Differences of Opinion

It’s not even Halloween yet, but already we’re seeing inventories of the “Best Crime Fiction of 2017” popping up around the Web. For instance, The Strand Magazine has posted its top choices as follows:

1. The Fifth Petal, by Brunonia Barry (Crown)
2. Two Days Gone, by Randall Silvis (Sourcebooks Landmark)
3. Follow Me Down, by Sherri Smith (Forge)
4. Where Dead Men Meet, by Mark Mills (Blackstone)
5. Fast Falls the Night, by Julia Keller (Minotaur)
6. Burial Hour, by Jeffery Deaver (Grand Central)
7. Friends and Traitors, by John Lawton (Atlantic Monthly Press)
8. Death on Nantucket, by Francine Mathews (Soho Crime)
9. Arrowood, by Mick Finlay (Mira)
10. The Walls, by Hollie Overton (Redhook)
11. Burials, by Mary Anna Evans (Poisoned Pen Press)
12. The Name of the Game Is a Kidnapping, by Keigo Higashino (Vertical)

Meanwhile, Publishers Weekly has come out with its own completely different list of a dozen favorites:

• Besieged, by A.J. Tata (Kensington)
• The Cuban Affair, by Nelson DeMille (Simon & Schuster)
• Fierce Kingdom, by Gin Phillips (Viking)
• Flashmob, by Christopher Farnsworth (Morrow)
• The Force, by Don Winslow (Morrow)
• Little Deaths, by Emma Flint (Hachette)
• Long Black Veil, by Jennifer Finney Boylan (Crown)
• Nine Lessons, by Nicola Upson (Crooked Lane)
• The Nine-Tailed Fox, by Martin Limón (Soho Crime)
• A Rising Man, by Abir Mukherjee (Pegasus)
• Vicious Circle, by C.J. Box (Putnam)
• Wolf’s Revenge, by Lachlan Smith (Mysterious Press)

Two other novels that could easily have qualified for that PW roster—Sarah Schmidt’s See What I Have Done (Atlantic Monthly Press) and Dan Chaon’s Ill Will (Ballantine)—appear instead among the publication’s General Fiction picks.

The Rap Sheet probably won’t be out with its own critics’ choice compilations until early December. Until then, we will try to keep track of other such rolls appearing elsewhere.