Rant and Raves

As we move hesitantly into a new year, let us thank all of those print publications, Web sites, and blogs that served up “best crime fiction of 2024” lists for the rest of us to read—and sometimes shake our heads at in disagreement. The number of such recommendations has now fallen off severely, but there are a few left to highlight.

The entertainment site Screen Rant, for instance, this week posted a top-10 list of thriller novels from the last dozen months:

• First Lie Wins, by Ashley Elston (Pamela Dorman)
• The God of the Woods, by Liz Moore (Riverhead)
• All the Colors of the Dark, by Chris Whitaker (Crown)
• Listen for the Lie, by Amy Tintera (Celadon)
• We Solve Murders, by Richard Osman (Pamela Dorman)
• The Return of Ellie Black, by Emiko Jean (Simon & Schuster)
• Middle of the Night, by Riley Sager (Dutton)
• Society of Lies, by Lauren Ling Brown (Bantam)
• House of Glass, by Sarah Pekkanen (St. Martin’s Press)
• The Boyfriend, by Freida McFadden (Poisoned Pen Press)

Other year-end choices come from Crimeworm, Do Some Damage’s Scott D. Parker, and Jackie Farrant of Raven’s Crime Reads. Tarrant adds this delightfully worded note, which matches my own experience of 2024: “So, although it’s been a depleted year of reviewing for me, I have read a lot of books—some brilliant, some good, some disappointing, and some where a tree has totally died in vain!”