Penguin Classics Crime and Espionage for 2026

Publishing through 2026, the Penguin Classics Crime and Espionage series brings together landmark works of fiction from across the twentieth century and beyond. Highlights include Robert van Gulik’s Judge Dee mystery The Chinese Nail Murders, Dorothy B. Hughes’s noir classic Ride the Pink Horse, Robert Littell’s Cold War thriller The Amateur, and Mai Jia’s international bestseller Decoded. The list also features Giorgio Scerbanenco’s Italian noir Traitors to All, alongside Rear Window and Other Stories, a newly curated Penguin Classics selection of suspense stories by Cornell Woolrich, originally published in the 1930s and 1940s. 

The Chinese Nail Murders by Robert van Gulik (9 July 2026) First published in 1961

Judge Dee returns in one of Robert van Gulik’s strangest and most atmospheric mysteries, set far from the courtly intrigue of Tang China and deep into a ferocious northern wilderness. In a remote, freezing region, a young girl vanishes, jewels are stolen and a brutal beheading shocks the local community. As Dee pulls at the threads, the case begins to circle an unsettling local obsession, the “Seven Board”, a popular game that may be more than a harmless pastime. With its locked room ingenuity and mounting dread, the novel offers all the pleasures of classic puzzle crime while using the harsh landscape and tight knit settlements to heighten the tension. Van Gulik’s Judge Dee novels are celebrated for their vivid historical texture, and this instalment is a particularly rich example, blending clue driven plotting with an immersive sense of place and period.

About the author: Robert van Gulik (1910 to 1967) was a Dutch diplomat and a leading authority on Chinese history and culture, who lived much of his life in the Far East. He wrote sixteen Judge Dee mysteries alongside influential studies of Chinese art and music.

Ride the Pink Horse by Dorothy B. Hughes (9 July 2026) First published in 1946

A heat hazed, high pressure noir that shifts the genre out of shadowy alleyways and into the bright glare of the American Southwest. Sailor, a former gangster’s muscle, arrives from Chicago in Santa Fe during Fiesta season with revenge and money on his mind. But the city is packed, the temperature is punishing, and the forces ranged against him are both organised and unpredictable. With nowhere to stay and danger in every crowd, Sailor is pushed into a tightening web of corruption and violence, where survival depends on reading people quickly and striking first. Dorothy B. Hughes turns the usual noir palette inside out, using vivid colour and sunlight to make paranoia feel even sharper. The result is a lean, propulsive thriller that builds dread through constant motion, chance encounters and the sense that the whole town is watching.

About the author: Hughes (born Kansas City, later based in New Mexico) was a journalist and poet who became one of the key voices of American hard-boiled fiction. Several novels were adapted for film, and she was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America.

The Amateur by Robert Littell (23 July 2026) First published in 1981

A classic Cold War thriller built on a deliciously unnerving premise: what happens when an ordinary man decides to do an extraordinary, violent thing and refuses to be stopped. Charlie Heller is a CIA cryptographer, a quiet specialist in codes and patterns, not fieldcraft. When his beloved fiancée is murdered by terrorists and his superiors choose not to pursue the killers, Heller turns his grief into purpose. He forces his way into the role of avenger, following the trail behind the Iron Curtain and stepping into a world he understands only on paper. Littell’s brilliance is in making Heller’s “amateur” status an advantage as well as a vulnerability. He does not know the rules, but he can see structures others miss, and his enemies underestimate him until it is too late. The novel moves with pace and bite, balancing tradecraft detail with mounting moral stakes, and it remains a sharp, unsettling meditation on bureaucratic cynicism and personal justice.

About the author: Robert Littell (born 1935) is a major American novelist of espionage and Cold War fiction, also known for The Company. The Amateur has been filmed twice, most recently as a major film released in April 2025.

Decoded by Mai Jia (13 August 2026) First published in China in 2002

An international bestselling spy novel that plunges into the secretive world of cryptology and the psychological cost of genius. Rong Jinzhen is a mathematical prodigy, recruited into China’s clandestine Unit 701 to crack “Code Purple”, an enemy cipher so elusive it becomes an obsession. As Jinzhen’s reputation rises, so does the pressure: the work is isolating, the stakes are national, and the line between brilliance and breakdown begins to blur. What starts as a triumph narrative becomes something darker, a descent into paranoia and mental unravelling as the act of decoding becomes a metaphor for power, secrecy and the limits of the human mind. Mai Jia writes from intimate knowledge of intelligence culture, giving the novel an unusual authenticity and a strong sense of Chinese social texture across decades. The result is both a gripping thriller and a portrait of a man consumed by the very talent that makes him indispensable. Decoded was first published in China in 2002 and became a phenomenon.

About the author: Mai Jia (pseudonym of Jiang Benhu) is one of China’s most awarded and bestselling writers, often credited as a key moderniser of Chinese espionage fiction.

Traitors to All by Giorgio Scerbanenco (3 September 2026) Originally published in Italian in 1966

A landmark of Italian noir and a defining case for Duca Lamberti, Scerbanenco’s doctor turned detective with a hard-earned moral core. One spring evening outside Milan, a Fiat carrying two passengers plunges into a canal. The deaths are initially filed as an accident, but Lamberti notices the pattern: the canal has claimed others, and the circumstances feel staged. His investigation points to a respectable lawyer with a murky history stretching back to the Second World War, and to an uncomfortable personal link, the man once shared a prison cell with Lamberti. Winner of the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière in 1968, the novel is both a razor tight mystery and a social portrait of “swinging sixties” Milan, where prosperity sits uneasily atop old wounds, compromised loyalties and opportunism. Scerbanenco’s writing is brisk, street level and unsentimental, exposing how violence and betrayal thread through every class. It is a gripping, morally charged thriller that helps explain why Scerbanenco is often called the father of Italian noir.

About the author: Born in Kiev in 1911, Scerbanenco moved to Italy young and settled in Milan as a teenager. After early romance fiction, he pioneered a distinctly Italian crime style, with many adaptations for film. He is best known for the Milan Quartet.

Rear Window and Other Stories by Cornell Woolrich (1 October 2026) Stories first appeared individually in the 1930s–1940s.

Nine superb crime stories from one of the twentieth century’s great masters of suspense and the lethal plot twist. The collection includes the tale that inspired Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, in which an injured, housebound man becomes convinced he has witnessed a murder and must investigate without ever leaving his apartment. Elsewhere, Woolrich pushes ordinary people into extraordinary corners: an accidental killer improvises a grotesque hiding place for a body just as the landlord starts showing the room to prospective tenants; an innocent youth accused of murder flees, only to discover an unnerving talent for crime. Woolrich’s gift is acceleration: he takes a simple premise, tightens the screws with plausible obstacles, and then swivels the reader into a new, darker understanding at exactly the right moment. These stories show why he was so influential on film and fiction alike, and why his work remains a touchstone for psychological suspense. This selection follows the success of the Crime and Espionage edition of his novel I Married a Dead Man and offers an ideal entry point for new readers, while giving collectors a concentrated dose of his best short form work.

About the author: Cornell Woolrich (1903 to 1968) was a hugely admired American crime writer whose work inspired numerous films including Rear Window, Phantom Lady and The Bride Wore Black. He lived a notoriously difficult life and became a recluse in later years.