Top 20 Detective Novels Reviewed

The 20 detective novels listed below may not be the 20 “best” detective novels, even by my uniquely idiosyncratic criteria. I’d read a lot of work in the genre even before I began writing these reviews in January 2010—and there are tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of detective novels I’ve never read. But, for what it’s worth, I gave every one of these 20 books a rating of ★★★★★. And they’re the best of the more than 250 detective novels I’ve read over the past decade.