Happy to Make Your Acquaintance

After the enforced isolation and rampant confusion of 2020, 2021 was a relief in so many respects. Last year the United States suffered not only from the rising scourge of COVID-19, but from a narcissistic president determined to ignore the pandemic’s severity and undermine the country’s response to it, leaving us all at greater risk. This year finally gave us vaccines and boosters and a skilled, responsible leader in the White House. It also brought with it, though, new COVID variants, supply-chain problems resulting from the pandemic, and worsening political divisions in the United States precipitated by the virulent spread of disinformation. At least on the health front, people now seem more settled as regards mask wearing, social distancing, and packing along proof of their vaccinations if they wish to dine out or attend large events. We can only hope those other contentious issues will be resolved with similar or greater public support.

Fortunately, we need not focus entirely on the world’s present troubles. Fiction—particularly in book form—provides a wonderful escape for those of us needing such things from time to time. You probably won’t be surprised to hear that most of the novels I picked up and read over these last 12 months fell into the crime, mystery, and thriller categories. Unlike last year, however, when—as a result of the uncertainties surrounding me—I turned principally to stories by familiar wordsmiths, in 2021 I managed to experiment with more writers outside of my previous experience. A quick tally of the books (both fiction and non-fiction) that I consumed since last January 1 includes 34 new-to-me authors, as opposed to 2020’s dismal count of just 29. In the 13 years now that I’ve kept track of such “fresh finds,” my highest count was registered back in 2015, when I relished 47 books by writers whose work I’d never read. I always shoot to outdo that record, but find it hard when I’m trying as well to keep up with the latest releases from authors whose work I already know and enjoy.

Below I have listed the novels I read in 2021 by writers I “discovered” only this year. Debut releases are boldfaced. Although I tackled a variety of novels outside of the crime-fiction field, it turns out that only one of those—L. Annette Binder’s The Vanishing Sky—was composed by an author I hadn’t come across before.

• Ava Barry (Windhall)
• L. Annette Binder (The Vanishing Sky)
• Camilla Bruce (In the Garden of Spite)
• C.J. Carey, aka Jane Thynne (Widowland)
• Bud Clifton, aka David Derek Stacton (The Murder Specialist)
• S.A. Cosby (Razorblade Tears)
• Jim Eldridge (Murder at the Fitzwilliam)
• Rudolph Fisher (The Conjure-Man Dies)
• Keigo Higashino (Silent Parade)
• Gilles Legardinier (The Paris Labyrinth)
• Niall Leonard (M, King’s Bodyguard)
• Robert J. Lloyd (The Bloodless Boy)
• Paraic O’Donnell (The House on Vesper Sands)
• Chris Offut (The Killing Hills)
• Riku Onda (The Aosawa Murders)
• Ambrose Parry, aka Chris Brookmyre and Marisa Haetzman (The Corruption of Blood)
• Craig Rice, aka Georgiana Ann Randolph Craig (Eight Faces at Three)
• Jonathan Santlofer (The Last Mona Lisa)
• Simon Scarrow (Blackout)
• Brendan Slocumb (The Violin Conspiracy—due out in February 2022)
• Nancy Springer (Enola Holmes and the Black Barouche)
• Vincent Starrett (The Great Hotel Murder)
• Kevin Sullivan (The Figure in the Photograph)
• Lara Thompson (One Night, New York)
• Kerry Tombs (The Malvern Murders)
• Paul Tremblay (The Little Sleep)
• Chris Whitaker (We Begin at the End)
• Clare Whitfield (People of Abandoned Character)

My consumption of non-fiction books in 2021 was, sadly, down somewhat from the totals in previous years. I seemed to have a harder time than usual finding books about history, politics, and other subjects that could draw and hold my attention as firmly as did the crime and thriller yarns beckoning from my stack. Nonetheless, I did savor these half-dozen releases by new-to-me writers:

• Laurence Bargreen (In Search
of a Kingdom: Francis Drake, Elizabeth I, and the Perilous Birth of the British Empire)
• Cy Chermak (The Show Runner: An Insider’s Guide to Successful Television Production)
• Julia Cooke (Come Fly the World: The Jet-Age Story of the Women of Pan Am)
• Gillian Gill (We Two: Victoria and Albert: Rulers, Partners, Rivals)
• Ed Hulse (The Art of Pulp Fiction: An Illustrated History of
Vintage Paperbacks)
• Alexander Rose (Empires of the Sky: Zeppelins, Airplanes, and Two Men's Epic Duel to Rule the World)

So how about you, dear readers? Which authors did you sample for the first time over these last 12 months? Please let us all know in the Comments section at the end of this post.