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. 

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:

• 446 Places For Free Books Online

• 91 Places For 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 16 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.

Amazon has free kindle, mystery and thriller,  ebooks for free download after registration.  There are 19 free entries in the main listing and clicking on the sub-genres (and sub-sub) will reveal some more.  I am not certain if these are available to those outside the USA.

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. Now requires registration and starting of a book group to read.

BookRix has over 60 free detective novels for reading online or download in epub, Sony, Stanza (iPhone) or their BookRix formats.  The reading online is in a popup window that reads as an ordinary book.  There are some classics that can be found elsewhere, but there are also many unique entries here.  The adult oriented books require registration to read or download.

BooksShouldBeFree has a large collection of 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.

Classicly has free classic novels in its Mystery category as well as in the Detective, Espionage and Thriller categories.   These are classic works in the public domain.  All are available for free download in PDF and manny are also available in KINDLE.  Where there is an introductory paragraph, books may be found by mousing over a books name.  Also, some times these do not link to the proper book, but a search of the book name will lead to a correct link.  Thanks to Tyler G for this suggestion.

DailyLit has 33 full free ebooks in its Mystery category and 4 full free ebooks in its Thriller category.  These are delivered in installments to your email, hence the "Daily" lit.

DigiLibraries has 37 free novels in its Law & Crime category as well as 353 free novels in its Mystery & Detective category.  This is a mix of classic and modern (unpublished authors) works.  All the ones I checked were available for download in EPUB or for reading online.  Some also offered PDF downloads.  Thanks to Jonathan Malka for this suggestion.

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

eBooksForAll offers 10 free classic Mystery and Thriller ebooks.  these are links offsite, so download and viewing options vary.

eBookTakeaway  has a good size collection in their crime/detective/mystery/thriller category for download in pdf, html or ebook text.

ePubBooks has around 30 free novels in its Mystery category.  Also listings in Crime/Detective, Espionage/Spy and Thriller/Suspense.  All are available for download in ePUB.  There are links to other download formats, but some of those are pay sites.

FeedBooks (Mystery/Detective)(Thriller)  has about 165 classic public domain works between these two sections available for download in a variety of formats.  There also is over 200 free novels in the these categories for original works:  Mystery & Detective, Thrillers, and Suspense.

FreeeBooksBlog has links to 4 unique free mystery novels for download in varying formats in their Mystery category as well as one entry in their Crime category.

Free eBooks.net (Mystery) has an interesting collection of 142 mystery novels available for download.

FreeOnlineNovels has about a large collection of links to mystery novels available online.

GetFreeeBooks  offers 10 free unique ebooks in its Mystery fiction category as well as 11 free ebooks in its Thriller & Suspense category.

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.

Joggoon has 2 Sherlock Holmes novels available for free reading online.

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.

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

Munsey'sMobile has over 1000 free novels in its Mystery category.  These are all available for free viewing online and are also available for download in PDF, PRC and ePUB.  These appear to be different works than those available on the regular Munsey's site, above.

MysteryNovelist offers the romance mystery, Snow Angels, by Barbara W. Klaser for free reading online.

obooko  offers 30 free books by self publishing authors for download.  Free registration is required.

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

Online Novels.blogspot has links to a large number of mystery/thriller novels available online for viewing and/or download.  These are unusual entries not found elsewhere.

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

PublicBookShelf (Mystery/Suspense) 37 novels available for online viewing

RichardEngling  offers his futuristic detective novel, Body Mortgage, for free download.  Registration for a newsletter is required.

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

Rob'sNovelsandNovellas has several novellas and novels for online viewing in its Mystery and Thriller section.  These are original and unique entries not found elsewhere.

SmashWords has about 35 free works listed in its Mystery & Detective Category.  These are original and unpublished works.  Most appeared to be short stories, but a few novels are included.  These are available for download in a wide variety of formats, including KINDLE, EPUB and PDF among others, as well as for online viewing.

SunDogStories offers the adult oriented crime story, Lucky's Dream, for free online viewing.

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

WattPad has a large collection of free Mystery/Suspense stories.  These are original, and generally unplublished.  Most appear to be short stories, but there are some novels and novellas.  Available for free reading online.

Web-Books has 220 free classic novels in its Mystery category.  These are all available to read free online or for download in WEB and WEB database.  Viewing the downloads requires their Web Viewer (free) which is clean as far as I can tell

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

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.