Saving the “Bests” for Last

The flood of “best crime fiction of 2022” lists is definitely diminishing, with The Rap Sheet about to deliver its final two sets of picks. But there are still a few sets of selections dribbling in.

For instance, the Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine blog has recently posted “best” choices from its reviewers Steele Curry, L.J. Roberts, and Ted Hertel. Crime Fiction Lover’s Sonja van der Westhuizen offers her five favorites of the year, including Charlie Higson’s Whatever Gets You Through the Night and Lee Goldberg’s Movieland.

And Literary Hub managing editor Emily Temple offers up what is headlined as “The Ultimate Best Books of 2022 List.” She has sifted through “35 lists from 29 publications” to determine which books, released over the last dozen months, appear most often on these end-of-the-year tallies. The only inarguable mystery/crime novel I see there is Deanna Raybourn’s Killers of a Certain Age (Berkley), which apparently showed up on just four of the lists surveyed.