Here is a List of 10 Best Classic Mystery Novels. These Books are available on Amazon. Mystery fiction is a genre of fiction that typically includes the identity of a killer or the victim of some other sort of crime being revealed.
Author : Barbara Neely
Blanche White is a plump, feisty, middle-aged African-American housekeeper working for the genteel rich in North Carolina. But when an employer stiffs her, and her checks bounce, she goes on the lam, hiding out as a maid for a wealthy family at their summer home. That plan goes awry when there’s a murder and Blanche becomes the prime suspect. So she’s forced to use her savvy, her sharp wit, and her old-girl network of domestic workers to discover the truth and save her own skin. Along the way, she lays bare the quirks of southern society with humor, irony, and a biting commentary that makes her one of the most memorable and original characters ever to appear in mystery fiction.
“Blanche not only solves the crime, but exhibits familiar foibles and strengths, believes in kitchen-table wisdom, and possesses a wicked sense of humor,” Ms. Magazine
Author : John Grisham
The life of a ten-year-old black girl is shattered by two drunken and remorseless white men. The mostly white town of Clanton in Ford County, Mississippi, reacts with shock and horror at the inhuman crime—until the girl’s father acquires an assault rifle and takes justice into his own hands.
For ten days, as burning crosses and the crack of sniper fire spread through the streets of Clanton, the nation sits spellbound as defense attorney Jake Brigance struggles to save his client’s life—and then his own.
Author : John le Carré
The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (Penguin Modern Classics) written by John Le Carre derives its suspense from the setting of its story at the time when tensions were high during the Cold War, as the war between the East and West Berlin raged on with the Berlin wall standing tall between them. Alec Leamas is a British spy agent who was sent on a mission to gain information from East Germany. His mission fails as the last of his spies is killed. His superiors, known as the Control, send him on another dangerous mission after this, where he has to find Mundt- the chief of the East German Intelligence.
He starts working at the library, where he comes across Liz, a member of the East German communist party. His love affair with her ends dramatically and he is arrested after getting into a fight at a liquor store. After this, he finds himself with Ashe, another East German agent. Ashe wants to know about the British Intelligence and more so, about Rolling Stone, a bank deposit funding transfer operation.
Author : Raymond Chandler
Los Angeles Private Investigator Philip Marlowe is hired by wheelchair-bound General Sternwood to discover who is blackmailing him. A broken, weary old man, Sternwood just wants Marlowe to make the problem go away. However, with Sternwood's two wild, devil-may-care daughters prowling LA's seedy backstreets, Marlowe's got his work cut out. And that's before he stumbles over the first corpse.
The Big Sleep is Raymond Chandler's first novel featuring laconic PI Philip Marlowe.
'One of the greatest crime writers, who set standards others still try to attain' Sunday Times
Author : Dashiell Hammett
Sam Spade is hired by the fragrant Miss Wonderley to track down her sister, who has eloped with a louse called Floyd Thursby. But Miss Wonderley is in fact the beautiful and treacherous Brigid O'Shaughnessy, and when Spade's partner Miles Archer is shot while on Thursby's trail, Spade finds himself both hunter and hunted: can he track down the jewel-encrusted bird, a treasure worth killing for, before the Fat Man finds him?
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Author : Agatha Christie
Just after midnight, a snowdrift stops the Orient Express in its tracks. The luxurious train is surprisingly full for the time of the year, but by the morning it is one passenger fewer. An American tycoon lies dead in his compartment, stabbed a dozen times, his door locked from the inside.
Isolated and with a killer in their midst, detective Hercule Poirot must identify the murderer – in case he or she decides to strike again.
Author : Kazuo Ishiguro
Kazuo Ishiguro imagines the lives of a group of students growing up in a darkly skewed version of contemporary England. Narrated by Kathy, now thirty-one, Never Let Me Go dramatises her attempts to come to terms with her childhood at the seemingly idyllic Hailsham School and with the fate that has always awaited her and her closest friends in the wider world. A story of love, friendship and memory, Never Let Me Go is charged throughout with a sense of the fragility of life.
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Author : Elizabeth George
Fat, unlovely Roberta Teys is found beside her father's headless corpse, wearing her best dress and with an axe in her lap. Her first words are: 'I did it. And I am not sorry' and she refuses to say more.
Inspector Thomas Lynley and DS Barbara Havers are sent by Scotland Yard to solve this particularly gruesome murder. And as they navigate their way around a dark labyrinth of secret scandals and appalling crimes, they uncover a series of shocking revelations that shatter the façade of the peaceful Yorkshire village.
Author : Patricia Highsmith
The psychologists would call it folie a deux...
'Bruno slammed his palms together. 'Hey! Cheeses, what an idea! I kill your wife and you kill my father! We meet on a train, see, and nobody knows we know each other! Perfect alibis! Catch?''
From this moment, almost against his conscious will, Guy Haines is trapped in a nightmare of shared guilt and an insidious merging of personalities.
Author : Agatha Christie
The book that topped the international online poll held in Agatha Christie’s 125th birthday year to discover which of her 80 crime books was the world’s favourite.
1939. Europe teeters on the brink of war. Ten strangers are invited to Soldier Island, an isolated rock near the Devon coast. Cut off from the mainland, with their generous hosts Mr and Mrs U.N. Owen mysteriously absent, they are each accused of a terrible crime. When one of the party dies suddenly they realise they may be harbouring a murderer among their number.
The clear winner in an international online poll held to discover the world’s favourite Agatha Christie book, this new paperback also coincides with a new 3-part BBC TV adaptation featuring a stellar ensemble cast: Douglas Booth, Charles Dance, Maeve Dermody, Burn Gorman, Anna Maxwell Martin, Sam Neill, Miranda Richardson, Toby Stephens, Noah Taylor and Aidan Turner.
