Murder by the Book...
THE COMPLETE reading list!

The Notting Hill Mystery by Charles Felix

The first genuine detective novel, with clues and a properly investigated solution to a crime, was published in book form in 1865 and as a serial three years earlier. ‘Felix’ was Charles Warren Adams, owner of the publishing firm and secretary of the Anti-Vivisection Society. The book even contains a map, later a popular feature of Golden Age novels.

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

The Moonstone foreshadowed many classic tropes of the twentieth-century detective novel: clues and red herrings; suspects and twists; investigations and reconstructions; and even an English country house. Moreover, it established the ethos of the genre: ingenuity; a fair, skilfully devised puzzle; and a deft shifting of suspicion.

Bleak House by Charles Dickens

An understanding of criminal psychology features significantly in Charles Dickens’s work. Inspector Bucket is the first police detective in English fiction; methodical and compassionate, he became a model for later professionals.

A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle

Sherlock Holmes and Dr John Watson first appeared in Beeton’s Christmas Annual 1887. Their debut – a dark tale of revenge and murder – established now-familiar characteristics: the brilliant, mercurial Holmes, and his kind, trustworthy Watson.

The Red Thumb Mark by R. Austin Freeman

Dr. Thorndyke is the original fictional forensics expert, complete with a crime scene bag of powders and implements. Freeman had sound medical knowledge; the French National Police adopted his kit idea and set up laboratories patterned on Thorndyke’s.

Trent’s Last Case by E.C. Bentley

The likeable, self-deprecating detective Philip Trent is an antidote to what Bentley saw as the egotism and needless eccentricity of Sherlock Holmes. The book refreshed tired conventions (unpleasant victim, least likely suspect), ushering in a new era of competition between authors and readers to reach the solution.

The Mystery of a Hansom Cab by Fergus Hume

The first crime novel to sell 500,000 copies – no comfort to its author, who had sold the copyright for £50. According to crime historian Martin Edwards, the book was once alleged to have inspired a real cab ride poisoning.

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

The bestselling crime novel of all time rests – like much of Christie’s work – on the genius of a simple idea. Ten strangers, each with a crime in their past, are invited to an island and killed off one by one. A brutal, claustrophobic book, with nothing off limits. Its dazzling solution is a scream against injustice and the limitations of law. The original racist title was taken from a music hall song and used in the UK until 1985.

The Moving Toyshop by Edmund Crispin

Crispin’s most famous novel is a typically exuberant example of the ‘impossible murder’. Arriving late in Oxford one night, Richard Cadogan finds a toyshop unlocked and the body of a woman upstairs; when he returns with the police, the toyshop is now a greengrocers, and the body has disappeared.

The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey

A preoccupation with injustice distinguishes Tey’s work. In her most famous book, she creates the ultimate armchair detective by confining Inspector Alan Grant to a hospital bed. While there, he reinvestigates the murder of the Princes in the Tower, inspired by a portrait of Richard III that bears no resemblance to the villain of history.

Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L. Sayers

Among many achievements, Sayers invented the slogan ‘Guinness is good for you’ during a career as an advertising copywriter in the 1920s. The success of her Peter Wimsey novels – her ‘literature of escape’ – enabled her to quit the job. However, her experience was used here to capture both the fear of unemployment in the 1930s and the camaraderie and jealousy of workplace life.

The Division Bell Mystery by Ellen Wilkinson

‘Red Ellen’ (for the colour of her hair and her politics) wrote her only crime novel in a gap between stints as a Labour MP. An elaborate murder in a committee room is made plausible by a convincing cast of politicians and civil servants and written with the immediacy and authority of a true insider.

Tragedy at Law by Cyril Hare

Hare effortlessly transferred his experience as a barrister and county court judge to his fiction, blending it with subtle comedy and an instinct for the dramatic. The law is not a backdrop here, but integral in every way. The murder occurs late, the clue depends on obscure legislation, and the realism of the court circuit provides fascinating entertainment.

Smallbone Deceased by Michael Gilbert

Set in a solicitor’s firm, based like Gilbert’s own in Lincoln’s Inn, Smallbone Deceased paints a wonderful picture of office politics in post-war Britain. The mystery that unfolds around a body found in a legal deposit box is stylish and clever.

All the Lonely People by Martin Edwards

As both novelist and historian, Edward’s contribution to crime fiction is immense. His Harry Devlin series broke boundaries in its portrayal of a Liverpool lawyer in the early 1990s. Each book carries the authority of his own legal background and a deep compassion for its subjects.

Without Prejudice by Nicola Williams

Williams poured her own experience as a barrister into this incisive legal thriller about Lee Mitchell, a young black woman of a working-class Caribbean background. The novel articulates the challenges of the legal profession for women and people of colour.

The Beast Must Die by Nicholas Blake

Opening with the line ‘I am going to kill a man’, the book is a study in grief, anger, and revenge for the death of a little boy. Detection and poetry are natural bedfellows, and Blake was the pseudonym of Poet Laureate, Cecil Day-Lewis. The author often drew on incidents from his own life and found inspiration for his finest crime novel in the near-miss that his son had with a dangerous driver.

The Hours Before Dawn by Celia Fremlin

Long before the term ‘domestic noir’ was invented, Fremlin had a talent for shining darkness into the lightest of corners. Her debut novel was inspired by exhaustion after sleepless nights with her second baby, an experience she transformed into a subtle, tense psychological chiller.

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle

The brutality and darkness of this novel spring from its bleak, barren setting. The terrifying isolation of Dartmoor is palpable, encouraging our belief in a vengeful supernatural world. And while Holmes gets to the truth, the instrument of justice is ultimately the setting itself.

The Tiger in the Smoke by Margery Allingham

Allingham’s beautifully evoked fog-bound London is a character in itself, synonymous with the sense of evil that seeps from the pages of this chilling novel. A psychological thriller rather than a classic whodunnit, the battle between good and evil, between a ruthless psychopath and a saintly vicar, is symbolically played out in the genteel squares and dark alleyways of England’s post-war capital.

The Perfect Murder by H.R.F Keating

Keating wrote his Inspector Ghote novels for ten years before he visited India. Despite this, the authenticity of their Bombay setting was widely praised: author Arjun Raj Gaind said, ‘the corruption…the endless bureaucracy, the vibrancy of the packed streets…it was all spot-on, capturing the city of my childhood with a panache that was blindingly intoxicating.’

Laidlaw by William McIlvanney

McIlvanney laid bare the soul of Glasgow with stylish, forensic prose. In Jack Laidlaw, he created a detective who is intuitively connected to the city. He also inspired an East Coast ally, inscribing a book for a young Ian Rankin with ‘Good luck with the Edinburgh Laidlaw’

On Beulah Height by Reginald Hill

Hill’s larger-than-life creation, Andy Dalziel, plays understudy to location here. A girl disappears, and the panic and suspicion in a small Yorkshire community are beautifully evoked. The flooding of the valley below Beulah Height to create a reservoir covers all traces of the crimes, creating a stunning portrait of a landscape scarred by loss

Green for Danger by Christianna Brand

Criticised for her characters’ cool reactions to the reality of air raids, Brand argued that ‘during the whole of the blitz upon London which I spent in a heavily bombed area…I, too, saw “not a shadow of panic or failure or endurance-at-an-end”. Her tale of murder in a Kent military hospital is a tribute to that courage.

Checkmate to Murder by E.C.R. Lorac

Detective stories flourished in Britain during and after both world wars, but war itself has proved an effective setting for crime fiction. Here, Lorac skillfully turns her familiarity with wartime London into an atmospheric, carefully observed story. The murder of a miser makes cunning use of a Hampstead black-out.

The Red House Mystery by A.A. Milne

Milne’s book - a country house, locked room mystery - helped establish the conventions of British detective fiction between the wars. Its immense popularity testified to a reader’s preference for charm over plausibility.

The Dying of the Light by Michael Dibdin

A bleak and ruthless Agatha Christie pastiche, in which the country house becomes a nursing home. At Eventide Lodge, a suspicious death holds far fewer horrors than the living hell of each passing day.

The Lord Have Mercy by Shelley Smith

Notable for its early, fearless depiction of a lesbian couple, the novel explores the frustrations and hatred lying dormant in middle-class village life. Smith takes a world of dinner parties, fetes, and antique shops and gives it a vicious, claustrophobic twist. Its powerful climax has all the terrible inevitability of a Greek tragedy.

The Killings at Badger’s Drift by Caroline Graham

A tranquil English village, the death of a spinster - this could be fifty years earlier were it not for the wry self-awareness and barbed humour that are sometimes lost in the TV world of Midsomer. Dedicated to crime novelist Christianna Brand, Graham’s debut established her as a successor to Brand’s impeccable plotting, sharp observation, and a touch of the macabre.

The Ice House by Minette Walters

Drawing comparisons with Ruth Rendell on publication, Walters’s memorable debut combines a deceptively traditional rural setting with an unflinching exploration of scandal, prejudice, and adultery.

Death at Broadcasting House by Val Gielgud and Holt Marvell

Val Gielgud and BBC colleague, Eric Auschwitz, used their knowledge of the new Broadcasting House to create the perfect setting for an audacious on-air murder. The book and the 1934 film give a fascinating glimpse into the recording techniques of the time and the glamour of Portland Place.

The Port of London Murders by Josephine Bell

Bell was blessed with a gift for atmosphere. The life of the Thames - factories and wharves, derelict barges with strange cargoes, the mean streets off dockland - provides a genuinely original view of London. Bell’s career as a GP gave her insights into social health and inequalities that she highlighted in fiction.

The Spoilt Kill by Mary Kelly

A private agent is hired to investigate the theft of designs from Shentall’s Pottery and diverted by a body in a vat of liquid clay. The wider industrial landscape is beautifully portrayed, but the book’s genius lies in its cumulative detail: the clay-whitened water ‘like milk between the cobbles’; the lack of plastic mugs in Stoke; the cacophony of factory hooters marking lunch across the city.

A Morbid Taste for Bones by Ellis Peters

Peters deftly populates historical events with characters whose motivations seem plausible today; her impact on the genre was so great that the Crime Writers’ Association named its Historical Dagger prize after her. The character of Brother Cadfael shot to fame on the popularity of Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose. He stayed there on his own merits, through kindness, wry humour, and an impatience with religious piety.

Venus in Copper by Lindsey Davis

In creating Marcus Didius Falco, Davis gave herself a wonderful window through which to explore multiple aspects of Roman society under Emperor Vespasian. The novel combines historical knowledge with compelling plots, colourful situations, and lively dialogue.

A Place of Execution by Val McDermid

Two stories are seamlessly woven into one unforgettable novel. In 1963, thirteen-year-old Alison Carter disappears from an insular Derbyshire hamlet; 35 years later, a journalist, Alison’s contemporary, attempts to find answers. Setting its fictional story against the reality of the Moors Murders, the book conveys the unique atmosphere of a particular time and place. McDermid’s sleight of hand upends our whole understanding of truth

The Innocence of Father Brown by G.K. Chesterton

Based on Father John O’Connor, a Bradford parish priest, Chesterton’s unlikely hero was a tiny man with a shabby umbrella, an unruly collection of parcels, and ‘a face as round and dull as a Norfolk dumpling’. His insights came from God and a peerless knowledge of the human heart.

The Crime at Black Dudley by Margery Allingham

Albert Campion was a modest, unassuming detective; in his debut, he’s a suspect, not the main character. Over four decades, Allingham skilfully developed Campion from ‘a silly ass’ to a serious, mature intelligence veteran, immensely likeable as both.

The Man in the Queue by Gordon Daviot (Josephine Tey)

The first detective novel by the writer better known as Josephine Tey shows all the daring and originality for which she’s admired, especially by other writers. It introduced Alan Grant, one of the earliest credible police inspectors. Tey, however, refused to be constrained by his popularity: he is absent from some of her finest books, and in one even appears on the wrong side of justice.

Speedy Death by Gladys Mitchell

1929 was a vintage year for detective debuts and the most eccentric by far was Mrs Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley, who would go on to appear in 66 books. A self-proclaimed ‘psychiatric consultant to the Home Office’, Mrs Bradley’s distinctive cackle, unorthodox methods, and memorable appearance delighted her devoted readers.

The Murder at the Vicarage, A Murder is Announced and The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side - all by Agatha Christie

Christie’s disdain for patronising attitudes towards women and the elderly shines through her portrayal of Jane Marple. The Marple books and their St Mary Mead setting are a mirror to social change in twentieth-century England; these three novels move from a traditional village hierarchy to the post-war suspicion of the stranger and eventually to the arrival of supermarkets and housing estates. 

Strong Poison by Dorothy L. Sayers

A year after dismissing the ‘love interest’ in crime fiction, Sayers introduced Harriet Vane as a vehicle to marry off her detective Lord Peter Wimsey. Instead, their relationship developed over several books, enriching both the detective and emotional aspects of Sayers’s later work and fulfilling her wish that her characters should grow and change.

From Doon with Death by Ruth Rendell

According to his creator, DCI Reg Wexford was ‘born at the age of 52’ and was ‘a man because like most women I am…still caught up in the web that one writes about men because men are the people and we are the others.’ Amiable and happily married, Wexford is a strong counterpoint to the disturbed and despairing characters who people Rendell’s books.

The Last Bus to Woodstock by Colin Dexter

Dexter created Inspector Morse on a rainy holiday in Wales; by the time the series ended 25 years later, he had refashioned the traditional mystery. Morse’s idiosyncrasies are legendary but strip away music, crosswords, beer, and the car, and you’re left with a human mix of bluster, vulnerability, romance, and cynicism. In his superintendent’s words, an ‘extraordinary and exasperating man’.

Knots and Crosses by Ian Rankin

In the outline for Rankin’s first novel, John Rebus was killed off - surely a good argument for an author to keep plans flexible. Rebus has developed considerably since his debut. Part of Rankin’s skill as a writer is his ability to reveal, fresh aspects of his character with each new book. Rebus’s readiness to combine bleakness with extraordinary compassion makes him one of the most interesting protagonists in any genre.

Rune by Chirstopher Fowler

‘It came as a shock to me to open my battered copy of Rune and find that the world of Bryant & May was already fully formed in my second novel.’ Arthur Bryant and John May are Golden Age detectives in a modern world. Later, they had their own much-loved, long-running series but made their debut in this standalone about London gripped by an epidemic. Fowler’s premature death last year robbed the genre of one of its most original writers.

Prime Suspect by Lynda La Plante

DI Jane Tennison’s first appearance is perhaps the most modest in any crime novel. She works quietly on a dull VAT fraud case while the murder inquiry goes on around her. This unpromising scene sets up the struggle for recognition that Tennison has with her male colleagues - as integral to the book as the crimes that follow.

The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith

Crime novels are not often cited as books that uplift or make a reader smile, but these gentle stories of Precious Ramotswe, founder of Botswana’s No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, strike a chord across the globe. Evil never triumphs in Mma Ramotswe’s world; kindness, generosity of spirit, courtesy, and forgiveness are placed at the centre of life.

The Crow Trap by Ann Cleeves

Brought to the screen by Brenda Blethyn, Cleeves’s beloved Vera Stanhope is a Northumberland detective who cares deeply about her work and very little about her appearance. The character was partly inspired by single women whom Cleeves knew growing up in the 1950s, those ‘indomitable women who ran things’ and had real wartime responsibility, choosing a single working life rather than marriage.

Cover Her Face by P.D. James

P.D. James’s most famous detective, Adam Dalgliesh, took his surname from her English teacher at Cambridge High School. A poet whose wife and son died in childbirth, he was given the qualities that James admired most: intelligence, courage, sensitivity, and reticence.

Payment Deferred by C.S. Forester

In debt and despair, bank clerk William Marble poisons his nephew for money and buries him in the back garden. In this claustrophobic portrait of guilt, Marble spends every waking minute in terror of being hanged, living like a ‘cornered rat’ until the law delivers an ironic, brutal twist of fate.

Malice Aforethought by Francis Iles

From its opening sentence, in which the philandering Dr Bickleigh decides to murder his domineering wife, Iles’s novel blasts through the whodunnit format while being very different - a penetrating study of murder, told from the inside out. Hugely influential, the book’s cynical humour, heavy use of irony, and cruel cameo sketches are a delight.

A Judgement in Stone by Ruth Rendell

Rendell brilliantly lays bare her plot on the very first page and develops it with an unrelenting sense of dread rather than clues. A family moves through life oblivious to its fate as Eunice Parchment takes revenge on the written words that alienate her from the world.

Lonely Magdalen by Henry Wade

When sex worker, Bella Knox is found murdered on Hampstead Heath, the press and police discuss the case with all the skewed assumptions of guilt and innocence that are still rife many years later. But Wade’s novel is on the side of the victim: its empathy and compassion transform this into the story of a life that matters.

The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey

Who is the victim here? The blue-eyed teenage girl who arrives home after an unexplained absence, claiming to have been abducted? Or the mother and daughter, accused of beating her with a dog whip and holding her against her will? Against a backdrop of scandal and trial by media, Tey’s masterpiece lays bare our assumptions of class and gender and shows how far the effects of emotional violence can spread.

Garnethill by Denise Mina

Mina has said that she wants her books to replicate the humanising detail in postmortem photographs that she saw while studying forensic science. That unflinching quality, mixed with compassion, makes her writing special. Here, former psychiatric patient Maureen O’Donnell’s experience of sexual abuse gives her a deep empathy with fellow survivors and illuminates that painful struggle for the reader.

A Pin to See the Peep Show by F. Tennyson Jesse

Inspired by the real-life conviction and execution of Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters in 1923, Jesse’s haunting masterpiece centres on Julia Almond, whose punishment is vastly out of proportion to her crime. The novel symbolises the class and gender discrimination rife in 1920s Britain. The hours leading up to Julia’s execution, sedated and scarcely human, are amongst the most horrific in all of crime fiction

We, The Accused by Ernest Raymond

The final devastating moments of Raymond’s epic novel are haunting, and the book is said to have contributed to the ultimate demise of capital punishment in Britain. Raymond traces Paul Presset’s murder of his wife, from motive and planning to manhunt, arrest, and trial. The book resists any attempt to portray people as good or evil.

Verdict of Twelve by Raymond Postgate

A woman is on trial for murder but Postgate’s groundbreaking, novel centres on a forensic examination of the jury members and their reactions to the crime. Cynical and dark, the book ruthlessly exposes the prejudice of the British justice system. By including a killer and a religious fanatic on the jury, Postgate asks uncomfortable questions about who has the right to judge.

Reputation For a Song by Edward Grierson

Grierson’s account of murder within an ordinary family has a haunting, melancholy impact that belies its quiet prose. A son kills his father, claiming self-defence, and in the ensuing trial the suspense comes not from the question of his guilt, but whether he will hang. As its title suggests, the novel shows how easily a life can be permanently and unjustly tarnished.

The Glass Pearls by Emeric Pressburger

Few writers have gone further to put themselves in uncomfortable shoes than filmmaker Emeric Pressburger. A Jew who was forced to flee Berlin when Hitler took power, his mother, and several other relatives died in the Holocaust. In this harrowing, fearless novel, he writes from the perspective of a Nazi war criminal, dissecting guilt and paranoia in a way that’s chilling and utterly convincing.

The Players and the Game by Julian Symons

Critic and crime novelist H.R.F. Keating praised Symons’s skill in using the crime novel to show ‘the violence behind bland faces’. In this story of a serial killer couple, readers must identify the man and the woman involved from a host of characters.

Innocent Blood by P.D. James

In the 1960s, P.D. James, alongside Ruth Rendell, transformed the crime novel into a living, breathing reflection of the world, capable of social commentary and deep psychological insight. Innocent Blood is the story of an adopted girl who discovers that she’s the child of a rapist and a murderer and sets out to find her mother. In dealing unflinchingly with a child’s death, it offers a powerful masterclass in the insanity of grief.

The Mermaids Singing by Val McDermid

McDermid’s breakthrough novel was praised for its feminist subversion of the crime genre and introduced Dr Tony Hill. It was written, she says, ‘partly as a reaction against a slew of novels…in which hideous violence was meted out to female victims whose only role…was to be raped, mutilated…and strewn across the landscape…I wanted to do things differently.’

The Dancing Face by Mike Phillips

The Dancing Face combines a fast-paced thriller with ongoing discussions around the restitution of Nigerian artefacts lodged in British institutions and acquired through war or exploitation. Philips’s pioneering fiction frequently addresses social issues and politics, vividly brought to life by engaging characters. This novel was written more than 25 years ago, but its relevance is stronger than ever.

Kif by Josephine Tey

Kif is an orphaned country boy whose poverty on returning from the First World War leads him to a life of crime, with the fatal consequences hinted at by striking cover art. Tey’s first novel, written under the pseudonym Gordon Daviot, is a quietly devastating depiction of the aftermath of war on ordinary people.

 The Final Problem by Arthur Conan Doyle

Conan Doyle saw the Reichenbach Falls on a visit to Switzerland, and knew instantly how to get rid of Sherlock Holmes, who ‘takes my mind from better things’. Holmes plunged to his death at the Falls, locked in combat with Moriarty. Grieving his father’s death, Doyle was bewildered by the public mourning for a fictional character, but finally he gave in: Holmes returned in 1901 and eventually retired.

Nineteen Eighty-Three by David Peace

Very few characters are left standing at the end of The Red Riding Quartet (1999 – 2002), Peace’s uncompromising portrayal of a decade of crime and police corruption in Yorkshire. Written with meticulous detail, the Quartet is set against the Ripper’s reign of terror but concerned more with the broader decay and collapse of society, manifest in the Yorkshire landscape and the very language of the people.

Curtain by Agatha Christie

When Christie killed off her detective Hercule Poirot after more than 50 years, his death was front-page news all over the world and spawned many obituaries. She wrote Poirot’s final story, Curtain, during the Blitz and stored it in a bank vault for posthumous publication, but Collins persuaded her to make it the 1975 ‘Christie for Christmas’. Poirot returns to Styles, the country house setting of his first appearance in 1920. His final address to Captain Hastings reads poignantly as Christie’s farewell to her readers; she died four months after the book was published.

The Remorseful Day by Colin Dexter

When Dexter announced Morse’s death, a press conference was called, and tissues provided. The character’s fortunes had been transformed by TV adaptations and a wonderful rapport between John Thaw and Kevin Whately as Morse and Lewis; a modern-day Holmes and Watson. Acknowledging the importance of Thaw’s portrayal, Dexter added a clause to his will to prevent other actors from playing him.

The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens

Dickens died when Edwin Drood was unfinished and left no indication of how he would have completed the story, thereby providing the ultimate - unsolvable - narrative twist. Ian Ousby calls this cover ‘the biggest clue of all’ to Dickens’s intentions; it includes several scenes that do not appear in the completed half of the book, prompting much speculation of what was to come.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

In Roger Ackroyd, Christie tore up the rule book and made anything possible. Its breathtaking twist divided readers, labelled ‘a rotten, unfair trick’ or ‘a brilliant psychological tour-de-force’. There’s nothing unfair in the plotting: everything the culprit says is true and the whole solution resides in one, apparently banal, sentence.

The Poisoned Chocolates Case by Anthony Berkeley

When Joan Bendrix is poisoned by a box of chocolates, the amateur sleuths of the ‘Crimes Circle’ offer six possibilities as to who sent it. The most famous novel by a founder of the Detection Club is perhaps unique in crime fiction for having multiple solutions by different authors. Alternatives to Berkeley’s reveal were published by Christianna Brand in 1979 and by Martin Edwards in 2016

The Hound of Death and Witness for the Prosecution by Agatha Christie

Christie’s play, Witness for the Prosecution, began life as a short story in The Hound of Death. When her theatrical producer suggested she adapt it for the stage, she refused. He persisted, goading her into it by writing a terrible adaptation himself. She eventually researched the Old Bailey and turned the story into a gripping courtroom drama, creating a new twist that quickly became the play’s trademark.

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Perhaps the biggest puzzle regarding Rebecca is how it’s avoided any genre categorisation in its 85-year history: it has the heart and soul of a crime novel, a murder mystery like no other. Du Maurier’s handling of suspense is flawless, and the shift in our understanding towards the end of the book is one of the most emotionally credible and deftly handled twists in all of fiction.

An Afternoon to Kill by Shelley Smith

When Lancelot Jones is flown out to India, an incompetent pilot lands him in the desert, where he meets an old woman called Alva Hine. She tells him her life story, a Victorian mystery that has him spellbound, but he - and we - are being deceived. The ending has a rare originality, although some readers might find it as infuriating and contrived as it is ingenious.

The Mousetrap by Agatha Christie

The longest-running stage production in the world started life as a radio play, ‘Three Blind Mice’, written for Queen Mary’s 80th birthday. Set in a snowbound country house, the play’s ending is a real surprise. Perhaps the most notable thing about it is the respect given to the solution: audiences are asked to keep the secret at the end of a performance and, for the most part, they do.

The Man Who Didn’t Fly by Margot Bennet

The premise of Bennett’s novel sounds like a brain teaser: ‘Four men are due to fly to Dublin but only three board the plane. The plane crashes and the wreckage is lost. Which man didn’t fly?’ Pieced together from fragments of conversation and logic, the solution is mathematical in its complexity, but ingenious in its delivery.

The False Inspector Dew by Peter Lovesey

‘Sixty years have passed and no one has explained the mystery of the false Inspector Dew.’ So begins the standalone story widely recognised as Lovesey’s masterpiece. Set on board the Mauretania in 1921 and loosely based on real-life murderer Dr Crippen and the policeman who pursued him. Fiendishly clever, the book is a writer’s favourite. Colin Dexter, HRF Keating, and Ruth Rendell have all defied anyone to see the outcome.

A Fatal Inversion by Barbara Vine

Writer Julian Symons credited A Fatal Inversion with ‘the most brilliantly ironic ending of any crime story known to me’. The second novel that Ruth Rendell wrote as Barbara Vine opens with the discovery of two bodies in the pet cemetery of a Suffolk country house; rich in intrigue and atmosphere, it culminates in a daring and satisfying twist of fate.

An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears

Set in Oxford in the 1660s, Pears’s epic centres on the suspicious death of a fellow from New College and the young woman accused of his murder. The novel is narrated by four very different witnesses and the facts shift and distort with each new testimony; the final pages shed a new light on everything.

The Office of the Dead by Andrew Taylor

The genius of Taylor’s Roth trilogy (following The Four Last Things and The Judgement of Strangers) is that whichever order you read it in rewards you with a satisfying layering of secrets, gradually unfolding the interwoven histories of two families – and the psychological development of a serial killer. The conclusion is a brilliant ending to a story that spans more than half a century - or is it the beginning?

BOOKS THAT BECAME FILMS

The Lodger by Marie Belloc Lowndes

A Shilling for Candles by Josephine Tey

The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White

Before the Fact by Francis Iles

The House of Doctor Edwardes by Francis Beeding

Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith

BOOKS SET IN CAMBRIDGE

Police at the Funeral by Margery Allingham

Darkness at Pemberley by T.H. White

The Boat Race Murder by R.E. Swartout

The Cambridge Murders by Dilwyn Rees

An Unsuitable Job for a Woman by P.D. James

The Wyndham Case by Jill Paton Walsh

A Plague on Both Your Houses by Susanna Gregory

Nights in White Satin by Michelle Spring

Ghostwalk by Rebecca Stott

Cambridge Blue by Alison Bruce

Lasting Damage by Sophie Hannah

Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death by James Runcie

The No. 2 Feline Detective Agency by Mandy Morton

Nine Lessons by Nicola Upson

The Lantern Men by Elly Griffiths