Recommended Mystery Novels

Last update: 03 Jun 2026 09:48
First version: Spun off from "Mysteries", 21 October 1999

Including true crime and spy stories, for lack of better places to put them.

Links on titles are generally to my own review or briefer comments.

See also: Mysteries to read.

Bruce Alexander (pseud. of Bruce Alexander Cook)
- Blind Justice
- Murder in Grub Street
- Watery Grave
- Person or Persons Unknown
Eric Ambler
- The Ability to Kill [Nonfiction]
- Background to Danger
- Cause for Alarm
- A Coffin for Dimitrios
- Journey into Fear
- Judgment on Deltchev
- The Levanter
- The Light of Day [filmed as Topakpi]
- A Passage of Arms
- The Schermer Inheritance
- State of Siege
Donna Andrews
- Murder, with Peacocks
- Murder with Puffins
- Revenge of the Wrought-Iron Flamingoes
Noreen Ayres
1. A World the Color of Salt
2. Carcass Trade
Margaret Barrett and Charles Dennis, Given the Crime
Nancy Bartholomew [Very light, but fun if approached in the right spirit]
1. Miracle Strip
2. Drag Strip
3. Film Strip
Josh Bazell
1. Beat the Reaper
2. Wild Thing
Alex Beer, The Second Rider
Cheryl Benard, Moghul Buffet
John Billheimer
1. The Contrary Blues
2. Highway Robbery
3. Dismal Mountain
4. Drybone Hollow
C. J. Box
1. Out of Season
2. Savage Run
3. Winterkill
4. Trophy Hunt
Edgar Box (pseud. of Gore Vidal) [Review]
- Death in the Fifth Position
- Death Likes It Hot
- Death Before Bedtime
Kylie Brant
1. Down the Darkest Road
2. Cold Dark Places
Alison Brennan
1. Love Me to Death
2. Kiss Me, Kill Me
3. If I Should Die
Ken Bruen, The Guards
Paul Bryers, The Prayer of the Bone
Chelsea Cain
- One Kick
Andrea Camilleri [A series, here in chronological order, but I started reading them out of sequence without losing anything]
1. The Shape of Water
2. The Terra-cotta Dog
3. The Snack Thief
4. Voice of the Violin
5. Excursion to Tindari
6. The Smell of the Night
7. Rounding the Mark
8. The Patience of the Spider
9. The Paper Moon
10. August Heat
11. The Wings of the Sphinx
12. The Track of Sand
13. The Potter's Field
14. The Age of Doubt
15. The Dance of the Seagull
16. Treasure Hunt
Truman Capote, In Cold Blood
Sarah Caudwell [Pseud. of the late Sarah Caudwell Cockburn]
- Thus Was Adonis Murdered
- The Sirens Sang of Murder
- The Shortest Route to Hades
- The Sibyl in Her Grave
Karen Rose Cercone
1. Steel Ashes
2. Blood Tracks
3. Coal Bones
Kate Collins
1. Mum's The Word
2. Slay It with Flowers
K. C. Constantine [A series of procedurals set in a fictional town just outside of Pittsburgh in the 1970s and 1980s. I can't say first-hand how well they capture the feeling of life then and there, but they have the way yinzers of those generations speak down cold, and are well-done mysteries besides.]
- Sunshine Enemies
Amanda Cross (pseud. of Prof. Dr. Carolyn Heilbrun)
- The James Joyce Murder
- Poetic Justice
- The Theban Mysteries
Jennifer Crusie
1. Welcome to Temptation
2. Faking It
Luca D'Andrea, Beneath the Mountain
Avram Davidson [General Review: Avram Davidson's Afterlife]
- The Enquiries of Dr. Eszterhazy [There's a later collection, Adventures of Dr. Eszterhazy, with more stories; I've not yet laid hands upon it.]
- The Investigations of Avram Davidson [Posthumous collection, ed. Grania Davis and Richard A. Lupoff]
Lindsay Davis
1. Silver Pigs [Review by Danny Yee]
2. Shadows in Bronze
3. Venus in Copper
4. The Iron Hand of Mars
5. Poseidon's Gold
6. Last Act in Palmyra
7. Time to Depart
8. A Dying Light in Corduba
9. Three Hands in the Fountain
10. Two for the Lions
11. One Virgin too Many
Bill DeAndrea [The "Killed In" books are a series, but I won't try to sort out order]
- Fatal Elixir
- Five O'Clock Lightning
- The Hog Murders
- The Lunatic Fringe
- "Matt Cobb" series
  1. Killed in the Ratings
  2. Killed in the Act
  3. Killed with a Passion
  4. Killed on the Ice
  5. Killed in Paradise
  6. Killed in Fringe Time
  7. Killed on the Rocks
  8. Killed in the Fog
Margaret Anne Doody
- Aristotle Detective
- Aristotle and the Secrets of Life
Ruth Downie
1. Medicus
2. Terra Incognita
3. Persona Non Grata
4. Caveat Emptor
5. Semper Fidelis
6. Tabula Rasa
Aaron Elkins
- Fellowship of Fear
- The Dark Place
- Murder in the Queen's Armes
- Old Bones
- Curses!
- Icy Clutches
- Make No Bones
- Dead Men's Hearts
- Twenty Blue Devils
Warren Ellis
- Crooked Little Vein
- Gun Machine
Janet Evanonvich [The series loses interest after a while. Maybe even before the 4th book...]
- One for the Money
- Two for the Dough
- Three to Get Deadly
- Four to Score
Christa Faust, Money Shot
Robert Ferrigno
- Cheshire Moon
- Dead Silent
- Flinch
- Heart Breaker
- The Horse Latitudes
Conor Fitzgerald, The Dogs of Rome
Shamini Flint, "Inspector Singh Investigates" series
1. A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder
2. A Bali Conspiracy Most Foul
Gillian Flynn
- Dark Places
- Sharp Objects
Leslie Forbes, Waking Raphael
John M. Ford, Scholars of Night
Ariana Franklin, Mistress of the Art of Death
Alan Furst [To be completely honest, Furst strikes me as imitation Eric Ambler, differing mostly in being more explicit about sex. However, it is good imitation Ambler, and since the original article is no longer being produced...]
- Night Soldiers
- Kingdom of Shadows
- Dark Star [Review by Brad DeLong]
Dale Furutani
1. Death at the Crossroads
2. Jade Palace Vendetta
Nicholas Freeling
- The Night Lords
- Cold Iron
Randall Garrett
- Too Many Magicians
- Lord Darcy Investigates
- Murder and Magic
Kathleen George
1. Taken
2. Fallen
3. Afterimage
4. The Odds
5. Hideout
6. Simple
7. A Measure of Blood
Tess Gerritsen [Comments]
1. The Apprentice
2. The Sinner
3. Body Double
4. Vanish
5. The Mephisto Club
6. The Keepsake
7. Ice Cold
8. The Silent Girl
9. Last to Die
10. Die Again
11. I Know a Secret
Lee Goldberg
1. Lost Hills
2. >Bone Canyon
3. Gated Prey
Nadia Gordon
1. Sharpshooter
2. Death by the Glass
3. Murder Alfresco
4. Lethal Vintage
Laurence Gough [Procedurals set in Vancouver; as hard-boiled as possible, given the circumstances. I haven't been able to track down the whole series.]
1. The Goldfish Bowl
2. Silent Knives = Death on a No. 8 Hook
3. Hot Shots
1. Killers
2. Heartbreaker
1. Karaoke Rap
1. Funny Money
Teresa Grant, Vienna Waltz
Sarah Graves
1. The Dead Cat Bounce
2. Triple Witch
3. Wicked Fix
4. Repair to Her Grave
5. Wreck the Halls
6. Unhinged
7. Mallets Aforethought
8. Tool and Die
9. Nail Biter
10. Trap Door
11. The Book of Old Houses
12. A Face at the Window
Jane Haddam (pseud. of Orania Papazoglou; see below)
- Not a Creature Was Stirring
- Precious Blood
- Acts of Darkness
- Quoth the Raven
- Great Day for the Deadly
- A Stillness in Bethlehem
- Feast of Murder
- Dear Old Dead
- Fountain of Death
- Murder Superior
- Festival of Deaths
- Bleeding Hearts
- And One to Die On
- Deadly Beloved
- Baptism in Blood
- Skeleton Key
- True Believers
- Somebody Else's Music
- Conspiracy Theory
- The Headmaster's Wife
- Hardscrabble Road
- Glasshouses
- Cheating at Solitaire
- Living Witness
Tarquin Hall
1. The Case of the Missing Servant
2. The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing
3. The Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken
4. The Case of the Love Commandos
5. The Case of the Reincarnated Client
Steve Hamilton, A Cold Day in Paradise
Elizabeth Hand
1. Generation Loss
2. Available Dark
3. Hard Light
Charlaine Harris
- A Secret Rage
- Last Scene Alive
Elsa Hart
1. Jade Dragon Mountain
2. The White Mirror
3. City of Ink
Sparkle Hayter (just looks like a pseud.)
1. What's a Girl Gotta Do?
2. Nice Girls Finish Last
3. Revenge of the Cootie Girls
4. The Last Manly Man
Lauren Henderson
1. Dead White Female
2. Too Many Blondes
3. Black Rubber Dress
4. Freeze My Margarita
5. Strawberry Tattoo
6. Chained
Carl Hiaasen
- Double Whammy
- Native Tongue
- Striptease
- Stormy Weather
- Tourist Season
Tony Hillerman
Peter Hoeg, Smilla's Sense of Snow [Except that the ending really makes no sense at all.]
Anna Lee Huber
1. The Anatomist's Wife
2. Mortal Arts
3. A Grave Matter
4. A Study in Death
5. As Death Draws Near
6. A Brush with Shadows
7. An Artless Demise
8. A Stroke of Malice
9. A Wicked Conceit
Elizabeth Ironside, A Very Private Enterprise
Stan Jones
1. White Sky, Black Ice
2. Shaman Pass
B. B. Jordan (pseud. of Frances Brodsky), Principal Investigation [The sequel, Secondary Immunization, was disappointing.]
Mary Louise Kelly
- Anonymous Sources
- The Bullet
Stephen King
1. Mr. Mercedes
2. Finders Keepers
Nancy Kress
1. Oaths and Miracles
2. Stinger
Jane Langton
- The Transcendental Murder
- Dark Nantucket Noon
- The Memorial Hall Murder
- Natural Enemy
- Good and Dead
- Murder at the Gardner
- The Dante Game
- Divine Inspiration
- God in Concord
- Dead as a Dodo
- The Face on the Wall
- The Thief of Venice
- Murder at Monticello
- The Escher Twist
- The Deserter: Murder at Gettysburg
Dennis Lehane
- Shutter Island
- A Drink before the War
J. Robert Lennon, Castle
Jonathan Lethem, Motherless Brooklyn
Herbert Lieberman, City of the Dead
Laura Lippman
- Tess Monahan series [Baltimore mysteries (except for In Big Trouble), which are supposed to be really good at conveying the feel of the city. I can't speak to that, but they did help me recognize some of the neighborhoods and even restaurants when I went there for a job interview in 2001.]
  1. Balitmore Blues
  2. Charm City
  3. Butcher's Hill
  4. In Big Trouble
  5. The Sugar House
  6. In a Strange City
  7. The Last Place
  8. By a Spider's Thread
  9. No Good Deeds
- Sunburn
Merline Lovelace
1. All the Wrong Moves
2. Now You See Her
3. Catch Her If You Can
Margaret Maron
1. Bootlegger's Daughter
2. Southern Discomfort
3. Shooting at Loons
4. Up Jumps the Devil
5. Killer Market
6. Home Fires
7. Storm Track
8. Uncommon Clay
9. Slow Dollar
10. High Country Fall
11. Rituals of the Season
12. Winter's Child
13. Hard Row
14. Death's Half Acre
William Marshall ["Yellowthread Street" mysteries, police procedurals set in Hong Kong. A weird combination of suspense, detection, broad humor and really disturbing situations, which works better than it has any right to, and sometimes (e.g., Perfect End, Frogmouth, and especially Out of Nowhere) leaves me twitchy. --- The internal chronology of the books is unimportant, so I've listed them alphabetically.]
- Frogmouth
- Gelignite
- The Hatchet Man
- Head First
- Inches
- Nightmare Syndrome
- Out of Nowhere
- Perfect End
- Roadshow
- Sci Fi
- Skullduggery
- Thin Air
- War Machine
- Yellowthread Street
Sujata Massey
- The Salaryman's Wife
- The Widows of Malabar Hill
Seicho Matsumoto
- Inspector Imanishi Investigates
- Points and Lines
Henry Mazel Murderously Incorrect [Review by Danny Yee]
Kirk Mitchell [Police procedurals, set in various parts of Indian Country. Benefit a bit from reading in order, though it's not strictly required.]
1. Cry Dance
2. Spirit Sickness
3. Ancient Ones
4. Sky Woman Falling
5. Dance of the Thunder Dogs
John Mortimer
- Rumpole of the Bailey
- The Trials of Rumpole
- Rumpole's Return
- Rumpole for the Defense
- Rumpole and the Golden Thread
- Rumpole's Last Case
- Rumpole and the Age of Miracles
- Rumpole à la Carte
- Rumpole and the Angel of Death
Katy Munger
- Legwork
- Money to Burn
- Bad to the Bone
- Better Off Dead
- Out of Time
Carol O'Connell, Mallory's Oracle
Karen E. Olson, The Missing Ink
Jake Page
1. The Stolen Gods [But maybe only those who have lived in Santa Fe can fully appreciate the delicious absurdity of the car chase]
2. The Deadly Canyon
3. The Knotted Strings
4. The Lethal Partner
Orhan Pamuk, My Name Is Red [Yes, recommending something whcih got the Nobel Prize as a mystery novel is a bit impious, but it is...]
Orania Papazoglou
- Charisma [Very good but very disturbing novel]
- Patience McKenna books
  - Death's Savage Passion
  - Sweet Savage Death
  - Wicked Loving Murder
  - Rich, Radiant Slaughter
  - Once and Always Murder
I. J. Parker [Narrative order, which is not the same as the publication order]
1. The Dragon Scroll
2. Rashomon Gate
3. Black Arrow
4. Island of Exiles
5. The Hell Screen
6. The Convict's Sword
7. The Masuda Affair
8. Fires of the Gods
Jill Paton Walsh, The Wyndham Case
Barbara Paul, Your Eyelids Are Growing Heavy
Rebecca Pawel [Comments]
1. Death of a Nationalist
2. Law of Return
3. The Watcher in the Pine
4. The Summer Snow
5. What Happened When the War Was Over
Anne Perry, The Cater Street Hangman
Marisha Pessl, Night Film
Elizabeth Peters
Ellis Peters, "Brother Cadfael" series
Sara Poole
1. Poisoner
2. The Borgia Betrayal
Bill Pomidor
1. Murder by Prescription
2. Skeletons in the Closet
3. Ten Little Medicine Men
4. Mind over Murder
Richard Price
- Clockers
- Freedomland
Phil Rickman [Nominally horror novels tracking the career of the Reverend Merrily Watkins, an Anglican priest working in a particularly depressed area of the Welsh-English border, they follow the British ghost-story convention of having a parallel "rational" explanation, so they can be enjoyed as mysteries with creepy effects. Sometimes, to be honest, Rickman's non-supernatural explanations are so contrived any thinking person would go for the ghosts.]
1. The Wine of Angels
2. Midwinter of the Spirit
3. A Crown of Lights
4. The Cure of Souls
5. The Lamp of the Wicked
6. Prayer of the Night Shepherd
7. The Smile of a Ghost
8. The Remains of An Altar
9. Fabric of Sin
Madeleine E. Robins
1. Point of Honour
2. Petty Treason
3. Sleeping Partner
4. The Doxies Penalty
Laura Joh Rowland [Historical mysteries in Tokugawa-era Japan. Series fatigue set in for me around volume 4...]
1. Shinju
2. Bundori
3. The Concubine's Tattoo
4. The Samurai's Wife
C. J. Sansom
1. Dissolution
2. Dark Fire
3. Sovereign
4. Revelation
Dorothy Sayers
Steven Saylor
- Roman Blood
- Arms of Nemesis
- A Murder on the Apian Way
Aileen Schumacher [Engineering mysteries]
1. Engineered for Murder
2. Framework for Death
3. Affirmative Reaction
4. Rosewood's Ashes
Zoe Sharp
1. Killer Instinct
1. The Fifth Victim
Roger L. Simon, Raising the Dead
Dan Simmons
- Darwin's Blade
- Hardcase
Karin Slaughter [Warning: these are extremely disturbing novels; the first two are about, respectively, serial rape and murder, and child pornography. The others are not much, if at all, lighter. But they are very well-written.]
- "Grant County" series:
  1. Blindsighted
  2. Kisscut
  3. A Faint Cold Fear
  4. Indelible
  5. Faithless
  6. Beyond Reach
- 1. Triptych
  2. Fractured
- Undone [fuses the two series]
- Broken
- Fallen
- Criminal
- Unseen
- The Last Widow
- The Silent Wife
Salla Simukka, The Snow White Trilogy
1. As Red as Blood
2. As White as Snow
3. As Black as Ebony
Julia Spencer-Fleming
1. In the Bleak Midwinter
2. A Fountain Full of Blood
3. Out of the Deep I Cry
4. To Darkness and to Death
5. All Mortal Flesh
6. I Shall Not Want
7. One Was a Soldier
8. Through Evil Days
9. Hid from Our Eyes
10. At Midnight Comes the Cry
Dana Stabenow, the "Kate Shugak" series
1. A Cold Day for Murder
2. A Fatal Thaw
3. Dead in the Water
4. A Cold-Blooded Business
5. Play with Fire
Rex Stout
Peter Straub [Straub normally writes horror novels, and these get marketed as such, but they're really excellent mystery novels and thrillers, with no supernatural elements at all, unless I've completely misunderstood them. Which is possible, since he's tricky.]
- The Hellfire Club
- The Blue Rose books [Three interlocking but completely incompatible renditions of a story about a killer called "Blue Rose", and three different disguises for Straub's native city of Milwaukee; this is impressive, if you notice it, but not distracting in the least if you don't. Reading Koko and The Throat could convince you that Straub fought in the Vietnam War, but then, reading his Ghost Story could convince you that he lived in a haunted town in upstate New York.]
  1. Koko
  2. Mystery
  3. The Throat
Dorothy Sucher, Dead Men Don't Give Seminars [Good observations of what theoretical physicists are like; also a fun novel.]
Leann Sweeney
1. Pick Your Poison
2. A Wedding to Die For
3. Dead Giveaway
4. Shoot from the Lip
Virginia Swift
1. Brown-eyed Girl
2. Bad Company
3. Bye, Bye Love
4. Hello, Stranger
Akimitsu Takagi, The Tattoo Murder Case [Nowhere near as kinky as the cover-blurbs make it sound]
James Tucker [Pittsburgh settings, but I read and enjoyed the first two before moving here]
1. Abra Cadaver
2. Hocus Corpus
3. Tragic Wand
Antti Tuomainen, Palm Beach, Finland
Janwillen van de Wettering, Robert Van Gulik: His Life, His Work
Robert Hans van Gulik [Unfortunately, I can't really put these in narrative order, since I haven't any copies to hand...]
- (trans.) Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee: Dee Gong An
- The Chinese Nail Murders [Review by Danny Yee]
- The Chinese Gold Murders [Review by Danny Yee]
- The Chinese Maze Murders
- Chinese Lake Murders
- The Moneky and the Tiger
- Judge Dee at Work
- The Phantom of the Temple
- The Haunted Monastery
- Murder in Canton
- The Red Pavillion
- The Willow Pattern
- Poets and Murder
John Holbrook Vance
Fred Vargas
- The Chalk Circle Man
- Seeking Whom He May Devour
- This Night's Foul Work
Donald Westlake
- Kahawa
- Nobody's Perfect
Jenny White
1. The Sultan's Seal
2. The Abyssinian Proof
3. The Winter Thief
Jen Williams, A Dark and Secret Place = Dog Rose Dirt
Lauren Willig [OK, the mysteries are generally feeble and these are mostly enjoyable as historical romance novels...]
1. The Secret History of the Pink Carnation
2. The Masque of the Black Tulip
3. The Deception of the Emerald Ring
4. The Seduction of the Crimson Rose
5. The Temptation of the Night Jasmine
6. Betrayal of the Blood Lily
7. The Mischief of the Mistletoe
8. The Orchid Affair
9. The Garden Intrigue
10. The Passion of the Purple Plumeria
11. The Mark of the Midnight Manzanilla
12. The Lure of the Moonflower
Susan Wolfe, Escape Velocity
N. Lee Wood
1. Kingdom of Lies
2. Kingdom of Silence