11 Modern Mystery Books for Agatha Christie Fans

In just a handful of years, bestselling author Alex Michaelides has rocketed to the top of the thriller game with his finely calibrated tales of mystery and suspense. Both the author’s debut, The Silent Patient, and his follow-up, The Maidens, are plot-twisty gems that we highly recommend you check out. For this list, though, we’re spotlighting The Fury, which The Boston Globe praises as “pure Agatha Christie–esque fun.” The novel whisks us away to an idyllic Greek island where ex–movie star Lana Farrar has gathered a few of her most glamorous friends for an Easter vacation. But the dreamy escape twists into a nightmare when heavy winds trap everyone on the island. As the storm intensifies outside, tensions simmer within — and by the end of the night, someone turns up dead. Who carried out the deadly deed, among the cast of suspects? You’ll have to trust playwright Elliot Chase, the unreliable narrator of The Fury, to guide you through the swirling mystery. There’s just one problem: Everyone is hiding something, including Elliot himself.

Louise Penny’s Still Life earned a slate of prestigious awards upon its release, including the New Blood Dagger, Arthur Ellis, Barry, and Anthony awards. The first in Penny’s beloved Inspector Armand Gamache series, it’s sure to enthrall Christie fans in search of a first-rate mystery. Still Life is set in Three Pines, a tiny Quebec hamlet south of Montreal, where Inspector Gamache is called to investigate the suspicious death of a local woman. While residents maintain that Jane Neal died in a tragic hunting accident, Gamache knows that things are far darker than they appear.

If you’re on the hunt for a deliciously inventive murder mystery brimming with killer wit, look no further than Stuart Turton’s The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, a book that bestselling author A. J. Finn describes as “Agatha Christie meets Groundhog Day.” The time-twisting whodunit centers on the perplexing demise of Evelyn Hardcastle. Evelyn is murdered at 11 p.m. each night at Blackheath Manor. Aiden Bishop, tasked with solving Evelyn’s murder, wakes up each morning in the body of a different house guest. Some of Aiden’s hosts are more helpful than others, and until Aiden can find the killer, he’s destined to repeat this time-loop whodunit from hell.

Lucy Foley’s The Guest List is sure to captivate Christie lovers, but don’t take our word for it. Library Journal, in its starred review, praised The Guest List as “Murder on the Orient Express and And Then There Were None rolled into one,” declaring that “fans of Christie…will absolutely love this book.” The mystery novel is set during a destination island wedding off the coast of Ireland. A TV star groom and a magazine publisher bride prepare to wed while the guests get ready to party in style. But as the ceremony progresses, jealousies and resentments rear their ugly heads, and it isn’t long before the dance floor is slick with blood.

Like Foley and The Guest List, Alice Feeney channels the spirit of Christie’s And Then There Were None in Daisy Darker, crafting a beguiling whodunit set on a remote island. The entire Darker family gathers at a crumbling family estate on a tiny tidal island to celebrate Nana’s 80th birthday. But when a storm descends and the clock strikes midnight, Nana turns up dead. An hour later, another body surfaces. Someone at this family gathering is checking off the attendees one by one. To survive the night and unmask the killer, the Darker clan will finally have to drag their family secrets into the light.

Peter Swanson “neatly riffs on Agatha Christie’s classic” in this exceptional thriller, delivering a “well-crafted page-turner” (Publishers Weekly) that’s sure to please. Nine Lives centers on nine strangers who each receive the same baffling letter in the mail: It’s a single sheet of paper with a list of names that includes their own. At first, the recipients dismiss the letter as junk, but then individuals from the list start dying off under very strange circumstances. As word spreads about one suspiciously drowning in Maine and another being shot while jogging in Massachusetts, the remaining people on the list race to unearth the connection. FBI agent Jessica Winslow is also on the list, and she sets out with Poirot-like determination to crack the case. 

“If you’ re a fan of Agatha Christie,” says Bustle, then “get ready to curl up with this suspenseful mystery” by Ruth Ware. We couldn’t agree more! Like Christie, Ware is a master mystery storyteller known for her big twists and finely calibrated clues that fall perfectly into place. She also loves a good locked-room setting, just like the Queen of Crime. The Woman in Cabin 10 follows travel writer Lo Blacklock, who embarks on a luxury cruise with a small number of fellow passengers. The voyage is a dream come true until Lo witnesses a woman being thrown overboard. But after Lo raises the alarm about the disappearance, the crew conducts a head count and claims all passengers are accounted for. Now Lo has to decide whether she imagined the event…or if something sinister is afoot.

Anthony Horowitz is the bestselling author behind beloved mysteries like Moriarty and The Word Is Murder. Like Christie, he knows how to craft a truly mind-blowing whodunit, and Magpie Murders is one of his best. In the novel, editor Susan Ryeland receives a new manuscript from Alan Conway, a crime writer she dislikes but has been forced to tolerate. Susan’s first read starts just fine. But as she digs into Conway’s writing project featuring detective Atticus Pünd, she becomes convinced that it contains a hidden story-within-a-story of real-life jealousy, greed — and murder. This is a modern narrative with an old-style feel of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction that Christie fans are sure to devour. Bonus: Magpie Murders also makes an excellent selection for your mystery book club!

The title alone should convince you to pick up this mystery by Edgar Award–winning author Rupert Holmes. If not, the book’s delightfully wicked premise will surely do the trick. Murder Your Employer is set at The McMasters Conservatory, a highly secretive school where students are trained in the homicidal arts. Students who attend the school must have a target in mind — and they must have an ethical reason for wanting their target dead. Their graduation thesis is simple: Murder your mark, pull off the perfect crime, and make the world a bit of a better place. What could possibly go wrong at a mysterious college crawling with murderers-in-training?

Here’s a meta-mystery for Christie fans. The Christie Affair is a historical mystery centered on Agatha Christie’s real-life disappearance. Christie really did disappear for 11 days in 1926, and just what happened over those 11 days, we’ll likely never know. But Nina de Gramont crafts a tantalizing dramatized version here, unspooling a tale of revenge, jealousy, and murder around the real-life events of an author who specialized in those very themes. The Christie Affair is “devilishly clever, elegantly composed and structured ― simply splendid” (Kirkus, starred review). 

The Mystery Guest is the second book in Nita Prose’s acclaimed Molly the Maid mystery series, which started with her 2022 bestseller, The Maid. In her latest release, the author returns to the five-star Regency Grand Hotel, evoking the English estate settings of Christie’s best whodunits. Amateur sleuth Molly Gray is now the department head at the hotel, training others to become maids. But just as Molly hits her stride, tragedy strikes: Famed mystery novelist J. D. Grimthorpe is found murdered on the floor of the hotel’s tearoom. Determined to wash out this stain before it sets, Molly delves into the case, crossing paths with her old foe, Detective Stark, and sorting through a cast of potential culprits, from Grimthorpe’s secretary and the new maid-in-training, to the hotel’s (too?) kindly doorman.