by Will Dean
There’s nothing wrong with vanilla, but sometimes you want something different.
When people ask me for my top crime and thriller picks, and then they hear my answers, I’m often faced with the same response: that’s not really crime fiction though, is it?
I’m not really sure. For me it is.
Genre boundaries can be useful for booksellers, journalists, publishers, and critics. But I’d argue they are less relevant for us readers.
I like to play in the margins. Those odd, quirky, often macabre shadows. Literary paths less trodden. Horror. The poetic. Short, dark literary novels and experimental epics embracing science fiction. Haunting ghost stories. Offbeat tales which break rules and defy conventions.
Off-piste stories offer a particular thrill.
The Wasp Factory. The Yellow Wallpaper. A Brief History of Seven Killings. Crime and Punishment. The Colour Purple.
Stories which may struggle, at first, to find a publisher. Oh, but they’re literary. Oh, but they’re what we call transgressive. Sure. Maybe. They also overlap and mesh deliciously with crime fiction. Many have an undeniable criminal act at the heart of the story.
It might be useful to explore this idea through some examples.
No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy. A noir masterpiece. Part western, part heist, part crime novel, part psychopathic monster thriller. So many parts. The arid, wild, borderland landscape is used to full advantage. A classic moral dilemma: should I take the money or not? What that one monumental life decision can lead to. Is it literary? I think so. Is it for everyone? Absolutely not. Is it crime fiction? It might just be one of the finest crime novels ever written.
Macbeth by William Shakespeare. The root of so much of what we might now call dark fiction. A deep exploration of personal ambition, murder, guilt, prognostication, love, fate, revenge. If killing an actual king isn’t a crime, then I don’t know what is. When I write a scene involving vengeance or guilt, it’s usually The Tragedy of Macbeth I think back to.
The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters. Realism and history. Radical social change after a war. Cultural norms, shifting. A chilling, quiet murder, with a backdrop of intense romance. These days crime novels with domestic settings, centred around flawed (often unreliable) main characters, are hugely popular, and rightly so. This rich novel is a superb (lesser known) example.
Are these core crime novels? No. But may I suggest that reading (or writing) something on the fringes, something less mainstream, can enhance our understanding and appreciation for all suspense, mystery, detective, espionage, and thriller fiction.
The Lottery by Shirley Jackson. A visceral, piercing story about groupthink. Always relevant, always horrifically realistic. The inhabitants of a small town go through with an annual ritual to purge bad omens. This tale is so powerful because we know things like this can, and do, happen. It is also so powerful by virtue of its length. It slaps you round the face and leaves you reeling.
The Shining by Stephen King. Extreme isolation. Madness. Unasked-for gifts (and curses). The manifest power of one building: the Overlook Hotel (see also: The Bramford in Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby). A writer’s descent into psychosis and misery. Crimes: old and new. A haunting blend of gothic, supernatural, crime, psychological suspense, and horror.
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi. Generational crimes. Trauma, exploitation, long-term impacts. The myriad ways crimes and injustices can run through generations and across continents.
Under the Skin by Michel Faber. This book knocked my socks off. It begins like a classic crime novel, set in Scotland. I was instantly hooked. And then when it goes off the rails, veering into a direction I certainly never saw coming (starting a book without reading anything about it can be a rich treat), the writing was so accomplished, and moreish, I couldn’t stop. A singular triumph.
Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh. It took me fifty pages to understand the dialect and then it clicked and I was utterly immersed. Numerous crimes, and a gritty (unrelenting, yet often hilarious) snapshot of a specific time in Edinburgh.
Agents and publishers might suggest an author tones down the dialect in a manuscript. I’m sure, most of the time, they are correct. But I do like it when books like Trainspotting, A Kestrel for a Knave, and Winter’s Bone slip through the net.
Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent. One of the finest opening lines in contemporary crime fiction: ‘Put me out with the trash,’ he said regularly. ‘When I die, put me out with the trash. I’ll be dead so I won’t know any different.’ A tour-de-force character study adored by crime and non-crime fiction readers alike.
Shutter Island by Denis Lehane. The prose is hypnotic. The characters are so multi-layered, flawed, human, you can’t draw your attention away. Even without the famous twist, this novel would be world-class and utterly satisfying.
Perfume by Patrick Suskind. From the opening passage, the reader is transported to the stench of 18th Century Paris. This story is an assault on the senses. We tend to place novels like this – along with the work of Hilary Mantel, Laura Shepperd Robinson, Abir Mukerjee, Philip Kerr – in the historical fiction category. I have no issue with that, of course. But these stories often have a crime at their core. That action, or series of actions, is the true driving force of the narrative.
The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith. Still utterly mesmerising 70 years after publication. Oozing with style, darkness, and a rare first-person insight into the mind of a charismatic psychopath. Unpredictable crime fiction at its best.
Here’s to celebrating books thriving at the edges of the genre. The rule-breakers and the mavericks. And here’s to the next generation of storytellers. I can’t wait to see what they’re thinking up for us.
Will Dean grew up in the East Midlands of the United Kingdom. After studying law at the London School of Economics and working in London, he settled in rural Sweden where he built a wooden house in a vast forest, and it’s from this base that he compulsively reads and writes. His debut novel, Dark Pines, was selected for Zoe Ball’s book club on ITV, shortlisted for the National Book Award (UK), The Guardian’s Not the Booker prize, and was named a Telegraph book of the year. He is also the author of Adrift, The Last One, First Born, The Last Thing to Burn, which was shortlisted for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year, and The Chamber. Adrift, Will’s newest thriller, is available on February 17, 2026.
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