In 2010, British academic, author and two-time Booker Prize judge John Sutherland (1999 and 2005) said that submitting a crime novel for the prize was ‘like putting a donkey into the Grand National’. Whether a throwaway quip or an observation on the publishing industry’s prejudices, Sutherland’s comment was likely referencing the long-standing division between so-called ‘literary’ and ‘genre’ fiction, with the latter often dismissed as airport fiction at best – all pace and plot, but supposedly lacking depth.  

But those days are, hopefully, behind us. Not only is crime fiction now the most popular genre among book buyers in the UK, according to Nielsen BookData; but genre boundaries in fiction have become much more fluid. In 2024 alone, two crime-tinged novels – Wild Houses by Colin Barrett and Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner – appeared on the Booker Prize longlist.  

In fact, throughout its history, the prize has recognised many novels with criminal themes. The 1972 shortlist included The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith by Thomas Keneally, a tale of one man’s violent killing spree. More recently, 2013’s winning novel, The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton, revolves around a series of crimes, while in 2022’s winning book, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka, the titular character is tasked with solving his own murder. 

Over the decades, the Booker and International Booker Prize have celebrated numerous novels that venture far into the shadowy corners of human experience, from high-voltage thrillers to psychological noirs and novels that use nefarious events to explore wider societal issues. The list below offers 10 books with both suspense and substance, and reveals just why they captured the attention of Booker Prize judges – and why they’ll linger in your own thoughts, too.  

Snap by Belinda Bauer

A chilling real-life case known as the ‘Riddle of the M50’ – in which 22-year-old Marie Wilks was abducted and murdered in 1988, leaving her young children stranded by a motorway – inspired Belinda Bauer’s harrowing thriller Snap. 

Bauer, hailed as ‘the true heir to the great Ruth Rendell’ by the Mail on Sunday, was haunted by the case and used it as a springboard for her novel. Snap delves beyond the initial tragedy to explore its aftermath, blending fact with fiction, as 11-year-old Jack and his sisters are left waiting in a broken-down car for their mother, who never returns. Three years later, Jack is still in charge, grappling with the trauma of the past while searching for the truth.

The novel made the longlist in 2018, but its inclusion was not without controversy. ‘It’s the sort of commercial fiction that tends to outsell the rest of the longlist put together but which Man Booker judges are supposedly too snotty and set in their literary ways to consider,’ wrote Johanna Thomas-Corr in the New Statesman – but clearly the judging panel did not agree, calling it ‘an acute, stylish, intelligent novel’ that is ‘expertly paced’. Such criticism didn’t prevent the novel from becoming a Sunday Times bestseller and winning the Crime & Thriller Book of the Year at the Specsavers National Book Awards. 

The Trees by Percival Everett

Something strange is afoot in Money, Mississippi, where a number of brutal murders shock the town. The first to go is Wheat Bryant, son of Granny C, and her nephew, Junior Junior. Beside them lies the body of a Black man eerily resembling Emmett Till, a young (and real-life) boy murdered in the same town some 65 years earlier. Two Black detectives are assigned to the case and they soon suspect that they are on the trail of a series of retribution killings. As the body count rises, a chilling revelation surfaces: Granny C may have been responsible for Emmett Till’s lynching, bringing to light the town’s dark, racist history.

Anyone who has read one of Everett’s many books (including his 2024 longlisted title, James) will know that he doesn’t care for genre conventions, or any conventions, for that matter. He revels in satire and writes white characters as caricatures, flipping a narrative that for years has seen Black people reduced to racist tropes. 

The Trees is a whodunnit with a difference: part murder mystery, part horror, as well as a racial allegory grounded in truth that unflinchingly addresses both historical and contemporary discrimination. It is ‘horrifying and howlingly funny,’ the Booker Prize judges noted in 2022, when it was shortlisted – a novel which ‘asks questions about history and justice and allows not a single easy answer’.

His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet

A series of ‘found’ historical documents form the backbone of Graeme Macrae Burnet’s blood-soaked novel, which pieces together a 19th-century triple murder in a remote crofting community in Scotland. Through court transcripts, medical reports, police statements, and newspaper articles from 1869, we learn about the brutal killing of Lachlan Mackenzie, the tyrannical constable of Culduie, by Roderick Macrae. 

Burnet toys with unreliable narration, offering multiple perspectives that challenge the reader’s perception of truth and justice. The novel, which was shortlisted in 2016, skilfully questions the subjectivity of storytelling, asking us to consider how much we can ever really know about the past.

‘True to the best of crime writing, the genius lies in the story and the way in which the characters react. It may not be a conventional thriller, but it is no less thrilling for that,’ wrote Eileen Battersby in the Irish Times, adding that the author’s ‘gleeful wit frequently surfaces in exchanges between characters that live off the page in a work which conveys not only a sense of period but also of place’. 

Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh

A young woman’s obsession with a glamorous work colleague takes a sinister turn in Eileen, Ottessa Moshfegh’s taut psychological noir, set in December 1964. The novel follows 24-year-old Eileen Dunlop, who is trapped between caring for her abusive, alcoholic father and working a dead-end job at a juvenile correctional facility in the claustrophobic suburbs of wintry New England. Eileen dreams of escape, but her life takes a sinister turn when she becomes obsessed with Rebecca Saint John, a glamorous new counsellor at the prison. What begins as fascination quickly spirals into a parasitic obsession, drawing Eileen into a shocking act of violence.

Moshfegh, inspired by her own experiences growing up in Massachusetts, captures the eerie atmosphere of small-town life. Eileen is a macabre and tense read that delves into uncomfortable spaces, exploring obsession, violence, and the darker sides of human nature – a place where Moshfegh shines. The novel was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2016, cementing Moshfegh’s reputation as a new and crucial voice in American literature. In 2023, it was adapted for film, in a production starring Anne Hathaway. 

Elena Knows by Claudia Piñeiro, translated by Frances Riddle

Growing up in Burzaco, a small town in the province of Buenos Aires, Claudia Piñeiro often witnessed the removal of bodies from the bell tower of the local church, where they had hanged themselves. This haunting image informed the opening of her novel Elena Knows, where an apparent suicide sets off a gripping narrative. The story centres on Elena, an elderly woman crippled by Parkinson’s disease, who refuses to accept the official explanation for her daughter Rita’s death. Although the police deem it a suicide, Elena is convinced it was murder. Determined to uncover the truth, she embarks on a tense and painful journey across Buenos Aires, despite physical limitations.

Piñeiro, who is often hailed as Argentina’s ‘Queen of Crime’, is known for her sharp, socially conscious narratives that explore the underbelly of society. Elena Knows is no exception, offering a psychological depth that has earned her comparisons to the greats, including Alfred Hitchcock. The novel was originally published in Spanish in 2007, and was translated into English by Frances Riddle. It was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2022. 

The Book of Evidence by John Banville

John Banville may be best known for his 2005 Booker Prize-winning novel The Sea, but his first nomination for the prize came much earlier, in 1989, for The Book of Evidence. Inspired by the 1982 crimes of Malcolm Macarthur in Ireland, Banville’s novel is a haunting first-person narration of a man on the brink. 

‘To do the worst thing, the very worst thing, that’s the way to be free. I would never again need to pretend to myself to be what I was not,’ Banville writes, presenting the testimony of Freddie Montgomery, a man accused of two crimes: theft and murder. While attempting to steal a painting from a family friend, Freddie bludgeons a chambermaid to death with a hammer when she catches him in the act.

Banville’s writing is cool and detached, detailing Freddie’s arbitrary actions – acts without clear motive – that subvert the reader’s expectations of how a murderer or psychopath should behave. The novel showcases Banville’s meticulous style and his mastery of psychological complexity, qualities that were evident long before he won the Booker Prize. 

Since 2007, under the pen name Benjamin Black, Banville has written a series of more traditional crime novels centred on the protagonist Quirke, a grumpy and unconventional pathologist in 1950s Dublin.

Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith

Based on the crimes of Soviet serial killer Andrei Chikatilo who murdered over 50 children, Child 44 transports readers to the heart of Stalinist Russia in 1953, amid a society where the State insists that crime doesn’t exist. Leo Demidov, an ambitious secret police officer, finds himself in a moral crisis when he uncovers evidence of a child killer at large. To expose the truth, he must risk everything, placing himself in grave personal and professional danger as the regime he serves becomes his greatest threat.

Tom Rob Smith’s novel is not for the faint of heart: expect graphic depictions of both torture and murder. Yet Child 44 is more than just a gory thriller with a psychological edge. It’s a vivid exploration of life under the oppression of post-war Communist Russia, where totalitarian control pushes society to the brink. An international bestseller, Child 44 sold over two million copies, was translated into over 30 languages was longlisted for the Booker in 2008. It went on to win multiple awards, including the ITW 2009 Thriller Award for Best First Novel, and the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award. 

The Keepers of Truth by Michael Collins

From post-war Russia to post-industrial America, where foundries lie cold, and a town’s manufacturing dynasty is dying along with the American Dream. Irish writer Michael Collins’ The Keepers of Truth is a noirish mystery set in the Midwest during the 1970s, which explores the impact of a brutal murder on a small, declining town.

Bill, a reporter at the local newspaper The Daily Truth, spends most of his days eating tuna melts and covering charity bake-offs. But he has ambition for so much more. So, when an old man, Lawton, goes missing and is found brutally murdered, Bill seizes the chance to unravel the mystery. However, as he delves deeper, the crime begins to cast a much darker shadow over his life, drawing him deeper into the murky world of the Lawton family.

Collins’ novel, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2003, offers a poignant commentary on America’s decline. Reviewing the novel for the Guardian, Robert Macfarlane said The Keepers of Truth was ‘a thunderous, magnificent, apocalyptic piece of prose,’ that is ‘at once a requiem for America and an indictment of its recent past’.

Interesting side note: in addition to his success as a novelist, Collins is also a champion endurance runner – a winner of the North Pole Marathon, the Everest Marathon and the Sahara Marathon, among others. In 2006 he ran a marathon a day for a month.

The Light of Day by Graham Swift

Seven years after he bagged a Booker for Last Orders in 1997, Graham Swift turned his pen to The Light of Day, a psychological exploration of a private detective, wrapped up in a murder mystery of sorts. The novel is narrated by George Webb, a former police officer turned detective, whose story unfolds through a fragmented monologue. On a brisk November morning in Wimbledon, we follow George as he sets out to visit Sarah – the love of his life who just happens to be in prison. Presented as a day-in-the-life narrative, the novel gradually reveals the destructive events of two years earlier that led to Sarah’s crime of passion: the murder of her husband’s lover – a crime in which George bears a degree of responsibility. 

Longlisted for the prize in 2003, The Light of Day is not a typical crime novel or murder mystery; it is deliberately slow-paced and pared back. It drip-feeds details of the crime across a non-linear structure, while gradually teasing out the motivations behind it.

Something Might Happen by Julie Myerson

On an ordinary Monday night in October, in a sleepy English seaside town, sometime between seven and midnight, something terrible happens: a woman named Lennie is murdered. Missing overnight, she is found by bin men on their dawn shift, lying in a pool of her own blood. Her heart has been cut out. 

Lennie is not an obvious victim, and with no suspects or motives, the police quickly reach dead ends. Tess, Lennie’s best friend and a mother of four, is devastated. Her world begins to unravel as she struggles to cope with the news, alongside the demands of family life.

While Something Might Happen centres around the brutal events of that autumn night, the author’s concern is the emotional weight and aftermath of the tragedy, particularly for Tess. The novel defies the conventions of a traditional whodunit and although it contains some of the usual tropes of a murder mystery – clues, a police investigation and a decent amount of blood spatter – it is ultimately a story of grief, trauma, and the lingering impact of loss. Something Might Happen was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2003.