10 Thrilling Contemporary Detective Series Books to Start Reading Now

Veteran screenwriter and Bluebloods showrunner Kevin Wade is back with One Good Eye, a follow-up to his riveting debut crime novel, Johnny Careless, and the latest in his Long Island–set Jeep Mullane series. Jenny Racine was the girl next door who grew up into an incredibly successful entrepreneur living on Long Island’s Gold Coast. When LI Police Chief Jeep Mullane responds to a call for help from her estate, he finds his longtime friend scared, brutalized, and refusing any investigation of the attack. Jeep can’t just let it go, so he kicks off his own search for answers — and soon finds himself ensnared in a web of biker gangs along with a fugitive police captain, a secretive ex-military ex-husband, and prying federal agents. “Wade delivers another compelling literary mystery” (Library Journal). 

Joe Ide kicks off his acclaimed Isaiah Quintabe detective series books in his Anthony Award–winning crime novel IQ. In a rough Los Angeles neighborhood, Isaiah Quintabe — better known as IQ — is picking up the LAPD’s slack. He may be a high school dropout, but he’s got a wicked intellect and is putting it to good use by solving crimes the cops can’t crack. He takes on cases for whatever his clients can afford, even if that’s just a home-cooked meal. But to make ends meet, he has to take paying clients, too. When he starts digging into the case of a rap mogul with a target on his back, the situation turns troublesome, and Isaiah finds himself up against everything from an ex-wife to an unhinged hit man. 

Gripping, nuanced, and keenly plotted, Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke is the Edgar Award–winning first entry in her Highway 59 series. Having grown up Black in Texas, Texas Ranger Darren Matthews knows how things go in this state. When the murder of a Black lawyer from Chicago and a white Texan woman is reported, Darren heads up Highway 59 to the town of Lark, Texas. With racial tensions rising in the wake of the crime, Darren will have to contend with backward attitudes as he works to find justice for the victims. 

Louise Penny’s beloved Chief Inspector Armand Gamache detective novels begin here in Still Life. When a body is found in the woods of Three Pines, a rural village south of Montreal, Inspector Gamache and his homicide team arrive to investigate. Locals are convinced the death was a hunting accident. Gamache suspects otherwise and quietly begins to pull back the curtain to reveal the secrets of this seemingly idyllic village. In its review of Still Life, Kirkus hailed Gamache as “cerebral, wise and compassionate…destined for stardom.” They were right. With 20 Inspector Gamache books already under her belt, Penny continues her celebrated small-town mystery series with Mrs. Wolcott’s Ghost, coming in October 2026.

A New York Times bestseller, The Thursday Murder Club is the first installment of Richard Osman’s detective series of the same name. In their senior village, four 70-somethings get together each week to talk about unsolved crimes. They call themselves the Thursday Murder Club. But when a local developer turns up dead, with a photograph left at the scene, the Club’s meetings kick up a notch. Suddenly these unlikely sleuths are caught in the middle of an unfolding investigation — can they crack the case before the killer strikes again?

Kate Atkinson introduces private investigator Jackson Brodie in Case Histories, as he takes on the cold cases of three families. Thirty years after a little girl goes missing, Brodie is contacted by the girl’s sisters, asking him to look into her still-unsolved disappearance. Meanwhile, a grieving father wants closure a decade after his daughter was murdered, and a woman seeks to reconnect with the niece she lost track of after her sister killed the child’s father with an axe. As Brodie works to find answers for each family, he discovers connections no one expected in this immensely enjoyable whodunit-slash-family-saga.

When a teenage girl is found strangled to death on Scotland’s Shetland Islands, the island community turns its suspicious gaze on the town loner, Magnus Tait. But the townspeople’s nerves are set on edge with the arrival of detective Jimmy Perez from the mainland, who insists that the case may not be so cut-and-dry. Their neighbor was murdered, and the killer is living among them. Raven Black launches the Shetland series by bestselling author Ann Cleeves.

Former detective Bill Hodges is retired, but there’s one case he just can’t put in the rearview mirror. The Mercedes killer was responsible for the violent death of eight people, taking their lives by driving a stolen car through a job fair line, leaving several more wounded in his wake. Hodges never caught the guy. And now, with his law enforcement days officially behind him, he’s being taunted — the killer has written him a letter describing how much he loved the thrill of driving through his victim and saying that he’s itching for a repeat performance much deadlier than the last. Now it’s a race to the finish: ex-cop vs. the one that got away. With Mr. Mercedes, horror maestro Stephen King proves yet again that he delivers across genres.

A staple of Nordic noir, The Keeper of Lost Causes is the thrilling original entry to the bestselling Department Q series. Haunted by a devastating shooting incident and wracked with survivor’s guilt, former homicide detective Carl Mørck finds himself the recipient of an unexpected “promotion.” He’s now the head of Department Q — he’s also the sole assignee to the new department. Department Q is just Carl and a backlog of cold cases. His colleagues might be doing their best to shove him aside, but Carl’s not ready to throw in the towel. One of the files has piqued his interest: a missing politician, disappeared five years earlier, presumed dead. The case might be classified as cold, but it’s not dead yet — and Carl doesn’t think the victim is either.

Bestselling author Michael Connelly introduces the persistent and principled Harry Bosch in The Black Echo. LAPD homicide detective and Vietnam vet Harry Bosch is out for justice. With every case he investigates, he’s determined to do right by the victims, but this one in particular hits closer to home. When the body of a man he fought beside in Nam, a fellow “tunnel rat,” is discovered in a drainpipe, Harry finds himself in the midst of a twisted case with adversaries at every turn. In the end, he’ll have to decide if his belief in justice is strong enough to outweigh his desire for retribution.