Kate Rhodes’s Five Favourite Crime Novels

Brighton Rock remains my all-time favourite crime novel. I started out as a poet, so its precise and visual writing style really appeals to me. Then there’s the marvellous depiction of Brighton, with all its seedy charm, during the inter-war years. Greene really makes the town live and breathe, until it feels like you’re walking down the promenade on a blistering hot day, trying to evade a vicious killer. It’s a chilling depiction of human evil too, in the form of a damaged teenager, taking revenge on the world for letting him down.

I read the book long before watching the film. For me, the novel is infinitely more powerful and subtle, because it leaves so much to the reader’s imagination. I found it far more chilling to imagine Hannibal Lecter’s depravity than to watch him cannibalising his prison guards. I also love the immaculate way Harris plays with the mind of Clarice, the young police officer sent to find out who could be copying Lecter’s crimes, while he festers in a high security psychiatric prison. From reading Silence of the Lambs I realised that the relationship between hunter and hunted didn’t have to be about pure terror. It could be intimate, and almost tender at times.

No list of favourite crime novels would be complete without at least one Agatha Christie! This book was written in 1926, exactly a hundred years ago, yet it remains a genre-defining classic. Christie’s plotting was so audacious and imaginative, it put her far ahead of her time. I debated whether to include And Then There Were None as well, because it’s a book I often reread. The concept is deceptively simple: ten strangers arrive on an island, only to be murdered, one by one. I adore Golden Age crime writing, and Christie remains the queen of her era.

Blue Monday was the first book I read in the Frieda Klein series. It held me from the very first page. I found Frieda entirely convincing as a complex, thoughtful psychotherapist, with a strong ethical drive when treating her patients. Maybe the confident writing comes from the fact that Nicci Gerrard is herself a psychotherapist, and her co-writer husband Sean French is a journalist. There’s an authenticity in every book in this brilliant series that rings with truth, and I always love learning something new when reading a crime novel. Each book in this series has taught me more about human psychology, as well as being a love letter to the city of London, which is beautifully depicted.

This book kept me spellbound! It takes the trope of an evil depraved man abducting a young girl and turns it on his head. It’s a nuanced, compelling story about a lonely woman who invites a young boy into her home, then refuses to let him go. Hancock’s writing style is lyrical, and she moves through the tale with absolute verve, increasing the psychological pressure with every page. A real masterclass in plotting and character depiction, as well as a chilling and horribly believable story.