Excellent First Mysteries
Discover the best first mysteries to start your reading journey. Explore gripping debut crime novels from Patricia Cornwell, P.D. James, and more.
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The Man with a Load of Mischief
by Martha Grimes
Inspector Richard Jury is dispatched to Long Piddleton, Northants, to help solve many murders.
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A Great Deliverance
by Elizabeth George
The quiet life of the Yorkshire countryside is shattered by a brutal murder and the shocking revelations unearthed by Scotland Yard investigators Barbara Havers and Thomas Lynley.
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Cover Her Face
by P.D. James
Headstrong and beautiful, the young housemaid Sally Jupp is put rudely in her place, strangled in her bed behind a bolted door. Coolly brilliant policeman Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard must find her killer among a houseful of suspects, most of whom had very good reason to wish her ill. Cover Her Face is P. D. James's electric debut novel, an ingeniously plotted mystery that immediately placed her among the masters of suspense.
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Knots and Crosses
by Ian Rankin
Detective Sergeant John Rebus must solve the case of the "Edinburgh Strangler" before the killer strikes again.
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Postmortem
by Patricia Cornwell
Dr Kay Scarpetta uses forensic medicine to try to catch the killer of five young women.
