10 Fantastic Crime Novels Written By Women

In this gripping tale of deception and delusion, wounds and betrayals, a thirty-year-old unsolved mystery is exposed along with the shocking fissures in the foundation of a seemingly solid family.

Thirteen-year-old Lizzie and her next-door neighbor Evie are inseparable. So when Evie suddenly disappears, everyone in town comes to Lizzie to find answers. Haunted by dreams of her lost friend and titillated by her own new power at the center of the disappearance, Lizzie uncovers secrets and lies that make her wonder if she knew her best friend at all.

Laura Hunt was the ideal modern woman and the ultimate femme fatale: beautiful, elegant, highly ambitious, and utterly mysterious. No man could resist her charms—not even the hard-boiled NYPD detective sent to find out who turned her into a faceless corpse.

The inspiration for Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1951 film, “Strangers on a Train” proved that Patricia Highsmith is a master at depicting the unsettling forces that tremble beneath the surface of everyday contemporary life. She paints a world filled with ordinary people, all of whom are capable of very ordinary crimes.

Taking readers deep into a labyrinth of dark neurosis, WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE is a deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated, and possibly murderous family—and the struggle that ensues when a cousin arrives at their estate.

Tana French is skilled at creating richly drawn, complex worlds and makes her novels not mere whodunits but brilliant and satisfying novels about memory, identity, and loss. In FAITHFUL PLACE, we meet Frank Mackey as he wrestles with his own past and the family, the lover, and the neighborhood he thought he’d left behind for good.

On a fateful summer morning in 1986, two eleven-year-old girls, Kirsty and Amber, meet for the first time. By the end of the day, they will both be charged with murder. Twenty-five years later, a series of familiar sickening attacks on young women occurs. Will Kirsty and Amber, now adults with vastly different lives, be able to keep their wicked secret hidden?

Can a stranger share your memories? That’s the question that haunts Brenna Spector when she first sees footage of missing webcam performer Lula Belle. Brenna takes the case—and in her quest for Lula Belle, unravels a web of obsession, sex, guilt, and murder that could regain her family . . . or cost her life.

Private investigator Jackson Brodie is reopening three different, seemingly separate, cold cases from decades ago. During his investigation, he discovers startling connections and revelations that heat up and intertwine these long-forgotten mysteries.

The Library of America and editor Sarah Weinman redefine the classic era of American crime fiction with a landmark collection of eight brilliant novels by the female pioneers of the genre, the women who paved the way for Gillian Flynn, Tana French, and Lisa Scottoline.