Colin Dexter’s first novel introduces us to the magnetic character of Inspector Morse – drinker, opera buff, brilliant mind, and inexplicable seducer of many women, along with his perplexed sidekick Lewis. The plot revolves around two young women who decide to hitch back to the pretty Oxfordshire village of Woodstock – and one ends up dead. Morse must unravel the web that ties to two women together, all the while drinking ale, doing crosswords, and frowning his way around the Oxford setting that is almost the series’ second lead.

You should read it: to see how to set up a wildly popular series and how to create a character so loved he inspired two spin-off TV shows; to admire the spare, ironic prose; to see how to use setting with enormous effect.

Frederick Forsyth’s 1971 thriller helped create the modern action thriller, a genre that sells millions each year and often features hitmen, conspiracies, high-level plots and a race against time. This is based around a real-life attempt on the life of General de Gaulle, which segues into a fictional follow-up plot. It opens with a famously ‘hooky’ passage of a man facing a firing squad and keeps up the pace with an unnamed English assasin, ‘The Jackal’, being hunted by French detective Lebel. A race is soon on to stop the General being killed.

You should read it because: Forsyth, an investigative journalist by trade, used the same methods to build up an intense sense of realism, and slotted his novel around real-life events to increase the tension and plausibility. It’s also a classic dual baddy/goody narrative. Although beware the power of the novel – it was an inspiration for the assassin who killed Yitzhak Rabin, and the man who tried to kill George Bush in 2005 – and also gave Carlos the Jackal his nickname.

Christine wakes up every day in a strange bed, with a man she doesn’t know. When she looks in the mirror, she sees a middle-aged woman she doesn’t recognise. A rare condition means that every time she goes to sleep she loses herself again. Gradually, with the help of a doctor and her ongoing diary, she manages to piece together bits of her past. Why has she found a picture of herself pregnant – and where is her child? Who did she used to be? And why has she found a note from herself, telling her not to trust her husband?

You should read it because: this huge bestseller caught the public imagination with its intriguing premise, and is a supreme example of how to use narration to cloak things from the reader. In this case the narrator is made unreliable by simply not remembering, but yours could also be lying, or traumatised, or unable to tell us the truth for other reasons. Arguably the book launched the current ‘marriage thriller’ genre that is so popular (see also Gone Girl) and is soon to be a major film with Nicole Kidman.

No list of crime novels would be complete without this dazzling tour de force by Raymond Chandler, introducing his laconic and hard-bitten PI Marlowe. Much parodied but never bettered, plot is not the strongest aspect of the book (a convoluted tail of blackmail, pornography, murder, and the wealthy Sternwood family), the book drips with dangerous broads, sinister henchmen, strong scotch, and smoking guns. There is even a large plot hole that was only identified when the book was adapated into the famous film. Chandler simply forgot to fill it.

You should read it: for the inventive, often hilarious use of metaphor; for its fun with words; to understand where the conventions of the noir/PI sub-genre come from; to see if you can spot the plot hole.

In small-town America, a man is sitting in a diner eating eggs when he’s arrested – but he doesn’t know why. This is our first introduction to Jack Reacher, the giant of a man who has since starred in a hugely popular series by Lee Child, and also a film with the (not-giant) Tom Cruise. Jack Reacher is an old-fashioned action hero straight from a Western, righting wrongs, dispensing justice, and able to battle his way out of any situation. He has guns and brawn and brains and he’s always right.

You should read it because the action thriller may seem like a simple formula, but delivering non-stop thrills is an impressive trick to pull off. Read it to see how to keep the pages turning, and then ramp the action up even more…and even more. You should also read it to see how Lee Child creates a character people return for again and again, even if he doesn’t display traditional character arcs, but shows up in every book just as tough and swoon-worthy as ever.

John Fowles is probably better known for the narrative experiments and mind-bending twists of The Magus and The French Lieutenant’s Woman, but The Collector is a quieter book of devastating power. Beautiful Miranda is kidnapped by ‘Fred’ and made to live in his specially adapted basement so he can admire her and keep her all to himself. A rapport gradually builds as she tries to win over her captor, desperately fighting to stay alive. We alternate between Miranda’s memories and despair and the chilling mind of The Collector.

You should read it because novels where ‘the killer narrates’ are ten a penny, but this is how to do it so it’s truly terrifying and moving, not just a cardboard cut-out thinking in crazed italics. Both are rounded, fully realised characters caught in an increasingly impossible situation. The  book was written before Room or the real-life horrors of the Fritzl case, but continues to be as relevant and shocking as ever.

Last year’s  break-out hit is worth reading just to see if the hype is justified – and it’s soon to be a film starring Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike. Nick and Amy are a golden New York couple when the recession hits and they have to move back to Nick’s small home town, where he takes a teaching job. But then Amy disappears. Where is she? At first it’s told in Nick’s first-person point of view, and it’s clear there are things he isn’t telling us. Then we move into extracts from Amy’s diary, which seem to reveal a different type of truth.

You should read it for the expert use of viewpoint to create suspense and twists – in a way the book is made by its viewpoint choices. Read it too for a chilling portrayal of a toxic marriage, and an insight into how the recession has shattered individual lives.

Considered by many to be the first detective novel in English, Wilkie Collins’s masterpiece still has the power to grip and surprise more than a century on. Heiress Rachel Verinder is given The Moonstone, a priceless Indian diamond, for her eighteenth birthday. That night it is stolen from her bedroom, and the race is on to find the thief. The book is divided up between different narrators, each with their own perspectives on what happened. It’s got the lot – red herrings, twists and turns, sinister uncles, locked rooms, country houses, and a dastardly villain.

You should read it because: it works not only as a gripping and entertaining mystery (and without any gruesome serial killers) but also for its subtle manipulations of the reader, forcing us to examine our own prejudices and judgements.

Daphne du Maurier came up with some of the enduring stories of our times – not just the creepy Jamaica Inn and My Cousin Rachel, but also the short story that inspired Hitchcock’s The Birds. But Rebecca is surely her masterpiece, and helped invent the modern psychological thriller. The poor narrator, who doesn’t even get a first name throughout, is naïve and impoverished, rushing into marriage with brooding, rich Max de Winter, recently widowed. He proposes on top of a cliff by calling her a ‘little fool’ and saying how much he really hated his dead wife, Rebecca. Nice guy!

Returning to his Cornish mansion, Manderley, the heroine is haunted by traces of the beautiful lively Rebecca. But what really happened to her? When the boat she supposedly drowned in is dredged up, and her body is found with a bullet in it, Max and Unnamed Heroine (really, she could have at least merited a name) are caught in a trap from beyond the grave. You should read it because it uses setting brilliantly, as well as a naïve narrator whose innocence and love for her husband mean she can’t see the truth the reader does. It also has a wonderfully unsettling downbeat ending.