The 29 Best Mystery, Thriller and True Crime Books of 2024…so Far
Here are the 29 best mystery, thriller and true crime books of 2024…so far. The game is afoot! Whether you haven’t a clue and let a story wash over you or whether you love a scavenger hunt, pull out pencil and paper and puzzle out the solution along with the protagonist, I’ve got some great books for you. Love Sherlock Holmes? Many of the people in these books follow in the footsteps of Holmes and Watson (or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, if you want to be pedantic) and they all love a good mystery. Looking for stories that illuminate the times they are set in, whether that’s LA after the riots or Shanghai as World War II looms? They’re here. Ongoing series, classic reissues, westerns, larks and yes even a Princess Diana imitator making like Miss Marple. So let’s get reading! At the head oof the Parade are…
The 29 Best Mystery, Thriller and True Crime Books of 2024…so Far
Courtesy of Scribner, William Morrow
1. Shanghai by Joseph Kanon
2. City In Ruins by Don Winslow
3. Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford
Joseph Kanon (The Good German, Los Alamos) makes Shanghai a Casablanca-worthy setting for World War II-era intrigue. It’s 1938 and some Jews fleeing Nazi Germany’s violence ended up in Shanghai. It’s a Western outpost inside China and all anyone wants to do is get letters of transit–I mean, book passage–on one of the cruise ships by Lloyd that offer a rare way to escape. Start casting the movie version now.
Few people quit at the top of their game. Director Quentin Tarantino insists his next film will be his tenth and final one. Done. Writer Don Winslow insists the same. City In Ruins is the finale to his Danny Ryan trilogy, a retelling of The Iliad that’s been compared to The Sopranos and called The Godfather of our day. Winslow already set a high water mark with his brilliant Border trilogy, not to mention stand-alone epics like The Force. Exceptional praise from critics and fellow writers. Bestseller status. And Winslow insists he’s walking away from it all. Find out why fans of crime fiction and great literature in general are so devastated.
Francis Spufford delivers a hard-edged noir set in an ever-so-slightly altered 1920s America. Better known in the UK, Spufford keeps you on your toes, whether it’s the puzzling whodunit or the recognizable yet not-quite familiar world where Indigenous people have thrived rather than being decimated. Traditional mystery fans will be delighted and those with a taste for alternate histories will savor the tossed-off details that bring the conceit to thrilling life. Uncategorizable, unless the category is “best of the year.”
Shanghai by Joseph Kanon ($28.99; Scribner) Buy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
City In Ruins by Don Winslow ($32; William Morrow) Buy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford ($28; Scribner) Buy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Courtesy of Bantam,Dutton, Pamela Dorman Books
4. Middle of the Night by Riley Sager
5. The Next Mrs. Parrish by Liv Constantine
6. First Lie Wins by Ashley Elston
Riley Sager’s latest suburban thriller hinges on a long-ago crime: two boys set up a tent in a backyard…but only one is there in the morning. Thirty years later, the boy who wasn’t snatched away reluctantly returns to the home where it happens, only to realize evil is still there too.
Liv Constantine enjoyed a massive hit with the Reese Witherspoon-endorsed The Last Mrs. Parrish. Now she’s returned with The Next Mrs. Parrish just as the “reformed” Jackson Parrish is let out of prison. It raises questions, such as “What will Constantine call the next book? The Final Mrs. Parrish?”
Reese Witherspoon picks another twisty winner with the blockbuster thriller First Lie Wins, a nail-biter about a woman with at least one secret identity who is forced to con a man she’s falling for. It’s complicated! Yes, I would be happy to let Reese take over this entire column, but she’s too busy conquering the world of film, tv and books.
Middle of the Night by Riley Sager ($30; Dutton) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
The Next Mrs. Parrish by Liv Constantine ($30; Bantam) Buy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
First Lie Wins by Ashley Elston ($28; Pamela Dorman Books) Buy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Related: The 32 Best Romance Books of 2024...So Far
Courtesy of Random House
7. The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum by Margalit Fox
The latest from acclaimed nonfiction writer Margalit Fox uncovers another fascinating tale from history. In previous books, Fox detailed everything from an engaging account of deciphering hieroglyphics to a daring escape by prisoners of war during WW I to how Sir Arthur Conan Doyle made like Sherlock Holmes and helped free a man wrongly imprisoned for murder. Now she has another juicy story to unfold: the story of the most notorious fence of stolen goods in US history, a person who operated in broad daylight (bribing the police certainly helped) and famous enough to make headlines when it all came crashing down. That person? The talented Mrs. Mandelbaum. Fox tells her story and captures an era. We learn everything about Mandelbaum’s operation, from secret passages to safe houses to how she helped plan major heists and protected the men and women under her employ. We also learn why fencing stolen goods became big business just as she rose to power (mass production made individual items harder to trace–they all looked the same!) and how Mandelbaum became one of the most powerful figures in crime despite being a woman. A decade or two later, crime would again be dominated by men but in the late 1800s, she was it. It’s a compelling narrative, to say the least, with a fascinating denouement. Mandelbaum’s story might be a miniseries (turning a book into a film or tv show is the highest compliment in this era.) But if producers want an ongoing series, I suggest they zero in on her lawyers, the colorful and wildly contrasting duo William Howe and Abraham Hummel. Howe was enormous, dressed flashily and made every pronouncement in court (and out) with operatic grandeur. Hummel was rail thin, dressed all in black and modest. Together they represented everyone from actors and circus folk to Mrs. Mandelbaum and the law was just one of many tools at their disposal. Fox brings them to delicious life, just as she does the entire world of this unapologetic crook.
The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum by Margalit Fox ($32; Random House) Buy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Courtesy of Soho Crime
8. Violent Spring by Gary Phillips
9. Ash Dark as Night by Gary Phillips
One of the high points of the year for mystery fans is the delight of not one, but two books from Gary Phillips. Violent Spring is the reissue of the classic 1994 mystery that launched his career and the character of private eye Ivan Monk, who investigates the death of a Korean shop owner in the wake of the 1992 LA uprising. This new edition includes an appreciation by the great Walter Mosley. And Ash Dark As Night (which I keep typing as Ash Dark As Knight, which also works) is the second acclaimed mystery starring crime photographer and sometime private eye Harry Ingram. Set in the 1960s, it finds Harry targeted by the LAPD when he gets hold of evidence documenting police brutality. The more things change….
Violent Spring by Gary Phillips ($17.95; Soho Crime) Buy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Ash Dark as Night by Gary Phillips ($27.95; Soho Crime) Buy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Courtesy of Grand Central Publishing, Riverhead Books, William Morrow, Viking
10. A Calamity of Souls by David Baldacci
11. The God of the Woods by Liz Moore
12. The Hunter by Tana French
13. Southern Man by Greg Iles
Does best-selling author David Baldacci have something to prove? If my math is right, this is his 50th novel for adults and Baldacci spent a decade working on it. Set in 1968 as the Civil Rights era facing an increasing backlash, a male white attorney takes on the case of a Black man wrongfully accused of a brutal murder. In over his head, he soon pairs up the a female Black attorney determined to see justice done. Together they might just beat the best prosecutor in the state of Virginia. That is, if powerful forces weren't arrayed against them and just as determined to see justice denied. The dependably entertaining Baldacci clearly dug deep on this one.
The God of the Woods is already one of the most acclaimed books of the year. It’s 1975 and a 13 year old girl goes missing from a summer camp. Tragic, until you discover her brother disappeared from the same place some 14 years earlier. And they’re both children of the family that owns the camp and rules the blue collar townsfolk with an iron fist. So tragic and…suspicious? Author Liz Moore’s biggest book yet and one being compared to Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, which is about the highest praise a book like this can receive.
The Irish countryside. A retired member of the Chicago PD. An almost feral abandoned teen named Trey. A returned father looking for gold. An English millionaire. The Hunter could be and is the stuff of a thriller. But in the hands of Irish writer Tana French it’s also rich material for a novel of psychological insight, complexity and the sort of tension that only arises when the characters you’re reading about feel real and so their fates really matter.
Greg Iles brings back Penn Cage with Southern Man, because how could he not? Following on from the acclaimed Natchez Burning trilogy, this time Penn tackles a white supremacist named Robert E. Lee White, a Ross Perot with a fascist bent and backing from a billionaire running for President. Toss in a mass shooting at a rap concert and antebellum plantations going up in flames and you've got an old fashioned race war on the way. Chaos! Until Penn teams up with his daughter and a one-time Black Panther in a race against time to reveal the conspiracy behind it all.
A Calamity of Souls by David Baldacci ($30; Grand Central Publishing) Buy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
The God of the Woods by Liz Moore ($30; Riverhead Books) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
The Hunter by Tana French ($32; Viking) Buy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Southern Man by Greg Iles ($36; William Morrow) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Courtesy of Mariner Books, Penguin Classics, Crown
14. Long Haul: Hunting the Highway Serial Killers by Frank Figliuzzi
15. The Case of Lizzie Borden and Other Writings by Elizabeth Garver Jordan
16. The Infernal Machine by Steven Johnson
In Long Haul– anonfiction work of true crime by Frank Figliuzzi–a gruesome pattern emerges. The FBI realizes that one thread connecting hundreds of unsolved murders might just be the occupation of the killers: long-haul trucker. Imagine, victims are picked up in one state and often the crimes occur in another and the bodies are dumped in a third, making the case all the more difficult to crack. Long-haul truck driver proves the perfect job for loners with a taste for the unthinkable. The FBI formed the Highway Serial Killings Initiative and tracked some 850 murders–and counting–that fit this m.o. Former FBI assistant director Figliuzzi charts the history of the unit and some of the worst offenders in a book acclaimed author Don Winslow calls “a true-crime masterpiece.”
If you’re a fan of true crime, you should know the work of pioneering journalist Elizabeth Garver Jordan. She was one of the few women to cover the Lizzie Borden and other murder trials…and did so with an innovative, narrative style that captivated the country. She championed women’s rights, denounced sexual violence, turned out detective tales and novels and if Emma Stone hasn’t optioned her story, well then Hollywood knows nothing.
In the popular history of The Infernal Machine, writer Steven Johnson heads to New York City before World War I and documents the rise of detective work as we know it today. It happens amidst a backdrop of anarchists setting off dynamite around the city and terrorizing New Yorkers for years. But the new head of the NYPD is determined to turn this corrupt tool of Tammany Hall from a muscle-bound oaf into a force that actually solves crimes.
Long Haul: Hunting the Highway Serial Killers by Frank Figliuzzi ($25.99; Mariner Books) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
The Case of Lizzie Borden and Other Writings by Elizabeth Garver Jordan ($22; Penguin Classics) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
The Infernal Machine by Steven Johnson ($32; Crown) Buy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Courtesy of Little, Brown for Young Readers, Dutton
17. The Brightwood Code by Monica Hesse
18. You Know What You Did by K.T. Nguyen
Monica Hesse plumbs World War I for an exciting tale of conspiracies that haunt a young woman involved in a disastrous mission. In The Brightwood Code, the war is over when she unexpectedly gets a chance to discover the truth about what happened. Telephone operator Edda did top secret work during the war when events went horribly awry. Now she's a civilian in DC when someone triggers her attention with the code word "brightwood" and Edda has a chance to right those horrible wrongs, or at least figure out why they happened and who is really to blame.
In the debut thriller You Know What You Did, a first-generation Vietnamese American is a success story: great husband, great daughter and a career as an artist. Then Annie's mother dies. And then a well-known art patron disappears. Then she wakes up in a hotel room next to a dead body. Just as compelling as the crime at its heart is the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder that plagues our protagonist. The OCD seems to illuminate what's going on, but is that true or is Annie's brain playing tricks on her?
The Brightwood Code by Monica Hesse ($18.99; Little, Brown for Young Readers) Buy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
You Know What You Did by K.T. Nguyen ($28; Dutton) Buy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
19. The Last Murder at the End of the World by Stuart Turton
The Last Murder at the End of the World combines a delicious murder plot with an unexpected setting: an island of survivors after the world is wiped out by a mysterious fog. When one of the handful of people left is brutally murdered, it’s both shocking and dangerous since the island’s defenses against the fog must be rebuilt in less than five days or they’ll all die.
The Last Murder at the End of the World by Stuart Turton ($27.99; Sourcebooks/Landmark) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Courtesy of Mariner Books, Dutton, Soho Crime
20. Everyone on this Train is a Suspect by Benjamin Stevenson
21. The Murder of Mr. Ma by John Shen Yen Nee and SJ Rozan
22. How To Solve Your Own Murder by Kristen Perrin
Everyone On This Train is a Suspect is delicious fun. A group of mystery writers board a train...and one of them is murdered. Stevenson delights in showing how the various styles of author (the forensic writer, the legal thriller writer, the psychological suspense writer and so on) tackle the crime in their own way.
The Murder of Mr. Ma is another blast of fun, one praised to the heavens by critics, though fans haven’t caught on as quickly. It’s a combination of Judge Dee and Sherlock Holmes, or if you’re fancy a mashup of gong’an fiction (where a magistrate solves crimes) and a Golden Age duo mystery (Holmes and Watson, natch). It’s 1924, Judge Dee comes to London to investigate the murder of a friend. When bodies quickly pile up, Dee recruits a quiet academic and the action is as furious as the thinking–this is no staid, sit at home and ponder the evidence storyline. The writing duo of John Shen Yen Nee and SJ Rozan make a great team, too.
The title–How To Solve Your Own Murder–is great. But they had us at the delightful cover, which echoes the opening of the PBS series Mystery! Throw in a country estate, an idyllic-seeming village riddled with petty feuds and secrets, a fortune teller predicting someone's murder (60 years in advance!) and we're sold. Comparisons to The Thursday Murder Club (catnip for mystery lovers) is just icing on the cake.
Everyone on this Train is a Suspect by Benjamin Stevenson ($30; Mariner Books) Buy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
The Murder of Mr. Ma by John Shen Yen Nee and SJ Rozan ($25.95; Soho Crime) Buy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
How To Solve Your Own Murder by Kristen Perrin ($28; Dutton) Buy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Courtesy of Simon & Schuster
23. The Bullet Swallower by Elizabeth Gonzalez James
Almost any Western works as a crime novel, because people have guns, justice is thin on the ground and the law is often whatever you make of it. In The Bullet Swallower, it’s the end of the 19th century and the bandit Antonio Sonoro heads to Texas to rob a train. Things go horribly wrong, Antonio’s little brother dies…and we jump to 1964, where actor/singer Jaime Sonoro is one of Mexico’s biggest stars. That won’t help him when there’s an existential debt to pay. It’s a novel that owes as much to the fantastical as it does to the felonious. Is it a western or a thriller or literary fiction? I just say it would be a crime not to read it.
The Bullet Swallower by Elizabeth Gonzalez James ($26.99; Simon & Schuster) Buy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Related: The 23 Best Shark Books of All Time
Courtesy of Random House, Doubleday, Dutton
24. The Princess of Las Vegas by Chris Bohjalian
25. Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
26. The Sicilian Inheritance by Jo Piazza
Chris Bohjalian knows page-turners: he’s the author of Midwives and The Flight Attendant, after all. But he also shows the strained but binding ties between two very different sisters. It's thrown into high relief by the setting of Las Vegas, where one of them works as a Princess Diana impersonator and is determined to figure out who killed her boss.
She had me at “Taffy.” But fans of Brodesser-Akner have high expectations from the author of the fiercely funny Fleishman in Trouble. The reviews say she delivers with Long Island Compromise, a family saga that begins in 1980 when a wealthy businessman is kidnapped. It picks things up decades later when everyone in his family–and I do mean everyone–is still reeling from the impact of that event and the money that’s proven a shield and burden ever since. Oh, but the money is dwindling folks. Comfort reading for those who haven’t won the lottery (or the lottery of birth) and the sort of social satire Tom Wolfe longed to write.
The Sicilian Inheritance is another work of literary fiction with a mystery at its heart. Sara's business and marriage both collapse, so why not head to Italy when her great-aunt dies and leaves Sara with the legacy of a (possibly) valuable piece of land and a shocking family secret? Sara must discover if her great-grandmother was murdered rather than died alone as her husband worked in America..and that her greatest inheritance may be the strength of the women in Sara's family that came before her.
The Princess of Las Vegas by Chris Bohjalian ($32; Doubleday) Buy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Aknew ($30; Random House) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
The Sicilian Inheritance by Jo Piazza ($28; Dutton) Buy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Courtesy of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, American Mystery Classics, Penguin Classics
27. The Essential Harlem Detectives by Chester Himes
28. Golden Age Whodunits edited by Otto Penzler
29. The Penguin Book of Pirates edited by Katherine Howe
Chester Himes looms large in the world of mysteries and thrillers. His legacy begins with the Harlem Detective series starring detectives Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson. The Everyman’s Library collects four of the best, starting with A Rage in Harlem and ending with Cotton Comes To Harlem. S.A. Cosby offers an appreciation in this handsome collection any mystery buff must own.
Fans of the Golden Age of Detective fiction trust Otto Penzler. You simply can’t go wrong with any anthology that has his name on it. Here he offers 15 classic “whodunits” that appeared between the two World Wars, ranging from the famous (Ellery Queen, Mary Roberts Rineheart) to the less familiar. But you can trust Penzler.
Pirates are a genuine threat on the high seas even today. That's no surprise since three-fourths of the Earth is water. It's big and pirates can lurk everywhere. So pirates right now are frightening. But pirates hundreds of years ago? Thrilling. Romantic. Fascinating. And also scary. The Penguin Book of Pirates is a compendium of stories about Blackbeard, women pirates and others who were the scourge of the high seas...and sometimes created egalitarian communities on board while doing so. Editor Katherine Howe pulls together contemporary accounts from journalists, ship's logs, trial transcripts and more to paint a picture of pirates as they really were.
The Essential Harlem Detectives: A Rage in Harlem, The Real Cool Killers, The Crazy Kill, Cotton Comes to Harlem by Chester Himes ($35; Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group) Buy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Golden Age Whodunits edited by Otto Penzler ($15.95; American Mystery Classics) Buy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
The Penguin Book of Pirates edited by Katherine Howe ($20; Penguin Classics) Buy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
