You Thought We Were Done with These?

Since it’s only early January, there’s nothing wrong in continuing The Rap Sheet’s cataloguing of “best crime fiction of 2016” posts.

Criminal Element’s 11 picks include John Hart’s Redemption Road, Louise Penny’s A Great Reckoning, and James Church’s The Gentleman from Japan. MysteryPeople brings us three different lists of favorites: Scott Montgomery’s “top 10 of 2016” (Steve Hamilton’s The Second Life of Nick Mason, Megan Abbott’s You Will Know Me, Peter Spiegelman’s Dr. Knox, etc.); Montgomery’s “top five debuts of 2016” rundown (yes, David Swinson’s The Second Girl earns a thumbs-up); and Molly Odintz’s “top 10 international crime novels of 2016” (among them Tana French’s The Trespasser and Raphael Montes’ Perfect Days). Not surprisingly, Vintage Pop Fictions’ “favorite reads in 2016” are all older works, including Erle Stanley Gardner’s The Case of the Baited Hook (one I don’t think I’ve enjoyed yet) and Alistair MacLean’s Ice Station Zebra (which I most certainly have read). Rob Kitchin at The View from the Blue House anoints 13 books—fiction and non-fiction—as his “best reads of 2016.” Jen Forbus offers her own unique combination of crime-fiction and non-fiction picks here. Finally, I think I neglected to mention British critic Mike Ripley’s choices of top releases from last year, named in his December Shots column: Philip Kerr’s The Other Side of Silence, Alexandra Benedict’s Jonathan Dark or the Evidence of Ghosts, Andrew Taylor’s The Ashes of London, and Ruth Dudley Edwards’ The Seven.

READ MORE: “Favorite 2016 Books” (Pop Culture Nerd).