Easter’s Evaluations

Over the last couple of months, Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine editor George Easter has been collecting and sorting through “best crime fiction of 2021” rosters, looking to see which of last year’s myriad releases earned the greatest number of nominations. He eventually amassed 85 such picks lists.

Yesterday, Easter posted the final results of that assiduous tabulating, naming S.A. Cosby’s Razorblade Tears (Flatiron)—which scored a whopping 44 mentions—as the Crime Novel of the Year.

Another 10 novels featured on 12 to 17 “bests” registers:

• Billy Summers, by Stephen King (Scribner)
• Harlem Shuffle, by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday)
• Five Decembers, by James Kestrel (Hard Case Crime)
• The Dark Hours, by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown)
• Dream Girl, by Laura Lippman (Morrow)
• The Other Black Girl, by Zakiya Dalila Harris (Atria)
• The Man Who Died Twice, by Richard Osman (Pamela Dorman)
• Clark and Division, by Naomi Hirahara (Soho Crime)
• The Turnout, by Megan Abbott (Putnam)
• The Plot, by Jean Hanff Korelitz (Celadon)

Click here to read more about Easter’s interest in this subject and his surveying methodology. Note, too, that a similar diagnosis by Rap Sheet contributor Fraser Massey achieved a slightly different outcome, likely because of variations in the lists they consulted.

READ MORE: “Favorite Reads of 2021,” by Jeff Quest (Spy Write); “Raven’s Yearly Round Up 2021 and Top 10 of the Year,” by Jackie Farrant (Raven Crime Reads); “Book Review of 2021,” by Kate Atherton (For Winter Nights); “My Favorite Reads of 2021,” by Kathy Reel (The Reading Room); “Top Reads of 2021,” by L.J. Roberts (It Is Purely My Opinion); “Looking Back at 2021,” by Aubrey Hamilton (Happiness Is a Book); “Bill’s Best of Fiction for 2021,” by Bill Selnes (Mysteries and More from Saskatchewan).