David Baldacci on the best crime fiction books

This classic psychological thriller sees Guy Haines and Charles Anthony Bruno fatefully meet during a train journey. Guy is a successful architect in the midst of a divorce, while Bruno turns out to be a sadistic psychopath who manipulates Guy into swapping murders with him. "Some people are better off dead," Bruno remarks, "like your wife and my father, for instance." As Bruno carries out his twisted plan, Guy is trapped in Highsmith's perilous world where, under the right circumstances, anybody is capable of murder.

Three women have been found murdered in Richmond, Virginia. There is a serial killer on the loose, and the only pattern to his crimes is that he always strikes early on Saturday mornings. When Dr Kay Scarpetta, chief medical officer, is woken at 2.33 a.m. to news of a fourth victim, she knows it’s a race against time to find new forensic evidence. But not everyone is pleased to see a woman in such a powerful position . . . This is the book David called the best crime novel ever written.

Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson travel to misty Dartmoor to investigate a devilish apparition in this classic mystery from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The intrepid duo unravel the truth behind a terrifying family curse after they are called upon to solve the mysterious death of Sir Charles Baskerville.

And Then There Were None is the bestselling crime novel of all time by the bestselling novelist of all time, Agatha Christie. The mystery sees eight people arrive on a small, isolated island, only for each of them to be accused of murder by an anonymous voice recording over dinner. And Then There Were None has been adapted numerous times for the stage, screen and radio.