Best Mystery and Suspense Novels

I liked Gillian Flynn's novels, especially "Gone Girl"

I'm a fan of Ngaio Marsh. Also, I enjoyed reading the old Sherlock Holmes mysteries.

Some of my favorite authors in this genre include Sue Grafton, Raymond Chandler. Robert Parker, Scott Turow, Dashiel Hammet, Ngaio Marsh, others. Chandler, Hammet and Marsh, of course, are classics, nearly as venerated as A. Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. The others are more modern. For police procedurals Joseph Wambaugh, ex-LA cop, can't be beat. There are a number of others that, for some reason, don't come to mind immediately.

I agree with Andy about Wambaugh and police procedurals. I would add Wahloo and Sjowall to that genre.

Yep, wasn't thinking of the Swedes.

A good writer relatively new to english translations is the Norwegian writer, Jo Nesbo. He's also a musician and an economist.

Suspense? John Le Carre.

I have a recently acquired liking for T. Jefferson Parker's novels. Sadly, in the one I am nearly finished with right now, he has a police detective who carries a couple of spare cylinders for his Colt Python. C'mon Parker, if you're going to write about guns, learn something about guns.

Yeah, I'm with you on that, roger. Irritates the bejazus out of me to have writers confidently describing something they're obviously unfamiliar with.

Just discovered a new detective story writer from South Africa -- Deon [sp.?] Meyer. Apparently he writes in Africaans because the book I read (Thirteen Hours) is a translation. The fascinating part for me is that he writes about present-day post-Apartheid South Africa and the interactions between black, white and "colored" characters is fascinating. He obviously knows what he's talking about. To add spice to the stories (for me, at least) his series character, a South African Police Inspector, is a recovering alcoholic who doesn't drink any more and attends A.A. meetings!

Jo Nesbo's protagonist is also an alcoholic in a stop mode (in the latest I've read). Nesbo has an excellent translator, Don Bartlett, who appears to be as spare and wellwording as Nesbo... or at least pay great attention to Nesbo's taut prose.
Hard to tell, since I speak no norwegian.

Meantime, I'm not clear on the interests of discountkart with a2k, but I've trouble resisting a book thread.

The poster can write a book title in the search window (upper right, dark blue band) and see what any of us has said about any book.

Is it time yet to say, "Agatha Christie"?

Say away, Andy.

I'm back to suggest some Poe short stories. The mysteries weren't great, but the suspense stories were good. Try the Telltale Heart.

IMO, Roberta, out of the 100-plus books that Aunt Agatha wrote, there are only maybe a half dozen at most that I'd recommend as pretty timeless. She was good at flouting the conventions of murder mystery writing at the time and some of her best stuff is good because it goes against the grain of what a solution to a murder should be. The Murder of Roger Achroyd, Muder on the Orient Express, And Then There Were None (also published as Ten Little Indians) and Three Blind Mice (The Moustrap in the stage version) all fall into this category of totally unexpected solutions.

The ones that go against the grain are truly classics, especially And Then There Were None. Josephine Tey, who was a contemporary of Christie, wrote mainly for the theater. Tey wrote only a small number of mystery novels, but all are classics and went against the grain. The Daughter of Time is especially good.

The Daughter of Time is probably the most satisfying mystery I have ever read. (Never mind that it has some historical inaccuracies. )