A few months ago, Babelio, the favorite site of reading fans, in partnership with the Quai du Polar festival, asked its members a killer question: what is, in their opinion, the best detective novel of the last 20 years? So out go the great classics of the detective literatureAgatha Christie and company… In the end, nearly 14,000 people responded to this survey based on “the most popular thrillers, crime novels and detective stories” released between 2005 and 2023. Which made it possible to create a top 10. So, who came out the big winner?
Millenniuman essential literary saga
This is a Scandinavian novel: Men who didn’t like womenby the Swedish writer Stieg Larsson. An author who died prematurely in November 2004, a few months before the publication of the first volume of what would become the famous trilogy. Millennium. The first, we can specify. This first novel was followed by The Girl Who Dreamed of a Can of Gasoline and a Match (2006) et The Queen in the Palace of Drafts (2007). Stieg Larsson originally planned to write a series of ten pounds.
Men who didn’t like women allows us to meet Lisbeth Salander, an asocial hacker, and Mikael Blomkvist, an investigative journalist and editor of a magazine called Millennium. An atypical duo who, in this first novel, will investigate the disappearance of Harriet Vanger, the niece of an influential industrialist. This thriller was a success all over the world and quickly became a “classic” of detective literature. Millennium has been adapted for the cinema, in Sweden (three films starring Noomi Rapace and Michael Nyqvist in the main roles), and in Hollywood (a film with Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig in 2011).
The 10 best thrillers of the last 20 years
Two authors have taken over from Stieg Larsson. Millenium first came back under the pen of David Lagercrantz who signed three novels, What doesn’t kill me (2015 – adapted for the cinema in 2018 with Claire Foy and Sverrir Gudnason), The Girl Who Returned Blow for Blow (2017) et The Girl Who Had to Die (2019). Karin Smirnoff took over with The Girl in the Eagle’s Claws (2022), first part of a third trilogy.
If The Men Who Didn’t Love Women is considered the best thriller in twenty years, what other novels are in the top 10? According to Babelio, readers opted for:
- The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affairby the Swiss Joël Dicker (Grand Prix of the French Academy in 2012)
- The illusion of evilby the Italian Piergiorgio Pulixi (2022)
- We were the salt of the seaby Quebecer Roxanne Bouchard (2014)
- 1991by Frenchman Franck Thilliez (2021)
- Black water liliesby the French Michel Bussi (2011)
- Surfaceby Frenchman Olivier Norek (2019)
- The Whispererby the Italian Donato Carrisi (2009)
- I will kill for youdu Français Henri Loevenbruck (2018)
- Only silenceby the British RJ Ellory (2007)
