Best Mystery Books

Mystery fiction is built on a promise: if you read carefully enough, you can solve the case before the detective does. The best mysteries keep that promise while making the journey as enjoyable as the destination.

61 expert-reviewed books — page 1 of 3

Say Nothing book cover
Editor's Pick

Say Nothing

by Patrick Radden Keefe

4.8

The story of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, told through the abduction and murder of Jean McConville and the lives of IRA members Dolours Price and Gerry Adams.

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The Likeness book cover
Editor's Pick

The Likeness

by Tana French

4.4

Detective Cassie Maddox is pulled back into undercover work when a murder victim is found bearing her exact face — and carrying the identity Cassie once used as an alias.

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Bad Blood book cover
Bestseller

Bad Blood

by John Carreyrou

4.6

Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou tells the complete story of how Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos defrauded investors and endangered patients with a blood-testing technology that didn't work.

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The Shadow of the Wind book cover
Bestseller

The Shadow of the Wind

by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

4.6

In postwar Barcelona, a young boy discovers a mysterious novel by a nearly forgotten author, and his obsession with the book's creator leads him deep into a dark labyrinth of secrets, loves, and betrayals.

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I'll Be Gone in the Dark book cover
Bestseller

I'll Be Gone in the Dark

by Michelle McNamara

4.5

The late Michelle McNamara chronicles her obsessive investigation into the East Area Rapist, later called the Golden State Killer — a serial criminal who terrorized California in the 1970s and 80s.

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The Devil in the White City book cover
Bestseller
4.5

The intertwined stories of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair — one of the most ambitious construction projects in American history — and the serial killer H.H. Holmes, who used the fair's crowds as cover for his murders.

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A Fatal Grace book cover
Bestseller

A Fatal Grace

by Louise Penny

4.4

The most hated woman in Three Pines is found dead at the village curling match, electrocuted in a sealed outdoor space — and Chief Inspector Gamache discovers that almost everyone had reason to want her dead.

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Piranesi book cover
Bestseller

Piranesi

by Susanna Clarke

4.4

A man lives alone in a vast, labyrinthine House of endless halls filled with statues, tides, and clouds, keeping meticulous journals of a world he believes to be complete — until anomalies in his journals suggest a truth he has been prevented from remembering.

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Still Life book cover
Bestseller

Still Life

by Louise Penny

4.4

Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec investigates the suspicious death of a beloved woman in the idyllic village of Three Pines.

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The Lincoln Lawyer book cover
Bestseller

The Lincoln Lawyer

by Michael Connelly

4.4

Criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller operates out of the back seat of his Lincoln Town Car, traveling between Los Angeles courthouses. When a wealthy Beverly Hills client hires him to fight a serious assault charge, Haller begins to suspect the man is guilty of something far worse — and that he has defended it before.

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Big Little Lies book cover
Bestseller

Big Little Lies

by Liane Moriarty

4.3

Three mothers in an Australian coastal community navigate school politics, marriage, friendship, and the fallout from a murder at the kindergarten trivia night.

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No Country for Old Men book cover
Bestseller

No Country for Old Men

by Cormac McCarthy

4.3

A welder stumbles on a drug deal gone wrong in the Texas desert and takes the money, setting off a chain of pursuit involving a psychopathic killer and an aging sheriff who can no longer understand the world he patrols.

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The Final Gambit book cover
Bestseller

The Final Gambit

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

4.3

The conclusion of the Inheritance Games trilogy finds Avery Grambs confronting the final deadly game of the Hawthorne brothers as she races to solve the mystery of Tobias Hawthorne's true intentions before time runs out.

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