A Quarter-Century’s Worth of Crime

I got to know actor-turned-author Tom Nolan in 1999, when I interviewed him for January Magazine on the subject of his then-new book, Ross Macdonald: A Biography. Since that time, we have corresponded occasionally, and I’ve tried to keep up with his career as mystery-fiction critic for The Wall Street Journal. Yet I have never been a Journal subscriber (disagreeing as I do with that paper’s politics), so I usually miss reading Nolan’s excellent criticism.

Today, though, former college professor and book collector George Kelley posted in his blog a list Nolan made up for the Journal, purporting to name what its headline says are “The 25 Best Mystery Novels of the Past 25 Years.” The original piece appeared in Saturday’s edition of the newspaper, and can be found online here (behind a paywall). Kelley’s text-only version of Nolan’s list is here, including the columnist’s comments on each of these 25 choices:

• All Things Cease to Appear, by Elizabeth Brundage (2016)
• Big Sky, by Kate Atkinson (2019)
• Birnam Wood, by Eleanor Catton (2023)
• Bluebird, Bluebird, by Attica Locke (2017)
• Bury Your Dead, by Louise Penny (2010)
• Dark Sacred Night, by Michael Connelly (2018)
• Death of a Red Heroine, by Qiu Xiaolong (2000)
• Elegy for April, by John Banville writing as Benjamin Black (2010)
• Find You First, by Linwood Barclay (2021)
• The Hunter, by Tana French (2024)
• IQ, by Joe Ide (2016)
• The It Girl, by Ruth Ware (2022)
• The Last Equation of Isaac Severy, by Nova Jacobs (2018)
• The Long Drop, by Denise Mina (2017)
• Magpie Murders, by Anthony Horowitz (2016)
• One-Shot Harry, by Gary Phillips (2022)
• The Plot, by Jean Hanff Korelitz (2021)
• Razorblade Tears, by S.A. Cosby (2021)
• Small Mercies, by Dennis Lehane (2023)
• A Talent for Murder, by Peter Swanson (2024)
• The Thursday Murder Club, by Richard Osman (2020)
• The Turnout, by Megan Abbott (2021)
• The Twenty-Year Death, by Ariel S. Winter (2012)
• What the Dead Know, by Laura Lippman (2007)
• Your House Will Pay, by Steph Cha (2019)

As with any such selections, arguments are bound to be aroused. I’ve read about half of the works Nolan cites. Some of those I found disappointing, and a couple I very much disliked (due to their violent content). Yet his choices of Magpie Murders, One-Shot Harry, and The Twenty-Year Death, for instance, win my enthusiastic approval. Had I been choosing, I might have included Peter May’s The Blackhouse (2011), Chris Whitaker’s We Begin at the End (2021), Derek B. Miller’s Norwegian by Night (2013), Jane Harper’s The Dry (2016), Martin Cruz Smith’s Wolves Eat Dogs (2004), Oriana Ramunno’s Ashes in the Snow (2022), Max Allan Collins’ Angel in Black (2001), Philip Kerr’s The Other Side of Silence (2016), Steven Price’s By Gaslight (2016), Dervla McTiernan’s The Ruin (2018), Thomas Mullen’s Darktown (2015), and … well, let’s just say it would be a very different list. But every reader has his or her own tastes, and I shan’t begrudge Nolan’s his.