Ten mystery series for when you've run out of Christie, sorted by what you loved
So you've finished them. All of them. Poirot, Marple, Tommy and Tuppence, the standalones, the one with the narrator (you know the one). And now you're standing in front of your bookshelf with the very particular grief of someone who has run out of Christie.
I've been there. But 'more like Christie' means something different to every Christie fan. Some of you loved the puzzle, the fair-play clues and the impossible crime. Some of you loved the village, the vicar and the gossip, and the way Miss Marple understood everyone because she'd met their type at the fishmonger's. And some of you loved the period, the trains and country houses and cocktails.
So I've sorted these by what you loved. Every one of them is the first book of a series, which means if you like it, there's more. (You're welcome. I know the feeling.)
Three ways in, depending on which part of Christie you can't live without. Pick your poison. (Sorry. I had to.)
- If you loved Poirot's puzzles
Little grey cells required. Moustache optional. - If you loved Miss Marple's village
Knitting, tea and a frightening memory for detail. - If you loved the period
Pack your trunk. The train leaves at nine. - Over to you
Where you tell me who I forgot. I know. I know.
If you loved Poirot's puzzles
The clues, the misdirection, and the moment the detective gathers everyone in the drawing room.
Magpie Murders
Book 1 of 3: Susan Ryeland · 501 pages
Editor Susan Ryeland is given the manuscript of her bestselling author's latest crime novel and has no reason to think it'll be any different from the others. It is. And as she reads it, a real mystery starts to emerge around it.
A classic whodunit worthy of Christie, wrapped inside a modern-day mystery. Two puzzles for the price of one, by someone who clearly adores the genre.
- Best for
- puzzle lovers who want something clever and very knowing
- Series
- the first Susan Ryeland mystery
The Honjin Murders
Part of: Detective Kindaichi Mysteries (8 books) · 193 pages
It's the winter of 1937, and a Japanese village is buzzing about a grand family's wedding, and also about a sinister masked man who's been asking questions. On the wedding night, the household is woken by a scream and eerie music. They find death, and a bloody samurai sword thrust into the untouched snow outside.
Yokomizo is often called Japan's Agatha Christie, and this locked-room classic introduces his amateur detective, Kosuke Kindaichi. It wasn't translated into English until recently, so it's new to most of us.
- Best for
- readers who want a true impossible crime
- Series
- the first Detective Kindaichi mystery
The Decagon House Murders
Book 1 of 4: The Bizarre House Mysteries · 289 pages
The members of a university detective-fiction club, each nicknamed after a favourite crime writer (yes, one of them is called Christie), spend a week on a remote island, drawn by its strange ten-sided house and the murders that happened there the year before.
A thrilling homage to And Then There Were None, written by someone who clearly adored it. If that was your favourite Christie, start here.
- Best for
- fans of And Then There Were None
- Series
- book one of the Bizarre House Mysteries
If you loved Miss Marple's village
The gossip, the cosy surface, and the sharp mind noticing what everyone else misses.
The Thursday Murder Club
Book 1 of 5: Thursday Murder Club Mysteries · 363 pages
In a peaceful retirement village, four friends in their seventies meet every Thursday in the Jigsaw Room to discuss unsolved crimes. Then a local developer turns up dead, with a mysterious photograph beside the body, and they find themselves with their first live case.
Miss Marple, multiplied by four, with a retirement village for St Mary Mead. Funny, warm and properly clever.
- Best for
- readers who loved Marple's cast of observant older women
- Series
- book one of the Thursday Murder Club
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
Book 1 of 12: Flavia de Luce · 386 pages
It's 1950, at a once-grand English country house called Buckshaw. Young Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison, finds a dead bird on the doorstep with a postage stamp pinned to its beak. Hours later, she finds a man dying in the cucumber patch.
Flavia is appalled. She is also delighted. Imagine Miss Marple as a gleefully poison-obsessed child, and you're close.
- Best for
- readers who want a village mystery with a wickedly funny narrator
- Series
- book one of Flavia de Luce
Hither Page
Book 1 of 2: Page & Sommers · 232 pages
In post-war England, James Sommers, a country doctor whose nerves didn't survive the war, wants nothing more than a quiet life in his home village. Then a handsome stranger turns up mixed up in the first violent death the village has seen in years: Leo Page, a spy sent to cover up a murder.
I read this one too fast, then went straight to the sequel and read that too fast. One description calls it a cosy mystery like Christie 'but make it gay'. Fair! But the cosiness has sharp edges: the war, the trauma, and the danger of being found out are all right there at the borders. And the way information arrives, half a teaspoon at a time, is a joy.
- Best for
- readers who want a village mystery with a romance at its heart
- Series
- book one of Page & Sommers
If you loved the period
The trains, the country houses, the cocktails and the cloche hats.
A Curious Beginning
Book 1 of 10: Veronica Speedwell Mysteries · 354 pages
London, 1887. Veronica Speedwell has just buried her aunt and is finally free to travel the world hunting butterflies, and the occasional romance. Then someone tries to abduct her, a mysterious baron rescues her, and he's murdered before he can tell her why. She ends up in the care of his friend Stoker, a bad-tempered natural historian.
I love this series. I've listened to it on audio, one book after another, and the narrator is superb. Veronica is sarcastic, brilliant and never knowingly polite, and the mysteries are sharp, with lots of history folded in.
- Best for
- readers who want adventure, wit and Victorian London
- Series
- book one of the Veronica Speedwell mysteries
Maisie Dobbs
Book 1 of 18: Maisie Dobbs · 321 pages
Maisie Dobbs started as a maid in an aristocratic London household at thirteen. A suffragette employer took her under her wing, and an investigator spotted her gifts and helped her get into Girton College, Cambridge. Now, after serving as a nurse in the First World War, she has set up as a private investigator.
The aftermath of the First World War runs through this series like a seam, which gives it a depth some period mysteries don't have.
- Best for
- readers who want a thoughtful, emotionally serious period mystery
- Series
- book one of Maisie Dobbs
The Widows of Malabar Hill
Book 1 of 5: Perveen Mistry · 401 pages
Bombay, the 1920s. Perveen Mistry, one of the first female lawyers in India, is handling a suspicious will on behalf of three Muslim widows living in full purdah, and the case turns murderous.
A period mystery in a world most of us know far less about than Christie's England, with a heroine whose very job is an act of defiance.
- Best for
- readers who want a period mystery somewhere new
- Series
- book one of Perveen Mistry
Cocaine Blues
Book 1 of 23: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries · 200 pages
The London season is in full swing at the end of the 1920s, and the Honourable Phryne Fisher, she of the diamond garters and outfits that shouldn't be sprung on people of nervous disposition, is bored. So she heads to Melbourne, and to murder.
Glamour, cocktails and a heroine who does exactly as she pleases. It inspired the TV series Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, and Phryne is a delight.
- Best for
- readers who want the period with all the glamour turned up
- Series
- book one of Phryne Fisher
Over to you
That's my list, and I'll admit I'm already worried about who I've left out. (I can hear the Dorothy L. Sayers fans sharpening their pencils from here.) So tell me: what did you read after Christie? And which of these would you hand to someone first?
Featured image and all illustrations by Phil · designbyphil.com · Book covers © their publishers