The Sean Duffy series by Adrian McKinty
Hard-boiled Troubles noir
What better to read about on a warm Aussie beach than a wet Belfast winter? The Sean Duffy series has an inspired premise: a bohemian Catholic cop serves in the Protestant Royal Ulster Constabulary, solving murders in a place where everyone knows and nobody tells. I knew from the first page of The Detective Up Late, the last in the series, that it was a towering masterpiece; it hits with all the force of well-hidden semtex. McKinty has to be the best crime writer working in Australia since Peter Temple.
Where should I start? The Duffy series kicks off with the Cold Cold Ground and that’s where you should start. Look forward to In the Morning I’ll Be Gone, an explosive story in more ways than one, and Rain Dogs, a classy locked-door mystery. – Andrew Messenger
The Shards by Bret Easton Ellis
Pulpy sex-crime thriller
Charting his valedictory school year in 80s uptown LA, this deranged psychosexual page-turner from American Psycho bad boy Bret Easton Ellis weaves his Less Than Zero biographical details into a compelling serial killer narrative that’s as insane as it is enthralling.
The sex scenes are waxy but erotic; the pop references are exhaustive; and the steam coming off the heated pools is weirdly intoxicating. Oozing studied cool, it’s a tale of privilege, paranoia and ultraviolence that will leave you reeling. – Tim Byrne
The Secret of Chimneys by Agatha Christie
Murder spy romcom
With Agatha Christie you can’t miss. (Yes, her books are dated, but you know that – enter at your own risk.) I don’t know why this is my favourite but I do know it’s the book I most frequently reread. Will-they-won’t-they plot lines galore. Red herrings for days.
Prefer a series? Poirot is king. (I would die for David Suchet – Sad Cypress! Five Little Pigs! Books wise, Dumb Witness is excellent, plus sublimely nasty about bad taste. And The Murder of Roger Ackroyd? Believe the hype.) I have a soft spot for Superintendent Battle (my pick is Towards Zero; Sparkling Cyanide with Colonel Race investigating is also great). Miss Marple is obviously fine. – Imogen Dewey
The Searcher by Tana French
Masterful slow burn
The US-Irish author Tana French is a crime writing powerhouse, best known for her Dublin Murder Squad novels – astute, pacy procedurals. The Searcher is a different creature: hushed, simmering and atmospheric. A tale of watchers watching.
Cal Hooper, a retired Chicago detective, has moved to rural Ireland in search of inner quiet. But he has the heart of a police officer and a boy is missing. Crime fiction is stuffed with tales of sharp-eyed strangers in small towns. This is one of the best. – Beejay Silcox
Yellowface by RF Kuang
Can’t look away
I like to compare reading Yellowface to watching the Netflix series You – you’re in the mind of a protagonist who has so clearly done the wrong thing but, as they constantly attempt to justify their actions, you have to remind yourself they’re the bad guy. The bad guy in question this time is June, who steals her friend Athena’s unpublished manuscript upon her death and publishes it as her own. This book is utterly twisted but so hard to put down. – Emily Wind
Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam
Apocalypse via Airbnb
I don’t think I’ve ever been more scared and thrilled to turn a page than I was when reading this book on an eerily empty beach during the first wave of the pandemic. It’s since been adapted into a film starring Julia Roberts and Mahershala Ali but I’d recommend reading the novel first. It’s about a smug white family who book an isolated holiday house in Long Island just before a mysterious global catastrophe shuts down communications and sends magnetic fields haywire. The owners of the house – a black couple – knock on the door seeking refuge in their own home, and the caustic race satire that transpires made me physically recoil almost as much as the scene with the teeth. – Steph Harmon
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
Pulpy literary mystery
Gillian Flynn writes frustratingly rare books – engrossing, exceptionally plotted thrillers that are actually well written. Gone Girl is the best of her bunch, a page-turner about a missing woman and a marriage on the rocks. Of course, thanks to its hit movie adaptation and subsequent pop culture ubiquity, you’d have done well to come this far in life without learning the shocking midpoint twist. But even if you go in knowing that big reveal, Gone Girl will still keep you enraptured. – Katie Cunningham
The Guest by Emma Cline
Cool girl spirals
Watching a manipulator from afar is dazzling; catching them spiral is even better. When 22-year-old Alex’s dream summer arrangement with an older man in luxurious Long Beach falls apart, she lingers. Unable to go home, she spends a week homeless, homing in on weak links she meets. But she can’t tread water forever, her desperation eroding the cool demeanour she needs.
Throughout Cline keeps Alex at a magnetic distance: just like her targets, we’re intrigued even as we sense danger. – Jared Richards
My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
Rollicking black comedy
“A friend will help you move house,” the old joke goes, “a true friend will help you move a body.” My Sister the Serial Killer takes that gag for a joyride around the streets of Lagos.
Ayoola doesn’t break up with her boyfriends, she dispatches them. And when she does, it’s her dutiful sister Korede who ends up scrubbing the bloodstains out of the carpet. Now Ayoola has her heart set on Korede’s crush. This is Nigerian noir at its best: raucous, sardonic and oh-so-smart. – BS
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Sumptuous sinister dreamworld
Silvia Moreno-Garcia knows her gothic horror tropes. Secluded mansion: check. Fearful new bride: check. Treacherous secrets: check. And that’s just the beginning of this tale of gaslighting, ghosts and high-society glamour.
Set in the 1950s, Mexican Gothic is the literary love child of Daphne du Maurier and Frida Kahlo. There are echoes of Shirley Jackson here too, and the ink-hearted alchemy of Angela Carter. You don’t read this book so much as surrender to it. A dark and heady swoon. – BS
Corinna Chapman series by Kerry Greenwood
Tasty, quirky, delightful
I feel Corinna Chapman has been overshadowed a little by Greenwood’s more glamorous Phryne Fisher. But what’s not to like about baked goods, cats and a hot lover combined with a cast of quirky characters and odd events, all set in a slightly seedy but familiar Melbourne setting? Crime writing is often dominated by old white blokes, so a feisty woman as a lead character (and author) is a nice change of pace.
Where should I start? Each book is self-contained but it’s easier to follow the evolving cast of characters by reading chronologically and starting with Earthly Delights. – Ellen Smith
Slow Horses by Mick Herron
Grubby spy thrillers
You may have already enjoyed the rollicking Apple TV adaptation of Herron’s spy novels, starring Gary Oldman having a lovely old time as the cranky, flatulent Jackson Lamb. But its worth cracking open the novels they’re based on. They follow a team of MI5 agents who have somehow screwed up and subsequently been exiled from the agency’s sleek headquarters to a creaky old office in Slough House. The newest “slow horse”, River Cartwright, ropes Lamb and the rest of his colleagues into a breakneck mission as part of his efforts to redeem himself with HQ. Great fun.
Where should I start? Start with Slow Horses – you should read this series in order. But my personal favourite is book five, London Rules. – Sian Cain
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
Sumptuous campus mystery
Donna Tartt’s debut – a maze of cliques, classics and cold-blooded killers – made her an instant superstar when it was published in 1992. In the intervening years many have tried and failed to film adaptations: no surprise for a novel so dense with winking references to the baroque and the arcane; so precisely studied, with its sextet of New England college students who spend as much time debating literature as they do colluding for power, pleasure and status. A bacchanal of a book. – Michael Sun
Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead
Humorous hapless hustling
The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys won Colson Whitehead his Pulitzers, but Harlem Shuffle is by far his most fun book. Set in 1960s New York, it follows Ray Carney, a furniture salesman who is embroiled in a double life, with his scheming cousin Freddie enlisting him to fence his stolen goods.
Harlem Shuffle has been likened to a Tarantino film but tonally it reminds me more of Noah Hawley’s excellent Fargo series: so much of the humour and pleasure comes from Ray’s constant scramble to stay ahead. – SC
The Rebus novels by Ian Rankin
Hard-boiled Scottish sleuth
All I want, all I ever really want, is a broody alcoholic cop, too smart for the job and battling his own demons while he solves eye-wateringly bleak mysteries. Sue me. Inspector John Rebus is this man. These books are Friday-night TV crime in printed form. Murders. Hangovers. Gangsters. Old mistakes. (Side note: I also have a great deal of time for Ian Rankin, who is right that The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is “a perfect gem”.)
Where should I start? Pick literally any. Whatever you can find at the bookshop. Individual plots are very much not the point here, and Rankin is nothing if not consistent. But if you want to start at the beginning, start with Knots and Crosses. – ID
