Bullet Points: First Wrap-up of the New Year

• Three works of crime/spy fiction appear on the latest book-club reading list prepared by British media personalities Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan. Among that pair’s eight choices are Tony Parsons’ The Murder Bag (Arrow), Charles Cumming’s A Colder War (Harper), and Emma Healey’s Elizabeth Is Missing (Penguin), all of which have recently been reissued in paperback in the UK. How convenient …

• Mike Ripley’s “Getting Away with Murder” column this month includes observations about the “Christmas Chrime” party held recently at Heffer’s Bookshop in Cambridge; forthcoming works by Robert Ryan (A Study in Murder), Max Allan Collins (Quarry’s Choice), Mark Henshaw (The Snow Kimono), and others; new Top Notch Thrillers releases (including The Lusitania Plot, by Raymond Hitchcock); and a “continuation” novel in Margery Allingham’s Albert Campion mystery series, Mr. Campion’s Fox (Severn House), penned by none other than Ripley himself, who last year published a completion of Allingham’s Mr. Campion’s Farewell, which Rap Sheet critic Jim Napier praised as “a delightful, timeless tale that will appeal to all lovers of the Golden Age of British crime fiction.” Read the entirety of Ripley’s column here.

• If you aren’t aware of this already, longtime crime-fiction critic Sarah Weinman, who for many years wrote the blog Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind, has launched a newsletter called The Crime Lady, focused on the genre and available only through free online subscription. New editions are expected on Wednesdays. In today’s second installment, explains “aspiring writer” Jim Thomsen, Weinman “reacts with some dismay to reports that ‘fiction in 2015 is set to be dominated by unreliable women’ with her belief that the genre--embodied by the ‘it novel’ so far, the UK suspenser The Girl on the Train [by Paula Hawkins]--is currently cluttered with a failure to combine ‘the terror of the mundane with a clarity of vision about their chosen milieu, however narrowly drawn. When their characters acted or made choices they felt, no matter how wrong-headed, rooted in some logic.’ She concluded: ‘Here’s what I want in my contemporary domestic suspense: more warmth and wit. Less whine and wheedle.’” You can easily subscribe to The Crime Lady here.

• I haven’t heard yet when PBS-TV in the States intends to broadcast the eighth season of Michael Kitchen’s historical mystery series, Foyle’s War, but that season’s three episodes commenced rolling out in the UK this last Sunday. Viewers (like me) who follow Foyle’s War avidly should check out this post in Robin Jarossi’s Crime Time Preview blog. For synopses of the three new episodes, which once more find Foyle and the former Samantha Stewart (played by Honeysuckle Weeks) working for British Intelligence, click here.

• In this column for The Daily Telegraph, Foyle’s War creator Anthony Horowitz muses on why his show continues, even after 12 years, to draw an enthusiastic viewership.

• Another popular British series destined to reach American television sets sometime in the not-too-distant future is Season 2 of the David Tennant police procedural, Broadchurch (Season 1 of which was remade in the States as Gracepoint). Again, Jarossi offers some thoughts on what viewers can expect, though he notes that “there will be no previews of the opening episode or any that follow.” Broadchurch’s sophomore season offers eight episodes. It began running in the UK on January 5.

• I wonder if the new digital short stories--tied in with each new Broadchurch installment, penned by Erin Kelly, and made available to viewers in Great Britain during Season 2’s run--will also be offered to fans of this crime drama when it is eventually shown on PBS.

• Hugh O’Brian, the 89-year-old former star of The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp (1955-1961) and Search (1972-1973), will be the next guest on Ed Robertson’s TV Confidential radio program, airing tonight on Detroit’s WROM, beginning at 8 p.m. O’Brian’s interview will be rebroadcast on a variety of other stations through January 12.

• This is pretty damn cool. Los Angeles police detective-turned-author Paul Bishop recently talked with Linda Pendleton, wife of the late Don Pendleton, about her husband’s work on the Executioner/Mack Bolan thrillers, which Open Road Media has re-released in e-book format. Part I of their exchange is here; Part II can be found here.

• I was remiss in not mentioning that the subject of my latest Kirkus Reviews column is The German Agent, a new spy novel by J. Sydney Jones, the author previously of five historical mysteries featuring turn-of-the-last-century Viennese lawyer Karl Werthen. I wish I could’ve been more enthusiastic about this short work, which is set during World War I, but for various reasons (explained in the column) it didn’t quite measure up to Jones’ previous high standards. I’m hoping for better from Basic Law, a “mystery of Cold War Europe,” that he has due out from Mysterious Press/Open Road in April.

• Bill Pronzini’s horror tale “Peekaboo,” which was featured among the contents of that author’s short-story collection Night Freight (2000), has been made into a 12-minute film. As Pronzini explains in this post in Ed Gorman’s blog:

A budding Canadian college filmmaker named Spiro Kay asked my permission a while back to make a short, non-profit film based on my horror short, “Peekaboo.” Here’s the result, which he just sent me. Really interesting take on the story, and very well done (though the ending could be a bit less murky).

• Will we ever run out of “best books of 2014” posts? Probably, but not yet. Jen Forbus lists her favorites (which include Roosevelt’s Beast, by Louis Bayard--one that I also liked a lot) in this post, while Kelly Robinson has her say here, Rob Kitchin summarizes his 10 choices (not all of which were new last year) in this piece, and Brian Abbott delivers this top-reads list in The Poisoned Martini. Meanwhile, Euro Crime continues to roll out its critics’ favorites from 2014.

• Finally, did you know that Tom Rob Smith’s much-heralded 2008 historical thriller, Child 44, has been made into a theatrical film starring Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman, and Noomi Rapace, and that it’s being readied for an April 17 premiere? Neither did I, but it’s one of The Guardian’s “88 Movies We’re Most Excited About in 2015.” On the other hand, I did know that Nathaniel Philbrick’s amazing 2000 non-fiction book, In the Heart of the Sea, has been filmed, with a March 15 release date in the States. Here’s a trailer.

And Now for Some Belated “Bests”

Happy New Year, everyone! On this opening day of 2015, let’s try to conclude our gathering of links to “best books of 2014” coverage.

Sarah Weinman ends her stewardship of the Crimewave column in Canada’s National Post with a wrap-up of her favorite works in a variety of mystery-fiction categories. Crime Thriller Girl turns thumbs up on nine novels, including one that passed undetected through my radar: The Distance, by Helen Giltrow. Crime Fiction Lover names her own “Top Five Books of 2014,” one of which is The Last Refuge, by Craig Robertson. In Euro Crime, Karen Meek offers “an all-female list” of her favorite five crime reads from the last 12 months, including Someone Else’s Skin, by Sarah Hilary. Shots’ Ayo Onatade offers a dozen top picks “in no particular order,” one of which is The Axeman’s Jazz, by Ray Celestin, a book I haven’t read, but probably should. Scott Montgomery of Austin, Texas’ BookPeople store mentions Benjamin Whitmer’s Cry Father and Reed Farrel Coleman’s The Hollow Girl among his particular reading delights from last year. (Separately, he and a co-worker applaud eight crime-fiction reissues.) Bitter Tea and Mystery’s TracyK expresses her thoughts on this subject here.

Two favorites lists of note from the blog Do Some Damage are those by Brian Lindenmuth (who cheers John McFetridge’s Black Rock and Sam Wiebe’s Last of the Independents) and Holly West (whose rundown features Lori Rader-Day’s The Black Hour and Timothy Hallinan’s Crashed). Barbara Tom, a former owner of Portland, Oregon’s Murder by the Book gives special attention to nine crime novels, not all of which appeared originally in 2014--but Rennie Airth’s The Reckoning certainly did. In a two-part post--here and here--Read Me Deadly serves up compliments to David Shafer’s Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, Tana French’s The Secret Place, and Ann Cleeves’ The Glass Room, as well as some works outside this genre. Dead End Follies includes Hilary Davidson’s Blood Always Tells (a book I also enjoyed) in his year-end summation. Jo Nesbø’s The Son finds a place on Jeff Somers’ list, in The Barnes & Noble Book Blog, of “Great Under-the-Radar Reads” from 2014. Meanwhile, Rex Stout’s And Be a Villain (1948) tops Curtis J. Evans’ list of 20 favorite books he blogged about last year. (Additional posts in that series can be found here, here, and here.) And Ben Boulden’s assessment, in Gravetapping, of his prized reads of the last 12 months includes works by Richard Hoyt and Bill Pronzini.

Finally, I want to bring your attention to The House of Crime and Mystery’s new poll to select its “Readers’ Choice Award” winners for 2014, in nine categories. Editor Jacques Filippi offers an extensive catalogue of crime and thriller works from which to choose, but then explains “you’re under no obligation to pick one of these titles.” Voting will close at midnight on Saturday, January 10, and one lucky participant will win “a bundle of books.” Click here to participate.

The Listing Post

With not much more than one week to go now before 2014 ends, “best books of the year” lists continue to pop up online.

Library Journal’s rundown features five titles drawn from the mystery/thriller stacks, among them Peter May’s The Lewis Man and Terry Shames’ The Last Death of Jack Harbin. My friend Adam Woog’s 11 choices for The Seattle Times include Love Story, With Murders, by Harry Bingham, and The Day of Atonement, by David Liss. Meanwhile, Sarah Ward weighs in at Crimepieces with her top-five contenders for the year’s best reads in this genre. (It seems she was very high on Thomas Mogford’s Hollow Mountain.) The bloggers for Crime Fiction Lover have each been rolling out their five top-shelf choices, at the same time as Sons of Spade’s Jochem Vandersteen presents a simple rundown of his five favorite works of private-eye fiction from the last 12 months. Austin, Texas’ MysteryPeople bookshop goes in a slightly different direction, highlighting its five favorite short-story collections. And three different crime novels are mentioned in novelist David Abrams’ compilation of the “Best First Lines of 2014.”

Step Up and Speak Out

Coming up shortly, we’ll roll out the sixth and final installment in The Rap Sheet’s “best crime fiction of 2014” mini-series. If you have failed to keep up, here are links to all of those write-ups:

Part I: Jim Napier
Part II: Kevin Burton Smith
Part III: Steven Nester
Part IV: Anthony Rainone
Part V: Ali Karim
Part VI: J. Kingston Pierce

It’s been fun presenting these rundowns of our critics’ favorite crime, mystery, and thriller works, but we do need to move on to other editorial endeavors (including tallying the results of our “best crime novel covers” poll). We encourage you now, though, to express some of your own opinions of which books in this genre, published during the last 12 months, most impressed or surprised you. Please use the Comments button at the end of this post to tell us what new works we should have read, but maybe missed, during 2014.

We thank you in advance for your thoughts on this matter.

Next Up: Favorite Crime Fiction of 2014

There are now fewer than three weeks remaining in 2014, so book reviewers and author-bloggers have accelerated their pace of posting “best crime fiction of the year” lists. Library Journal offers its choices in this genre (as well as other literary fields) here, while The Washington Post promotes what it contends are “The Five Best Thrillers of 2014” here. BOLO Books blogger Kristopher Zgorski shares his opinions on the year’s top reads here, and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Sun-Sentinel correspondent Oline Cogdill’s picks are available in a slideshow (never my favorite format, but Oline’s a nice person, so I’ll forgive her the gimmick just this once). Finally, UK journalist-author Woody Haut has assembled a “dirty baker’s dozen” of his favorite crime novels from the last twelvemonth, while pseudonymous fictionist Clinton Greaves comes up with 14 choices.

Ever since 1998, I’ve helped put together the annual “best books” features for January Magazine, the online publication from which The Rap Sheet spun off in 2006. This year editor Linda L. Richards decided to break with tradition and not post such a package of mini-reviews. However, I’m so accustomed at the end of every year to soliciting “best books” recommendations from January crime-fiction reviewers, that I went ahead and asked some of them to contribute their inventories of favorites to The Rap Sheet instead.

The first two of those rundowns are set to appear on this page later today, with more to roll out early next week--soon enough, we hope, to help shoppers who are still stumped as to what they might purchase for the book lovers on their holiday gift lists. Let us know what you think of our critics’ choices, and what other crime, mystery, and thriller novels published in 2014 really caught your fancy.

Forshaw’s Finest

Let’s add another “best crime fiction of 2014” list to our collection: UK critic Barry Forshaw’s selections in The Independent.

• The Axeman’s Jazz, by Ray Celestin (Mantle)
• Long Way Home, by Eva Dolan
(Harvill Secker)
• The Girl with a Clock for a Heart,
by Peter Swanson (Faber)
• Those Who Walk Away,
by Patricia Highsmith (Little, Brown)
• The Devil in the Marshalsea,
by Antonia Hodgson (Hodder)
• The Secret Place, by Tana French (Hodder)

You’ll find Forshaw’s comments about each of these works here.

In Case Santa Needs Some Suggestions ...

Since I have already begun cataloguing various selections of the “best” crime novels published during 2014, let me now add UK critic Mike Ripley’s top 10 list, as it’s offered in his December “Getting Away with Murder” column for Shots:

• Brainquake, by Samuel Fuller (Hard Case Crime)
• Darkness, Darkness, by John Harvey (Heinemann)
• Cobra, by Deon Meyer (Hodder)
• Bitter Wash Road, by Gary Disher (Text)
• By My Hand, by Maurizio De Giovanni (Europa/World Noir)
• Of Cops and Robbers, by Mike Nicol (Old Street)
• A Dark Song of Blood, by Ben Pastor (Bitter Lemon Press)
• The Suicide Club, by Andrew Williams (Hodder)
• The Silent Boy, by Andrew Taylor (Harper)
• The Reckoning, by Rennie Airth (Mantle)

That same column also provides observations about new books by Adrian McKinty and Michael Pearce, forthcoming works by Minette Walters and S.J. Watson, and the tiresome recent trend toward book covers that feature lone women running/walking away from the camera. Read it all here.

Bullet Points: Finds and Losses Edition

• Although Slate’s staff picks of 2014’s “best books” feature only one work of fiction that might come under The Rap Sheet’s consideration (David Shafer’s “funny techno-thriller,” Whiskey Tango Foxtrot), the Web mag’s critics include a whopping two novels from this genre among their 27 “Overlooked Books of 2014”: Adrian McKinty’s The Sun Is God and Lauren Beukes’ Broken Monsters.

• On the topic of “best books,” note that Crimespree Magazine editor Jon Jordan has posted his selection of 11 “damn good reads” from the last year, including Meg Gardiner’s Phantom Instinct, Chelsea Cain’s One Kick, and Tim Hallinan’s For the Dead.

• There are so many Christmas-related mysteries, that blogger-editor Janet Rudolph has had to split up her list of them in Mystery Fanfare. Click here to find dozens of works by authors whose names begin with the letters A through D. At least three more such postings of seasonal fare should follow in the coming days.

• Is there a “lost work” by Raymond Chandler? Yes, but as Sarah Weinman reports in The Guardian, it’s a comic opera discovered in the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Weinman explains:

The 48-page libretto to the comic opera The Princess and the Pedlar, with music by Julian Pascal, has hidden in plain sight at the library since its copyright was first registered on 29 August 1917.

The work, a copy of which was obtained by the Guardian, was found in March by Kim Cooper, shortly after she published her debut novel, The Kept Girl, featuring a fictionalised Chandler in 1929 Los Angeles.

While looking for more information about Pascal, Cooper discovered a missing link between Chandler’s English boyhood and his detective fiction: a witty, Gilbert-and-Sullivan-inflected libretto for a fantasy-tinged romance between Porphyria, daughter to the King and Queen of the Arcadians, and Beautiful Jim, a “strolling Pedlar.”

(Hat tip to January Magazine.)

• Critic Weinman tackles another classic fictionist for The New York Times Book Review, writing about Helen MacInnes, the author of Above Suspicion and many more tales.

• One more vintage detective novel I have to read someday.

• For the blog Book Noir, UK editor Barry Forshaw recalls his encounters with “two of my favourite creators (both massively talented, but neither the sweetest individual): I was able to speak to both--wait for it!--Alfred Hitchcock and Patricia Highsmith.”

• One of the most enduring urban legends has it that illustrator-turned-empire builder Walt Disney was “cryogenically frozen after he died [in 1966] so that he could be reanimated in the future.” Unfortunately, it’s not true.

• If you have never seen the 2003 pilot for a TV series based on the film L.A. Confidential, and starring Kiefer Sutherland, here it is.

• Number 36 in Robin Jarossi’s amusing, nostalgic countdown of “50 crime shows that blow us away” is Life on Mars, the 2006-2007 BBC One time travel/police procedural that starred John Simm and Philip Glenister, and “won a following through its freshness and cheekiness.” (Sadly, the U.S. version of that show didn’t fare so well.)

• In a short interview with The New York Times Book Review, David Baldacci was asked, “What’s the key to a great thriller?” His answer:

The same as any other genre: a great story. Characters you either hate or love, a compelling plot whose seemingly skeletal simplicity belies the mounds of meat underneath. And of course a contortionist writer at the helm who manages to stay a step ahead of even the most astute/cynical story-gobblers. You make it look easy and seamless, when it’s actually the hardest thing you’ve ever done in your life and the whole thing seems held together by fraying duct tape and spit.

• In conversation with Crimespree, Michael Connelly addresses the question of whether the career of his main protagonist, Los Angeles cop Harry Bosch (The Burning Room), is coming to an end. “It is very clear from the last few books his time is up with the badge, but not as a literary character,” insists Connelly. “I planted a number of seeds in the last three or four books that can show his continuation in some way. It does not necessarily have to be Harry Bosch up front. I have not decided yet what to do and have it as open-ended in this book so I have time to think about it. There are a number of possibilities including bringing him back as a cop in one more book, although I am leaning towards not doing it. It appears that his life is not dictated by any dates, but the needs of the series. In every four or five books something happens. It is time for a new direction for Harry.” You might remember that Detective Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch was introduced in Connelly’s first novel, The Black Echo (1992).

• Actor Howard Duff certainly had a great voice for radio.

• This is unfortunate news from In Reference to Murder: “[A]nother crime fiction [resource] bites the dust, as the authors of Sleuths, Spies, and Alibis have chosen to end the three-year-old blog.”

• And longtime supporter of The Rap Sheet Randal S. Brandt writes: “My friend Jean Buchanan has published a short piece called Mr. Dodge, Mr. Hitchcock, and the French Riviera: The Story Behind To Catch a Thief. It is published as an Amazon Kindle Single and is available via this link: http://www.amazon.com/Mr-Dodge-Hitchcock-French-Riviera-ebook/dp/B00P9GIATI/ (Or in the UK, from this link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mr-Dodge-Hitchcock-French-Riviera-ebook/dp/B00P9GIATI/) … The new piece explores the relationship between the novel and the film, and the circumstances under which the novel was written.” He adds that “Jean also contributed the Afterword to the Bruin Books edition of To Catch a Thief that was published in 2010, as well as adapting the novel as a radio play for BBC Radio 4 (broadcast in 2010).”

King Takes the Crown Again

Although the books-oriented Web site Goodreads is no longer an independent venture, but has been owned for the last couple of years by Amazon, a number of my friends still contribute to its growing database of reviews, and the site’s mission doesn’t seem to have been seriously undermined by corporate ownership. So the annual Goodreads Choice Awards continue to count for something.

Online voting to pick the 2014 Choice Awards recipients began in November and featured 20 nominees in the Best Mystery and Thriller category. Earlier today the winner in that division--receiving 41,453 votes--was announced. It’s Stephen King’s Mr. Mercedes (Scribner), a novel that I must admit remains on my to-be-read pile.

Also in contention for Best Mystery and Thriller novel honors were (in descending order of support): The Silkworm, by Robert Galbraith (Mulholland); The Thousand-Dollar Tan Line, by Rob Thomas and Jennifer Graham; Festive in Death, by J.D. Robb (Putnam); Top Secret Twenty-One, by Janet Evanovich (Bantam); The Long Way Home, by Louise Penny (Minotaur); The Secret Place, by Tana French; The Son, by Jo Nesbø (Knopf); I Am Pilgrim, by Terry Hayes (Atria/Emily Bestler); The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches, by Alan Bradley (Delacorte Press); Missing You, by Harlan Coben (Dutton); The Gods of Guilt, by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown); Natchez Burning, by Greg Iles (Morrow); The Good Girl, by Mary Kubica (Mira); In the Blood, by Lisa Unger (Pocket); Personal, by Lee Child (Delacorte Press): The Target, by David Baldacci (Grand Central); Mean Streak, by Sandra Brown (Grand Central); The Weight of Blood, by Laura McHugh (Spiegel & Grau); and Runner, by Patrick Lee (Minotaur).

Word is that 3,317,504 votes were cast in this year’s content, as compared with last year’s 1.9 million votes. That’s a fairly good record of participation. I’m a bit disappointed, however, that the crime, mystery, and thriller genre--which is such a mammoth seller worldwide--enjoys only minimal presence in the Goodreads competition, while what we think of a Science Fiction and Fantasy is split up among five categories, each of which has a winner. If there’s a Young Adult Fantasy and Science Fiction section, why is there not at least a category for Young Adult Mystery and Thriller?

Chart Toppers

I’ve taken a first crack at putting together a list of my favorite crime novels of 2014; you’ll find it in my Kirkus Reviews column today. Among my 10 choices are works by Laura Lippmann, Peter May, Joseph Koenig, and Antonia Hodgson.

With the help of some other Rap Sheet contributors, I am also working on a larger feature about the year’s best crime, mystery, and thriller fiction. That should appear on this page within the next couple of weeks, and be much broader in scope. Please stay tuned.

Mixing the Familiar with the Unusual

Kirkus Reviews this week unveiled lengthy and often overlapping lists of what its critics believe are the Best Books of 2014. Within that inventory, you will find 12 categories of fiction--everything from Best Literary Fiction to Best Fiction with a Touch of Magic. Under the heading Best Mysteries and Thrillers are these 16 titles:

• Bird Box, by Josh Malerman (Ecco/HarperCollins)

• The Bones Beneath, by Mark Billingham (Atlantic Monthly Press)

• Broadchurch, by Erin Kelly (Minotaur)

• Broken Monsters, by Lauren Beukes (Mulholland)

• Children of the Revolution, by Peter Robinson (Morrow)

• The Killer Next Door, by Alex Marwood (Penguin)

• The Long Way Home, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)

• Night Heron, by Adam Brookes (Redhook/Orbit)

• One Kick, by Chelsea Cain (Simon & Schuster)

• Reckless Disregard, by Robert Rotstein (Seventh Street)

• The Red Road, by Denise Mina (Little, Brown)

• The Secret Place, by Tana French (Viking)

• The Silkworm, by Robert Galbraith (Mulholland)

• The Son, by Jo Nesbø (Knopf)

• Those Who Wish Me Dead. by Michael Koryta (Little, Brown)

• Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, by David Shafer (Mulholland)

In addition, Megan Abbott’s The Fever and C.J. Sansom’s Dominion appear within the Best Popular Fiction category.

Most of the selections here are not very surprising, but I was interested to see both Bird Box and Night Heron make the cut, as neither of those debut novels had been on my radar during the last dozen months. (Which just goes to show that none of us is perfect.) What do the rest of you think of Kirkus’ picks?

Are They “Bests” or Just Bestsellers?

There are two things you can easily predict are going to happen in early November: Christmas-related commercials will begin appearing on television, and the holiday theme will quickly be picked up by stores (I actually found all of the employees of my local Office Depot wearing Santa hats the other day); and “best books of the year” lists will start popping up in periodicals and on Web sites everywhere.

I understand Kirkus Reviews will commence to declare its favorite books of the year during the week of November 16-22. But Amazon is already flogging its own picks. You will find the lists for all categories here. Below, though, are that online retailer’s 20 choices in the Mystery, Thriller & Suspense field:

• The Cairo Affair, by Olen Steinhauer (Minotaur)

• Chance, by Kem Nunn (Scribner)

• Cop Town, by Karin Slaughter (Delacorte Press)

• The Farm, by Tom Rob Smith (Grand Central)

• The Fever, by Megan Abbott (Little Brown)

• The Heist, by Daniel Silva (Harper)

• I Am Pilgrim, by Terry Hayes (Atria/Emily Bestler)

• The Kept, by James Scott (Harper)

• The Laughing Monsters, by Denis Johnson (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

• The Long Way Home, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)

• Natchez Burning, by Greg Iles (Morrow)

• An Officer and a Spy, by Robert Harris (Knopf)

• Personal, by Lee Child (Delacorte Press)

• Revival, by Stephen King (Scribner)

• Secrecy, by Rupert Thomson (Other Press)

• The Secret Place, by Tana French (Viking)

• The Son, by Jo Nesbø (Knopf)

• Those Who Wish Me Dead, by Michael Koryta (Little, Brown)

• Windigo Island, by William Kent Krueger (Atria)

• Wolf in White Van, by John Darnielle (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

There are few surprises here, though I suspect you won’t see Kem Nunn’s latest or Rupert Thomson’s new novel appear as frequently on 2014 favorites lists as you will see the remaining 18.

Early Out of the Gate

Once more, Booklist isn’t waiting for the end of the year to post its end-of-the-year choices of “best crime novels.” Bill Ott has actually put together two lists: “Top 10 Crime Fiction” (which includes Olen Steinhauer’s The Cairo Affair, Marisha Pessl’s Night Film, and James Carlos Blake’s The Rules of Wolfe) and “Best Crime Fiction Debuts” (featuring Jonathan Holt’s The Abomination, C. J. Howell’s The Last of the Smoking Bartenders, and Elisabeth Elo’s North of Boston, among other works). Click here to read all about them.

(Hat tip to Randal S. Brandt)