Fiction Favorites Galore

How about if we squeeze in one more post about “best crime fiction of 2016” compilations before ringing in the new year in?

Check out these pieces: Ayo Onatade runs down her 11 favorite reads of the last 12 months in Shotsmag Confidential, a list that features Colin Winnette’ Coyote, Erik Storey’s Nothing Short of Dying, and Adam Christopher’s Made to Kill; Puzzle Doctor picks the “Best New Crime Fiction (of the Books That I’ve Read) 2016 (in My Opinion),” among them being The Great Revolt, by Paul Doherty, and A High Mortality of Doves, by Kate Ellis; Clinton Greaves anoints 16 new novels as the best of ’16, including Stuart Neville’s So Say the Fallen and Ian Rankin’s Even Dogs in the Wild; and five different Crime Fiction Lover bloggers deliver their “bests” lists—Vicki Weisfeld (on whose inventory we find Bill Beverly’s Dodgers and J. Todd Scott’s The Far Empty, as well as other titles), Keith Nixon (Sarah Ward’s A Deadly Thaw, Tim Baker’s Fever City), Spriteby (Ben Aaronovitch’s The Hanging Tree, Chris Nickson’s The Iron Water), NagaiSayonara (Alan Furst’s A Hero in France, Jill Dawson’s The Crime Writer), and RoughJustice (Reed Farrel Coleman’s Where It Hurts, Conrad Williams’ third Joel Sorrell novel, Hell Is Empty).

Meanwhile, Open Letters Monthly contributor Steve Donoghue has released his tally of the worst new novels of 2016, containing mention—much to the chagrin of Stephen King fans—of that author’s third Bill Hodges novel, End of Watch.