Best Detective Books Top 10 [Adult & Youth] [Update 2024]

What are the best detective books for both adult and youth? You might be in the mood for a good crime thriller, so be sure to check out our list of the best detectives. Read along…

Discover the best detective books

Curious about the best detective books? We have listed them for you. We start our recommendations with the top 10 best Detective books of all time. This list has been updated this year, including all the recent titles.

Top 10 Best Detective Books	Author
The Big Sleep	Raymond Chandler
The Hound of the Baskervilles	Arthur Conan Doyle
The Moonstone	Wilkie Collins
The Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time	Crime Writers’ Association
Gone Girl	Gillian Flynn
Murder on the Orient Express	Agatha Christie
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd	Agatha Christie
The Maltese Falcon	Dashiell Hammett
Da Vinci Code	Dan Brown
In Cold Blood	Truman Capote

The top 10 list: the best detective books

Breathe Your Last: An addictive and nail-biting crime thriller (Detective Josie Quinn Book 10)

Nysa is found with her face down in a swimming pool, when Detective Josie Quinn finds her. Something is off, because Nysa was an excellent swimmer, and where is the backpack that she had carried with her? When more people die, Josie thinks there is pattern.

The Good Detective 

Detective Marsh loses his wife and child in an accident, and after that, well, he’s just not the same anymore. When his fingerprints are discovered at a crime scene and then another dead body is found, will he be able to clear himself from the list of suspects?

Vanishing Girls: A totally heart-stopping crime thriller (Detective Josie Quinn Book 1)

This is another ‘Josie Quinn’ story (like the number one on our top ten list), and this time Detective Josie finds not only one, but that two girls have gone missing. When she finds one of them, there seems to be a connection with a cold case. Can Josie solve the case?

Taken to the Grave: A completely unputdownable mystery thriller (A Detective Jo Fournier Novel Book 2)

Detective Jo Fournier knows there is a relation between the dead body of a college staff member and the murdered student Britney. Then there is another dead body. Can she prevent any other murders from happening when no-one believes her theory?

The Big Book of Female Detectives 

Otto Penzler has picked 74 detective stories from the last 150 years written by women. The book includes famous writers, like Agatha Christie, but also new writers like Anna Katharine Green.

The Bones She Buried: A completely gripping, heart-stopping crime thriller (Detective Josie Quinn Book 5)

This is the third ‘Josie Quinn’ book on this list, and we absolutely love the suspense in these stories. This time Josie is arriving at her partner’s grandparents’ house for dinner, when she discovers the grandmother dead in the garden. Could there be a link with the disappearance of Drew Pratt?

Save Her Soul: An absolutely unputdownable crime thriller and mystery novel (Detective Josie Quinn Book 9)

Josie finds a dead body after a dam breaks, but what startles her is the fact that the dead girl is wearing the exact same jacket that her ex-husband used to wear. He is not alive anymore, but could there be a connection between the two cases?

Detective Cross (Alex Cross Bookshots, 2)

When an anonymous caller threatens to set off bombs in Washington, DC, Alex Cross is put on the job to prevent this from happening. Will he, with the help form his partner, be successful?

The Templar Detective (The Templar Detective Thrillers Book 1)

We like this book because of the secrecy of the Templars who play an important role. Templar Knight Sir Marcus de Rancourt is confronted with a conspiracy when he decides he is going to live as a farmer to raise his sister’s children after she is found murdered. Can he find out who did it?

The Detective in the Dooryard: Reflections of a Maine Cop

We recommend this book by Timothy Cotton to anyone who wants a different point of view when it comes to crimes that have been committed. This writer focuses on the normal people that he meets during his investigations, not the crime itself.