Best Crime & mystery books

The 200 highest-rated Crime & mystery books, scored from 63.7K reader ratings.

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Sort byDecadeMinimum ratingsAdaptation200 results

By year of first publication, 1860–2026. The busiest stretch is 2000–2019, with 102. Select a bar to narrow the list.

1
8.68.6 / 10
The GodfatherMario Puzo772 ratings“The Godfather” endures because it is a novel about people before it is a novel about crime.Our view
2
8.58.5 / 10
Crime and PunishmentFyodor Dostoyevsky1.9K ratingsDostoyevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” belongs on a crime list as the story of a conscience under strain: dark, thoughtful and deeply moving.Our view
3
8.48.4 / 10
And Then There Were NoneAgatha Christie2.7K ratingsChristie at her darkest: ten people stranded on an island by a storm, each hiding a secret, their host nowhere to be seen.Our view

Why The Godfather is #1

The Godfather (Mario Puzo) scores 8.6/10 from 772 ratings — 0.1 points ahead of Crime and Punishment in second place.

The score is a weighted average across 3 independent rating sources. A title with few ratings is pulled toward the category average, so a handful of enthusiastic reviews cannot outrank a book that thousands of readers have judged. To keep the list varied, the top 20 holds at most two books from one series and three by one author; the rest follow further down. Method →

A good mystery plays fair

A mystery is a deal: you get the detective’s clues and race to the answer. Good ones keep it.

The clues were in plain sightAfter the reveal you see it was all on the page, as in “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd”.
The culprit grows from characterThe answer comes from who these people are, not a twin sprung in the last chapter.
Not always about whoSometimes you know the killer early and the puzzle is why, as in “Crime and Punishment”.

Frequently asked questions

Which title here has the most ratings?

And Then There Were None (Agatha Christie) — 2.7K ratings and 8.4/10, which puts it at #3 on this list.

What is the best book of recent years in Crime & mystery?

Of the books here published since 2022, The Frozen River (2023) ranks highest: #20, 8.1/10.