The best mystery & thriller novels…
Most mystery and thriller readers have their own list of novels they remember with fondness. While yours might be different, I want to offer you mine. For younger readers, there are probably some oldies in my list you might have missed and could enjoy. Maybe you’ve heard old geezers like me mention them fondly. In any case, many are classics now. Without further ado, here’s my list in alphabetical order according to author:
Isaac Asimov, The Naked Sun
David Baldacci, Absolute Power
John le Carré, Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy
Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye (1955)
Lee Child, The Affair
Agatha Christie, Death on the Nile
Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles
Michael Connelly, The Narrows
Jeffery Deaver, Garden of Beasts
Ken Follett, Eye of the Needle (1979)
Frederick Forsyth, The Day of the Jackal (1972)
Dashell Hammet, The Maltese Falcon
P. D. James, Death in Holy Orders
Elmore Leonard, Get Shorty
Robert Ludlum, The Bourne Identity
Robert Parker, The Godwulf Manuscript
Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, Relic
Ian Rankin, Resurrection Men (2004)
H. Rider Haggard, She
John Sandford, Bad Blood (2011)
Georges Simenon, A Battle of Nerves
With the exception of Sandford’s book, the years indicate when an Edgar Award was rewarded to the novel (Sandford’s is a best thriller award). I haven’t always chosen every author’s Edgar or thriller award novel if there is one because sometimes I don’t consider it the best! And many of the books in my list were unfortunately overlooked by the award committees.
I also should emphasize that most of the writers have authored many more books than the one that appears here for them. Baldacci produces bestseller after bestseller, but the one listed, his first, is his best. Deaver is more famous for his Lincoln Rhyme series, but I also think the one listed is his best. Follett has broadened his horizons, especially to more lengthy historical fiction, but none can beat the one listed here (also historical fiction in a sense and akin to Deaver’s in a way).
Many authors listed here were trailblazers in the genres. Those who followed them have a very big hurdle to leap over. All of these books should be considered classics (assuming snooty critics can ever consider genre fiction novels as classics—they tend to limit themselves only to those books in that catch-all genre “literary fiction”). I’ll admit I might have missed some classic mysteries and thrillers. I can state without reservation that I read every one of these novels and enjoyed them all (and a lot more than these, of course).
Some books here have influenced my own work in the mystery and thriller genres. Hard-boiled mystery writers like Chandler, Hammett, and Parker influenced my “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series,” but its spin-off, Rembrandt’s Angel, was influenced by Christie (the main characters are a modern version of Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, together at last!), and by P. D. James and Ian Rankin. Jame’s Death in Holy Orders influenced my sequel Son of Thunder much more than Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code (the latter’s influence was more limited to doing such a story the correct way, without controversy and sloppy historical research).
Any list like this is subjective. You can make your own, but I’d expect at least some overlap.
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Comments are welcome!
Goin’ the Extra Mile. Hot off the press and available on Amazon and Smashwords and its affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc). The U.S. made the MECHs (“Mechanically Enhanced Cybernetic Humans”), the Russians stole them, and now the Chinese are after the MECH tech and are willing to kidnap Mary Jo and her family to get it. #3 in the “Mary Jo Melendez Mysteries” puts Mary Jo and her MECH friends through the paces as the action and suspense takes the reader from the U.S. to Europe and China, returning to the globe-trotting thrills of the first novel, Muddlin’ Through, which is also now on sale for $0.99 at Smashwords for a short time.
In libris libertas!
