I don't know if the crime novel, sometimes called the mystery novel, the British called

the crime novel, I always like that expression better because not every great crime story has

an actual mystery like a whodunit in it. But one of the reasons I like the crime novel so much is

because it combines tight plotting and action with genuine, oftentimes deep explorations of life and philosophy and spirituality

that are just built in to the story. You don't have to talk about them. They're just there.

So I just wanted to talk about, you know, probably they'll call this the 10 best crime novels,

but that's not what this is. These are 10 great crime novels, many of which have changed my life and some of which may change

your life, and they're really good reads as well.

Of course, at first, you have to mention before any of them, crime and punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Depending on the translation, Dostoevsky can be tough to read, but he is a brilliant, brilliant,

brilliant genius of a novelist. This is a story of a young man

named Raskolnikov. It was written in 1866, and it's a story of a young man who decides that

his superior intellect gives him the right to commit a crime. And he goes and he kills two women,

one of whom is a pawnbroker to whom he owes

money. And it is what happens to him after he does that. It's just a brilliant, brilliant

exploration of morality and the moral web and of conscience and of Christianity. But it also has

scenes in it that are kind of inventions that you've never seen before,

like the questioning of Raskolnikov by the police, is in every TV show that you've ever seen.

I mean, the closer is just crime and punishment redone again and again and again.

One of the most profound novels.

I read it first when I was 19 years old, and it worked as an antidote to the

moral relativism that was becoming popular in the universities, because once you see the murder

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