Book shelves · Emotional Truth Diaries

30 books you can’t put down

Locked rooms, unreliable narrators and the last page you didn’t see coming. Classic detectives, psychological thrillers and investigations for sleepless nights.

30 books 3 shelves classic · psychological · crime
Read the list

30 Best Crime Novels and Thrillers You Can’t Put Down

How to use it

  • Tick the books you’ve read and watch your shelf fill up.
  • “Shuffle” draws your next book at random.
  • “Find ↗” opens a search in a bookshop.
  • Your ticks stay only on this device.

Our own selection. Some books contain violence and dark themes. Years are of first publication.

Classic detectives

Where it all began.

  1. 1
    Sherlock Holmes investigates the legend of a ghostly hound on the moors.
  2. 2
    A murder on a train stuck in the snow, and Poirot among twelve suspects.
  3. 3
    Ten strangers on an island, and there are fewer of them every night.
  4. 4
    A Poirot case with one of the most famous twists in crime fiction.
  5. 5
    A stolen Indian diamond and one of the first detective novels in English.
  6. 6
    Sam Spade and a priceless statuette everyone is willing to kill for.
  7. 7
    Philip Marlowe, a rich family and Los Angeles noir.
  8. 8
    Murders in a medieval monastery with a secret library.
  9. 9
    A young bride lives in the shadow of her husband’s dead first wife.
  10. 10
    A young man takes over someone else’s life, and we find ourselves rooting for him.

Psychological thrillers

Nobody is who they seem.

  1. 11
    On their fifth anniversary Amy disappears, and everyone suspects her husband.
  2. 12
    A journalist goes home to cover two murders and has to face her mother.
  3. 13
    Every day from the train she watches one couple, until she sees something she shouldn’t.
  4. 14
    A painter kills her husband and never says another word.
  5. 15
    Three mothers, a school fundraiser and a death that binds them together.
  6. 16
    A writer takes over a famous author’s series and finds her secret manuscript.
  7. 17
    Every morning she wakes up with no memory of her life.
  8. 18
    The perfect couple everyone envies, and what really happens behind their door.
  9. 19
    A woman who can’t leave her house spies on the neighbours and sees a crime.
  10. 20
    Two marshals hunt for an escaped patient at an asylum on an island.

Investigations and suspense

One more chapter. Then one more.

  1. 21
    A journalist and hacker Lisbeth Salander search for a girl who vanished almost forty years ago.
  2. 22
    A young FBI trainee asks Hannibal Lecter to help catch a killer.
  3. 23
    A murder in the Louvre and codes hidden in Leonardo’s art.
  4. 24
    Harry Hole hunts a killer who leaves a snowman at every crime scene.
  5. 25
    A war veteran turned private detective investigates a supermodel’s fall.
  6. 26
    After a crash, a famous writer is rescued by his “number one fan”.
  7. 27
    The true story of a family’s murder in Kansas, and of their killers.
  8. 28
    Four pensioners solve old murders for fun, until a real one happens.
  9. 29
    Young Erast Fandorin’s first case, in Moscow in 1876.
  10. 30
    A man pulled from the sea with no memory and a bank account number in his hip.

Don’t read the last page first. We know you want to.

More lists