There’s never a bad time of year to dive into a great mystery thriller book, but something about fall and winter—with their longer nights and sweater weather—makes them the perfect time to hunker down with a heart-racing whodunit. The best books of the genre perfectly combine a mystery and eerie tone with a puzzle so cleverly constructed that it’s almost impossible to solve before the narrator spells it all out, plus enough shocking twists and suspense to keep you on the edge of your seat the entire time.
Luckily for fans of thriller books, there’s no shortage of installments in the genre, which stretches back hundreds of years to include classics from the likes of Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle and spans tales of detectives, spies, and everyday citizens out for revenge. Here, we’ve rounded up dozens of the best mystery thriller books, from those iconic early entries to mid-century bestsellers from Agatha Christie to modern classics from Gillian Flynn, Liane Moriarty, and S.A. Cosby to even newer novels. Consider your reading list sorted for the foreseeable future, and good luck solving! Below, find the 36 best mystery thriller books of all time.
Often regarded as the best of Agatha Christie’s 66 novels, this 1939 classic remains the best-selling mystery novel of all time. And for good reason: It’s a closed-door mystery in which several visitors to an isolated island begin dying off one by one, leaving the reader scrambling to continually reframe their hypothesis of who’s responsible (likely unsuccessfully) until the killer finally unmasks themselves at the end.
Fargo showrunner Noah Hawley’s 2016 book starts with a mysterious plane crash that leaves only two survivors of the 11 passengers. From there, it flips between a real-time investigation into what exactly sent the plane plunging into the Atlantic Ocean and a deep-dive into the murky backstories of everyone on board—which may do a better job of explaining the crash than the technical evaluation.
As in many of Liane Moriarty’s complex, multi-layered mysteries, Big Little Lies starts with a crime, then jumps back in time to introduce a cast of impeccably written, deeply flawed characters, any of whom, frankly, could be guilty. As more and more details are revealed—many of which will throw a wrench into everything you thought you knew—the story slowly starts to become clearer, up until the ultra-satisfying explanation that ties everything together. Until you get to that point, though, you won’t be able to put this addictive book down.
Don't just take my word for it: Thriller expert Stephen King called Kate Atkinson’s 2004 novel “the best mystery of the decade.” This crime story, which is often cited as the book that put Atkinson on the map, introduces private investigator Jackson Brodie—who has since appeared in several more of Atkinson’s novels—as he uncovers shocking connections between three seemingly unrelated murders and disappearances.
Perhaps no other book generated as loud or thrilling of controversy in the early 2000s as The Da Vinci Code, which was disavowed by multiple global religions while staying on the bestseller list for years. Whether you accept it as rooted in fact or a purely fictional romp, it’s still very much worth a read for the history-loving mystery buffs among us, as Harvard professor Robert Langdon races across Europe to track down the Holy Grail, competing against a pair of cult-like groups and contending with the idea that Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene may have started a still-going bloodline together. Like I said: highly controversial—and definitely worth a read.
Deepa Anappara’s award-winning 2020 debut novel spans genres, from mystery thriller to coming-of-age story to sharp societal satire. It follows a police show-obsessed young boy in the slums of a fictional Indian city who embarks on an investigation into the disappearance of one of his classmates since the police are no help. It's a quest that becomes increasingly dangerous as even more kids go missing.
Prolific Polish author Olga Tokarczuk won the 2018 Nobel Prize for Literature for her incredible body of work. She accepted the award in 2019, just a few months after this 2009 novel finally made its U.S. debut. Like many of her other works, this mystery story has mythical, fairytale-like elements: It tracks the deaths of several hunters in a small Polish village, where our animal-loving protagonist Janina theorizes that animals could be killing the hunters in revenge.
In a very meta twist, Peter Swanson’s 2020 book pays homage to several other iconic murder mysteries from literary history, including some titles and authors featured on this very list. Years after a bookseller makes a list of eight nearly unsolvable “perfect murders,” an FBI agent informs him that a serial killer appears to be working their way through the list and asks for his help in tracking down the killer before it’s too late.
Before setting the literary world ablaze with 2017’s Little Fires Everywhere, Celeste Ng debuted this much quieter 2014 novel—my favorite of her three works so far. Told in the inverted mystery style, it begins with the death of a teenage girl, then flashes back and forth as her family digs into their past actions in an attempt to untangle the circumstances of her death in the present. Amid those classic elements of mystery and suspense, the book is also a deeply moving exploration of tenuous family ties and the often devastating effects of the fear of disappointing the ones you love.
You can’t go wrong with any of Lisa Jewell’s tightly written, anxiety-inducingly twisty novels, but this one is a particular favorite for many of her fans. In the present, 25-year-old Libby finds out she’s inherited a London mansion from her birth parents. What sounds like the start of a lavish new lifestyle, however, quickly devolves as Libby slowly uncovers the very dark story of the multiple families who once lived in the home—and the shocking events that led to her being put up for adoption as a baby.
The “unreliable narrator” in this 2018 novel is unreliable even to herself: Cassandra is a flight attendant with a penchant for drinking too much who wakes up hungover during a layover in Dubai with a dead body next to her. She then has to assume the role of detective in her own life, parsing through her foggy memories to figure out who the killer is—even if it turns out to be her.
Gone Girl’s impact is on full display in this 2015 thriller, with its title overlap and unlikeable, un-trustable female narrators. The titular character is Rachel, a divorcée whose struggles with an alcohol addiction make an already confusing situation even more so when her life becomes inexplicably intertwined with those of two other women, one of whom suddenly goes missing one day, making everyone—even Rachel herself—a suspect.
The original title of this Swedish book translates to “Men Who Hate Women,” and that’s very much a theme throughout the 2005 bestseller. It sees journalist Mikael Blomkvist teaming up with antisocial hacker Lisbeth Salander to crack the decades-old case of a young woman’s murder, leading them to dive into the increasingly creepy history of the girl’s own extended family. For as triumphant as their team-up is, as that original title suggests, there are some extremely disturbing scenes in this book, so major content warning for graphic sexual violence.
I can personally attest to the unputdownable nature of this 2024 hit novel, which I tore through in less than 48 hours. It takes place at a summer camp and follows several timelines at once: the disappearances of two siblings 14 years apart, their mother’s past, and the lives of a detective and a camp counselor during the most recent disappearance. All the stories begin to overlap and merge to flesh out the tragic tale of a family built on secrets and lies.
This 2012 blockbuster bestseller breathed new life into the mystery thriller genre, sparking a long line of breathtakingly twisty books with “Girl” in the title and unreliable narrators at the helm. Without giving too much away, the story opens with a wife missing and a husband acting incredibly suspicious—and you’ll want to buckle in for everything that unfolds after that.
Lucy Foley has a knack for writing closed-door mysteries that are so confounding and feature interconnected webs of characters so tangly that, if you're anything like me, you’ll suspect every person on the page before the culprit is finally revealed. That’ll certainly be the case when you read this one, in which a group of old friends gather at an isolated Scottish estate for a holiday reunion that's already tense enough before one ends up dead on New Year’s Day.
This one verges into the horror realm, as it’s so unsettlingly creepy that you may not sleep well until the mystery at its heart has been tied up. To avoid any spoilers, all I’ll say is that somebody is killed in a cabin located deep in the woods, where a group of longtime friends have gathered for a bachelorette party, and it takes our protagonist’s diving decades back in time to finally figure out how everything went so wrong in the present day.
You’ll be thinking about the ending of this novel—the first in Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad series—for a long time after it’s over. (I, for one, have been haunted by it for almost a decade now.) In it, two members of the squad are assigned to find the killer of a young girl, a case further complicated by one of the detectives’ mysterious history at the same location.
To build out her suspense-filled story of two murders in Baltimore in the 1960s, Laura Lippman took inspiration from the real-life unrelated deaths of a young Jewish girl and a Black woman in her 30s during that time in the city. Her resulting book has been hailed for how it tackles both the racism and the misogyny of the time, as its protagonist, a bored housewife and aspiring journalist, begins investigating the pair of mysterious murders.
With its book-within-a-book structure, Magpie Murders is a special treat for mystery thriller lovers everywhere: double the puzzles! The main story follows an editor tasked with reading through the latest detective novel from a bestselling author. However, as she works through the book, a mystery escalates in the real world with both stories becoming increasingly intertwined.
A simultaneously cozy and suspense-filled story, The Maid follows an idiosyncratic young woman working—you guessed it—as a maid in a hotel when she discovers a dead body in one of the guest rooms. She soon becomes tangled up in the investigation into the man’s murder, with her unique voice, world outlook, and quirky group of friends proving to be an unexpected asset to and refreshing break from the stiflingly unimaginative approach of the police on the case.
This 1930 classic—which was further immortalized in the acclaimed film noir starring Humphrey Bogart as private detective Sam Spade—is often considered one of the best mystery novels of all time. In it, Spade is hired by a duplicitous woman to hunt down a valuable statuette of a falcon, a task that pits him against a cast of criminals and finds him tangled up in a complex web of lies and deception.
Edgar Allan Poe is often credited with kicking off the modern mystery genre with this 1841 short story. It details the work of a detective, C. Auguste Dupin, as he susses out the culprit in the disturbing murders of a mother and daughter in Paris. Not only is the mystery a delightfully twisty one, but the story is also an interesting read for longtime mystery thriller fans. You'll see how it set the stage for many of the genre conventions that carry on to this day—from a clever detective who regularly outwits the police, to a faithful sidekick who documents all his triumphant works, to a locked-room mystery and a thorough explanation of the culprit’s motive and method after they’ve been revealed.
Laila Lalami’s 2019 novel was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction, and rightfully so. It centers upon the hit-and-run murder of a Moroccan immigrant, switching between an interconnected cast of nine characters from all different races, religions, and class backgrounds to parse through the often-tense circumstances that led up to Driss Guerraoui’s death.
Zakiya Dalila Harris has cited a range of works as varied as Get Out, Kindred, and The Stepford Wives as influences on her 2021 debut novel, which tells the story of Nella, the only Black employee at her publishing house until the arrival of Hazel. Though Nella’s originally glad to have an ally in the office, it’s not long after Hazel’s arrival that creepy things start happening to Nella, leading her to dig into some truly horrific history that seems to be repeating itself.
S.A. Cosby’s 2021 novel is as much a whodunit as a powerful commentary on racism, homophobia, and other pressing social issues. In it, two fathers—both ex-cons, one Black and one white—team up to find and get revenge on whoever murdered their sons. The quest proves to be more powerful than their longstanding prejudices against each other and against their sons, who were married with a baby together.
This 1938 novel remains perfectly creepy and intriguing to this day. It’s almost impossible not to get swept up in the tale told by our unnamed narrator, who’s just married a man seemingly still hung up on his deceased first wife. It’s not until the end that we learn the shocking truth of what happened at the grand Manderley estate all those years ago.
In a stellar example of the mind-bending inverted mystery style, Donna Tartt’s 1992 debut starts with a vague description of a college student’s death before heading back to the start of the school year to dive into the wild series of events that led up to the climactic moment. You won’t be able to get the sharply written, perfectly distinct six main characters—an eccentric clique on a small college campus—out of your head long after the story’s over.
This is another one of those books so twisty that you might need to take a minute to process the big reveal—or even start over from the beginning (guilty!). The Silent Patient is narrated by a therapist who’s been assigned a famous artist, now mute after killing her husband, as his new patient. Set aside a few hours when you start this one, because there’s no way you’ll be able to put this suspense-filled book down before you’re through.
Alice Feeney hit it big in 2022 with Daisy Darker, another great and particularly spooky mystery thriller, but Sometimes I Lie, her first book, might be her absolute best, in my humble opinion. It follows Amber, a woman who’s lying conscious but completely paralyzed in a hospital room, as she recalls the events that led her there, interspersed with excerpts from a decades-old diary. The main story is incredibly well-written and unsettling enough, but add some particularly massive twists, and you’ll be left questioning everything you thought you knew.
Louise Penny’s long-running series of novels starring Inspector Armand Gamache as he untangles mysteries in the small Canadian town of Three Pines, beginning with Still Life in 2006, may seem like a classic example of the “cozy mystery” genre, but don’t be fooled. Even with their rustic setting and a charming protagonist with an unfailing belief in the power of kindness, Penny’s novels feature tightly wound murder mysteries that can draw in even the most thrill-seeking of readers.
No list of mystery novels would be complete without an appearance from Sherlock Holmes. This 1887 book marks the iconic detective’s debut, in which he and Dr. Watson first meet and then promptly begin investigating the murder of an American man in London. Interestingly, the killer is revealed by the end of the novel’s first part, after which Part II builds out the fascinating backstory behind the killer’s actions leading up to the crime itself. It concludes with Watson committing to putting all of Holmes’ successfully cracked cases down on paper, setting up the guiding structure of dozens more of Doyle’s detective stories.
It may seem oxymoronic to call a mystery thriller heartwarming, but this one—along with its follow-ups in Osman’s bestselling series—surely fits the bill. While there’s certainly a complex and twisty puzzle at its core, the real draw of the story comes from its hilariously quirky cast of characters, a squadron of senior citizens who take up digging into cold cases as a casual hobby at their retirement community, and all too often find themselves facing down fresher murder cases in the process.
As a former spy, John Le Carré brought an exhilarating sense of reality to his more than two dozen widely lauded espionage novels. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, published in 1974, is one of his best-known and best-regarded, following spymaster George Smiley as he unravels a confusing conspiracy to place a Soviet mole within the U.K.’s MI6.
Another skin-crawlingly creepy thriller with a healthy dose of social commentary baked in, Alyssa Cole’s 2020 novel casts gentrification in an especially spooky new light. It follows Sydney, who sees her Brooklyn neighborhood’s history being bulldozed away and begins having strange experiences. She investigates the situation, only to uncover a scheme even more horrific than regular old gentrification.
In a fresh take on the inverted mystery style, rather than having her characters walk back through the events leading up to a shocking murder via memories or diaries, Gillian McAllister sends her protagonist quite literally traveling through time. In each chapter, Jen wakes up to a morning she’s already lived—days, weeks, or even months before the last—and ends up in a race against time to figure out why, in the present, she witnessed her teenage son seemingly stabbing a total stranger in the middle of the night. Every step back in time brings a new twist, making reading this book a lot like peeling back the layers of a very mysterious, very thrilling onion.
