Our Favorite Mystery and Thriller Books of 2024

We tore through Alex Michaelides’s instant New York Times bestseller The Fury, much like we devoured his two previous psychological thrillers, The Silent Patient and The Maidens. In his latest whodunit, Michaelides weaves together a twisty mystery with fascinatingly rich characters and a bewitching sense of place. Reclusive ex–movie star Lana Farrar invites her closest and most glamorous friends to her private Greek island to celebrate Easter. But a fierce storm disrupts the idyllic getaway, stranding the guests on the island and exposing plenty of secret animosities and dark desires. By the time the storm subsides, someone is dead — and now everyone is a suspect. You won’t be able to turn the pages fast enough in this Agatha Christie–esque mystery. 

Amy Tintera’s Listen for the Lie is another New York Times bestseller we could not get over in 2024. It’s a truly inventive thriller that embraces our culture’s fascination with true crime as it unspools its darkly funny small-town mystery. Lucy’s life changed forever the night someone murdered her best friend, Savvy, and she became the top suspect. Found dazed and covered in Savvy’s blood but with no memory of what happened, Lucy has tried her best to move on. But now the hit true crime podcast “Listen for the Lie” is investigating Savvy’s unsolved murder. This means Lucy must return to her hometown and get to the bottom of what really happened the night Savvy died — even if it implicates her. 

Jean Hanff Korelitz returned this year with an electrifying sequel to The Plot — her acclaimed literary thriller set in the publishing world — and we were hooked from the jump. Picking up right where The Plot left off, The Sequel follows Anna Williams-Bonner, who’s riding high off her husband’s literary successes and plotting her next move. Soon after Anna publishes a novel of her own, however, she receives excerpts from a story that should no longer exist. Whoever’s sending these messages knows too much, which means that Anna must find out who they are or risk losing it all. 

Why are the best murder mystery books always set in isolated towns? We don’t know the answer to that, but we do know that Peter Nichols’s atmospheric narrative Granite Harbor was a standout in 2024. The book is set in the coastal Maine village of Granite Harbor, where a local teenager is murdered at an archaeological site called The Settlement. On the case is single father Alex Brangwen, a failed novelist turned detective whose daughter was best friends with the victim. He enlists the help of single mother Isabel, who works at the site and whose own child was also friends with the victim. A second murder further rocks the small community and its inhabitants, and their secrets come bubbling to the surface as a serial murderer lives among them. 

Tana French has published a number of spectacular crime novels — among them, The Witch Elm, The Searcher, and In the Woods. We’re thrilled that she has (once again) exceeded expectations in The Hunter. French’s latest tale centers on Cal Hooper, a retired Chicago cop who decamps to rural Ireland and falls in love with a local named Lena. Together, they raise Lena’s daughter, Trey. But their tranquility is threatened when Trey’s scheming father returns, with an English millionaire in tow and a get-rich plan to find gold. Cal and Lena just want to protect Trey, while Trey only wants one thing: revenge. 

Richard Osman — author of #1 New York Times bestseller The Thursday Murder Club — hit it out of the park with We Solve Murders, his witty new detective novel. The book centers on a familial duo who solve murders, and we can’t help but hope it’s the first in a long line of novels featuring Steve and Amy Wheeler. Steve is a retired investigator who still dabbles in his sleuthing passions, now with the help of daughter-in-law Amy, a private security guard. While Amy is on assignment on a remote island, charged with protecting bestselling author Rose D’Antonio, a dead body and a bag of money complicate her mission. So she reaches out to Steve, and together they get to work trying to unmask the killer. 

Stephen Graham Jones returned in 2024 with another genre-busting thrill-ride that kept us on the edge of our seats. I Was a Teenage Slasher blends its gory sensibilities with bitingly dark humor, and it is written from the killer’s perspective. It will probably have you rooting for the antagonist even though you don’t want to — because, you know, murder is bad. The novel is structed as an autobiography of Tolly Driver, a 17-year-old outsider living in small-town Texas in 1989. Tolly’s just trying to keep his head above water when he becomes cursed to kill for revenge and all hell breaks loose. 

In The Last One at the Wedding, bestselling author Jason Rekulak delivers a compelling work of domestic suspense that taps into our contemporary anxieties over the haves and have-nots. The book centers on Frank Szatowski, who’s surprised to hear from his daughter Maggie after years of estrangement. Maggie has invited Frank to her wedding in New Hampshire. A surprise, to be sure. Doubly surprising? Maggie is marrying Aidan Gardner, the son of a tech billionaire. Frank travels to the wedding, which is held at a secluded and luxurious estate, and struggles to fit in with his elite and out-of-touch in-laws — but when he starts digging, this tense family drama transforms into nerve-jangling suspense.

Reese Witherspoon choosing Ashley Elston’s First Lie Wins for her book club helped the thriller gain traction this year, but it would have caught our attention even if Witherspoon hadn’t given it her stamp of approval. A propulsive cat-and-mouse thriller, the book focuses on Evie Porter — or the creation of Evie, since no such person exists. Evie is given her identity from her mysterious boss, Mr. Smith, whose real identity she does not know. Mr. Smith also gives her a mark, Ryan Sumner, but once Evie becomes entangled with Ryan, she starts to question her loyalties. 

Harlan Coben, the bestselling author behind blockbusters like Fool Me Once, topped himself this year with his new novel, Think Twice, which we absolutely had to include on our list. Three years ago, sports agent Myron Bolitar gave the eulogy at the funeral of famed basketball coach Greg Downing. So when two feds walk into Myron’s office and demand to know where Greg is located, he’s understandably perplexed. The agents tell Myron that Greg is not just alive, but that he’s the prime suspect in a double homicide — which leads Myron and his friend Win on a search for much-needed answers. The deeper they get in their search, the more secrets and twists they uncover.  

Riley Sager is a leading voice in the mystery and thriller genre, and if you’ve read any of his work, it’s easy to see why. Sager’s Middle of the Night is characteristically enthralling and well-plotted, with a supernatural twist that we loved. It focuses on Ethan Marsh, who returns to his childhood home 30 years after the tragic disappearance of his best friend, Billy, who was taken from a backyard tent in the middle of the night and never seen again. Now back on Hemlock Circle, Ethan realizes someone is roaming the cul-de-sac at strange hours. He also notices signs of the assumed-dead Billy, which prompts him to start an investigation that takes him into the woods — woods that Billy always claimed were haunted by ghosts.