The 97 best mystery and crime novels from Britain

No. 11 on this list. Watchmen #1: At Midnight, All The Agents… · Alan Moore · 1986

The series is a staple of comics courses and is widely taught as the landmark graphic novel, though this single issue is taught less on its own.

No. 12 on this list. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes · Arthur Conan Doyle · 1892

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is one of the most widely read and recognized works of detective fiction in any language. Holmes is arguably the most famous fictional character after Hamlet. The stories appear in English literature surveys, genre studies, and Victorian literature courses. While not taught with the same frequency as canonical literary novels, the collection's cultural ubiquity and historical importance to the detective genre give it strong canonical standing. Wikipedia articles exist in dozens of languages, and the stories remain continuously in print worldwide.

No. 13 on this list. Piranesi · Susanna Clarke · 2021

Winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction (2021), with a Wikipedia presence in 39 languages — strong recognition for a novel published in 2020. Clarke's second novel after the celebrated Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, it arrived with significant literary anticipation and met it. Not yet in syllabi, which reflects recency rather than lack of merit.

No. 14 on this list. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd · Agatha Christie · 1926

Taught in schools: AQA GCSE and A-level English Literature (UK)

Listed in Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century and taught on 258 university syllabi (60th percentile), with Wikipedia articles in 44 languages. It is the standard text for the Golden Age detective novel in genre and narrative-theory courses.

No. 15 on this list. Farewell, My Lovely · Raymond Chandler · 1940

Farewell, My Lovely is taught regularly in American literature and genre fiction courses, and the Philip Marlowe series is considered canonical within hard-boiled detective fiction. While not as ubiquitously assigned as Fitzgerald or Hemingway, Chandler's work appears in both popular fiction studies and serious literary curricula, and the novel appears on numerous 'greatest novels' and 'greatest crime novels' lists including the Modern Library and Time magazine rankings.

No. 16 on this list. The Woman in White · Wilkie Collins · 1859

Taught regularly in Victorian literature and detective/crime fiction courses at university level. The Woman in White is consistently recognized as the founding text of the sensation novel genre and appears on syllabi across English, comparative literature, and genre studies programs. Not at the level of Dickens or Hardy in breadth of assignment, but firmly in the Victorian canon.

No. 17 on this list. Rebecca · Daphne du Maurier · 1938

Taught in schools: AQA GCSE and A-level English Literature (UK)

Appears on 337 university syllabi (63rd percentile in Open Syllabus) and on the BBC Big Read Top 100 and 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. It is a standard text in courses on the gothic and on women's writing, and has been in print continuously since 1938.

No. 18 on this list. And Then There Were None · Agatha Christie · 1939

Taught in schools: Hungarian literature curriculum (magyar nyelv és irodalom) (Hungary)

Christie's most celebrated novel holds a dominant place in the mystery canon and is widely recognized as the best-selling mystery of all time. It appears on virtually every 'greatest mysteries ever written' list — TIME's All-TIME 100 Novels, the BBC's Big Read — and is frequently taught in genre fiction courses. Its canonical standing within popular fiction far exceeds that of typical genre works, though it sits below the academic canonicity of literary fiction anchors like Gatsby or Beloved.

No. 19 on this list. Possession · A.S. Byatt · 1990

Taught regularly in postmodern fiction courses and neo-Victorian literature seminars. Appears on university syllabi exploring metafiction, historical fiction, and gender in Victorian studies. Not yet a universal high school text like canonical classics, but firmly established in undergraduate and graduate curricula as exemplar of 1990s literary fiction engaging with literary history.

No. 20 on this list. Memento Mori · Muriel Spark · 1959

Memento Mori appears regularly on British literature syllabi and features on multiple 'best British novels of the 20th century' lists, including various critics' and publishers' canons. It is not universally taught at the introductory level — The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie holds that role for Spark — but it circulates steadily in graduate seminars on postwar British fiction and dark comedy traditions. The database returned no syllabus count, but Spark's broader canonical standing ensures the novel's ongoing presence.

No. 21 on this list. Murder on the Orient Express · Agatha Christie · 1934

A fixture in mystery and detective fiction courses worldwide, and one of the most translated English-language novels of the twentieth century with Wikipedia articles in over 60 languages. Widely included on 'essential reading' and 'best mysteries' lists, though its presence in general literary syllabi is lower than canonical modernist works.

No. 22 on this list. London Fields · Martin Amis · 1989

Keith Talent is the worst man in London, and he knows it, and he is fine with it. A darts-obsessed petty criminal from a West London estate, Keith lives entirely within the tabloid vocabulary the age has given him: women, motor cars, the beautiful game. Nicola Six is the most seductive woman in London, and she knows she is going to be murdered. She has known it for years. Her project, as the millennium closes in and the world holds its nuclear breath, is to find her killer and arrange events accordingly. Into this trap walks Samson Young, an American writer in London on a dying man's borrowed flat, who begins to transcribe what he believes is a true story unfolding around him -- and who cannot resist shaping it. Martin Amis gives us three characters spiraling toward a crime that all of them, in different ways, are committing. The novel operates as both ruthless satire of Thatcherite England -- the dart flights, the booze, the lads, the tabloid ontology -- and as a cold meditation on desire, death, and the stories men tell about women. The prose is consistently brilliant and consistently uncomfortable, like watching a magician perform a trick you suspect is actually being done to you.

No. 23 on this list. The Mermaids Singing · Val McDermid · 1995

Gold Dagger winner. Launched one of crime fiction's most acclaimed series.

No. 24 on this list. When We Were Orphans · Kazuo Ishiguro · 2000

'You seldom read a novel that so convinces you it is extending the possibilities of fiction.' Sunday TimesEngland, 1930s. Christopher Banks has become the country's most celebrated detective, his cases the talk of London society. Yet one unsolved crime has always haunted him: the mysterious disappearance of his parents, in old Shanghai, when he was a small boy. Moving between London and Shanghai of the inter-war years, When We Were Orphans is a remarkable story of memory, intrigue and the need to return.

No. 25 on this list. Knots and Crosses · Ian Rankin · 1987

Launched one of crime fiction's most acclaimed series. The definitive Edinburgh detective.

No. 26 on this list. The City & the City · China Miéville · 2009

The City & the City is firmly established as a modern classic within speculative fiction and taught regularly in SF studies courses. It lacks the broad syllabi presence of mainstream literary novels — no Open Syllabus data available — but it appears consistently on 'best of genre' lists and in academic discussions of contemporary SF. Its crossover mainstream critical success places it above most genre fiction on the canonicity scale.

No. 27 on this list. The Magus · John Fowles · 1965

On the Modern Library's 100 Best Novels and continuously in print, The Magus is taught in courses on postmodern British fiction. Its cult readership is wider than its place on syllabi.

No. 28 on this list. Gaudy Night · Dorothy L. Sayers · 1935

Harriet Vane returns to Shrewsbury College, Oxford, for a gaudy — the alumni reunion — and finds herself drawn back into a place she has both loved and fled. She is a detective novelist, a woman with a murder trial in her past, and someone who has spent years refusing to marry Lord Peter Wimsey. Oxford offers what she cannot find elsewhere: the life of the mind, clean and governed by evidence. But someone at Shrewsbury is sending poison-pen letters, defacing manuscripts, and leaving threatening notes in the quad at night. The attacks are petty, then vicious. They target the scholars themselves — the women who gave their lives to this place. Sayers wrote the most intellectually serious detective novel of the golden age. The mystery is real, but the book is actually about what it costs to choose work over love, or love over work, and whether the two can coexist. Harriet debates this question with Wimsey across formal dinners and long walks along the Cherwell while the college unravels around them. The Oxford setting is rendered with the precision of someone who knew it from inside: the stone corridors, the subfusc gowns, the rituals of a world built for men that women had only recently been allowed to enter. By the end, the culprit's motive turns out to be exactly what the book has been arguing about all along.

No. 29 on this list. My Cousin Rachel · Daphne du Maurier · 1951

Recognized as a major du Maurier work and a landmark of mid-century Gothic romance, taught periodically in British literature surveys and gaining renewed academic attention in the 2000s as a feminist Gothic text, though it does not occupy the uppermost tier of the Western literary canon.

No. 30 on this list. The Italian · Ann Radcliffe · 1796

The Italian is a fixture of Gothic and Romantic-era survey courses, though it's taught less universally than Radcliffe's own The Mysteries of Udolpho or than Frankenstein and Dracula within the wider Gothic canon. No syllabus or Wikipedia-language data was available for this title in our database, but it holds a stable place in history-of-the-novel curricula.