Collider ranks eight pre-21st-century detective books as essential classics, arguing that the genre produced some of literature’s most enduring characters and innovations.

– ‘Arsène Lupin, Gentleman Burglar’ (1907) is praised as a witty French inversion of detective fiction, with Lupin using deduction to commit crimes.
– ‘The Maltese Falcon’ (1930) is highlighted as Dashiell Hammett’s defining hard-boiled novel and a major influence on noir.
– The article frames these works as influential across detective fiction, from traditional sleuth stories to gritty pulp crime.