As the new Knives Out film, Wake Up Dead Man, is released on streaming, here are more ingenious – and confounding – whodunnits to watch and read.

When Rian Johnson's Knives Out was released in 2019, it was widely acknowledged as bringing the film whodunnit to a wider, newer audience. Now six years on, it's an established franchise, with the third film, Wake Up Dead Man, released on Netflix tomorrow. Featuring another all-star cast led by the brilliant Daniel Craig, this latest film explicitly references some of the great crime writers of the past, among them John Dickson Carr and Agatha Christie. With that in mind – and should you be looking for further cases to get stuck into after watching – here are 10 of the most ingenious murder mysteries ever committed to page or screen:

No list of murder mysteries would be complete without one of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes adventures. Any number of short stories and novels featuring the Baker Street sleuth would be worthy of mention, but The Adventure of the Speckled Band has a particularly twisting element (literally) at the heart of its crime. Doyle pitted Holmes against very few traditional "locked-room mysteries" – in which a seemingly "impossible" murder or other crime takes place in a confined space – so this one particularly stands out. Originally published in the Strand Magazine in 1892, this short story details a difficult case for Holmes, with the discovery of the earlier murder of a woman hinting at danger for her surviving sister. Conan Doyle's somewhat surreal but deeply effective tale is one of his strongest, and possesses a decidedly malevolent atmosphere.

Maverick writer GK Chesterton was equally at home writing about politics and philosophy as with murder mysteries. Yet he is ultimately most famous for the latter, due to his vast number of stories centred around modest clergyman detective Father Brown. Brown's natural moral intuition and theological insight render the stories both witty and intellectual. The Invisible Man presents a murderous problem that is easily one of Chesterton's most intriguing and confounding. Young inventor Conrad claims to be the victim of harassment from an unknown assailant, known only as the "invisible man". When he is eventually found murdered in a heavily guarded house, it seems that Conrad's tormentor really was invisible, having never been seen entering or leaving the crime scene. Luckily, Father Brown is on hand to provide some much needed clarity.

Considering her vast and monumental output, Christie's work could occupy the entirety of this list. From bringing to life the most famous fictional detective of the past century, Hercule Poirot, to her evocative stand-alone stories, she is the undisputed master of the whodunnit. Her other truly great creation was the brilliant Miss Marple (the best screen version being Joan Hickson's 1980s interpretation of the marvellous character), and The Murder at the Vicarage was the great lady's debut. Concerning the murder of Colonel Protheroe who, in the most Cluedo-esque fashion, is found murdered in the local vicar's study, this puzzling Christie plot is complicated, not just by the manipulation of evidence but an endless string of confessions as........

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