It’s easy to confuse the conceit of mystery novels where everyone’s a suspect with that of the locked room mystery – indeed, there’s a lot of overlap, because it’s not often everyone in a locked room is not a suspect when a crime takes place there. However, I’m here to remind you that it stands alone as a strong contender for the best type of mystery. Here are fifteen mystery novels where everyone’s a suspect and they’ll keep you guessing all the way to the end.
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
As far as mystery novels go, And Then There Were None demonstrably has a (pardon the pun) killer premise. It’s a locked-room mystery, with a ticking clock. Ten strangers are lured to an isolated island mansion. All were brought there under similar false pretenses, and a creepy gramophone announcement reveals that all of them are implicated in a murder. One by one, they are in turn killed off – someone on the island brought them there to deliver vengeance, but who? And why? Agatha Christie is the Queen of Crime for a reason. Read my full review of And Then There Were None here.
Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson
It’s no surprise that everyone’s a suspect in this mystery novel: it says so right there in the title. Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone is set at the Cunningham family reunion, held at a remote ski chalet (which they’ve booked with a non-refundable deposit), and given the family’s history it’s hardly a surprise when a body is found in the snow. One by one, the narrator reveals how each family member was culpable in someone’s death, as he tries to figure out which one of them is responsible for the most recent murder – a man none of them appear to know. Read my full review of Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone here.
Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty
As Big Little Lies unfolds, each chapter is punctuated with extracts from witness interviews with a journalist – something went down at a school trivia night, and one of the characters present is responsible. Everyone was drunk, everyone was dealing with a lifetime’s worth of baggage, and everyone had good reason (well, good-ish) to want someone at the Pirriwee Public Trivia Night fundraiser dead. This is the book that put Liane Moriarty on the map as a master of the domestic mystery-thriller. Read my full review of Big Little Lies here.
The Maid by Nita Prose
Molly Gray, the titular character in The Maid, loves her job at the Regency Grand Hotel. She loves returning each room to “a state of perfection”, though that’s made much harder when she discovers the dead body of a guest in the penthouse – and she becomes the prime suspect in his murder. Anyone in the hotel that day could have been responsible, but it’s only Molly being hauled down to the police station for questioning. So, it falls to her to figure out what really happened to the wealthy guest, enlisting the help of some unlikely friends. Read my full review of The Maid here.
The Likeness by Tana French
Trust me when I tell you The Likeness has a lot more going on than an attention-grabbing doppelganger mystery plot. A detective receives a frantic call from her boyfriend, because a body has been discovered that looks exactly like her. In the hopes of uncovering the killer, she goes undercover as the victim, with a shaky cover story about miraculously surviving the wound that should have killed her. Every single one of her housemates is a suspect; how many of them know that the detective isn’t who she says she is, and that the victim is really dead? Read my full review of The Likeness here.
The Seven Deaths Of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
The Seven Deaths Of Evelyn Hardcastle is a time-travel, body-hopping murder mystery where everyone’s a suspect – and it’s every bit as complicated as it sounds. The narrator is doomed to repeat a single day again and again, each time in the body of a different guest at a party in a crumbling mansion, until he solves a murder. Each of the guests were present at a similar party at the same house nineteen years earlier, where one of the Hardcastle children was killed. History is going to repeat itself, unless the narrator can stop it. Read my full review of The Seven Deaths Of Evelyn Hardcastle here.
The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
The members of The Thursday Murder Club have very little in common, besides their place of residence and an interest in solving unsolveable crimes. Naturally, it’s a dream come true when a dead body shows up practically on their doorstep – even if they are suspects along with everyone else who lives and works in Coopers Chase Retirement Village. These wily seniors must work together, with their “man on the inside” PC Donna De Freitas, to see this case through to the end and uncover the truth. Read my full review of The Thursday Murder Club here.
All That’s Left Unsaid by Tracey Lien
There were a dozen witnesses to 17-year-old Denny Tran’s murder in Cabramatta’s Lucky 8 restaurant, but none of them saw anything. Every single one was looking away, in the bathroom, out the back. None of them can tell the police, or his bereft sister Ky, who killed Denny – or why. Were any of them involved? Who are they trying to protect? All That’s Left Unsaid is an amazing story of inherited trauma, the cruelty of loss, and the impact of xenophobia, remarkably rendered in the technicolour of Sydney in the 1990s. Read my full review of All That’s Left Unsaid here.
The Busy Body by Kemper Donovan
Set in Maine, The Busy Body sees the unnamed narrator take a job ghostwriting the memoir of a failed presidential candidate. Dorothy Gibson is a centrist independent who recently suffered a shocking loss to a buffoon in an electoral upset. That would all be fine, except for the apparent-suicide (actual murder) of her next door neighbour. It just so happens that Dorothy was one of the last people to see her alive, and her name is inevitably dragged into the headlines. Dorothy and the ghostwriter find themselves flung head-first into a real-life murder mystery in which they are among the suspects. Read my full review of The Busy Body here.
Cold Truth by Ashley Kalagian Blunt
Cold Truth follows Harlow Close, a Winnipeg influencer not deterred in the slightest by the region’s sub-zero temperatures and cold snaps. Her father mysteriously disappears from his home one night, and Harlow enlists the assistance of her reluctant sister to aid in the search, seeing as the police are turning up nothing. There are scores of suspects: Jasper, the disgruntled neighbour; Hudson, Harlow’s aggrieved ex-boyfriend; Gareth, the creepy storage facility employee; Donna, the overly-enthusiastic lady from the missing man’s curling team… to name a few! Read my full review of Cold Truth here.
The Concierge by Abby Corson
Hector Harrow has worked at Cavengreen Hotel for his entire adult life. He’s the hotel concierge, which means he sees everything and says nothing… until now. He didn’t just discover the body at Cavengreen Hotel, he was accused of the murder, and he’s telling the story in the hopes of clearing his name – because someone else staying or working at the hotel that night is responsible. When The Concierge begins, Hector is ready to put it all on the line to see that justice is done – and there are plenty of shock twists to come in this intriguing murder mystery. Read my full review of The Concierge here.
The Creeper by Margaret Hickey
The inciting incident for The Creeper, an eerie and vivid Australian murder mystery, takes place ten years before it begins: with a presumed murder-suicide on a mountaintop. A local ‘creeper’ (thus the title) apparently shot and killed several hikers before turning his shotgun on himself. On the anniversary of the tragic event, the new cop in the small town decides to turn over a few stones and make sure nothing was missed in the initial investigation – surely, the small town can’t hide its secrets forever. Read my full review of The Creeper here.
Five Found Dead by Sulari Gentill
Five Found Dead is a delightfully meta mystery with an Agatha Christie twist: a crime fiction writer and his sister investigate a murder that takes place on board the Orient Express. The cabin next to theirs’ is covered in blood, but there’s no body – then, the steward assigned to guard the crime scene turns up dead, too. And that’s just the beginning! As the title suggests, there are more bodies to come, and someone on the train is responsible. Read my full review of Five Found Dead here.
The Fury by Alex Michaelides
A movie star invites her friends to join her on a private Greek island… and then there’s a murder. That’s basically the premise of The Fury. It’s a locked room mystery on a private island in a gorgeous location with glamourous characters – each of whom is a suspect in the killing. To reveal the truth, the narrator circles around again and again to tell the story again from the beginning, zooming in on different parts to reveal more information that casts the rest in new light. Read my full review of The Fury here.
Kill Your Husbands by Jack Heath
Kill Your Husbands is a murder mystery set over the course of a weekend getaway. Three couples rent an isolated house on a mountaintop, to spend some time reconnecting and relaxing in nature. Things get spicy when the idea of partner-swapping comes up. The friends concoct a convoluted scheme where, for one night only, they’ll sleep with someone who isn’t their spouse. What could go wrong? Well, one of the husbands turning up dead, for one. And then another. And one of the wives goes missing. Read my full review of Kill Your Husbands here.
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