I found a link to the 100 favorite mysteries of the 20th century. The list was compiled by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association.

Many classics and a few new ones.  Only one book per author could be added.

http://www.mysterybooksellers.com/favorites.html

Hope you enjoy the list and find something new to read!

Thanks for that, Amy.  VERY interesting books on there!  I've read a bunch. 

Jim Huang, who is apparantly the director of the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association owns a bookstore called: The Mystery Company near me.  He is an absolute gem of a guy and as a resource, is without peer.  He has a nice used section and can without a glitch tell you what author you'd probably like and why when you tell him the ones you've loved. 

He does free shipping anywhere and  you can order from his website.  If there's a title you can't find, I'd definitely recommend contacting him. 

Just my totally unsolicited plug to support independent booksellers...   :) 

Wow - I've only read three of these books.  And I call myself a mystery fan!  

How sad, I've only read 6 of the 100!  But there are 2 more on my Reminder list :)  I'm going to have to check out the authors they have listed.

17 out of 100!  Not too bad :)  I do have a few on the TBR pile......

I thought I was a big mystery buff, too. But I've only read 13 out of 100.

I've read 38 of those and have several others on my TBR. Also there are many where I've read other books by the author listed but just haven't gotten to the one book listed yet. Some great reading there, that's for sure!

Cheryl

Very interesting! I've read 11 and have several of the others on my TBR pile.

I've read 19 and  have a few others TBR, and a couple wishlisted.

It's interesting to see what "one" book was chosen for the various authors. Some like Sue Grafton are pretty obvious -- Grafton's A -- but why choose Josephine Tey's Brat Farrar over The Daughter of Time? I've read both, but DoT seems the more captivating and enduring book, in my opinion. For what it's worth. ;-)

Updated to correct the Christie information. Duh! ;-)

Pam

I had the same thought, Pam.  Interesting choices for some others.  Marcia Muller, for example--that's the first of the series but her writing and that series gets nothing but better as it goes along.  I just looked it up and Brat was published first but definitely not her earliest.  For both of the Kellerman books, they are the first of the series.  Maybe that was one of the primary factors for which book...  We'll have to ask someone!  :)

Sharon 

Another one I wondered about, Sharon, was choosing The List of Adrian Messenger by Philip MacDonald. Messenger was the last of the Anthony Gethryn detective series books (1960) and very loosely adapted (mostly the title!) for a so-so movie of the same name. It's a good book, but a better book by MacDonald is the first Gethryn mystery, The Rasp, which came out in 1924.

Then again, maybe the people voting on this list are something like me -- Messenger was the book I'd heard of and read first. I had no idea it was part of a series until I looked at the Fantastic Fiction site to see what else Philip MacDonald had written.

I've read 21 and see I lot more I need to read!  I also noticed the "first in series" trend - most of the books that I've read were from series and nearly all of them were the first.  Notable exceptions for me were the Robert Parker book and the Lawrence Block book, both of which were excellent choices, I think.

15 read and 8 on TBR pile, plus at least 2 on Reminder List. One I am surprised is not on the list is The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins as it is usually heralded as the first true detective novel.

One I'm surprised *is* on the list is Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird. Excellent book, but I've just never considered it a mystery.

I got my hands on this list a few years ago and I've been trying to read them all.  I'm not sure how many I'm up to, but I've made some wonderful finds!  A couple that are not as well known today but definitely deserve a look are John Buchan's The Thirty Nine Steps and Frederic Brown's The Fabulous Clipjoint.

I'm surprised G. K. Chesterton isn't on the list.  The Man Who Was Thursday is a classic.

Charlie, I think that The Moonstone was published in the 19th C., which would explain its omission from the list.  I've got that one on my TBR, though.

ETA:  I've read 30, I think.  I've got a ways to go.

I've read 30-32 or so.  There are some that I read so many years ago that I'd have to check to try and be sure.  There's some interesting choices there, but I suppose all lists are like that.

I've only read ten on the list.  But its tough because there's so many where the author wrote a lot of really good ones (especially Agatha Christie) but only one is on the list, so its seems like a lot are missing.

What an interesting list.  Finding out the psychology used to make the choices would be interesting.  I too have never really thought of "To Kill a Mockingbird" a mystery.  Ah well -- it certainly gives me some wonderful ideas for reading.  Thanks for posting the link -- Becky

Marilyn, this list actually is why I originally joined PBS.  I was trying to find out-of-print books from this list stumbled across this site.  I have found many books from this list here, and in fact my first book ever received from PBS was Margery Allingham's Tiger in the Smoke (which is EXCELLENT, by the way).

Thanks for posting this Amy! 

I've read a few on the list and have a few more on my TBR pile but this gives me lots more ideas.

Thanks for posting this.  I saw another post where someone had marked the titles they'd read, so I decided to do the same.  I also marked the ones I'm planning to read  (or re-read) with an *.  I think the book rental people will be happy!  Some might be interested in ones that available as free downloads from Librivox.  I didn't check anything that didn't sound interesting but these would be older titles.

Sorry for the formatting errors, but after losing my message, I had to paste it from Word and can't seem to fix it.

1. Allingham, Margery, The Tiger in the Smoke
2. Ambler, Eric, A Coffin for Dimitrios
3. Armstrong, Charlotte, A Dram of Poison*
4. Atherton, Nancy, Aunt Dimity's Death
5. Ball, John, In the Heat of the Night
6. Barnard, Robert, Death by Sheer Torture
7. Barr, Nevada, Track of the Cat*
8. Blake, Nicholas, The Beast Must Die, (author C. Day-Lewis, Poet-Laureate and father of Daniel Day-Lewis)
9. Block, Lawrence, When the Sacred Ginmill Closes*
10. Brand, Christianna, Green for Danger - I think I tried to read this one several times
11. Brown, Frederic, The Fabulous Clipjoint
12. Buchan, John, The 39 Steps *(Dover) available as a free Librivox download at http://librivox.org/the-thirty-nine-steps-by-john-buchan/
13. Burke, James Lee, Black Cherry Blues
14. Cain, James M., The Postman Always Rings Twice
15. Cannell, Dorothy, The Thin Woman
16. Carr, John Dickson, The Three Coffins
17. Caudwell, Sarah, Thus Was Adonis Murdered
18. Chandler, Raymond, The Big Sleep
19. Christie, Agatha, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
20. Connelly, Michael, The Concrete Blonde
21. Constantine, K.C., The Man Who Liked Slow Tomatoes* (May have read this since I once read a lot of K.C. Constantine)
22. Crais, Robert, The Monkey's Raincoat
23. Crispin, Edmund, The Moving Toyshop
24. Crombie, Deborah, Dreaming of the Bones
25. Crumley, James,The Last Good Kiss
26. Dickinson, Peter,The Yellow Room Conspiracy
27. Doyle, Arthur Conan, The Hound of the Baskervilles
28. DuMaurier, Daphne, Rebecca
29. Dunning, John, Booked to Die
30. Elkins, Aaron, Old Bones
31. Evanovich, Janet, One for the Money
32. Finney, Jack, Time and Again*
33. Ford, G.M., Who in Hell Is Wanda Fuca?
34. Francis, Dick, Whip Hand
35. Fremlin, Celia,The Hours Before Dawn (Has anyone read this one?)
36. George, Elizabeth, A Great Deliverance
37. Gilbert, Michael, Smallbone Deceased*
38. Grafton, Sue, "A" is for Alibi
39. Graham, Caroline, The Killings at Badger's Drift
40. Grimes, Martha, The Man With the Load of Mischief
41. Hammett, Dashiell, The Maltese Falcon
42. Hare, Cyril, An English Murder*
43. Harris, Thomas,The Silence of the Lambs
44. Hiaasen, Carl,Tourist Season*
45. Highsmith, Patricia,The Talented Mr. Ripley
46. Hill, Reginald, On Beulah Height
47. Hillerman, Tony, A Thief of Time
48. Himes, Chester, Cotton Comes to Harlem
49. Innes, Michael, Hamlet, Revenge*
50. James, P.D., An Unsuitable Job for a Woman
51. Kellerman, Faye,The Ritual Bath
52. Kellerman, Jonathan, When the Bough Breaks
53. King, Laurie, The Beekeeper's Apprentice
54. Langton, Jane,Dark NantucketNoon – may have read this one
55. le Carre, John, The Spy Who Came in From The Cold
56. Lee, Harper, To Kill a Mockingbird
57. Lehane, Dennis, Darkness, Take My Hand
58. Leonard, Elmore,Get Shorty
59. Lochte, Dick, Sleeping Dog *?
60. Lovesey, Peter,Rough Cider *?
61. MacDonald, John D., The Deep Blue Good-by *
62. MacDonald, Philip, The List of Adrian Messenger ?
63. Macdonald, Ross,The Chill – might have read this one
64. Maron, Margaret, Bootlegger's Daughter
65. Marsh, Ngaio, Death of a Peer
66. McBain, Ed, Sadie When She Died – another possibility that I just can’t remember; I read a lot of McBain
67. McClure, James, The Sunday Hangman
68. McCrumb, Sharyn, If Ever I Return, Pretty Peggy-O
69. Millar, Margaret, Stranger in My Grave*
70. Mosley, Walter, Devil in a BlueDress
71. Muller, Marcia, Edwin of the Iron Shoes
72. Neel, Janet, Death's Bright Angel*
73. O'Connell, Carol, Mallory's Oracle
74. Padgett, Abigail, Child of Silence
75. Paretsky, Sara, Deadlock
76. Parker, Robert, Looking for Rachel Wallace
77. Perez-Reverte, Arturo, The Club Dumas
78. Perry, Thomas, Vanishing Act
79. Peters, Elizabeth, Crocodile on the Sandbank
80. Peters, Ellis, One Corpse Too Many
81. Pronzini, Bill, Blue Lonesome
82. Queen, Ellery, Cat of Many Tails
83. Rendell, Ruth,No More Dying Then
84. Rice, Craig, The Wrong Murder*
85. Rinehart, Mary Roberts, The Circular Staircase * (May have read; available as free download at Libravox librivox.org/the-circular-staircase-by-mary-roberts-rinehart/
    
86. Robinson, Peter, Blood at the Root
87. Rosen, Richard, Strike Three You're Dead
88. Ross, Kate, A Broken Vessel
89. Rozan, S.J., Concourse
90. Sayers, Dorothy, Murder Must Advertise
91. Sjowall & Wahloo,The Laughing Policeman*?
92. Stout, Rex, Some Buried Caesar *
93. Tey, Josephine, Brat Farrar
94. Thomas, Ross, Chinaman's Chance *?
95. Todd, Charles, A Test of Wills
96. Turow, Scott, Presumed Innocent
97. Upfield, Arthur,The Sands of Windee*?
98. Walters, Minette, The Ice House
99. White, Randy Wayne, Sanibel Flats
100. Woolrich, Cornell,I Married a Dead Man