Best Thriller Series: 12 Detective Series Worth a Binge

In 1893, Arthur Conan Doyle tried to kill off Sherlock Holmes in “The Final Problem” because he said the detective kept him from better things. Readers hated it so much that ten years later he brought Holmes back in “The Adventure of the Empty House.” Readers wanted more of that detective, so the author had to bring him back from the dead!

Readers still feel the same way. Once a detective gets under your skin, you don’t want one book. You want twelve, and you want them tonight.

So here are the series worth starting next, each with the book to start with.

The Short Version

• If you want a detective nobody believed, on an island where storms hide the bodies, start with The Storm Reaper by Kristen Van Nest.
• For a London private detective and his partner, start the Cormoran Strike series with The Cuckoo’s Calling.
• Something funny with almost no gore? Start with The Thursday Murder Club.
• For a detective who goes home to a small town that hates him, start with The Dry.

What to Look For in a Thriller Series

Four questions I ask before I commit to a whole series:

Do You Want to Spend Ten Books With This Detective?

A standalone can get away with a flat hero. A series can’t. If the detective bores you in book one, books two through ten won’t save it. I want a detective who has a life outside the case, and opinions about it.

Does Each Book Work on Its Own?

The best series let you jump in anywhere, then reward you for reading in order. You shouldn’t need a recap before chapter one.

Does the Place Change Along With the People?

In a great series, the town, the island or the police station grows up over the books too. You start to know who runs the bakery and who lies to the police.

Is There a Long Mystery Running Underneath?

Every book solves its own case, but something bigger keeps going in the background.

Thriller Series at a Glance

Which Thriller Series to Binge Next?

1. The Violet Crisp Series by Kristen Van Nest, Starting With The Storm Reaper (2026)

Read this if: you want a detective who was right all along and nobody listened to her.

What you’re getting: The Storm Reaper is set on Fire Island, a barrier island off Long Island, and borrows from the Gray Man of Pawleys Island folklore, a real legend about a ghost who appears before hurricanes. A serial killer has been hunting there for a decade. He kills during the storm, lets the tide wash the body out to sea, and the police write down another storm-related death. It worked until the currents shifted and the bodies started washing back. Violet Crisp was sixteen when she survived the storm that killed her best friend and saw a man murdered in the fog that same night. The chief said she was confused by grief. Her own father said she was making it up. She spent the next ten years building a case nobody believed.

Why series fans will like it: It is book one of the Violet Crisp series, so the island and the people on it are built to come back. You get the small-town loyalties and grudges a long series needs, a detective who knows the island’s storms better than anyone, and a case that ties back to her own past.

What readers say:

• Mary, Goodreads Reviewer, ★★★★★: “This book had me sucked in from the beginning and I am very excited to learn that this is #1 in a series.”
• Beverly, Goodreads Reviewer, ★★★★★: “This was a very dynamic, gripping story and author, and I can’t wait to continue the journey.”
• Alison Hoeksema, Goodreads Reviewer, ★★★★★: “The opening book of the Violet Crisp series of crime thrillers is both gripping and haunting.”

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2. The Cormoran Strike Series by Robert Galbraith, Starting With The Cuckoo’s Calling (2013)

Read this if: you want a detective duo whose working relationship is half the reason you keep going.

What you’re getting: Cormoran Strike is a private detective in London and an Afghanistan veteran who lost part of his leg. In The Cuckoo’s Calling, a supermodel falls from her balcony, the police call it suicide, and her brother hires Strike to prove otherwise. His temp, Robin Ellacott, turns out to be better at the job than anyone expected.

Why series fans will like it: Robin starts as a temp and becomes his partner, and watching that happen across the books is the long mystery underneath. Robert Galbraith is J.K. Rowling, so the series has the same habit of planting a clue three books before it pays off.

Fair warning: The later books are very long.

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3. The Dublin Murder Squad by Tana French, Starting With In the Woods (2007)

Read this if: you want crime fiction with gorgeous sentences and a detective who is falling apart.

What you’re getting: In In the Woods, Detective Rob Ryan and his partner Cassie Maddox investigate a girl’s murder in the same Dublin-area woods where Rob’s two childhood friends disappeared. Rob was found there alone, with no memory of what happened.

Why series fans will like it: Each book hands the lead to a side character from the book before, so you meet the squad from the inside, one detective at a time.

Fair warning: In the Woods does not answer every question it asks. Some readers still haven’t forgiven it!

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4. The Jackson Brodie Series by Kate Atkinson, Starting With Case Histories (2004)

Read this if: you like cold cases and a detective with a dry sense of humor.

What you’re getting: Jackson Brodie is an ex-cop working as a private investigator in Cambridge. In Case Histories, three old cases, including a little girl who vanished decades ago, land on his desk and start to connect.

Why series fans will like it: Atkinson writes Brodie like a real, tired, funny person, and the side characters are as good as the cases.

Fair warning: It reads more like literary fiction than a page-turner.

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5. The Aaron Falk Series by Jane Harper, Starting With The Dry (2016)

Read this if: you want a detective who goes home to a town that never forgave him.

What you’re getting: Federal agent Aaron Falk goes back to Kiewarra, a farming town in a drought, for the funeral of his childhood best friend, who the town believes killed his family and then himself. The town also still blames Falk for a death twenty years earlier.

Why series fans will like it: Every Falk book drops him into a closed community where everyone knows more than they’re telling. If you love that setup, it never gets old.

Fair warning: It is a short series, so you’ll finish fast.

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6. The Shetland Series by Ann Cleeves, Starting With Raven Black (2006)

Read this if: you want a remote island where everybody remembers everything.

What you’re getting: In Raven Black, a teenage girl is found dead in the snow in Shetland in January. The locals blame one man, and Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez has to open up a case the whole island has already closed.

Why series fans will like it: Perez grew up on the islands, so every case is also about who he’s related to and who he went to school with.

Fair warning: The first book spends a lot of time setting up the island.

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7. The Thursday Murder Club Series by Richard Osman, Starting With The Thursday Murder Club (2020)

Read this if: you want to laugh while somebody solves a murder.

What you’re getting: Four friends in a retirement village meet every Thursday to look at unsolved murders. Then a real one happens down the road, and they decide the police need their help.

Why series fans will like it: You come back for the four of them more than the cases, the way you come back to a sitcom.

Fair warning: It is cozy, with low tension and very little gore.

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8. The Slough House Series by Mick Herron, Starting With Slow Horses (2010)

Read this if: you want a team of rejects who are better at the job than the people who rejected them.

What you’re getting: Slough House is where Britain’s MI5 sends spies who messed up. Their boss, Jackson Lamb, is rude, filthy and much smarter than he lets on. In Slow Horses, a kidnapping gives the team a chance to prove themselves.

Why series fans will like it: The office is the setting, and the people in it change from book to book. Some of them don’t make it.

Fair warning: It is a spy series, not a detective one.

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9. The Millennium Series by Stieg Larsson, Starting With The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2005)

Read this if: you want an unlikely team working a decades-old disappearance.

What you’re getting: Journalist Mikael Blomkvist is hired by a rich old man to find out what happened to his grandniece Harriet, who vanished from the family’s island nearly forty years ago. He ends up working with Lisbeth Salander, a hacker who trusts no one.

Why series fans will like it: Lisbeth is one of the most memorable characters in crime fiction, and her own story runs underneath every case.

Fair warning: It includes graphic sexual violence.

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10. The Chief Inspector Gamache Series by Louise Penny, Starting With Still Life (2005)

Read this if: you want a village you’d move to if people stopped getting murdered there.

What you’re getting: In Still Life, a retired schoolteacher is found dead in the woods outside Three Pines, a tiny village in Quebec, and Chief Inspector Armand Gamache comes to find out who killed her.

Why series fans will like it: Three Pines and its people are the real draw. By book three you’ll know everyone at the bistro.

Fair warning: It is slow, and the first book is the gentlest one.

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11. The Harry Bosch Series by Michael Connelly, Starting With The Black Echo (1992)

Read this if: you want a classic LAPD detective who does not care about politics.

What you’re getting: Harry Bosch is an LAPD detective and a Vietnam veteran who fought in the tunnels. In The Black Echo, a body in a drainage pipe turns out to be a man he served with.

Why series fans will like it: Bosch ages in real time across the books, so you watch Los Angeles and the detective change together.

Fair warning: It is a very long series, and the first book shows its age.

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12. The Rizzoli & Isles Series by Tess Gerritsen, Starting With The Surgeon (2001)

Read this if: you want forensic detail and a detective who has to fight her own department.

What you’re getting: A killer in Boston is targeting women in their homes, copying a murderer who was shot two years earlier. Detective Jane Rizzoli is the only woman on the homicide team, and she has to prove herself while she hunts him.

Why series fans will like it: Rizzoli gets sharper with every book, and medical examiner Maura Isles joins her in book two.

Fair warning: It is gory.

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How to Choose Between Detective Series Books

• A detective nobody believed: The Storm Reaper.
• A partner duo: Cormoran Strike.
• Something to laugh at: The Thursday Murder Club.
• Beautiful sentences: Tana French.
• An island where everyone knows everyone: Shetland.
• An old-school LA procedural: Harry Bosch.

Why Series Readers Choose The Storm Reaper

Most detective series start with the detective already in charge. The police trust her, the town listens to her, and the only mystery is the case.

That works for book one. But when you finish it, the question that gets you to book two is about the detective herself: what happens to her next, and who on that island is still lying to her.

The Violet Crisp series starts with her as the person everyone dismissed. Violet was sixteen when she saw a man murdered in the fog during the storm that killed her best friend. The chief said she was confused by grief, and her own father said she was making it up. She spent the next ten years building a case nobody believed, on the island where she still lives.

That’s why series readers start here. Mary wrote that she was “very excited to learn that this is #1 in a series,” and Beverly wrote, “I can’t wait to continue the journey.”

Thriller Series FAQ

What Is the Best Thriller Series to Start With?

It depends on the detective you want. The Storm Reaper by Kristen Van Nest starts the Violet Crisp series on Fire Island, The Cuckoo’s Calling starts the Cormoran Strike series in London, and The Dry starts Jane Harper’s Aaron Falk series in rural Australia.

What Are Good Detective Series Books for Adults?

Try Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad, Ann Cleeves’s Shetland series, Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch series or Kate Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie books. All four have grown-up detectives with messy lives and cases that stay with you.

Which Thriller Series to Binge if You Want to Laugh?

Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club is the funniest series on this list, followed by Mick Herron’s Slough House. Both have real murders but plenty of jokes.

Do I Need to Read a Thriller Series in Order?

Most thriller series work out of order, because each book solves its own case. You get more from reading in order, though, because the detective’s life keeps moving between books.

Which Thriller Series Has a Detective Nobody Believes?

The Violet Crisp series is built on it. In The Storm Reaper, Violet saw a man murdered in the fog at sixteen and spent ten years building a case nobody believed. Alison Hoeksema, Goodreads Reviewer, ★★★★★, called it “both gripping and haunting.”

Which Thriller Series Has a Female Detective?

Rizzoli & Isles has Jane Rizzoli in Boston, the only woman on her homicide team in the first book. Tana French’s In the Woods also has Cassie Maddox as half of its detective pair.

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