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The best mystery audiobooks, ranked by the data

Ranked by weighted listener rating, the best mystery audiobook in our dataset is Watchmen by Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons, John Higgins — 4.47★ across 235 ratings and 12.4 estimated listening hours. We scored every published mystery audiobook in our dataset: 94 qualify — mystery-shelved titles with full pages here — carrying 9,716 listener ratings between them. The top 15 are below. No opinions: the formula in the method note decides the order.

94books qualify
9,716listener ratings behind the list
12.2avg hours (est.)

The top 15

  1. Watchmen by Alan Moore

    12.4 hrs est. · 4.47★ · 235 ratings · weighted score 4.40

    About 13 days at an hour a day — right at the average fantasy length.

  2. Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

    15.1 hrs est. · 4.54★ · 90 ratings · weighted score 4.37

    About 16 days at an hour a day — 23% longer than the average fantasy audiobook.

  3. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J. K. Rowling

    18.9 hrs est. · 4.36★ · 211 ratings · weighted score 4.30

    About 19 days at an hour a day — 54% longer than the average fantasy audiobook.

  4. Amulet by Kazu Kibuishi

    5.7 hrs est. · 4.57★ · 42 ratings · weighted score 4.29

    About 6 days at an hour a day — 54% shorter than the average fantasy audiobook.

  5. The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

    21.8 hrs est. · 4.33★ · 254 ratings · weighted score 4.28

    About 22 days at an hour a day — 77% longer than the average fantasy audiobook.

  6. The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

    33.2 hrs est. · 4.51★ · 47 ratings · weighted score 4.28

    About 34 days at an hour a day — 265% longer than the average mystery audiobook.

  7. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling

    20.8 hrs est. · 4.27★ · 411 ratings · weighted score 4.25

    About 21 days at an hour a day — 69% longer than the average fantasy audiobook.

  8. The Green Mile by Stephen King

    13.8 hrs est. · 4.33★ · 108 ratings · weighted score 4.24

    About 14 days at an hour a day — 7% longer than the average thriller audiobook.

  9. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

    11.5 hrs est. · 4.43★ · 46 ratings · weighted score 4.24

    About 12 days at an hour a day — 7% shorter than the average fantasy audiobook.

  10. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

    15.4 hrs est. · 4.29★ · 154 ratings · weighted score 4.23

    About 16 days at an hour a day — 69% longer than the average mystery audiobook.

  11. Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

    12.3 hrs est. · 4.31★ · 99 ratings · weighted score 4.22

    About 13 days at an hour a day — 35% longer than the average mystery audiobook.

  12. Turn Coat by Jim Butcher

    15.8 hrs est. · 4.39★ · 41 ratings · weighted score 4.21

    About 16 days at an hour a day — 28% longer than the average fantasy audiobook.

  13. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J. K. Rowling

    8.9 hrs est. · 4.21★ · 1,009 ratings · weighted score 4.20

    About 9 days at an hour a day — 28% shorter than the average fantasy audiobook.

  14. And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

    6.6 hrs est. · 4.24★ · 169 ratings · weighted score 4.20

    About 7 days at an hour a day — 49% shorter than the average thriller audiobook.

  15. Death Note, Vol. 1 by Tsugumi Ohba

    5.9 hrs est. · 4.37★ · 41 ratings · weighted score 4.20

    About 6 days at an hour a day — 52% shorter than the average fantasy audiobook.

How this ranking works

Every published mystery audiobook in our dataset qualifies — 94 books. Each is scored by its Open Library listener rating weighted by its rating count — score = (v·R + 50·C) ÷ (v + 50), where R is the book's rating, v its number of ratings, and C = 4.06★ the mean across all 500 published books we measured. Fewer ratings pull a score toward that mean, so a high rating on a handful of votes can't outrank a slightly lower one backed by hundreds. Genre shelves come from Open Library's subject data — a book qualifies when its subjects carry the mystery signal. No editorial picks, no sponsored placement. Dataset build 2026-07-06; rankings recompute with every data refresh. Full methodology · All mystery audiobooks we measured

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