crime fiction home

Julian Symons 100 Best Crime & Mystery Books

Noted author, reviewer and acknowledged detective fiction expert Julian Symons composed
this list for the Sunday Times in 1957.


Buy Copies of these Top One Hundred Crime and Mystery Books
1794 - William Godwin - Caleb Williams
1845 - Edgar Allan Poe - Tales of Mystery and Imagination
1860 - Wilkie Collins - The Woman in White
1864 - Sheridan Le Fanu - Uncle Silas
1868 - Wilkie Collins - The Moonstone
1870 - Charles Dickens - The Mystery of Edwin Drood
1882 - Robert Louis Stevenson - The New Arabian Nights
1886 - Fyodor Dostoevsky - Crime and Punishment
1887 - Emile Gaboriau - The Mystery of Orcival
1887 - Fergus Hume - The Mystery of a Hansom Cab
1894 - Arthur Conan Doyle - The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
1895 - Arthur Machen - The Three Impostors
1899 - EW Hornung - Raffles
1902 - AC Doyle - The Hound of the Baskervilles
1907 - Jacques Futrelle - The Thinking Machine
1907 - Maurice Leblanc - The Seven of Hearts
1909 - Gaston Leroux - The Mystery of the Yellow Room
1909 - Baroness Orczy - The Old Man in the Corner
1910 - A.E.W. Mason - At the Villa Rose
1911 - G.K. Chesterton - The Innocence of Father Brown
1912 - R Austin Freeman - The Singing Bone
1913 - E.C. Bentley - Trent’s Last Case
1914 - Ernest Bramah - Max Carrados
1915 - John Buchan - The Thirty-Nine Steps
1920 - Sapper - BullDog Drummond
1922 - Edgar Wallace - The Crimson Circle
1922 - A.A. Milne - The Red House Mystery
1922 - Freeman Wills Crofts - The Pit-Prop Syndicate
1924 - A.E.W. Mason - The House of the Arrow
1926 - Agatha Christie - The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
1926 - C.S. Forester - Payment Deferred
1928 - S.S. Van Dine - The Greene Murder Case
1928 - Frances Noyes Hart - The Bellamy Trial
1928 - W. Somerset Maugham - Ashenden
1929 - Anthony Berkeley - The Poisoned Chocolates Case
1929 - H.C. Bailey - Mr. Fortune Speaking
1931 - Thomas Burke - The Pleasantries of Old Quong
1931 - Dashiell Hammett - The Glass Key
1931 - William Faulkner - Sanctuary
1931 - Francis Iles - Malice Aforethought
1931 - Hugh Walpole - Above the Dark Circus
1932 - Ellery Queen - The Greek Coffin Mystery
1933 - Dorothy L Sayers - Murder Must Advertise
1933 - Ethel Lina White - The Wheel Spins
1934 - Margery Allingham - Death of a Ghost
1934 - James M Cain - The Postman Always Rings Twice
1934 - F. Tennyson Jesse - A Pin to See the Peep-Show
1934 - Rex Stout - Fer-de-Lance
1935 - Ellery Queen - The Adventures of Ellery Queen
1935 - Ernest Raymond - We, the Accused
1935 - Dorothy L. Sayers - Gaudy Night
1935 - John Dickson Carr - The Hollow Man
1936 - Erle Stanley Gardner - The Case of the Sleepwalker’s Niece
1936 - Graham Greene - A Gun For Sale
1937 - Michael Innes - Hamlet, Revenged
1937 - Jonathan Latimer - The Lady in the Morgue
1938 - Daphne du Maurier - Rebecca
1938 - Philip MacDonald - The Nursemaid Who Disappeared (Warrant for X)
1939 - Eric Ambler - The Mask of Demetrios
1939 - Geoffrey Household - Rogue Male
1939 - Ngaio Marsh - Overture to Death
1940 - Raymond Postgate - Verdict of Twelve
1941 - Patrick Hamilton - Hangover Square
1941 - John Mair - Never Come Back
1942 - Cyril Hare - Tragedy at Law
1943 - Raymond Chandler - The High Window
1943 - Simenon - The Lodger
1944 - Vera Caspary - Laura
1945 - Agatha Christie - Death Comes as the End
1945 - William Irish - Phantom Lady
1946 - Edmund Crispin - The Moving Toyshop
1946 - Helen Eustis - The Horizontal Man
1947 - Kenneth Fearing - The Big Clock
1947 - Edgar Lustgarten - A Case to Answer or One More Unfortunate
1948 - John Franklin Bardin - Devil Take the Blue-Tail Fly
1948 - Roy Fuller - With My Little Eye
1949 - Roy Vickers - The Department of Dead Ends
1950 - Charlotte Armstrong - Mischief
1950 - Christianna Brand - Cat and Mouse
1950 - WR Burnett - The Asphalt Jungle
1950 - Michael Gilbert - Smallbone Deceased
1951 - Victor Canning - Venetian Bird
1951 - Georges Simenon - Maigret in Montmartre
1951 - Josephine Tey - The Daughter of Time
1952 - John Bingham - My Name is Michael Sibley
1952 - Edward Grierson - Reputation for a Song
1953 - Raymond Chandler - The Long Goodbye
1953 - John Ross Macdonald - The Ivory Grin
1953 - Hillary Waugh - Last Seen Wearing…
1954 - Ira Levin - A Kiss Before Dying
1955 - Margot Bennett - The Man Who Didn’t Fly
1955 - Michael Innes - The Man From the Sea
1955 - Margaret Millar - A Beast in View
1955 - Patrick Quentin - The Man With Two Wives
1956 - Nicholas Blake - A Tangled Web
1956 - Patricia Highsmith - The Blunderer
1956 - Shelley Smith - The Lord Have Mercy
1957 - Stanley Ellin - Mystery Stories
1957 - Ian Fleming - From Russia With Love
1957 - Meyer Levin - Compulsion

Page Layout © 2004 R.D. Collins

Home

Books Wanted     Bibliographies     DW Artists     Home Page