The Top-100 Crime Novels of All Time

1-10 | 11-20 | 21-30 | 31-40 | 41-50 | 51-60 | 61-70 | 71-80 | 81-90 | 91-100

Stieg Larsson (2009) The Girl Who Played With Fire.

Crusading journalist Mikael Blomkvist and weird Lisbeth Salander once again team up to hunt down a sinister criminal enterprise. Larsson's second break-out-in-a-cold-sweat thriller is smart and crackles with stunning twists.

John Le Carré (2005) The Spy Who Came in From the Cold.

In Le Carré's first masterpiece Alec Leamas, a British agent in early Cold War Berlin, is responsible for keeping the double agents under his care undercover and alive. When the East Germans start killing them, Leamas is sent deep into Communist territory to find out why. But nothing is quite what it seems. "The finest spy story ever written" (Graham Green).

Dennis Lehane (2009) Shutter Island. (Reprint)

Shutter Island is an army facility turned hospital for the criminally insane. When a patient escapes, U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels and his partner, Chuck Aule, are called in to investigate. This is one of the best psychological thrillers of all time. One mind-bending plot twist after another!

Ann Rule (2001) The Stranger Beside Me.

Ted Bundy, a most violent sociopath, murderer, and mutilator of women, is the subject of this true-crime book. Ann Rule's chilling account, from the time she unsuspectingly met and worked with the savage slayer to the moment of his death by electrocution in Florida, is one of the greatest books in the true crime genre.

Jim Thompson (1991) The Killer Inside Me.

Probably the most chilling and believable first-person story of a criminally warped mind I have ever encountered. (Stanley Kubrick)

Scott Turow (1989) Presumed Innocent.

Turow's first courtroom thriller is one of the best legal fiction novels. As a former U.S. prosecutor, Turow has intimate knowledge of legal procedures and can draw the reader into the grittily realistic drama of a murder trial. A dark twist of events transforms prosecutor Susty Sabich from the accuser to the accused.

Barbara Vine (1993) A Dark-adapted Eye. (First published 1987)

Ruth Rendell writing as Barbara Vine.

Eric Ambler (2001) The Mask for Dimitrios / A Coffin for Dimitrios. (First published 1939)

Ambler's story of a mystery writer in Istanbul, who gets himself involved with the criminal and spy Dimitrios, is a true classic. Dimitrios' corpse has just been fished out of the Bosporus by the police. As the writer sets out to discover Dimitrios' past, someone is stalking him on his trail from Smyrna to Athens to Sofia.

Benjamin Black (2011) A Death in Summer: A Novel.

Brooding pathologist Dr. Quirke and Detective Inspector Hackett of Scotland Yard investigate the death of wealthy Richard Jewell, whose head has been blown off. In this smooth mystery novel set in 1950s Dublin, John Banville (pen name Benjamin Black) skillfully explores a broad cast of eccentric characters linked by a web of abuse, corruption, guilt, and desperation.

Lawrence Block (2011) A Drop of the Hard Stuff.

Former NYPD cop with a drinking problem outsmarts a clever and elusive killer. Excellent.

In cooperation with Amazon.com

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