The 18 Best Golden Age Detective Novels

Country houses, church bells, a bedside investigation of Richard III. The genre wrote its rules here, then broke them on purpose.

1

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

Christie's 1926 novel, the book that showed how far a detective writer could push the reader.

2

And Then There Were None

Christie's 1939 island thriller, her best-selling title.

3

Murder on the Orient Express

Christie's 1934 closed-carriage mystery.

4

The Nine Tailors

Dorothy L. Sayers' 1934 fen-country mystery built around church bells.

5

Gaudy Night

Sayers' 1935 Oxford novel, as much a love story as a mystery.

6

The Hollow Man

John Dickson Carr's 1935 locked-room novel, containing the famous locked-room lecture.

7

The Poisoned Chocolates Case

Anthony Berkeley's 1929 novel in which six amateurs solve the same crime six ways.

8

Malice Aforethought

Francis Iles' 1931 novel that tells you the murderer on page one.

9

Trent's Last Case

E.C. Bentley's 1913 novel, often called the first modern detective novel.

10

The Red House Mystery

A.A. Milne's 1922 country-house mystery, written before Winnie-the-Pooh.

11

The Beast Must Die

Nicholas Blake's 1938 revenge novel told partly as a murderer's diary.

12

Murder Must Advertise

Sayers' 1933 novel set in the advertising agency where she once worked.

13

Green for Danger

Christianna Brand's 1944 wartime mystery set in a military hospital.

14

The Franchise Affair

Josephine Tey's 1948 novel about two women accused of abducting a girl.

15

Whose Body?

Sayers' 1923 debut, introducing Lord Peter Wimsey.

16

The Body in the Library

Christie's 1942 Miss Marple novel, a deliberate cliche turned inside out.

17

Death of a Ghost

Margery Allingham's 1934 Albert Campion novel set in the London art world.

18

The Case of the Velvet Claws

Erle Stanley Gardner's 1933 debut for Perry Mason.