TIME’s list of “the most gripping, twist-filled, satisfying, and influential mystery and thriller books” running all the way back to the 1800s
created by ennuibee
last updated April, 2026
The Woman in White
Wilkie Collins
Crime and Punishment
Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Leavenworth Case (The Mr. Gryce Mysteries)
Anna Katharine Green
The Turn of the Screw
Henry James
The Hound of the Baskervilles (Sherlock Holmes, #5)
Arthur Conan Doyle
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (Hercule Poirot, #4)
Agatha Christie
The Crime at Black Dudley (Albert Campion Mystery, #1)
Margery Allingham
The Patient in Room 18 (Sarah Keate, #1)
Mignon G. Eberhart
The Maltese Falcon
Dashiell Hammett
The Conjure-Man Dies: A Harlem Mystery
Rudolph Fisher
A Man Lay Dead (Roderick Alleyn, #1)
Ngaio Marsh
Gaudy Night (Lord Peter Wimsey, #12)
Dorothy L. Sayers
The Three Coffins (Dr. Gideon Fell, #6)
John Dickson Carr
Rebecca
Daphne du Maurier
A Coffin for Dimitrios (Charles Latimer #1)
Eric Ambler
Double Indemnity
James M. Cain
If He Hollers Let Him Go
Chester Himes
In a Lonely Place
Dorothy B. Hughes
The Daughter of Time (Inspector Alan Grant, #5)
Josephine Tey
Beat Not The Bones
Charlotte Jay
Casino Royale (James Bond, #1)
Ian Fleming
A Kiss Before Dying
Ira Levin
The Long Goodbye (Philip Marlowe, #6)
Raymond Chandler
Beast In View
Margaret Millar
The Quiet American
Graham Greene
The Talented Mr. Ripley (Ripley, #1)
Patricia Highsmith
We Have Always Lived in the Castle
Shirley Jackson
The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (George Smiley, #3)
John le Carré
The Honjin Murders (Detective Kosuke Kindaichi, #1)
Seishi Yokomizo
Where Are the Children? (Where Are the Children, #1)
Mary Higgins Clark
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