Locked-room puzzles, hard-boiled detectives, and twists that rewrote the genre. The canonical whodunits, ranked across the Mystery Writers of America, critics, and millions of readers.
The full ranking
Locked-room puzzles, hard-boiled detectives, and twists that rewrote the genre. The canonical whodunits, ranked across the Mystery Writers of America, critics, and millions of readers.
And Then There Were None (Agatha Christie)
Ten strangers are lured to a remote island and killed off one by one, in time with a sinister nursery rhyme. Christie's best-selling work and the best-selling mystery novel ever written; readers praise its relentless suspense and the twists that keep them guessing to the final page.
The Complete Sherlock Holmes (Arthur Conan Doyle)
Every Holmes case in one volume: all four novels and 56 short stories that set the template for modern detective fiction. Readers call it a timeless, self-contained classic, the groundwork on which every later mystery writer built.
Rebecca (Daphne du Maurier)
A naive young bride arrives at Manderley to find the estate, and her new husband, still haunted by his glamorous first wife. Du Maurier's gothic suspense classic grips readers to its surprising end, praised for its brilliant writing and the chilling contrast between its two women.
The Big Sleep (Raymond Chandler)
Private eye Philip Marlowe takes a blackmail case for a dying millionaire and descends into the corruption of 1930s Los Angeles. Chandler's hard-boiled debut is a touchstone of American crime writing; readers prize its atmosphere and Marlowe himself, even as some find the plot deliberately tangled.
The Silence of the Lambs (Thomas Harris)
FBI trainee Clarice Starling bargains with the imprisoned Hannibal Lecter to catch a serial killer called Buffalo Bill. Readers call it an unparalleled psychological thriller, better than the film, with characters that leap off the page.
The Woman in White (Wilkie Collins)
A spectral woman in white on a midnight road pulls a young drawing master into a conspiracy of stolen identity and madness. One of the first and finest sensation novels; readers praise its sustained suspense, sharp characters, and its formidable heroine Marian Halcombe.
Murder on the Orient Express (Agatha Christie)
Hercule Poirot is trapped on a snowbound luxury train where a passenger lies stabbed and every traveler is a suspect. Readers call it brilliant from start to finish and better than the film, built around one of the most famous twists in the genre.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Stieg Larsson)
A disgraced journalist and Lisbeth Salander, a fierce tattooed hacker, reopen the 40-year-old disappearance of an heiress from a powerful Swedish family. Readers call it a gripping, atypical mystery with a surprise ending and a heroine unlike any other in the genre.
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (Agatha Christie)
A retired Poirot is pulled into the stabbing of a wealthy man in a quiet English village, in a case built around one of the most audacious twists Christie ever devised. Long voted among the finest crime novels ever written, it is prized by readers and critics alike for its ingenious, much-debated ending.
The Maltese Falcon (Dashiell Hammett)
Sam Spade is drawn into a deadly hunt for a jewel-encrusted statuette after his partner is murdered. The novel that founded the hard-boiled detective genre; readers praise its crackling, descriptive prose and its sharply drawn cast of double-crossers.
Ranked across 6 sources: Mystery Writers of America · Top 100 Mystery Novels of All Time; The Greatest Books · Greatest Mystery Books of All Time (aggregate rank); Reedsy · The 30 Best Mystery Books of All Time 2024; ProWritingAid · Best Mystery Books of All Time, Top 25 (unordered roundup); Goodreads · Ranked by Rating (Reader Reviews); Amazon Reviews · Ranked by Star Rating (June 2026). Full scoring is on the Methodology tab above.
Related lists
Browse every Top 10 List, see the experts and aggregators behind them, or play the day’s puzzles.