Wednesday, October 22, 2014

10 for 10

I made the mistake of checking in on Facebook today, only to discover that there’s a new meme going around. The challenge, as Brian Lindenmuth of Spinetingler Magazine presented it to me, is to name your “top 10 favorite crime books from 2004-2013. Ten only. No cheating by squeezing more titles in.” I immediately went to my annual tallies of the works I’ve read and tried to cull out one per year … which immediately turned into two or three a year … which ultimately left me with 25 titles, rather than 10. I whittled away from that point, finally coming up with this imperfect list, in alphabetical order:

The Blackhouse, by Peter May
Bye Bye, Baby, by Max Allan Collins
City of Dragons, by Kelli Stanley
House of the Hunted, by Mark Mills
Little Green, by Walter Mosley
Peeler, by Kevin McCarthy
A Quiet Flame, by Philip Kerr
Rosa, by Jonathan Rabb
The Song Is You, by Megan Abbott
Wolves Eat Dogs, by Martin Cruz Smith

I’m not going to tag anyone with the responsibility of following me in this daunting venture. But if you wish to submit your own choices, please do so under the Comments tab below.

4 comments:

Clinton Greaves said...

An impossible task, but I managed to winnow my list to the following ten:

The Double, by George Pelecanos
Triptych, by Karin Slaughter
Standing in Another Man's Grave, by Ian Rankin
Down River, by John Hart
Little Green, by Walter Mosley
The Professionals, by Owen Laukkanen
The Poacher's Son, by Paul Doiron
Power Play, by Joseph Finder
The Tin Roof Blowdown, by James Lee Burke
Angel Baby, by Richard Lange

J. Kingston Pierce said...

Excellent choices, Clinton! Your list even includes a couple of novels I haven't read. Yet.

David B. said...

A quick list, without scanning my shelves, leaves eight, so I reserve the right to add two later!

The Troubled Man - Mankell
A Whisper to the Living - Kaminsky
Strangers - Pronzini
A Drop of the Hard Stuff - Block
The Draining Lake (tans. date) - Indridason
Bad Moon Rising - Gorman
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Larsson
Stettin Station - Downing

John said...

Don Winslow- Power of the Dog
Steve Hamilton- The Lock Artist
Michael Koryta- The Prophet
Charlie Huston- The Mystic Arts of erasing all signs of Death
Tom Piccirilli- The Last Kind Words
Olen Steinhauer- The Nearest Exit
Robert Littell- Legends