Cogdill Puts in Her Two Cents

Well-known critic Oline H. Cogdill, from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, today named her favorite 2021 works in the crime, mystery, and thriller fields. Those titles are broken down into four categories.

Best Mysteries:
• The Turnout, by Megan Abbott (Putnam)
• The Collective, by Alison Gaylin (Morrow)
• The Dark Hours, by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown)
• These Toxic Things, by Rachel Howzell Hall (Thomas & Mercer)
• Razorblade Tears, by S.A. Cosby (Flatiron)
• 1979, by Val McDermid (Atlantic Monthly)
• Dream Girl, by Laura Lippman (Morrow)
• The Perfume Thief, by Timothy Schaffert (Doubleday)
• Clark and Division, by Naomi Hirahara (Soho Crime)
• Lightning Strike, by William Kent Krueger (Atria)
• The Survivors, by Jane Harper (Flatiron)
• These Silent Woods, by Kimi Cunningham Grant (Minotaur)
• Palace of the Drowned, by Christine Mangan (Flatiron)
• What’s Done in Darkness, by Laura McHugh (Random House)
• The Lost Village, by Camilla Sten (Minotaur)
• Hairpin Bridge, by Taylor Adams (Morrow)
• Velvet Was the Night, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Del Rey)
• When Ghosts Come Home, by Wiley Cash (Morrow)
• The Neighbor’s Secret, by L. Allison Heller (Flatiron)
• Pickard County Atlas, by Chris Harding Thornton (Bantam)

Best Debuts:
• Who Is Maud Dixon? by Alexandra Andrews (Little, Brown)
• Girl A, by Abigail Dean (Viking)
• The Other Black Girl, by Zakiya Dalila Harris (Atria)
• My Sweet Girl, by Amanda Jayatissa (Berkley)
• Arsenic and Adobo, by Mia P. Manansala (Berkley Prime Crime)
• Mango, Mambo, and Murder, by Raquel V. Reyes (Crooked Lane)
• All Her Little Secrets, by Wanda M. Morris (Morrow)

Best Short Story Collections:
• The Great Filling Station Holdup: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Jimmy Buffett, edited by Josh Pachter (Down & Out)
• Midnight Hour: A Chilling Anthology of Crime Fiction from 20 Authors of Color, edited by Abby L. Vandiver (Crooked Lane)

Best Non-fiction:
How to Write a Mystery: A Handbook from Mystery Writers of America, edited by Lee Child and Laurie R. King (Scribner)

Looking over Cogdill’s numerous choices compels me to reassess what I thought had been my rather extraordinary success in reading broadly within this genre over the last dozen months. There are too many books that I never found time enough to tackle. Sigh …