Best of 2024

Janice Hallett has done it again: in her latest epistolary novel, the reader is encouraged to join the dots and solve the mystery by reading emails, text messages and essays from a group of arts students. Hallett's usual unreliable narrators, gentle satire, and plot twists make this a favourite, ideally to be read through in one sitting.

Commissario Guido Brunetti returns to solve another crime in Venice. Donna Leon's long-standing series never disappoints, and the publishers have kindly opted for a larger-than-usual font size, which makes it easier to read for older eyes.

What would happen when a Golden Age "little old lady" detective who solves the usual village murders and a hardboiled police detective from California meet? In the capable hands of Chris Brookmyre, this genre-crossing story is highly entertaining and fun.

Ian Rankin's John Rebus series, set in Edinburgh, is deservedly popular. This latest instalment sees John Rebus behind bars - clearly not the safest place to be for someone who has put many of the inmates into prison in the first place.

1950s London is the main character in this dark and gritty tale. Against a back-drop of rationing and race riots, crime and poverty, Dominic Nolan's White City is a powerful and compelling read.

There is a murder, and the plot is driven by the urgent need of the protagonist to solve it, so this book fits the murder mystery genre.

For the reader, the biggest puzzle and joy lies in puzzling out what this post-apocalyptic island really is. True to form, Stuart Turton again builds a richly imagined world with compelling characters.

Benjamin Stevenson's second novel takes all the familiar mystery tropes: there is a closed circle of characters (all involved in crime fiction writing and publishing), in a confined location (a moving train crossing Australia), with a corpse in a locked room. The narrator delights in teasing the reader by pointing out all the rules of the genre. It's a fun read for classic mystery readers.

George Smiley is back, resurrected by John le Carré's son Nick Harkaway, an acclaimed novelist in his own right, who here masterfully captures the style of the original. The story takes us back to 1963, and the Cold War.

The ultimate companion volume to Miss Marple, by "Agathologist" Mark Aldridge, Agatha Christie's Marple describes and evaluates the full range of Marple publications, from the original stories, to film and television adaptions, translations, audiobooks and more, taking us all the way from 1927 to the 21st century.

This should be on the list for the striking cover alone. Vaseem Khan's latest volume in the Malabar House series takes us to Bombay and New Delhi in 1951. We again meet India's first female detective Persis Wadia, and Archie Blackfinch from Scotland Yard.