CrimeReads, Goodreads, and Top Reads

It was only a matter of time before the excellent Web site CrimeReads weighed in on the subject of this year’s supposedly “best” crime, mystery, and thriller works. Here are its top 10 choices:

• Bath Haus, by P.J. Vernon (Doubleday)
• The Turnout, Megan Abbott (Dutton)
• Harlem Shuffle, by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday)
• The Collective, by Alison Gaylin (Morrow)
• Velvet Was the Night, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Del Rey)
• Dream Girl, by Laura Lippman (Morrow)
• Razorblade Tears, by S.A. Cosby (Flatiron)
• Clark and Division, by Naomi Hirahara (Soho Crime)
• The House of Ashes, by Stuart Neville (Soho Crime)
• By Way of Sorrow, by Robyn Gigl (Kensington)

The editors suggest that we “check back in the coming days for more of the Best Books of 2021.” There’s no telling how much more click-worthy material they can squeeze from this popular subject.

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Meanwhile, Goodreads says that The Last Thing He Told Me, by Laura Dave (Simon & Schuster), has won its 2021 Choice Award in the Mystery & Thriller category, with 58,406 public votes. Here are the five runners-up for that title, and the number of votes for each:

• The Maidens, by Alex Michaelides (Celadon) — 49,829 votes
• Billy Summers, by Stephen King (Scribner) — 47,847 votes
• The Push, by Ashley Audrain (Pamela Dorman) — 39,069 votes
• Arsenic and Adobo, by Mia P. Manansala (Berkley) — 28,263 votes
• Harlem Shuffle, by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday) — 26,200 votes

The full results of this year’s contest can be found here.

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Elsewhere on the “favorite reads of the year” front, the UK’s Grab This Book champions such crime-fiction releases as Olivia Kiernan’s The Murder Box, Joseph Knox’s True Crime Story, Rod Reynolds’ Black Reed Bay, and Fiona Erskine’s Phosphate Rocks (a yarn that had escaped my attention before this week). Steve Donoghue, who often reviews books for The Christian Science Monitor and The Washington Post, turns thumbs up on Nicholas Meyer’s The Return of the Pharaoh, James R. Benn’s Road of Bones, Dorothy St. James’ The Broken Spine, and Sujata Massey’s The Bombay Prince. Finally, Good Housekeeping magazine mentions several mysteries among its “55 Best New Books to Read in 2021,” including Ashley Audrain’s The Push, Sarah Penner’s The Lost Apothecary, and Colson Whitehead’s Harlem Shuffle.

(Hat tip to Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine.)