A banner year for whodunits: 2025’s 10 best mystery novels

There were so many great mystery novels published this year that it was difficult to pick just 10 for this list. But here they are. Among them are some familiar names — Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, the Thursday Murder Club senior quartet and Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez — as well as some new ones, like “Detective Aunty” Kausar Khan. Hopefully, there’s something here for every mystery lover.

The Black Wolf by Louise Penny

Penny’s plot about terrorists attempting to annex resource-rich Canada as the 51st U.S. state is uncannily topical. At the story’s center, there’s Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec, whose calm command keeps his team — and readers — grounded in the hope that, despite the odds against them, they can prevent an international disaster.

The Bone Thief by Vanessa Lillie

Syd Walker, a Cherokee archaeologist in the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, is searching for missing skeletal remains when she learns that a Native American teenage girl has disappeared. Investigating further, Walker finds a link between the stolen remains, the missing teen and a secretive group whose members are descended from the earliest white settlers on Native land in Rhode Island.

Detective Aunty by Uzma Jalaluddin

Kausar Khan’s friends have nicknamed her “Detective Aunty” for her keen emotional intelligence and observational skills. Now, Khan, a widow in her 50s, must call on her expertise to save her daughter, who has been accused of murdering the landlord of her Toronto clothing shop. In her first mystery, Jalaluddin offers readers both a satisfying puzzle and an endearing new sleuth.

The Dentist by Tim Sullivan

Detective Sergeant George Cross is autistic, which helps him compile an enviable crime-solving record but can make him a challenging colleague. His partner, Detective Sergeant Josie Ottey, is a good complement, though, as the two work to discover who killed a homeless man in Bristol, England, in an investigation that leads them to a potential police brass cover-up.

The Game Is Afoot by Elise Bryant

Mavis Miller is trying to put her life back together after quitting her dead-end job when her daughter’s soccer coach drops dead at a Saturday morning game. When police determine the coach was murdered and target Miller’s ex-husband as a possible suspect, Miller — who recently helped police solve another case — jumps back into detective mode to clear his name.

Guilty by Definition by Susie Dent

Dent, a renowned British lexicographer, plumbs the depths of loss and language in this exceptional debut mystery set in Oxford. Martha Thornhill has just started as the senior editor of the Clarendon English Dictionary when the staff begin receiving anonymous notes with tantalizing clues about the never-solved disappearance of Thornhill’s sister a decade ago. As their investigation deepens, Thornhill and her colleagues find their lives are threatened.

The Hidden City by Charles Finch

Finch melds history and suspense in the latest volume of his Charles Lenox series, set in Victorian London. Lenox’s newest case appears to weirdly connect several unsolved murders in which the initials “FK” are carved unobtrusively into the doorways of various London businesses. Probing further, Lenox finds a trail that may lead to the highest echelons of British society.

The Impossible Fortune by Richard Osman

The senior sleuths of the Thursday Murder Club — Elizabeth Best, Joyce Meadowcroft, Ibrahim Arif and Ron Ritchie — are in top form in Osman’s latest caper. The four are attending a wedding when the best man tells Elizabeth that someone is trying to kill him and asks for her help, leading the quartet into an investigation centered in the wild world of cryptocurrency.

The Killing Stones by Ann Cleeves

After a seven-year hiatus, Cleeves brings back fan-favorite Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez, who has moved from Shetland to the Orkney Islands with his pregnant partner — and boss — Willow, and their young son. When his good friend Archie Stout is found murdered on a stormy December night, Perez fears he may be too close to the case to effectively search for the killer, but he pursues the answers anyway.

Murder Takes a Vacation by Laura Lippman

Muriel Blossom, a widow of a certain age, wins the lottery and decides to take an extravagant Seine cruise. Once on board, Blossom, a minor character in Lippman’s bestselling PI Tess Monaghan series, suddenly finds herself the target of violent international art thieves and must use the detective skills she learned from Monaghan to keep herself alive.