A well written mystery book can create drama, intrigue and excitement aplenty, as the author can harness the readers only questioning thoughts. Mystery books often revolve around solving a crime, often theft or murders and are from the narrative viewpoint of a detective. The detective or investigator is often originally presented with minimal clues that have the potential to help solve the crime or mystery in the book.

Mystery books have become a really popular genre of fiction writing, largely because the author can put plenty of different twists into the plot of the story, changing your focus from suspect to suspect. If you are interested in reading some mystery books, here are some great series and individual books that might serve as a great starting point.

Sherlock Holmes- Arthur Conan Doyle
Sherlock Holmes is a London based detective created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who is particularly good at solving difficult crimes from very small clues. Holmes is featured in four novels and 56 short stories- reading one of the novels or a collection of short stories is a great way of finding out if you like the books. Most of the books are actually narrated from the viewpoint of Holmes’ good friend, Dr. Watson. For me, the greatest attraction of the books is Holmes himself- he has a fierce intellect and is excellent at analysing forensic scenes but he is also very eccentric, caring little for the opinions of others. However although Holmes is a big attraction of the books, the stories themselves are very imaginative and well written and have not been outdated by modern criminal writing- although our forensic techniques have improved markedly over the years, you cannot fail to marvel at Holmes’ skills of deduction.

And Then There Were None- Agatha Christie
“And Then There Were None” is the most commercially successful of Agatha Christie’s many mystery books, having sold approximately 100 million copies. In the plot, eight individuals are invited to a mansion on a fictional island and they are attended by two hosts. However each guest finds in their room a poem about ten little soldiers who all died- a chilling indicator for the rest of the book. The guests start dying one by one, and the paranoia and suspicion within the group keeps on mounting. At the end here is an almost unsolvable mystery left- almost. As well as this book, Agatha Christie wrote books around two detectives, Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple- both series of books are very popular and if you are interested it might be worth reading one of each series to see if you like them.

The Hardy Boys- Franklin W. Dixon
For younger readers interested in mystery books, I would recommend “The Hardy Boys.” The Hardy Boys is a series of books about two young men, Frank and Joe Hardy, who regularly solve different crimes and mysteries. The two boys are the sons of a well known private investigator, Fenton Hardy and they manage to investigate a huge variety of different mysteries.