Best Detective and Mystery Books to Read
Top 10 Detective and Mystery Fiction books
Detective and mystery or the police procedural is a sub-genre of crime fiction and mystery fiction. A police officer or detective as the protagonist tries to solve a crime. Murder is usually the case to investigate. The audience is challenged to solve the crime by the clues and evidences provided before the detective reveals the answer at the end of the novel.
The Da Vinci Code
The Da Vinci Code is a 2003 mystery thriller novel by Dan Brown. It is Brown’s second novel to include the character Robert Langdon: the first was his 2000 novel Angels & Demons. The story explores an alternative religious history, whose main plot point is that the Merovingian kings of France were descended from the bloodline of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene.
Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is called to the Louvre to inspect a murder victim. Louvre curator has been shot several times with strange symbols all over his body. Langdon must team up with cryptographer Sophie Neveu to find out who did this and why — a dangerous mission that leads them down a spiraling path of religious legends and conspiracy theories come true.
The Da Vinci Code
by Dan Brown
Alex Cross Series
by James Patterson
Alex Cross Series
Alex Cross is a crime, mystery, and thriller novel series written by James Patterson. The series focuses on Metropolitan Police Department detective and father Alex Cross as he faces threats to his family and the city of Washington, D.C. The series has been running since the 1990s and is ongoing. Nearly all have made bestsellers lists and garnered favorable reviews, especially Double Cross; Cross Fire; I, Alex Cross; and Alex Cross, Run.
Alex Cross is a widower-detective-father and son of Ali Cross who often fights against threatening villains—and criminals—who wish to kill Cross and others. It mainly focuses on Cross trying to solve very difficult cases while attempting to maintain a relationship with his family. For example, in Merry Christmas, Alex Cross, Cross misses out on Christmas Eve and Christmas itself to focus on finding and defeating a terrorist group. One of his regular foes in the earlier books is Gary Soneji, the “Mastermind” who wants to kill Cross, out of revenge for Alex putting him in prison. In some books, Cross sometimes works with—or against—the President/Secret Service in a few books such as Along Came a Spider, Jack & Jill, I, Alex Cross, and Kill Alex Cross.
The Shadow of the Wind
The Shadow of the Wind is a 2001 novel by the Spanish writer Carlos Ruiz Zafón and a worldwide bestseller. The book was translated into many languages and English in 2004 by Lucia Graves.
The novel is actually a story within a story. The boy, Daniel Sempere, in his quest to discover Julián’s other works, becomes involved in tracing the entire history of Carax. His friend, who goes by the alias of Fermín Romero de Torres, was imprisoned and tortured in Montjuïc Castle as a result of his involvement in espionage against the government during the Civil War. He helps Daniel in a number of ways, but their probing into the murky past of a number of people who have been either long dead or long forgotten unleashes the dark forces of the murderous Inspector Fumero.Thus, unravelling a long story that has been buried in the depths of oblivion, Daniel and Fermín come across a love story, the beautiful yet tragic story of Julián and Penélope, both of whom seem to have been missing since 1919—that is, nearly thirty years earlier…
The Shadow of the Wind
by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
I Shall Not Want
by Julia Spencer-Fleming
I Shall Not Want
I shall not want is a 2008 mystery and police procedural novel by Julia Spencer-Fleming
In the small Adirondack town of Millers Kill, New York, life doesn’t stop for heartbreak. A brand-new officer in the police department, a breaking-and-entering, and trouble within his own family keep Police Chief Russ Van Alstyne busy enough to ignore the pain of losing his wife―and the woman he loves.
At St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, the Reverend Clare Fergusson is trying to keep everyone happy while denying her own wounded soul. When a Mexican farmhand stumbles over a Latino man killed with a single shot to the back of his head, Clare is sucked into the investigation. The discovery of two more bodies executed in the same way ignites fears that a serial killer is loose. Now two would-be lovers, who thought they had lost everything, must find a way to trust each other again―as the violence strikes ever closer to home…
Close to the Bone
Close to the Bone is the eighth installment in the bestselling Detective Sergeant McRae series of crime novels from Stuart MacBride.
Logan McRae is still living in a caravan, his girlfriend, Samantha, is still unresponsive and someone is leaving bones on his doorstep. Besides all this he has to cope with Detective Inspector Steel, a string of assaults, someone who is going around and necklacing people. More murders follow and the filming of a novel about witchcraft seems to be inspiring the Necklacing murders. This leads to a confrontation with McRae’s erstwhile boss, David Insch, ex DI from Grampian Police, who is now on the production team for the film.
Close to the Bone
by Stuart MacBride
The Dry
by Jane Harper
The Dry
The Dry is a mystery, suspense, police procedural by Jane Harper, published in 2016.
After getting a note demanding his presence, Federal Agent Aaron Falk arrives in his hometown for the first time in decades to attend the funeral of his best friend, Luke. Twenty years ago when Falk was accused of murder, Luke was his alibi. Falk and his father fled under a cloud of suspicion, saved from prosecution only because of Luke’s steadfast claim that the boys had been together at the time of the crime. But now more than one person knows they didn’t tell the truth back then, and Luke is dead.
Amid the worst drought in a century, Falk and the local detective question what really happened to Luke. As Falk reluctantly investigates to see if there’s more to Luke’s death than there seems to be, long-buried mysteries resurface, as do the lies that have haunted them. And Falk will find that small towns have always hidden big secrets.
Memory Man
Memory Man is a crime novel by David Baldacci, published in 2015. It is about a man whose wife, daughter, and brother in law were murdered. This is the first novel to feature the character Amos Decker.
Amos Decker is a former professional football player who was violently hit on his first play, resulting in severe injuries and changes to his brain. As his football career has ended, Decker becomes a police officer, and later a successful detective, while using his newly acquired mental abilities (synesthesia and hyperthymesia). After his family is murdered in an unsolved case, Decker loses his will to live and becomes a transient while working as a private investigator. After a mass shooting at a local high school, Decker is asked to assist in solving the case by the local police force he used to work for. It soon becomes apparent that the shooting is somehow related to the killing of his family 18 months before.
Memory Man
by David Baldacci
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
by Stieg Larsson
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a psychological thriller novel by Swedish author and journalist Stieg Larsson, which was published posthumously in 2005 to become an international bestseller. It is the first book of the Millennium series.
In December 2002, Mikael Blomkvist, publisher of the Swedish political magazine Millennium, loses a libel case involving allegations about billionaire industrialist Hans-Erik Wennerström. Blomkvist is sentenced to three months (deferred) in prison, and ordered to pay hefty damages and costs. Soon afterwards, he is invited to meet Henrik Vanger, the retired CEO of the Vanger Corporation, unaware that Vanger has checked into his personal and professional history; the investigation of Blomkvist’s circumstances has been carried out by Lisbeth Salander, a brilliant but deeply troubled researcher and computer hacker…
Gone Girl
Gone Girl is a thriller novel in the mystery and crime genres, by the American writer Gillian Flynn, published in 2012. The novel became quite popular and soon made the New York Times Best Seller list.
The first part of the novel centers on Nick Dunne and his wife Amy’s marriage. Its point of view alternates between that of Nick and Amy, whose perspectives on their marriage are very different. For example, Nick describes the couple’s relationship in the present day, while Amy’s diary entries depict their relationship in the past. Amy’s diary portrays Nick as an aggressive, moody, idle, and threatening husband, while Nick describes Amy as someone who is needlessly difficult, anti-social, stubborn, and an irrational perfectionist…
Gone Girl
by Gillian Flynn
The Snowman
by Jo Nesbø
The Snowman
The Snowman is a novel by Norwegian crime-writer Jo Nesbø, published in 2007. It is the seventh entry in his Harry Hole series.
In 1980, a married woman has illicit sex with a lover while her adolescent son waits in a car outside; their lovemaking is disturbed when they think somebody is looking at them from outside the window, which turns out to have been only a tall snowman. Twenty-four years later, Norwegian detective Harry Hole investigates a string of murders of women around Oslo. His FBI training leads him to search for links between the cases, and he finds two of them—each victim is a married mother, and a snowman appears at every murder scene…