You’re the Top!

Due to unexpected technical difficulties, it took longer to post than anyone foresaw; but January Magazine’s “Best Books of 2006” mega-feature is finally up, including 45 books--selected by nine critics--in the crime-fiction section. (A couple of other titles that could have appeared along with them--Jeb Rubenfeld’s The Interpretation of Murder and Thomas Harris’ Hannibal Rising--were moved to help fill out the general fiction page.)

Included among this year’s picks:

• The Big Boom, by Domenic Stansberry
• By the Time You Read This, by Giles Blunt
• A Corpse in the Koryo, by James Church
• Darkness & Light, by John Harvey
• Dope, by Sara Gran
• The Drummer, by Anthony Neil Smith
• A Field of Darkness, by Cornelia Read
• The Hidden Assassins, by Robert Wilson
• Liberation Movements, by Olen Steinhauer
• The Night Gardener, by George Pelecanos
• The Pale Blue Eye, by Louis Bayard
• A Stolen Season, by Steve Hamilton
• The Virgin of Small Plains, by Nancy Pickard
• Zero to the Bone, by Robert Everz

There are also a couple of crime-related books highlighted in this feature package’s non-fiction section: Michael Connelly’s Crime Beat and Erik Larson’s Thunderstruck, a terrifically consuming follow-up to The Devil in the White City (2003).

Special thanks are due here to January editor Linda L. Richards, who put in many frustrating (and tear-provoking) hours trying to overcome software quirks, in order to bring us this year’s selection of “favorites.” Without her persistence and her willingness to learn a new software program, the “Best Books of 2006” might not have been posted until well into 2007. She deserves a hearty toast! Champagne, of course.