Haycraft-Queen list

The Haycraft-Queen Definitive Library

of Detective,Crime, and Mystery Fiction

A Reader's List of Detective Story Cornerstones

1748 Zadig by Voltaire

1794 The Adventures of Caleb Williams by William Godwin

1845 Tales by Edgar Allan Poe

1828 Memoirs De Vidocq by Eugene Francois Eugene

1853 Bleak House by Charles Dickens

1856 Recollections of a Detective Police Officer by Waters (William Russell)

1860 The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

1862 Les Miserables  by Victor Hugo

1866 Crime and Punishment  by Fyodor Dostoevsky

1866 The Widow Lerouge by Emile Gaboriau

1866 The Dead Letter by Seeley Regester (Mrs. M.V. Victor)

1867 File No. 13 by Emile Gaboriau
1868 The Mystery Of Orcival by Emile Gaboriau

1868 The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

1869 Monsieur Lecoq by Emile Gaboriau

1870 The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens

1872 Old Sleuth, the Detective by Harland Page Halsey

1874 The Expressman and the Detective by Allan Pinkerton

1878 The Leavenworth Case by Anna Katharine Green

1882 New Arabian Nights by Robert Louis Stevenson

1886 The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

1887 The Mystery of a Hansom  Cab by Fergus W. Hume

1890 The Sign of the Four by Arthur Conan Doyle

1892 The Big Bow Mystery by Israel Zangwill

1894 The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
1894 The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

1894 Martin Hewitt, Investigator by Arthur Morrison

1894 The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson by Mark Twain

1897 Dracula by Bram Stoker

1895 Prince Zaleski by M.P. Shiel

1899 The Amateur Cracksman by EW Hornung

1902 The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle

1903 The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers

1905 The Return of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

1905 The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy Baroness

1906 The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont  by Robert Barr

1906 Tracks in the Snow by G.R. Benson

1907 The Thinking Machine by Jacques Futrelle

1907 The Red Thumb Mark by R. Austin Freeman

1907 The Secret Agent  by Joseph Conrad

1907 Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Cambrioleur by Maurice

1907 The Mystery of the Yellow Room by Gaston Leroux
1908 The Perfume of the Woman in Black by Gaston Leroux

1908 The Gentle Grafter by O. Henry

1908 The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton

1908 The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart
1908 The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer

1909 The Clue by Carolyn Wells

1909 John Thorndyke’s Cases by R. Austin Freeman

1909 The Old Man in the Corner by Baroness Orczy
1909 Through the Wall by Cleveland Moffett

1910 The Achievements of Luther Trant by William MacHarg & Edwin Balmer

1910 “813” by Maurice Leblanc

1910 At the Villa Rose by A.E.W. Mason

1911 The Innocence of Father Brown by G.K. Chesterton

1911 The Eye of Osiris by R. Austin Freeman  
1912 The Singing Bone by R. Austin Freeman

1912 The Silent Bullet by Arthur B Reeve

1913 Trent’s Last Case by E.C. Bentley

1913 The Lodger by Mrs Belloc Lowndes

1914 Max Carrados by Ernest Bramah

1914 The Lone Wolf by Louis Joseph Vance

1915 The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan

1915 The Valley of Fear by Arthur Conan Doyle 
1916 Limehouse Nights by Thomas Burke  

1917 His Last Bow by Arthur Conan Doyle

1918 The Middle Temple Murder by J.S. Fletcher

1918 Uncle Abner by Davisson Melville

1920 Call Mr. Fortune by HC Bailey

1920 The Cask by Freeman Wills Crofts

1920 The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie

1920 The Great Impersonation by E. Phillips Oppenheim

1920 Bull-Dog Drummond by McNeile Sapper - Cyrile

1920 Tutt and Mr. Tutt by Arthur Train

1921 The Grey Room by Eden Phillpotts

1922 The Eight Strokes of the Clock by Maurice Leblanc

1922 The Red House Mystery by A.A. Milne

1923 The Brooklyn Murders by G.D.H. Cole

1923 Whose Body? by Dorothy L Sayers

1924 Inspector French’s Greatest Case by Freeman Wills Crofts

1924 The Rasp by Philip MacDonald

1924 The House of the Arrow by A.E.W. Mason

1925 The House Without a Key by Earl Derr Biggers

1925 An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

1925 The Viaduct Murder by Ronald A Knox

1925 The Informer by Liam O’Flaherty

1925 The Paddington Mystery by John Rhode

1925 The Mind of J. G. Reeder by Edgar Wallace

1926 The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

1926 Payment Deferred by C.S. Forester

1926 The Benson Murder Case by SS Van Dine

1927 The Canary Murder Case by SS Van Dine

1927 The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

1927 The Bellamy Trial by Frances Noyes Hart

1928 Meet the Tiger by Leslie Charteris

1928 Ashenden by W. Somerset Maugham

1928 The Murders in Praed Street by John Rhode

1929 Clues of the Caribbees by T.S. Stribling

1929 The Poisoned Chocolates Case by Anthony Berkeley

1929 Little Caesar by WR Burnett

1929 The Roman Hat Murder by Ellery Queen

1929 The Patient in Room 18 by Mignon G Eberhart

1929 Murder by the Clock by Rufus King

1929 Detective Duff Unravels It by Harvey J O’Higgins
1930 The Book of Murder by Frederick Irving Anderson

1930 The Hammersmith Murders by David Frome

1930 The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

1930 The Documents in the Case by Dorothy L Sayers & Robert Eustace

1931 Death Walks in Eastrepps by Francis Beeding

1931 The Glass Key by Dashiell Hammett

1931 Guys and Dolls by Damon Runyon

1931 The Penguin Pool Murder by Stuart Palmer

1931 Murder at School by Glen Trevor (James Hilton)

1932 The Red Castle by HC Bailey 

1932 Re-enter Sir John by Clemence Dane, Helen Simpson

1932 Before the Fact by Francis Iles (Anthony Berkeley)

1932 The Tragedy of X by Ellery Queen (Barnaby Ross)
1932 The Tragedy of Y by Ellery Queen (Barnaby Ross)

1932 The Fatal Five Minutes by R A J Walling

1933 The Case of the Sulky Girl by Erle Stanley Gardner
1933 The Case of the Velvet Claws by Erle Stanley Gardner

1934 Death of a Ghost by Margery Allingham 

1934 The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M Cain

1934 The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L Sayers

1935 The Murder of My Aunt by Richard Hull

1935 No Hero by John P Marquand

1937 Trial and Error by Anthony Berkeley

1938 The Beast Must Die by Nicholas Blake
1938 The Crooked Hinge by John Dickson Carr
1938 The Judas Window by John Dickson Carr

1938 Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier

1938 Brighton Rock by Graham Greene

1938 Lament for a Maker by Michael Innes

1938 The Nursemaid Who Disappeared by Philip MacDonald

1938 Death from a Top Hat by Rawson Clayton

1938 The Listening House by Mabel Seeley

1939 The Mask of Dimitrios by Eric Ambler 

1939 The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

1939 Overture to Death by Ngaio Marsh

1939 The Mysterious Mickey Finn by Paul Elliot

1940 Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler

1940 Drink to Yesterday by Manning Coles
1940 Pray Silence by Manning Coles

1940 The So Blue Marble by Dorothy B Hughes  

1940 The Norths Meet Murder by Frances and Richard Lockridge  

1940 Verdict of Twelve by Raymond Postgate

1940 The Patience of Maigret by Georges Simenon

1941 Trial by Fury by Craig Rice

1941 A Taste for Honey by H.F. Heard

1942 Rocket to the Morgue by H.H. Holmes (Anthony Boucher)

1942 The Just and the Unjust by James Gould Cozzens

1942 Calamity Town by Ellery Queen

1942 The Bride Wore Black by Cornell Woolrich (William Irish)

1943 Laura by Vera Caspary

1944 The Adventures of Sam Spade by Dashiell Hammett
1944 Blood Upon the Snow by Hilda Lawrence

1946 The Unsuspected by Charlotte Armstrong

1946 The Moving Toyshop by Edmund Crispin

1946 Dr. Sam Johnson, Detector by Lilian De la Torre
1946 Lord of the Sorcerers by Carter Dickson

1946 The Horizontal Man by Helen Eustis

1946 The Department of Dead Ends by Roy Vickers

1947 A Case to Answer by Edgar Lustgarten

1948 Wisteria Cottage by Robert M Coates
1948 Love Lies Bleeding by Edmund Crispin

1948 Dreadful Summit by Stanley Ellin
1948 Intruder in the Dust by William Faulkner

1948 Dreadful Summit by Stanley Ellin
1948 Intruder in the Dust by William Faulkner

1949 The Moving Target by Ross Macdonald

1950 Mischief by Charlotte Armstrong

1950 The Simple Art of Murder by Raymond Chandler
1950 The People Against O’Hara by Eleazar Lipsky
1950 Through a Glass, Darkly by Helen McCloy
1950 The Motive by Evelyn Piper
1950 Blues for the Prince by Bart Spicer
1950 Nightmare in Manhattan by Thomas Walsh

1951 A Gentle Murderer by Dorothy Salisbury Davis
1952 The Little Tales of Smethers by Lord Dunsany