More than halfway through 2025, the crime fiction world is delivering more than just suspects and alibis: it’s serving existential dilemmas, psychological whiplash, and settings so vivid you might shiver before you hit “turn the page”. Picture frostbitten bunkers in Ontario, haunted Southern Gothic atmospheres, and spunky protagonists who’ll sniff out danger with a wink and a dare.
This lineup traverses courtroom gravitas, historical elegance, spine-tingling suspense, and metafictional mind games. Whether you’re in the mood for intellectual nuance or full-throttle tension, this list will guide you to the most compelling crime reads of the year so far: books that don’t just entertain, but burrow into your curiosity and refuse to let go.
In crafting this list, I’ve leaned into nuance, atmosphere, and emotional texture, because good crime isn’t just about “whodunit”, it’s about “Why do we care?”. These ten novels each bring something spirited to the table: moral ambiguity, character resonance, sharp dialogue, and unique vantage points. If you’re the kind of reader who savors the vinyl moment of a plot reveal, these books warrant a spot on your nightstand, and maybe a bookmark in your heart.
1. Presumed Guilty by Scott Turow
Scott Turow returns to the courtroom, but this time the stakes are heavier, the shadows longer. Presumed Guilty brings back Rusty Sabich, now 77, retired, and still haunted by the echoes of past trials. When his fiancée’s son is accused of murder, Rusty steps back into the legal arena, not as a symbol of justice, but as a man reckoning with the weight of his own legacy.
Turow doesn’t write legal thrillers; he writes moral labyrinths. The courtroom is less a battleground than a confessional, where guilt is never clean and innocence is rarely absolute. Rusty’s journey is introspective, slow-burning, and quietly devastating. The novel asks: What does it mean to defend someone when you’re still defending yourself?
Why we recommend it: For readers who crave courtroom drama that doesn’t just argue, it interrogates. Turow’s latest is less about verdicts and more about the verdicts we carry inside us. If you’ve ever wondered whether justice and truth are really on speaking terms, this book will keep you up at night.
2. A Killing Cold by Kate Alice Marshall
Kate Alice Marshall doesn’t do surface-level suspense. A Killing Cold is a psychological thriller wrapped in snowdrifts and secrets, where memory is the real antagonist. Theodora Scott, Theo to those who dare, is invited to her fiancé’s family estate, Idlewood, a remote retreat that feels more like a trap than a vacation. When she discovers a photo of herself as a child taken at the same location, the past begins to thaw, and it’s not pretty.
Marshall’s prose is glacial and precise, each sentence a shard of unease. The cold isn’t just atmospheric, it’s emotional, relational, and ancestral. Theo’s search for truth becomes a descent into the kind of dread that doesn’t scream, but whispers. This isn’t a detective story. It’s a reckoning.
Why we recommend it: Some thrillers chase killers, and others chase ghosts. This one does both. For readers who love their mysteries psychological, their heroines haunted, and their settings frostbitten with memory, A Killing Cold delivers a chill that lingers.
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3. The Queens of Crime by Marie Benedict
Life in 1920s high society looks dazzling under chandeliers, but beneath the silk and civility lies plotting, power plays, and a murder in a locked ballroom. Lady Constance Redford navigates gossip, class barriers, and her own limited agency as she assumes reluctant detective duties. Benedict enriches the tale with historical gravitas: post-war Britain, women stepping up, and rigid class structures being questioned at dinner parties.
But we’re not in a Jane Austen spin-off; this is a whodunit soaked in political tension. Constance’s intelligence cracks the veneer of aristocratic calm and forces you to ask: who gets to decide which voices are heard? The tension between personal ambition and social expectation is tangible. This is refined historical crime with backbone, flair, and a locked-room twist you’ll want to dissect at afternoon tea.
Why we recommend it: This one will delight historical fiction addicts who adore tea, tiaras, and subverting the patriarchy with a sly smirk. Imagine Downton Abbey got hijacked by Agatha Christie and a political science professor, sharp, elegant, and more biting than a butler’s side-eye.
4. Blood Moon by Sandra Brown
Georgia swamps, moss-draped trees, and a blood‑red moon set the stage for journalist Celeste Morgan’s return, and her discovery: ritualistic killings with a gothic sheen. Brown steers the novel between Southern Gothic and modern suspense, with Celeste’s determination shining through layers of superstition and hidden trauma. She’s not only uncovering bodies: she’s digging through her own history.
The ritual slayings feel ritual for a reason: they’re stage props in the small town’s morbid theatre. Brown skillfully interlaces emotional stakes, Celeste’s personal ghosts, with the kind of atmospheric tension that makes your heartbeat echo in your ears. Lovers of rich Southern settings, flawed heroes, and ritualistic chills, this is your new obsession.
Why we recommend it: For readers who like their thrillers thick with humidity, family secrets, and the kind of tension that makes your teeth clench mid-sentence. If you’re the kind of person who believes no good ever comes from returning to your hometown, congrats, this book agrees with you.
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Subscribe to our weekly newsletter5. Nobody’s Fool by Harlan Coben
Harlan Coben knows how to twist a plot, but in Nobody’s Fool, he twists the past. Sami Kierce, once a promising detective, now teaches criminal justice, until a woman he thought was dead walks into his classroom. What follows is a spiral through old wounds, buried truths, and a murder that never stopped echoing.
Coben’s pacing is surgical, his emotional stakes quietly brutal. Sami isn’t just solving a mystery, he’s unraveling the version of himself he thought was buried with her. The novel moves between campus corridors and memory’s darker alleys, asking whether closure is ever anything more than a story we tell ourselves.
Why we recommend it: For fans of thrillers that don’t just entertain, they excavate. Coben’s latest is for anyone who’s ever looked back and wondered what they missed. Smart, sharp, and emotionally loaded, it’s a story that proves the past never stays buried.
6. Vera Wong’s Guide to Snooping (On a Dead Man) by Jesse Q. Sutanto
Vera Wong doesn’t stumble into mystery anymore; she walks in with purpose and a thermos of oolong. In this sequel to Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers, our favorite tea shop owner and amateur sleuth finds herself entangled in another case when a missing influencer turns up dead in Mission Bay. The twist? Vera’s future daughter-in-law may be involved, and the police file she accidentally discovers is far too tempting to ignore.
Sutanto blends cozy mystery with generational wit, but beneath the banter and nosy charm lies something deeper: Vera’s evolving sense of justice, her longing for connection, and her refusal to be underestimated. The tea may be hot, but the emotional stakes are hotter. This isn’t just a whodunit, it’s a celebration of curiosity, community, and late-life reinvention.
Why we recommend it: Vera Wong is the kind of protagonist who doesn’t just solve mysteries, she solves people. If you’re craving a cozy whodunit with bite, heart, and a heroine who weaponizes tea and maternal instinct, this is your next comfort read with a twist.
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7. The Perfect Divorce by Jeneva Rose
Sarah Morgan knows how to win in court. But when her second husband files for divorce and her past resurfaces, complete with missing women and reopened murder cases, she realizes some battles aren’t fought in courtrooms. They’re fought in kitchens, bedrooms, and the quiet spaces where trust used to live.
Rose returns to the world of The Perfect Marriage with a sharper edge and a deeper ache. Sarah isn’t just defending herself, she’s defending the version of her life she thought she’d earned. The tension builds not through jump scares, but through the slow unraveling of certainty. DNA evidence, betrayal, and the ghosts of old cases converge in a narrative that’s as psychological as it is procedural.
Why we recommend it: This isn’t just courtroom drama, it’s emotional excavation. Rose delivers a thriller that’s as much about what’s buried in the past as what’s admissible in court. For readers who like their suspense tangled in betrayal, legal strategy, and the quiet horror of domestic unraveling.
8. Hidden Nature by Nora Roberts
Sloan Cooper returns to Western Maryland with scars, some visible, some buried. After surviving a violent robbery and a near-death experience, she’s not just healing. She’s watching. When a woman goes missing and the forest begins whispering its secrets, Sloan realizes the wilderness she once loved may be hiding something far darker than she imagined.
Roberts crafts atmosphere like a symphony: rustling leaves, shifting shadows, and the quiet dread of isolation. But the real mystery isn’t just in the woods, it’s in Sloan herself. As she uncovers a pattern of disappearances across state lines, the novel becomes a meditation on trauma, resilience, and the thin line between protector and prey.
Why we recommend it: Some thrillers chase killers. This one chases silence. If you’ve ever stood in a forest and felt something watching, or if you believe healing and danger sometimes share the same trail, Roberts’ latest will speak to you in rustling leaves and buried truths.
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9. The Ghostwriter by Julie Clark
Here’s a spine-tingling meta twist: Cara McCarthy, a formerly celebrated true-crime author, is coaxed back into the dark by a ghostwriting gig. The subject? A released killer is writing his memoir. Cara embarks on that dangerous dance between truth and performance, and slowly realizes the stories she’s helping craft are terror in disguise.
Clark threads this tension with surgical precision. Suspicion drips from Care’s notebooks, phone logs, and voice memos. Each fragment pulls you deeper into a labyrinth of narrative manipulation. It’s not just “Who did it?”, it’s “Who’s telling the story?”. For fans of true-crime reflection and unreliable voices, this is a master class in unsettling storytelling.
Why we recommend it: Recommended for those fascinated by unreliable narrators, true crime tropes, and characters who lie for a living but start telling the truth by accident. If you read In Cold Blood and thought, “But what if it was messier?”, well, welcome home.
10. Not Quite Dead Yet by Holly Jackson
Jackson flips the rules with style: Nina Kaplan, a plucky journalist, fakes her death to jumpstart a cold case and inadvertently becomes a public outrage. With fifty shades of chaos, she navigates a forum of amateur sleuths, imposter theories, and conspiracy echo chambers, all while orchestrating her own funeral (sort of).
But beneath the thrills and cheeky antics lies something sharp: Jackson questions voyeurism, identity, and how anyone can control their narrative in the age of digital spectacle. Nina’s resilience, intelligence, and tanks-full-of-gall paint her as a modern hero with a mischievous smile and a camera-ready purpose. For anyone who loves next-gen suspense seasoned with media commentary, you’re in for a ride.
Why we recommend it: Perfect for fans of clever plotting, online sleuthing, and young women who fake their deaths not for drama (okay, a little for drama) but for justice. If you like your crime fiction with a TikTok twist and a heroine who weaponizes her own obituary, this is your new obsession.
The first half of 2025 has gifted us a kaleidoscope of crime storytelling, from freezing bunkers and forensic fireplaces to gothic forests and courtroom confessions. These ten books don’t just chase murder: they invite readers to linger in moral quandaries, character rifts, and social reflection. Whether you devour suspense, historical intrigue, dark humor, or introspective nuance, this curated journey has something electric waiting on every page.
So grab one—or five—of these titles, settle into your favorite reading nook, and let these narratives haunt, amuse, unsettle, and stay with you long after the twist. Because great crime fiction doesn’t just conclude with resolution: it echoes in your mind long after “The End.”.
