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The Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time, by Category
(from The Crown Crime Companion)
From the back of the book: “For The Crown Crime Companion, the Mystery Writers of America have compiled a list of the best 100 mystery novels of all time, as well as a list of favorites in ten categories.”
These are the top books (in descending order) from each category:
Classics (1-10),
Suspense (11-20),
Hardboiled/Private Eye (21-30),
Police Procedural (31-41 – there was a tie between #40 and #41),
Espionage/Thriller (42-51),
Criminal (52-61),
Cozy/Traditional
(62-71),
Historical (72-81),
Humorous (82-91), and
Legal/Courtroom (92-101)
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26. |
Red Harvest (1929). Red Harvest is partly based on Hammetts own experiences from Butte, Montana, after the first World War. I deals with corruption and violence in a local community. The main character is Continental Op, a detective Hammett had been developing in short stories. Continental Op is a prototype sleuth, and very much of the "hard-boiled"-detective type for which Hammett later became famous.
The book has been filmed as Roadhouse Nights starring Jimmy Durante.
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Dashiell Hammet |
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27. |
I, the Jury (1947). Mike Hammer, Spillanes hero, is a male chauvinist private eye. The book is said to have been written in only nine days. However, after slow sales of the hardcover edition, it went on to become a world hit. It is still well worth a read!
It was filmed in 1953, starring Biff Elliot as Mike Hammer.
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Mickey Spillane |
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28. |
A Is for Alibi (The Kinsey Millhone Alphabet Mystery Series)(1982). The main character is Kinsey.. Kinsey is a divorcee living in a friends apartment. She is a private eye. Grafton has written a series of books about this character, and this is the first. The books are based in California in modern times. Kinsey is a modern woman with her independence and isn't afraid of a challenge.In the series we follow her personal life, while she solves cases. Easy, light reading!
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Sue Grafton |
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29. |
The Lady in the Lake (1944). The plot is about a missing woman in a small mountain town an hour or so from the city of LA. Derace Kingsley, a businessman, hires Marlowe to find his estranged wife Crystal. Kingsley fears that Crystal - rich, pretty, spoiled and reckless - may have gotten herself into a scandal that could jeopardize his own position with the shareholders of the company he runs.
This book was filmed in 1947, in a movie with the same name as the book.
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Raymond Chandler |
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30. |
The Doorbell Rang (The Rex Stout Library) (1965).This novel generated some controversy when it was published, largely due to its negative portrayal of the FBI, its director and agents. It was published at a time that the public's attitude toward the FBI was turning critical, not long after Robert F. Kennedy and J. Edgar Hoover clashed. FBI was coming under fire for its investigations of Martin Luther King. Some critics did not care for the book: one called it the "most overrated Wolfe." It is, however, a great read, and no less interesting for its critical tone!
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Rex Stout |
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31. |
Dance Hall of the Dead (Edgar Award Winner) (1973)." Ernesto is missing and there is a pool of blood by his bike. The next day his buddy George runs off. It is up to Sgt. Joe Leaphorn to find the boys before anything happens to them.
As with most of Hillerman's novels everyone has different agendas and stories that overlap. There are alleged stolen artifacts form and archeological dig, and possibly a drug interest. .. We also get a good dose of Zuñi culture, and a feel that we are in the area.
Hillerman is nice enough to leave sufficient clues to let you figure out the mystery before Leaphorn and you then get to watch as he finally comes around to your way of thinking." (Review by B.Chandler at the amazon.com netsite.)
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Tony Hillerman |
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32. |
The Laughing Policeman (1992). This is actually the fourth Martin Beck book in the series of 10 written by Sjøwall & Wahløe. This is one of the highpoints in this excellent series of Swedish police novels. A bus crashes, and it turns out that the driver and all eight passengers have been shot. What can be the purpose of this bizarre and horrific massacre?
This book, as well as all the others in the series, has been filmed.
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Maj Sjowall & Per Wahloo |
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33. |
Gorky Park (1981, filmed 1983). This is the first in a series of books featuring Arkady Renko. Renko is an honest, dedicated, hard-working Ukrainian cop. When he was Chief Homicide Inspector for the Moscow Prosecutor's Office, he took charge of a grisly murder case involving the international fur trade. Very quickly, he fell afoul of the KGB. That's how his troubles began, which pursue him throughout the series of novels.
The later books in the series are Polar Star and Red Square, Havana Bay, and Wolves Eat Dogs. The whole series is great, and highly recommended!
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Martin Cruz Smith |
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34. |
A Thief of Time (1990). (Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee Novels) A noted anthropologist vanishes at a moonlit Indian ruin where "thieves of time" ravage sacred ground for profit. When two corpses appear amid stolen goods and bones at an ancient burial site, Navajo Tribal Policemen Lt. Joe Leaphorn and Officer Jim Chee must plunge into the past to unearth the astonishing truth behind a mystifying series of horrific murders.
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Tony Hillerman |
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35. |
The First Deadly Sin (1972) (the first in a series of three books). Sanders' excellence is demonstrated through the realistic characters he creates. He allows the reader to gain access to the most personal aspects of his two main characters, their thoughts, obsessions and behavior. Police Captain Edward X. Delaney, Commanding Officer of New York City's 251st Precinct, and Daniel Blank, a young business executive, a mountain climber, who has strange sexual fantasies, are the primary focus of this unique mystery.Some call this book a "psycho-sexual thriller." Has been filmed, starring Frank Sinatra.
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Lawrence Sanders |
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36. |
Last Seen Wearing (Pan Classic Crime)(1952). This is the novel which invented the "police procedural" subgenre of crime story.
The investigation in this book is into the disppearance of first year student Lowell Mitchell from Parker College in Massachusetts. The local police chief, Frank Ford, follows the usual course of alerting the press, searching the grounds of the college, dragging its lake, looking into travellers, etc. Ford is not very imaginative, and a lack of leads leaves him baffled once the obvious has been tried and failed.
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Hillary Waugh |
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37. |
The Steam Pig (Crime Club)(1971). A murder mystery set in South Africa, where Kramer and Zondi come across Bantu gangs that murder with bicycle spokes. They hear whispered references to "the Steam Pig".
McClure has later written four other Kramer and Zondi novels - "The Song Dog", "The Caterpillar Cop", "Snake" and "Gooseberry Fool".
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James McCLure |
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38. |
The Choirboys (1975). This is a controversial work of fiction written by a Los Angeles Police Department officer-turned-novelist Joseph Wambaugh. It is a parody about the effects of urban police work on young officers, seen through the exploits of a group of Los Angeles police officers.
The book was filmed in 1977.
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Joseph Wambaugh |
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39. |
Shroud for a Nightingale.(1971) "a well-written, well-plotted mystery that will keep you guessing. A young student nurse dies during a training exercise, another is found dead in her bed. The first could have been the result of a practical joke gone bad, the second, a suicide. Or they both could be murder. P.D. James will keep you guessing until the end as to the truth about these deaths and the truth about the nurses, the doctors, the instructors at this very deadly hospital." Reviewed by Elizabeth Hendry at amazon.com
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P.D. James |
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40. |
Ice (1983). From the long series of 87th Precinct books. This one is longer than most and has a huge cast of characters. They include theatre personnel, drug dealers, diamond merchants, and the familiar 87th precinct cops. And there are a large number of suspects for the reader, and possibly the author, to finally attach to the various crimes committed.
A good read, and better than the movie!
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Ed McBain |
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41. |
In the Heat of the Night (Mystery Scene Books) (1965, filmed 1967). Virgil Tibbs, a Black detective, arrives in a Southern town to conduct an unpopular investigation of a local murder. This book has a tight plot, sharp characterizations, and simple yet interesting language. It is also compelling narrative on racial discrimination in the small towns of America’s Deep South.
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John Ball |
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42. |
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1963). Voted the best spy novel of all times by Publishers Weekly. The tale concerns Alec Leamas, a British agent in early Cold War Berlin. Leamas is responsible for keeping the double agents under his care undercover and alive, but East Germans start killing them, so he gets called back to London by Control, his spy master. Control gives him a scary assignment: play the part of a disgraced agent. Control sends him back out into the cold--deep into Communist territory.
Filmed, in a movie starring Richard Burton.
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John Le Carre |
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43. |
A Coffin for Dimitrios (1939, filmed 1944). The hero is Charles Latimer, a self-effacing British economics professor who has launched a new career as a spy novelist. While on vacation in Istanbul, he meets the ingratiating Colonel Haki at a party who is anxious to make the acquaintance of one of his favorite authors. After they have lunch the next day, Haki invites Latimer to his office where he poses the question: "I wonder if you are interested in real murderers, Mr. Latimer."
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Eric Ambler |
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44. |
Eye of the Needle (1978, filmed 1981). The British used a massive counter-intelligence operation by creating dummy armies, airfields, missiles and allowed German reconnaissance aircrafts to infiltrate into their airspace to take their pictures and made them believe that the D-Day attack was to come not at Normandy but from somewhere else. History points out that it worked. But the premise of the story is that what would have happened if it had not worked? What would have happened if a German spy found out this bluff and reported it to Hitler? How was he to be stopped from doing it?
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Ken Follett |
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45. |
The Day of the Jackal (1971, filmed 1973) (see our Forsyth-bibliography). This is a novel whose main character is theJackal, a highly feared and infamous terrorist at the time when this novel was written. The plot of the book is a (fictional) account of an attempt by this terrorist to assassinate president de Gaulle. This book is very well written and very exciting. The intense style and suspense that sets Forsyth apart as a writer and master of the thriller genre is visible already here in this early book.
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Frederick Forsyth |
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46. |
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1974). This is probably Le Carré’s masterpiece and one of the great spy novels of the 20th century. Inspired by the career of Kim Philby, a Russian double agent who worked his way into the upper reaches of the British Secret Service. The "mole" -- the deep-penetration agent -- has turned Britain's Intelligence Service (commonly known as the Circus) inside out. Rumors of him had circulated through the corridors of power for years and contributed to the disgrace of "Control," Smiley’s mentor. In the book, Smiley is recalled from his unhappy retirement when a renegade British agent unearths evidence that the mole really does exist.. In the face of all this, a panicked Whitehall minister enlists Smiley’s aid, charging him to "go backwards, go forwards, do whatever is necessary...to clean the stables," and to put the elusive mole out of business.
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John le Carre |
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47. |
The Thirty-Nine Steps (Penguin Classics)(1915). It's a tale of intrigue, a classic early story of an innocent man drawn into dark doings of murder and espionage, and finding himself pursued by both police and enemy agents.We follow Richard Hannay through England and the lowlands of Scotland as he eludes spies and keeps Europe from war. |
John Buchan |
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48. |
The Ipcress File(1962, filmed 1965). The Ipcress File was Len Deighton's first novel, and his first bestseller and the book that broke the mould of thriller writing. For the working class narrator, an apparently straightforward mission to find a missing biochemist becomes a journey to the heart of a dark and deadly conspiracy. The film of The Ipcress File gave Michael Caine one of his first and still most celebrated starring roles, while the novel itself has become a classic.
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Len Deighton |
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49. |
Smiley's People(1979). This is the third novel of the Karla Trilogy, featuring British master-spy George Smiley, following Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and The Honourable Schoolboy.
George Smiley is called out from retirement, to investigate the death of an old British agent, a Russian General anonymously living in retirement in London. Smiley learns that the General had discovered information that would lead to a final confrontation with the Soviet spy-master Karla.
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John le Carre |
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50. |
Rogue Male (Crime Masterworks)(1939). The narrator stalks a man guarded by the best in the land, a man with a vested interest in keeping himself out of the sights of any assassin. With the dictator in his sights the hero is apprehended and tortured almost to the point of death. Left to fall from a cliff to an apparently accidentally death he cheats fate. Then begins his flight to freedom. But what kind of freedom? Now he is hunted everywhere. |
Geoffrey Household |
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