The best mystery novels where the detective is in way over their head

Everyone knows Agatha Christie’s most famous novels but when you dig a little deeper, you start to really uncover her genius. 

The Hollow is slow, careful, and spectacularly mature for a genre novel.  Legend has it that Christie didn’t like her detective, Hercule Poirot, so maybe that’s why she stuck him in such a difficult situation. A murder occurs right before his eyes, and the killer is there, holding a gun. 

The killer has motive, opportunity, and, of course, Poirot watched her do it.  But why is the gun the wrong caliber? And why is everyone except the murderer acting so suspicious?  

This one plays against convention, so even when you think you know what is going to happen next, you probably don’t.

Detective CW Sughrue was working the topless bar scene well before Jack Reacher wandered across the literary landscape. But unlike Reacher, Sughrue carries the sins of mankind on his own shoulders, just as likely to solve a crime as to curl up in a cheap motel with a bottle of whisky. 

He begins the book looking for a trouble author (is there any other kind?), but once he finds him, things get really messy…

The first time I saw a Coen Brothers’ movie I felt like I was already familiar with their style. It’s probably because I had already read Crumley’s novels with their existential sadness and brutal violence just-barely-buoyed by clever plotting and pitch-black humor.

Dick struggled with mental health his whole life, sometimes to the point where reality began to fracture and he questioned his own identity. That very struggle is at the heart of A Scanner Darkly.  

The protagonist is so mixed up that I’m not even sure what to call him. Sometimes he’s Bob Arctor, a junkie living in a flop house, high on the reality-splitting drug Substance D. Sometimes he’s Fred, the police detective enlisted to watch Arctor’s house and determine who is making and selling the dangerous drug. 

After weeks of living in the house and monitoring its inhabitants, Fred finally gets a lead on a suspect. The only problem is, it's him. 

I love when authors mix genres. Dibdin’s Cosi Fan Tutti is a combination of mystery and a Mozart opera! 

Combining the farcical elements of corruption, romantic longing, and mistaken identity, Dibdin pulls us through the beautiful streets of Naples, Italy, where everyone is thoughtful and earnest, and still, somehow, nothing like they appear. 

His detective Aurelio Zen is supposed to be keeping the peace, but he’s not up for the job, much more interested in untying romantic entanglements and enjoying the countryside. A solid plan until the Italian sanitation department decides they’re going to clean up the streets for him.

Lighthearted and breezy but with a genuine emotional core, you’ll get through Cosi Fan Tutte in a single sitting and be happier for it. 

I probably wouldn’t even know that I liked mystery novels, much less grow up to write them, if I hadn’t curled up with The Westing Game in my parent’s attic at the start of the summer of my 8th-grade year. 

Borrowing from so many wonderful detective traditions which came before, Raskin pits a series of teams against each other to discover which one of them is a murderer. The prize? Sam Westing’s two hundred-million-dollar inheritance.  

Unlike the adults on the rest of this list, Raskin’s teenage sleuths are not in over their heads. They’re loyal, crafty, and much smarter than their adult counterparts. The only one truly over his head was young reader Ash Bishop. Thirty years later and I’m still mad I didn’t solve this one.