Ten of the best murders

Agamemnon, by Aeschylus

A-level examiners with anxieties about the lessons taught by literature would find their worries here confirmed. The murder of Agamemnon by his wife Clytemnestra, who has taken a lover, begins the great tradition of western tragedy. We hear Agamemnon's cries as he is killed, and then his wife describes it for us: "Violent driven rain of bitter savoured blood / To make me glad".

Macbeth, by Shakespeare

You don't actually see the murder of Duncan by Macbeth, but you do witness the later subcontracted killing of Banquo by the nameless "three Murderers". Most chilling is the scene where they get their instructions from Macbeth, and confess themselves so battered by "the vile blows and buffets of the world" that they are willing to do anything terrible.

Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens

Probably the most famous killing in Victorian fiction, the murder of the kindly prostitute Nancy by her erstwhile beau Bill Sikes is both melodramatic and genuinely horrific. Dickens's performance of it was the climax of his famous live show. Female spectators sometimes fainted.

The London Merchant, by George Lillo

This 1731 tragedy is hardly known any more, yet created an extraordinary stir throughout the 18th century. Based on an old ballad, it is the story of the apprentice George Barnwell, who, infatuated by a courtesan, murders his wealthy uncle. The uncle forgives him even as he is dying, so George can later go gladly to the scaffold.

Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Dostoevsky really puts you through it because he puts his murderer through it. The feckless student Raskolnikov murders an old money-lender (and her sister who comes upon the crime). We spend most of the rest of the novel experiencing his guilt and terror, as justice closes in.

"Porphyria's Lover", by Robert Browning

An eloquent dramatic monologue of a psychotic speaker who sits by the fire with his beloved Porphyria. At its end he describes how he has just strangled her with her own beautiful hair so that she will always be his. "And all night long we have not stirred, / And yet God has not said a word!"

L'Étranger, by Albert Camus

Meursault, a Frenchman living in Algeria, shoots an Arab on the beach one day. The Arab has been in a fight with Meursault's friend Raymond, a local pimp, but our emotionless narrator tells us that he pulled the trigger because of the irritating heat of the day, rather than out of vengeance. He then fires four more times into his victim's body. Life is, after all, absurd.

Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov

"You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style," observes the narrator Humbert Humbert at the start of the novel. The witty paedophile plans to murder Charlotte, mother of Lolita, but she gets herself run over instead. Later, however, he does ruthlessly slay Quilty, the man who stole Lolita from him. He also manages to turn the murder into comic narrative.

The Talented Mr Ripley, by Patricia Highsmith

Ripley, the amoral anti-hero, kills quite a few people in the course of the four novels featuring him. The most vivid and instinctive murder is the first: Ripley is outraged at the "blatant rudeness" of wealthy loafer Dickie Greenleaf. So, out together in a boat off San Remo, Ripley simply (and graphically) batters his friend to death with an oar.

We Need to Talk about Kevinby Lionel Shriver

Genuinely horrible to read, largely because the cool-blooded young murderer uses a crossbow rather than a more merciful gun. The narration is as exact as his well-practised aim.