terrible role in the disapearance of her younger brother.
This is not a parody novel, just a highly self-aware one. It still tells a totally serious, and very engaging, mystery story, with a satisfying and heartwarming ending.
FAQ
What is the world’s best-selling mystery?
This isn’t as simple to quantify as many of us would like, as there are different ways of counting sales, but And Then There Were None is one reasonable candidate for this.
Who is the #1 mystery author?
As with the above, this isn’t always simple to quantify who or what is the best-performing example of an entire genre. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is possibly the best-known author of mystery novels in history. Agatha Christie is also among the most prolific and successful.
