A Private Business by Barbara Nadel
Thriller set on the ESSEX Coast
Ten Great LONDON Crime Books
16th July 2025
Ten great London crime books. London crime stories leverage the city’s unique atmosphere, from its bustling streets and historic alleyways to its gritty underbelly, as a character in itself. Authors frequently explore the vast social divides, hidden secrets, and diverse communities within the sprawling metropolis, creating rich backdrops for their mysteries.
From the classic deductions of Sherlock Holmes in Victorian fog to contemporary police procedurals the genre showcases London’s evolving identity. Gangland sagas, psychological thrillers, and spy novels all thrive within its bounds, often utilising iconic landmarks and lesser-known corners to heighten suspense and authenticity. The sheer scale and complexity of London offer endless possibilities for intricate plots and compelling characters, solidifying its place as a cornerstone of crime fiction.
Here are ten of our favourite London crime novels.
The Bleeding Heart by Christopher Fowler
It’s a fresh start for the Met’s oddest investigation team, the Peculiar Crimes Unit.
Their first case involves two teenagers who see a dead man rising from his grave in a London park. And if that’s not alarming enough, one of them is killed in a hit and run accident. Stranger still, in the moments between when he was last seen alive and found dead on the pavement, someone has changed his shirt…
Much to his frustration, Arthur Bryant is not allowed to investigate. Instead, he has been tasked with finding out how someone could have stolen the ravens from the Tower of London. All seven birds have vanished from one of the most secure fortresses in the city. And, as the legend has it, when the ravens leave, the nation falls…
Soon it seems death is all around and Bryant and May must confront a group of latter-day bodysnatchers, explore an eerie funeral parlour and unearth the gruesome legend of Bleeding Heart Yard. More graves are desecrated, further deaths occur, and the symbol of the Bleeding Heart seems to turn up everywhere – it’s even discovered hidden in the PCU’s offices. And when Bryant is blindfolded and taken to the headquarters of a secret society, he realises that this case is more complex than even he had imagined, and that everyone is hiding something. The Grim Reaper walks abroad and seems to be stalking him, playing on his fears of premature burial.
Rich in strange characters and steeped in London’s true history, this is Bryant & May’s most peculiar and disturbing case of all.
Jukebox by Saira Viola
Nick Stringer is a rookie lawyer but what he really wants is to run his own record label. His dream seems one step closer when old family friend and businessman Mel Greenberg offers to bankroll him.
Avery Cross is a junior reporter desperately searching for the story that’s going to make her name. Avery thinks there’s more to Mel Greenberg than meets the eye and that uncovering the truth about him might just be her ticket to the big time.
Nick, Mel and Avery’s lives converge against the backdrop of London’s underworld where glamour, crime & greed party side by side. It doesn’t take long before Nick begins to realise that if an offer looks too good to be true it probably is.
In a city rocked by corruption and excess, one of them is going to learn that sometimes in life you get more than you bargained for.
Jukebox is Saira Viola’s brilliant full-length debut novel.
The Art of Death by David Fennel
Death is an art, and he is the master . . .
Three glass cabinets appear in London’s Trafalgar Square containing a gruesome art installation: the floating corpses of three homeless men. Shock turns to horror when it becomes clear that the bodies are real.
by The cabinets are traced to @nonymous – an underground artist shrouded in mystery who makes a chilling promise: MORE WILL FOLLOW.
Eighteen years ago, Detective Inspector Grace Archer escaped a notorious serial killer. Now, she and her caustic DS, Harry Quinn, must hunt down another.
As more bodies appear at London landmarks and murders are livestreamed on social media, their search for @nonymous becomes a desperate race against time. But what Archer doesn’t know is that the killer is watching their every move – and he has his sights firmly set on her . . .
He is creating a masterpiece. And she will be the star of his show.
The Evil Beneath by A J Waines
There’s a body in the water – and she’s wearing your clothes… Impulsive and intrepid psychotherapist, Juliet Grey, can’t resist responding to an anonymous text message telling her to go to Hammersmith Bridge at dawn. But it isn’t simply the dead body in the water that disturbs her, it’s the way something uniquely personal to Juliet has been left on the corpse. Another obscure message – another London bridge – and Juliet finds herself caught up with a serial killer, who leaves personal mementos instead of collecting trophies. Teaming up with local detective, DCI Brad Madison, Juliet strives to find out why she has been targeted and how it’s connected to the accident that killed her brother, nineteen years ago. Can Juliet use her knowledge of the human psyche to get inside the mind of the killer, before another body is found under a bridge? And how long before Juliet herself becomes the next target?
Tuesday Falling by S Williams
You’ve never met anyone like Tuesday. She has suffered extreme cruelty at the hands of men, and so has taken it upon herself to seek vengeance. She wants to protect and help others like her, to ease their suffering. A force to be reckoned with, she lives beneath the streets of London in the hidden network of forgotten tunnels that honeycomb the city – and this is her preferred hunting ground.
When Tuesday is connected to a series of brutal attacks on gang members, DI Loss takes on the investigation. A burned-out detective still suffering the devastating effects of the unsolved murder of his daughter three years earlier, the case starts to hit close to home. Because soon Loss will discover that Tuesday could hold the key to uncovering the truth about what happened to his daughter…
A Better Quality of Murder by Ann Granger
Evil lurks on the streets of Victorian London in this gripping crime novel.
As Inspector Ben Ross of Scotland Yard walks homeward one Saturday night in late October 1867, the fog that swirls around him is like a living beast. By the time it has lifted next morning a woman lies murdered in Green Park. Allegra Benedict was the beautiful Italian wife of an art dealer in Piccadilly. But what had she been doing in London that afternoon, and why had she been selling her brooch in the Burlington Arcade just hours before her death? As Ben begins his investigation, his wife Lizzie – with the help of their maid Bessie – looks into Allegra’s private life and uncovers more than one reason why someone might want her dead…
A Dark and Twisted Tide by Sharon Bolton
Former detective Lacey Flint quit the force for a safer, quieter life. Or that’s what she thought.
Now living alone on her houseboat, she is trying to get over the man she loves, undercover detective Mark Joesbury. But Mark is missing in action and impossible to forget. And danger won’t leave Lacey alone.
When she finds a body floating in the river near her home, wrapped in burial cloths, she can’t resist asking questions. Who is this woman, and why was she hidden in the fast-flowing depths? And who has been delivering unwanted gifts to Lacey?
Someone is watching Lacey Flint closely. Someone who knows exactly what makes her tick . . .
A Death At The Palace by M H Baylis
Novel set in Wood Green. The third novel from journalist and scriptwriter MH Baylis, A Death at the Palace is set in and around Wood Green, a largely unloved and often overlooked corner of north London colonised by successive waves of immigrants who rub along with varying degrees of success. Through its cosmopolitan streets limps Rex Tracey, a journalist who “would be forty before his Oystercard needed its next top-up”, and who has fallen from the heights of Fleet Street to working for the local rag, where he spends his time necking Polish beer and investigating an anti-immigration group. When the body of his Lithuanian ex-girlfriend Milda is discovered, he becomes a murder suspect and is forced into some detective work of his own. Meanwhile, retired chiropodist and camera buff Arthur Chapman lives a life of quiet desperation, caring for his dying wife and struggling to keep the demons of his past at bay…
A Private Business by Barbara Nadel
Barbara Nadel brings us a new and original pair of detectives in poverty-stricken Stratford East, whose inhabitants are cynical about any possible improvements the Olympic Park can make to their wretched lives. Here another set of Londoners is impelled towards disaster. Maria, a faded stand-up comedian whose fame reached its apogee 20 years ago, seeks the help of dodgy private investigator Lee Arnold when she begins to experience frightening delusions. Maybe they’re not all in her mind, which is frankly rather filthy.
Readers of a gentle literary disposition should be warned that Maria made her name in comedy through the novelty of a woman using obscene language: we are given realistic samples. At the opposite end of the scale is Lee’s new assistant, Mumtaz Hakim. Like Rendell’s nanny, she comes from a Muslim background and is trying to avoid the “suitable” marriage that her family wants for her.
Mumtaz finds herself deeply involved in Maria’s nightmarish experiences and forced to play an active part in Arnold’s agency, one which exploits her training as a psychologist.
Capital Punishment by Robert Wilson
Beautiful Alyshia D’Cruz has grown up in London and Mumbai wanting for nothing. But one night she takes the wrong cab home.
Charles Boxer, expert in high-stakes kidnap resolution, teams up with his ex-partner, investigative cop Mercy Danquah, who’s battling with their rebellious teenage daughter.
Alyshia’s father hires Boxer, who knows all about the tycoon’s colourful career, which has made him plenty of enemies. But despite the vast D’Cruz fortune, the kidnappers don’t want cash, instead favouring a cruel and lethal game…To save Alyshia, Boxer must dodge religious fanatics, Indian mobsters and London’s homegrown crimelords.
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT is a journey to the dark side of people and places that lie just out of view, waiting for the moment to tear a life apart.
Enjoy our selection of crime novels set in London!
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What about the Charles Holborne series?