Free Mystery, Detective, Thriller & Crime (Fiction) Books Online

Introduction

This is a listing of sites that legally offer free fiction Mystery, Detective, Thriller and Crime books , for reading and listening (audio).

All of these sites listed have content that is legal for them to distribute and for you to download and/or read online.  If you find that any site listed is offering content that can not be legally transferred, please let me know in the comments below. 

Also, I would appreciate it if you would post comments about any sites that you like or do not like so that information can be added to the site's listing here.  This would help new users to decide which sites to try.

This list is not comprehensive and if you know of any other sites please post in the comments below or at our forums. 

A comprehensive alphabetical listing of free books for reading or listening can be found on these pages:

• 100+ Places For Free Books Online

• Free Audio Books Online

There will be other Mystery, Detective, Thriller and Crime related  books at sites listed there, but they are not categorized at the sites.

Libraries are also an excellent source for reading and listening materials.  To find out more information on your local library, the links here may help:  Library Information

There are 13 other book  pages here at Gizmo's covering other various popular book genres and offering links to free online books listed here:  Book Genre Pages

Mystery/Detective/Thriller/Crime (fiction)

2020k (Detective) (Mystery/Thriller) Large collection (2,000) available for download in a variety of formats

Arthur's Classic Novels (Mystery)(Detective 1)(Detective 2) These three links provide a nice collection of classic mystery and detective stories for online viewing.

BlackMaskFiction  offers 20 or so free detective stories that were originally published in magazines during 1925 to 1939 for download in pdf.

BookGlutton  has interesting collection of 53 free books in its Mystery & Detective section for online reading with the added  feature of  groups available for discussion of the readings.  Nice combination of reading and socializing.  Suggested by an anonymous poster.

BooksShouldBeFree has 34 classic Mystery audio books available for download in very good quality MP3 or as text for reading.

BookYards (Mystery) 109 classic novels available for download in pdf

ClassicLiteratureLibrary offers several detective stories by Dickens and Poe as well as several Sherlock Holmes and Professor Challenger books by Doyle for online viewing.

eBooksDirectory  has a small collection of free mystery novels for download.  It is a nice mix of classic and newer novels.

FeedBooks (Crime/Mystery)(Thriller) (Detective) has about 165 classic works between these two sections available for download in a variety of formats.

FindingFreeeBooks posts about free ebooks online.  There are 26 posts in the mystery section. There are also some listings in the Crime section.  Also worth checking out the limited time offers section as there will be mystery novels there also.  This is a nice spot if you are looking for something different as these are unique entries.

Free eBooks.net (Mystery) has an interesting collection of 132 mystery novels available for download.

FreeOnlineBooks  has a nice small collection of free books in its Crime category.

FreeOnlineNovels has about 25 novels (scroll down) available for online viewing

Globusz (Mystery) has 10 books available for online viewing or download.

GoogleBookSearch (Mystery) has 48 classic mystery novels available for online viewing or download as pdf.

Gutenberg (Mystery)(Detective)(Crime Fiction) between these three sections, Gutenberg has a large collection available for download in several formats.

JimDeFilippi offers 8 of his crime novels for free download in pdf.

KnowledgeRush has about 60 works of several classic mystery writers available for free download in pdf or html in its Mystery category.

ManyBooks (Mystery/Detective) has an interesting collection of 588 books available for download in a variety of formats.

MobileRead (Mystery) has about 200 works linked to download for mobile or HTML in its forums (there are some others mixed in for some reason)

Munsey's (Mystery) has 736 mystery novels available in a variety of formats

OnlineBooksPage (Mystery/Detective) Small amount of links to mystery and detective novel downloads. 

Project Gutenberg Australia has a large collection of novels by Australian authors, some available for online viewing and some for download.

PublicBookShelf (Mystery/Suspense) 14 novels available for online viewing

Qvadis (Mystery) 115 unique novels available in Palm Database (.pdb) format.

RobertBurtonRobinson  offers a number of free books and short stories for free online viewing and for free download in pdf.

Stiljack offers a free complete crime novel of Martin Cooper along with 5 short stories and also has a few other authors short stories.  Aspiring writers are encouraged to have their books posted there.

TopMystery A good amount of each of the limited authors listed are available for online viewing or download

Wowio (Mystery) has a good size collection of mystery novels available for free online viewing

Mystery/Detective/Thriller/Crime (fiction) (audio)

AudioBooks has Agatha Christie's Miles of Mystery and The Wisdom of Father Brown by G.K.Chesterton along with 5 chapters of Black Jack Justice under Detective.  There are also several chapters of the Red Panda Adventure along with Mark Twain's The Stolen White Elephant under Mystery.  You must register (free) to download.

AudioBooksForFree has a large number of works in this genre.  There are 250 free audio books under Crime Mystery; 209 free audio books under Thriller (although most also involve supernatural); 19 free audio works under Spy Stories and 16 free audio books under Terrorists.  Downloads in MP3.  The free downloads are in low quality (8kbps) and registration is required.

AudioBookTreasury has The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (11 works) available for free download in MP3 (or complete work in Zip) or for listening online.

BooksShouldBeFree has 34 classic Mystery audio books available for download in very good quality MP3 or as text for reading. 

LibriVox has 147 free audio books under their Mystery genre as well as 11 works under their Spy Stories genre.  These are available for download in MP3 (64kb/128kb) or ogg vorbis.  All are human read.

MariaLectrix has a good number of works in their Mystery category, but they are separated and often the parts are posted in different blog entries making it a bit difficult to get the whole audio book.  Some link to other sites for download, others are for listening online there.

PodioBooks has 12 unique entries under Mystery and 9 unique works under Thrillers available for download in very good quality MP3.  These were originally released as podcasts (and still are) but most are completed.