10 Again

Talk about slipping in just under the wire! Kerrie Smith, the Australian author of the Mysteries in Paradise blog, recently asked her readers to submit--by today, January 4--lists of their 10 favorite crime novels from 2008. Since I didn’t have the time or space to talk about that many books in January Magazine’s recent two-part selection of crime-fiction reads from last year, I decided to submit my own top-10 list to Smith’s blog. The following books are arranged alphabetically, rather than in order of my preference:

• The Black Dove, by Steve Hockensmith
• The Black Tower, by Louis Bayard
• Child 44, by Tom Rob Smith
• Dancing for the Hangman, by Martin Edwards
• Fatal Lies, by Frank Tallis
• The Dawn Patrol, by Don Winslow
• Killing Frost, by R.D. Wingfield
• A Quiet Flame, by Philip Kerr
• Second Violin, by John Lawton
• Stratton’s War, by Laura Wilson

Honorable mentions: A Pale Horse, by Charles Todd; Death Was the Other Woman, by Linda L. Richards; A Vengeful Longing, by R.N. Morris; Moriarty, by John Gardner; Lie Down with the Devil, by Linda Barnes; and Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, by John McFetridge.

Other readers’ lists at Mysteries in Paradise can be found here.