Japan ReviewedHere is the short answer. If you want one great book, buy Monster. If this is the first manga you have ever read, buy Death Note.
You will not go wrong with either. But "mystery" covers a lot of ground, and what you should buy depends on what you are in the mood for: a battle of wits, a long setup that pays off all at once, or something you will finish in a weekend and then lie awake thinking about. So this is five of them, sorted by that — all five complete, and all five available in English.
The short list
Best overall — adult suspense
Monster
A surgeon saves a boy's life, and the boy grows up to be a killer. Quiet, heavy, and closer to a great film than to an action comic.
Best first manga — battle of wits
Death Note
Write a name in the notebook and that person dies. Two geniuses trying to outmanoeuvre each other, at full speed from the first volume.
Best payoff on a long setup
20th Century Boys
The world starts ending exactly the way a group of kids once imagined it would. Sprawling and nostalgic — the one to start on a long holiday.
Best for reading in one sitting
Erased
Time travel and a series of child abductions. Short enough to finish over a weekend, and it will still keep you up.
Best thriller to share
The Promised Neverland
A very happy orphanage turns out to be something else entirely. Fast pages, and one of the few real thrillers a family can read together.
Every one of them is finished, so there is no risk of buying into a series that never ends. What I say about the stories comes from reading them in Japanese; I cannot tell you anything about the English translations or how the books are made. Where I talk about the English editions, it is only about what exists and how many volumes it takes to finish.
Monster
Who the monster is turns over, again and again, across nine volumes.
Dr Tenma, a brilliant young neurosurgeon in Germany, saves a boy with a bullet in his head. Years later he learns that the boy he saved has become a serial killer. Tenma sets out across Europe after him, intending to end it himself.
I put this first because it is not a whodunnit — it is a book about how a person becomes a monster. Japan's record of it is easy to check: it won the 3rd Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize Grand Prize in 1999 and the 46th Shogakukan Manga Award in 2000, and it had passed 20 million copies in circulation by March 2019. There are no special powers and no locked rooms. What there is instead is timing — pauses placed so precisely that you keep turning pages.
- Right for you if you want a heavy, adult thriller — the Silence of the Lambs end of the shelf
- Not for you if you want fast pacing or spectacle. The early volumes are deliberately quiet
The English edition is VIZ's Perfect Edition, which collects two of the original Japanese volumes per book: nine volumes and you are done.
See volume 1 on Amazon
Volume 1 of the Perfect Edition. The slow opening is groundwork — give it three volumes.Death Note
One rule: the human whose name is written in this notebook dies.
Light Yagami, a brilliant and profoundly bored high school student, picks up a notebook dropped by a death god and decides to become the god of a new world by killing criminals. The detective sent after him, known only as L, is his equal. Neither of them stops trying to outthink the other for twelve volumes.
It has sold 30 million copies worldwide as of September 2015, and it placed second in Kono Manga ga Sugoi! two years running, in the 2006 and 2007 editions. What makes it work as mystery is that you know who the killer is from page one. The question is never who — it is how he gets caught, or how he gets away — and that is exactly why it is such an easy first manga to hand someone.
- Right for you if you like being outsmarted, or you are looking for the first manga you will ever read
- Not for you if you need a protagonist to root for — Light is not the good guy
One thing about the box set: it is sold as "Volumes 1-13", but the thirteenth book is the official guide, How to Read, not part of the story. The story is twelve volumes. If you would rather try the whole thing in a single brick of a book, there is also an All-in-One Edition.
See the complete box set on Amazon
The complete box set: manga volumes 1–12, plus Death Note 13: How to Read and a fold-out.20th Century Boys
The end of the world, written by a group of children as a game, is now happening on schedule.
Kenji runs a convenience store. The death of a childhood friend makes him realise that events in the news are following, point by point, the apocalypse he and his friends invented one summer as kids. Behind it is a cult leader who calls himself "Friend" — and Friend is one of them.
Its weapon is the sheer volume of setup and the precision of the payoff. The story moves between the 1970s, the present, and later still, and a throwaway panel from dozens of volumes earlier comes back carrying the whole plot. The awards say the same thing in another way: the Shogakukan and Kodansha manga awards, the Japan Cartoonists Association Grand Prize, and in 2011 an Eisner for best international material from Asia. Over 36 million copies in circulation.
- Right for you if you want to settle into something long, with a large cast and a plot that rewards attention
- Not for you if you struggle with big casts or timelines that jump around
The English edition is VIZ's Perfect Edition, twelve volumes. It follows the same division as the Japanese complete edition — eleven books of 20th Century Boys and one of 21st Century Boys — and since the conclusion, 21st Century Boys, is inside those twelve, buying the set gets you the whole thing.
See volume 1 on Amazon
Volume 1 of the Perfect Edition. The childhood scenes start paying off around the middle of the run.Erased
Of the five, this is the one most likely to disappear your evening.
Satoru is a manga artist who is not getting anywhere, and who involuntarily jumps back in time to just before something terrible happens — a phenomenon he calls "Revival". Then one day he is thrown back eighteen years, to the winter a girl in his class was abducted and murdered. He does not know who did it, and he has to stop it from inside his ten-year-old body.
It took second place in the Manga Taisho awards in 2014 and fifteenth in the 2014 Kono Manga ga Sugoi! men's list. It is not really built as a puzzle about time travel. It runs on one thing: the child you could not save, and a second chance at saving her. The suspense is not about who — it is about whether he gets there in time.
- Right for you if you want something you can finish quickly, or you watched the anime and want the original
- Not for you if you read mystery to solve it yourself before the detective does
The English edition is a Yen Press hardcover that collects two Japanese volumes at a time — the eight-volume story fits into five books of about 390 pages each. It is the least shelf space of anything here.
See volume 1 on Amazon
Volume 1 of the hardcover edition, collecting the first two Japanese volumes.The Promised Neverland
The happiest orphanage in the world. At eleven you go to your new family — or that is the arrangement.
Emma, Norman and Ray are the three children who never miss a question on the tests. One night they see what actually happened to a "sister" who was collected by her new parents. The orphanage is a farm, the children are livestock, and what follows is a contest of wits with the woman who raised them, and a plan to get out.
It ran in Weekly Shonen Jump, but the early volumes are constructed as a straight suspense thriller — how much has Mom worked out, and how much is she letting them believe she has not? That tension is closer to a death game than to an adventure comic, and a suspense story with a girl at the centre and a dark fantasy setting was noted at the time as unusual for the magazine. It won the Manga Taisho Grand Prize in 2017, topped the men's list in the 2018 Kono Manga ga Sugoi!, and has 42 million copies in circulation as of August 2023. Because the leads are children, it is also one of the few genuine thrillers you can hand to a teenager.
- Right for you if you want an escape plot and a battle of wits drawn at speed, or you are buying a present for a teenager
- Not for you if you want quiet, realistic mystery — the premise is dark fantasy
The English edition runs to twenty volumes. Trying volume 1 first to see whether the opening lands is a perfectly reasonable way in, but the pages go quickly, and if you know you are going to read it the box set saves you doing this twenty times.
See the complete box set on Amazon
The complete box set: all 20 volumes, an exclusive booklet and a double-sided full-colour poster.So where do you start
- You have barely read manga before → Death Note. One volume and you have the whole premise and every rule
- You want one serious book for adults → Monster. If this article leaves you undecided, this is the one
- You want the long setup and the payoff → 20th Century Boys
- You want to finish it this weekend → Erased. Five hardcovers, and it does not let go
- You are sharing it with family or a teenager → The Promised Neverland
All five are finished, so whichever you pick, you can read it to the end. Pick tonight's book without worrying about the pile.