No Shortage of Opinions

The “best crime and mystery fiction of 2019” lists continue to proliferate over the Web. At this link, you’ll find New York Times critic Marilyn Stasio’s 10 top picks. They were pretty predictable, though she does step off the beaten track just far enough to applaud Lisa Sandlin’s The Bird Boys and James Sallis’ Sarah Jane. And click here to look over Oline Cogdill’s choices for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, among them Owen Laukkanen’s Deception Cove, Jamie Mason’s The Hidden Things, and Allen Eskens’ Nothing More Dangerous.

A couple of mystery-fiction bookshops, both of them now operating exclusively online, are expressing their opinions on these matters, too. Aunt Agatha’s Bookstore, once prominent in Ann Arbor, Michigan, has named a dozen works of merit published over the last 12 months. Among that bunch: James R. Benn’s When Hell Struck Twelve, Melanie Golding’s Little Darlings, and S.J. Rozan’s Paper Son. Meanwhile, Portland, Oregon’s Murder by the Book offers this list of noteworthy crime novels, which includes Tim Johnston’s The Current, Kate Atkinson’s Big Sky, and Blake Crouch’s Recursion.

One final set of selections comes from the British “social cataloguing” Web site Dead Good. It asked 19 different authors, all of whom are well known in this genre, to recommend novels that first appeared this year. Gillian McAllister, for instance, suggests The Turn of the Key, by Ruth Ware. Abir Mukherjee touts Joe Country, by Mick Herron. And Jane Corry nominates The Family Upstairs, by Lisa Jewell.

(Hat tip to Mystery Fanfare.)