10 Great Crime Books I've Read in 2021 (so far!)

The Golden Age of Crime Novels is said to be between the 1930s and the 1960s, but actual dates tend to differ with Britain gaining its Golden Age by the time people like Graham Green and Agatha Christie walked on to the scene. Then, across the water in the USA - there were more films being made than literature in terms of fame with the noir culture peaking with Carol Reed's "The Third Man" (1949) - and its snazzy soundtrack.

One thing I have been focusing on this year is trying to peel myself away from British Library Crime Classics and attempt to broaden my range of crime, mystery and thriller novels. I believe I have done this quite successfully but I have to say though - some have been a lot less predictable than others.

Usually, I rate a crime and thriller novel on how much of the ending I can guess by the time I make it halfway through the book. If I can guess the entire ending, then I have to say it is probably not going to be very good, if I'm half-right then the book is okay, but it really has to wow me by making my predictions completely wrong in order to get a good grade in my eyes. The more I read this genre however, the more difficult it will be to stop me from guessing the ending.

I realised this and said to myself 'then why don't I rate it on how thoroughly the storyline unravels?' Well, it is almost guaranteed that a storyline in a crime and thriller novel will unravel. There must be no 'matter of fact' value and everything must be contained within the narrative. Some books do have a 'this happened as a matter of fact...' at the end and it really does bring the mark down. But, many contemporary crime novels try their best to avoid it.

So, in my reading this year - as I have read extensively more crime and thriller fiction outside the classic realm, I'd like to share ten of the best I have read in 2021 so far.

10 Great Crime Books I've Read in 2021 (so far!)

The Other Passenger by Louise Candlish

Louise Candlish writes a nightmare between friends that turns from dark to awry very quickly when murder becomes the next question. A brilliantly planned melodrama of sociopaths, this book was one of my favourite thrillers of the year.

Check out my review here.

Watching from the Dark by Gytha Lodge

Gytha Lodge writes a murder mystery with such precision that the red herring is right where you will least expect it. A brilliantly planned thriller of the 21st century, tons of problems come into play once a girl is murdered and people start asking questions. I thought this was one of the best things I had read in a long, long while.

Check out my review here.

The Dilemma by B.A Paris

This is the book that prompted me to read all of B.A Paris' other books as well. I loved this book so much, it was unreal. About a family disintergrating with all of its general lack of awareness for each other, this book takes twists and turns around people returning home and what happens when someone doesn't arrive on time. A thoughtful race-against-time thriller, this book was a heart-pounding masterpiece.

Check out my review here.

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

If you love misdirection and the story developing through multiple people at multiple different parts of the timeline, then this book is going to blow your mind. When I read this, I kind of saw the ending coming but it was still a shock to find out what had really happened to make the woman go absolutely silent for so long. It is a brilliant work of thriller and crime and honestly, if I could go back in time and read this for the first time again, I definitely would.

Check out my review here.

The Heartwarming by S.E Lynes

When her daughter goes missing, everything goes up in the air. A thriller about a woman who is literally falling apart because of motherhood (not literally as in figuratively, but literally as in 'yes, literally'...) this book covers a wide range of tropes in the genre. What we have is therefore a psychodrama of events in which so many people are hurt, trodden down and angry at the place in which they find themselves, all while things go from bad to worse the more time that she spends not finding their daughter.

My review contains spoilers future readers may not want to read and so I will not be tagging it in this article.

The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward

The tagline to my review was: 'When I say I was absolutely terrified, I mean it...' I was extremely terrified after reading this book because for the entire book, you will not realise what is actually happening. An exercise in denial and grief, this book is a great achievement of modern literature and for the thriller genre, it explores new and important reaches in the genre. Through death, mystery and surveillance, this book investigates the most difficult things about living on the last house on Needless Street.

Check out my review here.

The Man from London by Georges Simenon

A signalman on the railway witnesses a murder and feels like he's going crazy. In what is possibly one of the best books by Georges Simenon I have ever read, this book goes into depth about the human psyche and why you can never really believe your own eyes - especially when you need to hide things from everyone else: even yourself. A heated melodrama of business and psychology, this makes for an amazing almost 'third man'-esque thriller that I absolutely adored.

Check out my review here.

The Night She Disappeared by Lisa Jewell

Lisa Jewell is the new brilliant thriller writer. I have adored her books ever since one of them was featured on the Reese Witherspoon Book Club and have since, made an effort to read her other books. This one comes at a surprise since it is not like anything I had read in thrillers before. A strange house, a weird get together and a couple on the verge of a breakdown, this book was so dark and twisted that sometimes I had to just stop. It was amazing yet insanely dark.

I will not be tagging my review for the case that there may be a couple of plot line spoilers within it.

The Au Pair by Emma Rous

An amazing book about a tragedy looked back on by a family in crisis: a person that they didn't really know too well, a mother who flung herself from a cliff the day her twins were born, a father who has died in mysterious circumstances and a baby picture of mother a twins with only one baby in the picture. This book was a roller coaster of the terrifyingly wealthy and the just plain scary. A tale of murder and deceit, it is really a masterpiece of the modern thriller.

Check out my review here.

Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes

When a dead body is found, things get real as it is known that a child-killer may be on the loose with strange motives. Half a deer is found and the police don't know where to start. This is all done by the same man and it is absolutely revolting. It is an incredible book which is told out of time so that the secrets remain unsolved until the very end. Each character, with some sort of vice, seems to almost let this case get the better of them. It is really quite an achievement of terror, crime and the thriller genre.

Again, because of minor spoilers - I will not be tagging my review here.