The 55 Greatest Crime and Mystery Stories

Greatest Works | Greatest Short Stories

For much of the history of crime and mystery publishing, the short story ruled. Readers once got their weekly fix of murder and mayhem from the hundreds of periodicals that filled magazine racks. Since the mid-twentieth century those publications have all but disappeared. Writers of crime and detective fiction, however, are still seeing their work appear in the few magazines that still run such stories, as well as in collections of their works and in third-party anthologies.

The continuing interest in short stories has led us to produce this list of the greatest crime and mystery stories, separate from the Greatest Crime and Mystery list, which is dominated by the longer forms.

For this list we define a short story as having fewer than 17,500 words, any longer prose work usually being categorized as a novella or a novel. For a rougher rule of thumb, think of a short story as a prose narrative you can read in an hour or less.

Note, this is our first stab at a list of great crime and mystery short stories, and we recognize it is much too brief. Expect it to grow as our greatest literature research proceeds. Check back for updates.

Latest update: October 24, 2022

Click linked titles and authors for details, critiques and comments.

See also:

Article
Creating the Greatest Literature of All Time list

List
Greatest Literature of All Time

List
Greatest Science Fiction

List
Greatest Fantasy Fiction

On Amazon:

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and Other Stories

The Murders in the Rue Morgue: The Dupin Tales

On Twitter: