A Bumper Crop of Commentaries

The Winter 2026 edition of Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine was transmitted last week to subscribers, and at 106 pages in length (which editor George Easter says makes it the “largest issue ever”), it furnishes a great deal of material for enjoyment.

Dominating the mag this time are 89 lists of the “best” mystery, crime, and suspense novels published in 2025. We’re given picks by DP’s usual contributors, but also those from myriad other print and Web publications (including The Rap Sheet) as well as large booksellers on both sides of the Atlantic. Further, Easter has sifted through all of those selections to determine which titles appear most frequently (S.A. Cosby’s King of Ashes and Richard Osman’s The Impossible Fortune win that race). He noticed a couple of trends while compiling these lists: “There didn’t appear to be any diminution of the number of psychological/domestic suspense novels, but there did seem to be an evident uptick in the number of traditional mysteries published. Also there seems to be a blending of the line between mystery/crime fiction and horror fiction. A few titles that I would consider horror fiction have made it onto best mysteries of the year lists.”

Ah, but there’s more (as so many TV commercials often like to promise)! Filling out his electronic pages, Easter includes here a “Most Anticipated Mysteries of 2026 list” that runs to “300+ titles”; an interview with author Elizabeth Heider and reviews of her two books starring Naples, Italy, investigator Nikki Serafino (May the Wolf Die and the brand-new Children of the Savage City); and of course, DP’s stable of critics have their say about recent releases in this genre (Max Allan Collins’ Return of the Maltese Falcon wins plenty of attention). Easter’s quarterly is always strong on book reviews, but this number provides many more than we have come to expect.

Gone are the days when Deadly Pleasures was available in print; it’s now a more handsome digital periodical, available for an annual subscription price of $10. Learn more here.