Favorite Crime Fiction of 2021, Part IV: Jim Thomsen

Jim Thomsen is a writer, editor, and book reviewer based in the small town of Kingston, Washington. His work has appeared in Mystery Tribune, Pulp Modern, Switchblade, Shotgun Honey, and West Coast Crime Wave, among other outlets.

My list of top crime-fiction novels of 2021 probably says a lot more about me than about the genre, so I’ll explain a little.

One, I’ve grown tired of the brand-first strictures of series storytelling, so I almost entirely skipped those this year; I just can’t find satisfaction in any story in which commercial concerns preclude what and where the characters themselves may want to go in a story.

Two, even my choice in standalones says something about that restlessness: I tend to look for novels with crime at their center, but “crime novels” seems too reductive a term. The novels I tend to be drawn to these days take on structural approaches and thematic weight far beyond who did what or what will happen when everything comes to light. That doesn’t mean they’re War and Peace, but only that they try new things in pleasurably accessible ways.

And three, I’ve decided to step away from the crime-fiction “community.” I like crime fiction and social media, because I like to share what I read and my observations about it, but in the past I tended to be concerned with making friends and fitting in, like the new kid in seventh grade. Now I’ve stopped trying to sit at the Twitter Cool Kids Lunch Table and instead just be me: a guy who reads a lot of stories about crime, regardless of who wrote them or published them or promoted them or represented them, and loves to pass along what he thinks about them.

To that end, here we go ...

• Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, by Quentin Tarantino (Harper):

Like it or hate it, one thing about this novel spun off from Tarantino’s own 2019 film about 1969 comes across clearly: the author had a hell of a good time writing and doing whatever the hell he wanted to with a story and a universe he created. And that exuberance, in every passage on every page, is infectious and irresistible. Partly because it follows no rules other than the ones it makes up for itself, from the compass of a creator incapable of going wrong.

• How to Find Your Way in the Dark, by Derek B. Miller (Mariner):

Much of what I said about Tarantino’s novel can be also applied to Miller’s latest. This prequel of sorts to his indie-bookstore sensation Norwegian by Night (2013) finds its elderly hero, Sheldon Horowitz, as a preteen, just as World War II is breaking out. Sheldon tries to stay focused here on avenging his father’s death, while coming to grips with his Jewish, American, and male identities. By turns wry, witty, and a wallow in darkness, this story grabs you by the suspenders and never lets go.

• The Night Always Comes, by Willy Vlautin (Harper):

Up there with gender and race, one of the great thematic baselines for great crime fiction comes in stories of soulless, grinding gentrification—and those who lose what they’ve long had as a result. The great Vlautin explores this theme in Portland, Oregon, a city beset by homeless encampments on seemingly every corner, as a young woman with a disabled brother and mother who wants out, races over a day and a half around the city in an often bloody effort to hang onto her rundown house by any means possible.

• Getaway, by Zoje Stage (Mulholland):

This is a pitch-perfect example of a conventionally structured isolation thriller that takes the reader through an unbearably tense ordeal and never lets up on the throttle, while thoughtfully exploring power dynamics and conflicts between men and women—and women and women. Getaway is proof that function need never sacrifice anything to form to entertain and enlighten in equal measure.

• Loser Baby, by Jason Bovberg (Dark Highway Press):

One of the current storylines in the crime-fiction community is about who has the right to tell whose stories, and how authentically white males can tell stories of people other than white males. One prominent female author has said that women write men better than men write women, because men tend to default to the “male gaze” of women. I like to think male authors have taken that on as a challenge and not a demand to go sit in the corner, and Bovberg has more than met this challenge with his prickly, uncomfortable look at a couple of days in the life of a Southern California woman on the margins—and the terrible choices she makes, and the worse ones she makes to get out of trouble. Not a hint of male gaze here.

Other 2021 Favorites: Velvet Was the Night, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Del Rey); Harlem Shuffle, by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday); Five Decembers, by James Kestrel (Hard Case Crime); Undone Valley, by William R. Soldan (Cowboy Jamboree Press); and The Low Desert, by Tod Goldberg (Counterpoint).