Favorite Crime Fiction of 2025, Part V: Ali Karim

(Ali Karim is The Rap Sheet’s longtime British correspondent, a contributing editor of January Magazine, and assistant editor of the e-zine Shots. In addition, he writes for Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine and Mystery Readers International. This last fall, Ali was the Fan Guest of Honor at Bouchercon in New Orleans.)

This was my first full year of retirement, a course correction necessitated by problematic changes in my health but giving me more time to spend with family. Apart from some freelance writing on the subjects of industrial chemistry (my lifelong career) and firefighting, I have sought to keep my mind occupied with reading, reviewing books, and penning literary commentary on both crime and horror fiction. My rewards, after two years spent worrying about my heart, were (1) to take part in the final CrimeFest in May, and (2) to attend this last September’s Bouchercon “World Mystery Convention” in New Orleans, Louisiana. Planning for that latter excursion was extensive, particularly since I had to find robust medical insurance, but I was helped by my old comrade, Shots editor Mike Stotter, who then accompanied me across the Atlantic. The week we spent attending Bouchercon panel discussions, walking inside and outside the city’s French Quarter, and partaking of various Southern food specialties (though no grits!) was extremely gratifying. Yet most memorable by far were the hours we got to spend with our American friends, especially Rap Sheet editor Jeff Pierce, Deadly Pleasures editor George Easter, and DP associate editor Larry Gandle. It had been a decade since we’d last been in the United States, attending Bouchercon 2016 (also in New Orleans). But when we gathered as friends, it seemed that hardly any time had passed at all.

Of the many new crime, mystery, and thriller novel releases I read in 2025, these are the 10 I relished the most:

• Everybody Wants to Rule the World, by Ace Atkins (Corsair UK/Morrow U.S.)
• 13 Hillcrest Drive, by Gerald Petievich (Rare Bird U.S.)
• Kill Your Darlings, by Peter Swanson (Faber & Faber UK/Morrow U.S.)
• The Whyte Python World Tour, by Travis Kennedy (Penguin UK/Doubleday U.S.)
• Ordinary Bear, by C.B. Bernard (Blackstone U.S., 2024)
• Hero, by Thomas Perry (Mysterious Press U.S., 2024)
• Broken, by Jón Atli Jónasson (Corylus UK)
• Never Flinch, by Stephen King (Hodder and Stoughton UK/
Scribner U.S.)
• The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne, by Ron Currie (Atlantic UK/Putnam U.S.)
• The Oligarch’s Daughter, by Joseph Finder (Head of Zeus UK/
Harper U.S.)

While I enjoyed all of those novels, it’s the first three I revisit most often in my mind. Atkins’ Everybody Wants to Rule the World delivers laughs aplenty in an otherwise terrifying Cold War thriller about sleeper agents embedded in Atlanta, Georgia, seeking the truth behind the concept of “mutually assured destruction.” Petievich’s 13 Hillcrest Drive is a tough-as-nails police procedural about a cop struggling to overcome a past indiscretion at the same time he investigates a triple homicide case in Hollywood, California. And Swanson’s Kill Your Darlings tells of a poet who determines to kill her English professor husband, not because he’s a drinker with a notoriously wandering eye (and a fondness for young women students), but because he’s begun writing a mystery novel that may reveal a dark secret that has long cemented their union.

Let me also recommend two from the crime non-fiction shelves:

• Reacher: The Stories Behind the Stories, by Lee Child (Bantam UK/Mysterious Press U.S.)
• Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers, by Caroline Fraser (Fleet UK/Penguin Press U.S.)

And since I mentioned my fondness for horror fiction, let me tout a couple of works from that genre that appeared this year:

• Whistle, by Linwood Barclay (HQ UK/ Morrow Paperbacks U.S.)
• The End of the World as We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King’s The Stand, edited by Christopher Golden and Brian Hodge (Hodder & Stoughton UK/Gallery U.S.)