THE FIVE BEST MURDER MYSTERY NOVELS OF ALL TIME, ACCORDING TO LUCY FOLEY

Of all our contemporary mystery authors, no one keeps readers guessing quite like the multi-million-bestselling Lucy Foley. From the icy dread of The Hunting Party to the boiling-point midsummer tension of The Midnight Feast, she has made a name for herself as a modern master of the whodunnit – crafting tense, twisty stories full of secrets, shifting perspectives and atmospheric settings.

But when not writing her own page-turners, which murder mysteries does she reach for?

A Murder is Announced by Agatha Christie

“How to pick a favourite Christie? It’s impossible, really, and depends on what I happen to be in the mood for. But this is just so clever – from the wonderful elevator pitch [a forthcoming murder advertised in the local paper] to the superbly tight plotting.

“I’m also a little biased, as I’m currently writing a Miss Marple novel for the Christie estate – and this is the one I reach for time and again as my template of Christie’s genius.

“I love it, too, for its evocation of postwar Britain with all its social change and tension. Miss Marple is so good here, too (though when is she not?) – brilliantly perceptive, cunning and then almost frighteningly vengeful in her snaring of the killer. Sweet little spinster she is not.”

HarperCollins, £9.99

Death in the Air by Ram Murali

“This novel gives me everything I love about a Golden Age whodunnit, brought bang up to date: a gloriously escapist setting (a spa nestled in the foothills of the Himalayas), a cast of overprivileged characters we love to hate (think Bollywood wannabes and heiresses aplenty), and intrigue galore.

“The world of the book is so richly and fascinatingly evoked that I wanted to luxuriate in it, even as things started to go very wrong indeed. It’s the perfect, escapist summer read with a sting in the tail.”

Atlantic, £9.99

Tokyo Express by Seicho Matsumoto

“This is almost a distillation of the whodunnit-as-puzzle in its fiendish plotting. The story centres on the so-called love suicide of a young couple, about which, it quickly becomes clear, there is more than meets the eye.

“It’s a wonderful time-capsule portrait of Japan in the late 50s, as the detective Kiichi Mihara travels the length and breadth of the country in his efforts to uncover the truth.

“There’s also a nice noirish and at times Hitchcockian sensibility. It more than honours the contract set down between writer and reader in a classic whodunnit in terms of the laying of clues, red herrings and reversals, but at the same time manages to probe human psychology and explore Japanese postwar malaise.”

Penguin Classics, £9.99

Close to Death by Anthony Horowitz

“I could have chosen any of the books in the Hawthorne series and they can be read in any order, but I loved this – the latest – for its depiction of badly behaved (and very nosy) neighbours.

“What I think is so clever about these books is the meta element (see also Horowitz’s Magpie Murders series, in which we always get a book within a book). Horowitz puts himself into them as the bumbling Watson to the enigmatic and often thoroughly unlikeable Hawthorne’s Sherlock. and in the process sends up himself, the publishing industry, and the very nature of the whodunnit itself.”

Penguin, £9.99

My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

“This isn’t really a murder mystery in the classic sense, but a taut, funny thrill ride of a book in the Dexter or The Talented Mr Ripley tradition, in which we know exactly ‘whodunnit’, and the tension lies in who will get away with what and the execution of the crime itself.

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“Or, more accurately, whether the victim will be executed at all, as our narrator, Korede, wrestles with whether she will let her beautiful, manipulative and psychotic sister Ayoola get away with yet another murder – this time of the man Korede loves. It is brilliant on sisters and family loyalties (tellingly it was originally published in Nigeria with the title Thicker Than Water).”

Atlantic, £9.99

The Midnight Feast by Lucy Foley (HarperCollins, £9.99) is out now in paperback

2025-06-21T06:05:23Z