Pick of the Crop

Everywhere you look nowadays (including in The Rap Sheet), you see critics choosing their favorite crime, mystery, and thriller works of 2015. For instance, in the latest edition of her newsletter, The Crime Lady, Sarah Weinman identifies 12 books that drew her special attention this year, including Elisabeth de Mariaffi’s The Devil You Know, Don Winslow’s The Cartel, Amy Stewart’s Girl Waits with Gun, and Martin Edwards’ The Golden Age of Murder.

Meanwhile, National Public Radio picks 22 novels from the genre that it deems especially worthy of note (some of which I haven’t even gotten around to reading yet, such as Ruth Ware’s In a Dark, Dark Wood). And South Florida Sun-Sentinel critic Oline H. Cogdill offers her rundown of the year’s “best crime novels” in a text-free, not-reader-friendly slideshow. Featured on both of these last two lists, as well as on many other inventories of preferred 2015 crime novels, is Paula Hawkins’ Girl on the Train--which helps explain why that British page-turner tops Amazon’s list of bestsellers for the year.