Mystery novels are among the most popular today, but a good mystery isn’t all that easy to write. The earliest noted example of the modern, typical detective novel is The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, which established many of the modern tropes of crime and mystery storytelling, but that boundary is constantly pushed by new writers who understand the genre’s conventions and add their own twist to it.
Many classic and modern mystery novels deserve to be adapted for the screen, but the question is, how well can that truly be done? Some novels are best experienced on paper, where we’re submerged into the psyche of the protagonist, effectively becoming him. No other medium (except perhaps video games) can make the viewer/reader feel as if they’re in the story themselves. The following mystery novels would be amazing adaptations if done correctly; their television versions could easily make us feel as if we’re the main character and yet present the protagonist with a certain objectivity, adding a spice to the main twist and building worlds that may have been hard to imagine while reading. Here are mystery books that deserve a TV adaptation.
‘Time Out of Joint’ (1959)
Fans of classic science fiction and its literary godfather, Philip K. Dick, know about Time Out of Joint all too well. This is one of the maybe lesser-known books by Dick, whose works have had numerous film and TV adaptations thus far (the most notable being the Blade Runner franchise). Time Out of Joint is a classic sci-fi story, so it may not classify as a mystery to some, but its plot and atmosphere around the first half of the novel are built on a tightly wound unknown that drives the protagonist crazy and makes him question his own sanity. If there was a proper comparison, this novel would be the grandfather of The Truman Show and Severance, though there are other shows that match the plot well.
Time Out of Joint follows Ragle Gumm, who lives in an idyllic and typical American small town in 1959. Ragle has a unique talent, where he plays the local newspaper’s game called “Where Will The Little Green Man Be Next?” guessing the answer correctly every single time and getting a cash prize for it. This makes Ragle somewhat of a local celebrity, and he lives happily until one day, things in his world begin to disappear and appear without a good explanation. Ragle dives deeper into his investigation, and his world suddenly flips upside down. Time Out of Joint is an incredible novel, full of intense moments, surprising twists, and a satisfying ending. Adapting it to modern times wouldn’t be difficult, but getting the atmosphere right might take some trial and error. Either way, this Philip K. Dick novel only needs a dedicated showrunner—the story itself is already perfect.
‘The Murder of Roger Ackroyd’ (1926)
OK, so yes, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd does have its place on TV already: the Poirot series starring David Suchet adapted the book into a feature-length episode, and there’s even a Japanese feature film based on it, but there’s not an actual series. Anyone who reads Agatha Christie often knows exactly why The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is a gem among her other works; the unusual twist really delivers a stunner and shifts the entire novel on its side. The precision of the storytelling that Agatha Christie delivers in this novel is pretty much her magnum opus; a typical murder mystery on the surface, Roger Ackroyd is a methodically written slow-burn that hides its central mystery brilliantly.
Hercule Poirot is summoned to solve the death of the wealthy widower Roger Ackroyd, and he is aided by Dr. James Sheppard, who was called to the scene by Ackroyd’s assistant. Poirot and Sheppard work on consolidating their clues and motives of various people who attended a dinner at Ackroyd’s home on the night of his death. The narrator of the novel, though, is not a third party or Poirot, but Sheppard himself, who observes clues and Poirot at work with attention to detail and great dedication. Sheppard and Poirot are a formidable team, and a methodical and clever showrunner could really make this duo stand out. With so many Poirot adaptations, though, Roger Ackroyd may not be a priority to many writers. However, that’s not even the biggest problem, but the fact that serving justice to the best crime novel of all time might be a big bite to take after all.
‘The Silver Road’ (2018)
Nordic noir is definitely worthy of adapting for TV screens, and though there are many examples of good novels in the genre, The Silver Road by Stina Jackson is unique and carries special weight. Unlike most Nordic noirs, it doesn’t follow a detective solving a murder mystery but a grieving father who refuses to let go of his missing daughter. The novel depicts the backwoods of Sweden, way up in the north where it’s colder, houses are far away from each other, and boredom often prevails without much to be done about it. Jackson writes with incredible empathy and precision, driving the wedge of grief further into her protagonist. But the book doesn’t stop at being a process of sadness; rather, it turns very quickly into a mystery that grows sinister with each page. It’s a brilliant debut novel, awarded with the Best Swedish Novel award in 2018.
Lelle, a high school teacher in a remote town in Sweden, searches for his missing 17-year-old daughter Lina every single day. She disappeared on the road known as the Silver Road three years before, where Lelle dropped her off at the bus station when she was headed to school. He drives past, investigates decrepit houses, and asks about Lina wherever he can. At the same time, now 17-year-old Meija arrives in town and becomes Lelle’s new student; Meija comes from a dysfunctional home and doesn’t have the parental support any child should expect, and after another girl who looks like Lina disappears, Lelle and Meija become integral parts of the search for the culprits. This could be a very well-made slow-burn mystery series with the right showrunners, but the focus would have to be on Lelle’s intensifying guilt and self-isolation in parallel with the increasing looming dread of Meija’s loneliness. It wouldn’t be an easy show, but it would be brilliant if it were made anything like the novel.
‘Strange Houses’ (2021)
Strange Houses was a social media phenomenon when it came out because it’s not like other mystery novels. Strange Houses literally features house plans spread out across its pages, where the readers aren’t meant to just parse through lines of text and inhale the mystery but take a long, hard look at the houses featured in the novel and make their own conclusions. Strange Houses is a bona fide mystery that combines modern journalism with Japanese tradition and folklore, and its author is just as mysterious as the book itself. Known only as Uketsu, this creator is best known for his YouTube career and hiding behind a white, faceless papier-mâché mask. Uketsu creates videos about unsolved mysteries across Japan, and though his content is only in Japanese, his published novels have been translated into numerous languages across the globe.
Strange Houses is the first in the Strange series of novels (followed by Strange Pictures, Strange Buildings, and Strange Maps), and it follows an unnamed journalist in the first person as he is contacted to analyze a baffling house plan. We’re immediately confronted with it, and things seem off from the start; the child’s room is in a weird place, and why is there a triangle-shaped room no one can see? The journalist enlists the help of architect Kurihara, and together, they come to conclusions that become more and more shocking with each discovery. Strange Houses is an extremely fast read, but it’s such a fun novel that imagining it as a TV series is pretty much a given. There is already a feature film of the same name from 2024, but the adaptation was so bad compared to the book that the only way this brilliant, fast-paced, and super tense mystery novel could be given justice is by a TV series.
‘Drood’ (2009)
The task of adapting the colossal and magnificent Drood for TV screens remains one of the hardest things to do, according to Guillermo del Toro, at least. When Dan Simmons wrote it, he made sure to combine fact with fiction in such an immersive and intricate way that a lot of the things featured in the two-novel story feel like they’ve actually happened. Simmons is known for writing stories like that, and his audacious approach to these things has often been a hit-or-miss with audiences, from the gargantuan Abominable to the more TV-friendly The Terror. Still, many readers love Simmons and his weird proclivity for taking real-life mysteries and giving them his own, fictional, and often supernatural explanations—I am one of them. And to go back to del Toro, so is he. Del Toro tweeted out once that his script for Drood was completed and that it was one of the stories that took months of his life to finish; a lot of us, fans of the book and Simmons and del Toro, hope to still see this come to fruition in some way.
Drood is a two-part novel about the final five years of Charles Dickens‘ life, told from the perspective of writer Wilkie Collins (a full circle moment here, since Collins is mentioned as the creator of the first detective novel). Collins is friends with Dickens and often describes his daily routine and the process of writing his final novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. But Dickens leaves all of his writing aside to try and track down information about the man who calls himself Drood, one who saved him from certain death during a train accident in 1865. As Dickens searches obsessively, Collins helps him but descends further into opium usage due to his gout, becoming an unreliable narrator along the way. The mysterious circumstances of Dickens’ well-known unfinished novel are intertwined with a fictional, terrifying, and mysterious encounter with Drood, which Simmons turned into a stellar piece of reading. With each new page, you’re either getting frustrated with the dynamics of 19th-century England or absolutely stunned by the Count Orloff-esque appearances of Drood. It’s safe to say that Drood would need a clever adaptation that doesn’t take any of its parts for granted; it might even work better as a TV series.