• The Best Classic Crime Fiction - The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
  • The Best Classic Crime Fiction - The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
  • The Best Classic Crime Fiction - The ABC Murders by Agatha Christie
  • The Best Classic Crime Fiction - Brat Farrar (1949) by Josephine Tey
  • The Best Classic Crime Fiction - The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith

The Best Classic Crime Fiction, recommended by Sophie Roell

Since the early stories of the 18th and 19th centuries, crime fiction has been an incredibly popular and enduring genre, the investigation of murder somehow capturing the imagination of millions of readers around the globe. Here, Sophie Roell, editor of Five Books, uses strict but simple criteria to pick out the best classic crime fiction, from the Victorian age through to the 1950s.

  • The Best Books by Wilkie Collins - Rambles Beyond Railways by Wilkie Collins
  • The Best Books by Wilkie Collins - The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
  • The Best Books by Wilkie Collins - The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
  • The Best Books by Wilkie Collins - Poor Miss Finch by Wilkie Collins
  • The Best Books by Wilkie Collins - Heart and Science by Wilkie Collins

The Best Books by Wilkie Collins, recommended by Jason Hall

Wilkie Collins, the sensationalist author and inventor of the detective novel, knew precisely how to “make ’em laugh, make ’em cry, make ’em wait”. Jason Hall, Victorian literature expert and editor of a new edition of Jezebel’s Daughter, chooses the five best books from Collins’s extensive oeuvre – and considers the voracious appetites and unorthodox lifestyle of this intriguing Englishman.