Undisputed Queen of Crime Agatha Christie died on this day in 1976. Crime fiction is a genre that has traditionally been dominated by men—but on the other hand, Christie is the best-selling author of all time, so that should tell you something. In honor of her life (and her prolific publishing career) I’ve picked out a few great crime novels written by women from each of the last ten decades. Now, of course, there are more than three crime novels from each decade that you should read (and probably more than three novels in every genre that you should read), but one has to stop somewhere, so add your own recommendations with abandon. NB: This is not a definitive list by any means; genre is necessarily a bit fluid here, privilege has gone to important, groundbreaking or otherwise historically notable works where I’ve noted them, but taste has, as ever, played a factor.
1920s
Agatha Christie, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926)
Voted the best crime novel of all time in 2013, this book is particularly heralded for its influential structure and highly surprising twist—which I won’t, of course, ruin for you here.
Patricia Wentworth, Grey Mask (1928)
The first of the many novels starring Miss Silver—governess-turned-detective—by a verifiable master of the genre.
Gladys Mitchell, Speedy Death (1929)
Another introduction of a fierce and long-lived (appearing in 66 novels!) female detective: the reptilian psychiatrist Mrs. Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley. In her first novel, she faces a dead body in a bathtub in a fine gentleman’s country house—doesn’t get more classic than that.
1930s
Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night (1935)
Oh, Dorothy L. Sayers! This whole decade (and more) could have been filled with her work, but why not highlight the very fun Gaudy Night, in which the writer Harriet Vane uncovers the truth about a series of crimes at her alma mater, and which has been called the first feminist mystery novel.
Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca (1938)
In this best-selling gothic classic, our heroine shows up to her new home (after marrying a wealthy near-stranger), and must do battle with the now-legendary housekeeper Mrs. Danvers, while uncovering the truth about her husband’s eponymous first wife.
Agatha Christie, And Then There Were None (1939)
Christie’s most popular work (and the best-selling mystery novel of all time) is a particularly weird sort of locked-door mystery: a bunch of morally questionable people are lured to an island and then killed off one by one, until…
1940s
Vera Caspary, Laura (1942)
A woman—an independent career woman, importantly—is shot in the face in the doorway of her apartment; later, she comes home, forcing the detective investigating her murder to start investigating her for murder—though of course he’s also in love with her.
Christianna Brand, Green for Danger (1945)
Brand’s best novel is set in a WW2 hospital during the Blitz—when a patient dies on the table, no one bats an eye, but when one of the nurses follows him in short order, Inspector Cockrill is on the case.
Josephine Tey, The Franchise Affair (1948)
A teenage girl accuses Marion Sharpe and her mother of abducting her, beating her, and keeping her hostage—though they of course swear they did no such thing, and call on Robert Blair to prove it. A tense and satisfying novel.
1950s
Josephine Tey, The Daughter of Time (1951)
Whoops, more Tey. This unusual detective novel features a contemporary Inspector attempting to exonerate the long-dead Richard III—basically on a hunch, at least at the beginning. In 1990, the Crime Writers’ Association voted it the best crime novel of all time.
Margery Allingham, The Tiger in the Smoke (1952)
An immersive, atmospheric novel in which a killer stalks through the pea-soup fog of London. Also, fun fact: this is J.K. Rowling’s favorite crime novel.
Patricia Highsmith, The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955)
But of course—one of my favorite crime novels of all time, featuring the endlessly fascinating, terrifyingly devious Tom Ripley, an antihero for the ages.
1960s
Margaret Millar, The Fiend (1961)
A subversion of the pedophile genre from a prolific and underrated writer.
Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962)
Not your typical crime novel by any stretch—but it certainly involves a crime, a murder even, and a murderer who is eventually revealed. Plus, it’s one of the great novels of the decade, and it seems a shame not to have Shirley Jackson, queen witch, on this list in some way.
Emma Lathen, Murder Against the Grain (1967)
This novel, which won Lathen the CWA Gold Dagger, is a wry banking murder mystery set during the Cold War. And why not?
1970s
P.D. James, Shroud for a Nightingale (1971)
One of the best of James’s Adam Dalgleish books, Shroud for a Nightingale finds the detective in a nursing school plagued by—you guessed it—murder.
Paula Gosling, A Running Duck (1974)
Later retitled as Fair Game, Gosling’s first novel, which follows a woman’s struggle to survive after an accidental run-in with a hitman, won the CWA New Blood Dagger.
Ruth Rendell, A Demon in My View (1976)
Rendell is a master, and this novel—which pits a reclusive psychopath against the graduate student studying reclusive psychopaths who has just moved in downstairs—is one of her best.
1980s
Sue Grafton, “A” Is for Alibi (1982)
The first Kinsey Millhone “Alphabet mystery” novel sets out to solve the murder of a lawyer—hired by his wife, who has already spent eight years in jail for the crime. But of course, things are more complicated than they seem.
Barbara Vine, A Dark-Adapted Eye (1986)
In this novel by Ruth Rendell’s alter-ego, which won the Edgar award, a woman combs through the past of her aunt, who was hanged for murder. A masterpiece of suspense.
Lindsey Davis, The Silver Pigs (1989)
A historical crime novel set in Rome in AD 70, the first book in the Marcus Didius Falco Mysteries is perfect for those who want all the murder and intrigue of the genre without having to look around every corner.
1990s
Natuso Kirino, Out (1997)
Originally published in Japanese in 1997 (and translated into English in 2004), Kirino’s exceptional novel follows a group of women, late-night coworkers at a bento box factory who are trying their best to cover up a murder—but quickly falling apart at the seams.
Donna Tartt, The Secret History (1992)
Murder, bacchanalia and mayhem staged by Greek majors at a small Vermont college. All right, this book doesn’t exactly go with the others—yes, there’s a crime, but we know who did it the whole time. What we don’t know, exactly, is why. Still, it manages to be just as suspenseful as any “true” crime novel on this list.
Minette Walters, The Sculptress (1993)
The titular character of this novel—which won both an Edgar and a Macavity Award—is an obese woman in jail for the horrific murder of her mother and sister, and famous for the way she re-molded their bodies after their death (and the wax figures she makes compulsively in prison). But when a journalist takes an interest in her story, she finds that not everything is as it seems.
2000s
Kate Atkinson, Case Histories (2004)
The case of three cases—that shouldn’t be connected, but somehow, at least to detective Jackson Brodie’s eye, seem to be reaching out to one another. Atkinson can always be counted on for solid graceful prose; she’s one of my favorite crime/literary crossovers.
Sophie Hannah, Hurting Distance (2007)
A psychological crime thriller about two detectives on the hunt for a serial—and completely creepy—rapist.
Laura Lippman, What the Dead Know (2007)
This novel begins with a premise worthy of the Romanovs: a woman emerges from a car crash in 2005 claiming to be Heather Bethany—a girl who, along with her sister, disappeared in 1975. What follows is a twisty, imaginative mystery that won the 2008 Anthony and Macavity Awards for best novel.
2010s
Tana French, Faithful Place (2010)
Let’s just have this one stand in for French’s whole oeuvre, shall we?
Megan Abbott, Dare Me (2012)
Abbott is one of our greatest contemporary crime writers, and she consistently takes girlhood as her subject—endlessly mysterious and, er, violent as it can be. This novel, which the New York Times called “Heathers meets Fight Club,” is a suburban noir about cheerleaders—complete with a dead body, of course.
Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl (2012)
One of the biggest—and most surprising—crime books in recent memory, which also opened the floodgates for a host of very unlikeable female characters.
