We Were Liars is the best book I’ve read this year. I have been recommending it all this week and it’s also made me think about how many books I enjoy are mysteries. In its honour, here are ten recommended mystery novels.
- We Were Liars by E Lockhart
Could be read as YA or an adult novel. The heroine knows something terrible has happened but can’t grasp what or why, the answer must lie in at the summer vacation home where she lost her memory two summers ago. - Before I Go To Sleep by SJ Watson
Intensely creepy thriller about a women with a rare form of amnesia which has erased her short term memory and she has to rebuild her identity each day, but can she trust what she learns? - The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
Margaret goes visits bestselling author Vida Winter, intrigued by her collection of twelve stories confusing named ‘Thirteen Tales of Change and Desperation’. The thirteenth tale is wrapped around the mystery of Vida’s own life and the disturbed twins Emmeline and Adeline March. Vida must be one of the twins to know their family secrets so well – but which one? Is she protecting someone else or her own deeds. - Asta’s Book by Barbara Vine
This is one of my favourite Barbara Vine novels. Asta’s book is a diary bequeathed ultimately to Asta’s granddaughter Ann after the death if her aunt Swanny. The diary is well known by that stage, a bestseller translated into multiple languages, but could it hold the key to a mysterious murder and a lost child? As Ann unravels the mystery of the diary and the murder together, she learns surprising and uncomfortable facts about herself and her family. - Dead Famous by Ben Elton
Ben Elton is very clever in the way he weaves his plots. In this novel, set on the stage of a Big Brother style reality TV show, you don’t even know who has been killed until a third of the way through the book – and there remain the mysteries of how a murder could have been committed in full view of the public and the identity of the killer. - Sleeping Murder by Agatha Christie
The beginning of this novel is one of the most sinister and mysterious I’ve read. At doesn’t seem like a detective story but a supernatural one and that mood is retained throughout the novel. - The Dark Room by Minette Walters
Heiress Jane “Jinx” Kingsley wakes up from a coma after what appears to be a suicide attempt. She’s been jilted by her fiancé, who has since disappeared together with Jinx’s best friend Meg. With the help of Dr Alan Protheroe of the Nightingale Clinic she tries to recover the truth from her shattered memories and night time terrors. - The Time Travellers Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
This narrative is told in the sequence that makes sense for parts – but not all- of the story. Throughout it is a sense of lurking danger and dread. Henry’s time travel leaves him so very vulnerable and we know that a tragedy is coming while the details remain obscure. - The Secret History by Donna Tart
Long before The Goldfinch we all knew Donna Tart for this novel. Richard arrives at Hampden College, a poor Californian student who is quickly seduced by the charismatic classics students and their Professor. Desperate to be a part of the group, he misses the signs that will lead to more than one a brutal murder. - The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
Laura Chase is dead and her one novel ‘The Blind Assassin’ has a huge cult following. Only her sister Iris knows what really happened when she and Laura were children and how the novel came to be.