The Best Crime Books Being Made Into New TV Series & Movies

There’s been a murduh! There have been multiple murders, in fact, between the pages of these crime novels, all of which are on their way to the screen. Featuring Nordic noir, dark comedy, secret-infested thrillers, literary detective novels and cosy crime, this little bunch of books have all been optioned, and will, industry-willing, be seen in cinemas and on TV before too long.

If you want to get ahead of the curve when they blast onto Netflix and the like, then get reading. After all, these mysteries won’t solve themselves…

Dark Pines by Will Dean (2018)

The first in Will Dean’s Tuva Moodyson novels, Dark Pines is set in rural Sweden (where the British writer now lives) but the planned TV adaptation will apparently relocate the action to the wilds of Scotland instead. The six-books-and-counting series tells the story of Tuva, a deaf journalist whose investigations into local crime lead her into intrigue and danger. In Dark Pines, Tuva is working on a small paper when a serial killer who’s been dormant for decades starts up business again in her community. Atmospheric, chilling, surprising and above all, led by a great central character, the Tuva books were always destined for a screen adaptation. EastEnders and Code of Silence’s Rose Ayling-Ellis is attached to play the lead, with playwright Charlotte Jones on adaptation duties.

How To Kill Your Family by Bella Mackie (2021)

This darkly comic revenge story was a huge hit for novelist Bella Mackie on publication, and it’s set to get even bigger with the news that Netflix is making a TV adaptation starring Anya Taylor-Joy (Furiosa, Peaky Blinders, The Queen’s Gambit). It’s an ‘eat the rich’ story for our times in the White Lotus, The Menu and Succession mould, about the illegitimate daughter of an extremely wealthy man who gets revenge on his whole dynasty after he wrongs her and her mother. Taylor-Joy is the perfect choice to play glamorous, unhinged antihero Grace, and this one promises to be cruel fun.

Missing You by Harlan Coben (2014)

By now, we know the score with Harlan Coben thrillers: 20-odd years ago, A Thing happened, and now it’s back to bite someone on the bum – usually someone whose bum you could bounce a 10p coin off due to their strict Pilates/Hockey/Golfing regime, and who lives in a well-appointed detached six-bed with kerb appeal and Smeg appliances. There will be twists and revelations at regular intervals, and the whole thing will be ludicrous fun. Missing You, based on this 2014 novel, is the next British Coben adaptation from the team behind Fool Me Once, Stay Close and more. It’s coming to Netflix and is the story of a detective named Kat suddenly confronted on an online dating app by the ex-fiancé who disappeared decades earlier. Expect conspiracy, peril and secrets springing out like snakes in a prank can of nuts.

Playdate by Alex Dahl (2020)

A novel that ended up on several ‘Best Thriller’ roundups on publication, this nightmare scenario is about to become a five-part Disney+ series starring Holliday Grainger (Strike), Ambika Mod (One Day) and Denise Gough (Andor). It’s the story of Elisa (Gough), who lets her young daughter go to a sleepover at the house of a new friend with a charming mother, Rebecca (Grainger). But when Elisa goes to collect her child, everything falls apart and an urgent investigation ensues, as reported on by journo Selma (Mod). Destined to fit into the ‘kitchen island’ genre of psychological thriller TV about well-heeled yummy mummies unravelling, this is one to watch.

Sweetpea by CJ Skuse (2017)

It’s always the quiet ones… Rhiannon Lewis is exactly that, a mouse-like nobody who passes by invisible to all. Except that underneath the surface, Rhiannon has secrets that’d make your eyes pop and a temper you very much don’t want to get on the wrong side of.

CJ Skuse’s darkly comedic thriller is a fun, fast read with a dark heart, and it’s been adapted by Pure’s Kirstie Swain into an eight-episode TV series, coming to Sky Atlantic and Starz in October. They’ve cast the extraordinarily beautiful Ella Purnell (Fallout, Yellowjackets) in the lead role, which may make the whole ‘nobody notices her’ thing a little hard to swallow seeing as Rhiannon has a face that belongs in a Renaissance painting, but we’re sure Purnell will, ahem, kill it.

The Cordelia Gray Books by P.D. James (1972 – 1982)

It’s early days on this one, but TV producer Caryn Mandabach (Peaky Blinders) is the kind of person who gets things done, so there’s every reason to believe the option her company picked up on these PD James novels will actually translate to a TV show. It wouldn’t be the first ever screen version of James’ private detective Cordelia Gray – there was an 1982 TV movie and a 1990s series starring Helen Baxendale – but it would be the first in decades.

Gray is the lead character in two novels by PD James (also the creator of Detective Adam Dalgleish) An Unsuitable Job for a Woman and The Skull Beneath the Skin. A colourful, peripatetic childhood divided between boarding school and travelling with her political activist father led the character to work at a private detective agency that she eventually inherits and takes over.

The Harry Hole Series by Jo Nesbø (1997-)

Despite the somewhat unsavoury ring to Jo Nesbø’s Detective Hole, that’s what they’re calling this new series – there’s already a Netflix page and everything. Pronounced “Hoo-leh” rather than “Hole” as in vole, Det. Harry Hole is a classic crime fiction archetype – a depressed, alcoholic, Norwegian maverick genius solving twisted crimes against bleak but beautiful Nordic landscapes. This won’t be his first screen outing, Michael Fassbender played him in the meme-generating 2017 feature film The Snowman by Let the Right One In’s Tomas Alfredson, but it’ll be the first TV version of Nesbø’s bestselling detective. Series one will adapt The Devil’s Star, the fifth book in the series, with Tobias Santelmann (who played Ragnar in The Last Kingdom) playing the lead role.

The Kay Scarpetta Series by Patricia Cornwell (1990 – 1998)

Here’s a starry cast: Nicole Kidman and Jamie Lee Curtis are attached to Prime Video’s in-development adaptation of the millions-selling Kay Scarpetta books, of which there are a whopping 28. That show won’t be running out of source material anytime soon then. Created by Patricia Cornwell, who must be swimming Scrooge McDuck-style through piles of money by now, they’re the story of a medical examiner who solves murders using her forensics expertise. Kidman has signed up to play the lead, with Curtis in the role of her sister, in the series created by Deadwood and Lost’s Elizabeth Sarnoff.

The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman (2020)

Filming began this year and recently wrapped on the feature film adaptation of the first in Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club series (there are four novels and counting). Harry Potter and Home Alone director Chris Columbus has assembled a fine cast to bring this cosy murder mystery to the big screen. Dame Helen Mirren, Celia Imrie, Ben Kingsley and Pierce Brosnan play Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron, the central quartet of crime-solving retirees who work out of their swanky retirement village in the South of England.

If all goes well at the box office and on Netflix, then these aged-but-don’t-underestimate-us sleuth movies could well become a calendar fixture for the next few years.

Until I Kill You by Delia Balmer (2024)

The full title of Delia Balmer’s non-fiction memoir is Until I Kill You: The Shocking True Story of the Woman Who Survived Living with Serial Axe Murderer John Sweeney. At the beginning of their relationship, Nurse Balmer didn’t suspect her partner John Sweeney of any wrongdoing, but quickly, his violent abuse revealed that she was in great danger. This is the story of Balmer surviving life-threatening attacks from a man who boasted of previous murders and was only convicted after a six-year hunt and investigation. Balmer’s memoir has been adapted into a true crime TV drama starring Endeavour’s Shaun Evans as Sweeney, and Line of Duty’s Anna Maxwell-Martin as Balmer. The four-parter debuted in New Zealand and Canada earlier this year, and which is scheduled to air on ITV in the UK in December 2024.

Verity by Colleen Hoover (2018)

Bestselling author and ‘BookTok’ star Colleen Hoover is, to use a technical publishing term, kind of a big deal. Her millions-selling novel It Ends With Us has just been raking in box office with a Blake Lively-starring adaptation that’s sent eyeballs to the next Hoover novel being adapted for the big screen. That will be Verity, as announced in May 2024. It’s the story of Lowen, a young woman hired as a ghost writer for a successful author who is seriously injured, and whose devastating secrets are spilled in a not-for-publication autobiography discovered by Lowen. No cast has yet been announced, but expect this one to be everywhere when it arrives.

SEE ALSO

A Matter of Blood by Sarah Pinborough (2010)

The first in the Dog-Faced Gods Trilogy, this dystopian serial killer crime novel was announced as being adapted by Pinborough for TV back in November 2023.

Cross by James Paterson (2006)

They don’t come much bigger in crime fiction than James Patterson (Along Came a Spider, Kiss the Girls), and this Prime Video series about his most famous detective and forensic psychologist arrives on November 14.

For the Love of Julie by Ann Ming (2008)

Sheridan Smith will star in an adaptation of nurse and legal reformer Ann Ming’s true crime memoir for ITV, renamed I Fought the Law, about Ming’s years of campaigning to get justice for her murdered daughter Julie Hogg.

The Perfect Couple by Elin Hilderbrand (2018)

Currently No. 1 on Netflix, The Perfect Couple starring Nicole Kidman, Eve Hewson and Liev Schreiber, is a glossy mystery thriller set in the land of the wealthy and corrupt. Watch it for the dance routine credits sequence if nothing else.