Plum Picks: Everyone Wants a Say

It’s been impossible to keep track of every “best books of 2015” list dumped onto the Web recently. We’ve posted a wide variety of them already on this page--including those from regular Rap Sheet contributors--but their numbers appear to swell daily. What follows is our latest collection of “bests” links. These selections come primarily from the crime, mystery, and thriller genre, though some of the choices extend well past those parameters. And not all of these lists restrict themselves to books that were released during the last 12 months; some older volumes are highlighted as well.

• Crime Fiction Lover’s various “Top Five Books of 2015” lists
• S.W. Lauden’s “Recommended Reading 2015”
• “Jingle Bells! Mrs. Peabody’s 2015 Christmas Recommendations”
• “LitReacter Staff Picks: The Best Books of 2015”
• Sarah Ward’s “My Top Reads of 2015” in Crimepieces
• Nigel Bird’s “Faves of Fifteen (Overseas)” in Sea Minor
• Declan Burke’s “Review: The Best Crime Novels of 2015”
• “Best of 2015” in His Futile Preoccupations …
• Crime Thriller Girl’s “Top Reads 2015: Crime”
• Crime Thriller Girl’s “Top Reads 2015: Thriller”
• Steve Donoghue’s “Best Books of 2015: Mysteries” in SteveReads
• Scott Montgomery’s “Top 10 of 2015”
• Jochem Vandersteen’s “Favorite Sons of 2015” in Sons of Spade
• Peter Rozovsky has posted several “best books of 2015” items in his blog, Detectives Beyond Borders
• “The Year in Review: 2015 Reads” in Yet Another Crime Fiction Blog
• “My Top 5 Reads of 2015” in Bite the Book
• “My Favorite Reads of 2015” in Ms. Wordopolis Reads
• “The Year’s Best Books in Review -- A.D. 2015; Featuring Three Deserving Resurrection,” by The Dusty Bookcase’s Brian Busby
• Nick Jones’ “The Ten Best Books I Read in 2015” in Existential Ennui
• “My Favourite Books of 2015” in Cross Examining Crime
• “Not Quite a Top 10…” in Novel Heights
• John Harvey’s “Best Books of the Year, 2015”
• Euro Crime critics are currently rolling out their “Favourite Discoveries of 2015” lists, featuring books, films, and more.
• “Book Riot Best of 2015”
• Tobias Gohlis’ “Best Crime of 2015” in the German newspaper Die Zeit. The original posting is here, but an English translation can be found here. (Note that some books have been published under different titles in Germany; Richard Price’s The Whites, for instance, becomes The Untouchables, while James Lee Burke’s House of the Rising Sun becomes Embers and Ashes).
• “The Books We Loved in 2015” in The New Yorker
• “Top Ten Tuesday: Best of 2015” in You Book Me All Night Long
• McVoice’s “Faves of Fifteen (UK)”
• “Celebrity Picks: Gillian Flynn’s Favorite Reads of 2015” in Omnivoracious
• Flavorwire’s “The Best Fiction of 2015”
• Powell’s Books’ “Best Fiction Books of 2015”
• “My Top Ten Favourite Books of 2015,” by Bob Douglas in
Critics at Large
• “Top Five Texas Authors of 2015” in MysteryPeople’s blog
• “The Bowery Boys Ten Favorite New York History Books of 2015”

And now for a few broader-reaching extras:

• “The Best Facts I Learned from Books in 2015,”
by Kathryn Schulz (The New Yorker)
• “2015 in Books News: Tragedies and Triumphs,”
by Richard Lea (The Guardian)
• “2015 in Crime Flicks,” by Jedediah Ayres (Hardboiled Wonderland)

Please feel free to add any additional, interesting links in the Comments section of this post.

Getting to the Bottom of the Tops

Lately it’s seemed that a good deal of what I do here at Rap Sheet headquarters is gather together other people’s “best books of 2015” picks. And those lists are multiplying in number as we near New Year’s Day. The latest reviewer to announce her choices is Shotmag Confidential’s Ayo Onatade, whose dozen favorites include Pleasantville, by Attica Locke; The Ghosts of Altona, by Craig Russell; The Body Snatcher, by Patrica Melo; The Killing Kind, by Chris Holm; and Every Night I Dream of Hell, by Malcolm Mckay.

Meanwhile, the contributors to UK-based Crime Fiction Lover are each presenting rundowns of their preferred mysteries and thrillers from the last year. Among the books mentioned so far are The Bone Tree, by Greg Iles; Friends of the Dusk, by Phil Rickman; The Caveman, by Jørn Lier Horst; The Father, by Anton Svensson; I Let You Go, by Clare Mackintosh; and Even Dogs in the Wild, by Ian Rankin. Click here to keep up with all of their selections.

Finally (for now), Andrew Nette’s list of the “Top 10 Books of 2015” in Pulp Curry extends beyond works that were actually published this year. It features Hard Rain Falling, by Don Carpenter; The Tattoo Murder Case, by Akimitsu Takagi, and Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice.

* * *

While we’re on the subject of these year-end lists, note that The Rap Sheet will post its last two rolls of critics’ picks later today and then tomorrow. If haven’t been keeping track, here are links to the pieces we’ve already run:

• Favorite Crime Fiction of 2015, Park V: Ali Karim
• Favorite Crime Fiction of 2015, Part IV: Kevin Burton Smith
• Favorite Crime Fiction of 2015, Part III: Stephen Miller
• Favorite Crime Fiction of 2015, Part II: Jim Napier
• Favorite Crime Fiction of 2015, Part I: Steven Nester

Please feel free to express your own ideas about this year’s superior releases in crime fiction in the Comments section below.

Pick of the Crop

Everywhere you look nowadays (including in The Rap Sheet), you see critics choosing their favorite crime, mystery, and thriller works of 2015. For instance, in the latest edition of her newsletter, The Crime Lady, Sarah Weinman identifies 12 books that drew her special attention this year, including Elisabeth de Mariaffi’s The Devil You Know, Don Winslow’s The Cartel, Amy Stewart’s Girl Waits with Gun, and Martin Edwards’ The Golden Age of Murder.

Meanwhile, National Public Radio picks 22 novels from the genre that it deems especially worthy of note (some of which I haven’t even gotten around to reading yet, such as Ruth Ware’s In a Dark, Dark Wood). And South Florida Sun-Sentinel critic Oline H. Cogdill offers her rundown of the year’s “best crime novels” in a text-free, not-reader-friendly slideshow. Featured on both of these last two lists, as well as on many other inventories of preferred 2015 crime novels, is Paula Hawkins’ Girl on the Train--which helps explain why that British page-turner tops Amazon’s list of bestsellers for the year.

Measuring Excellence Differently

Having already delivered my 10 “favorite crime novels of 2015” list on the Kirkus Reviews Web site, I devote my brand-new column there to other mystery and thriller books that shined over the last year according to somewhat different criteria. As I remark,

I was picking only 10 works from the genre, those that had best caught and held my attention. Yet I’d read many dozens more such books since December 31, 2014. The fact that some of those others hadn’t made the cut did not mean they lacked for intrigue or merit; merely that I had decided to confine my selection count to an arbitrary 10. ... It occurred to me that if I’d broadened my definition of what deserved mentioning, I could have penned a column that better represented my 2015 reading experiences ... though it might be twice as long.

So, click here to find some of the my other favorite new books, broken down into less customary categories such as “Crime Solvers I’m Pleased to See Back on the Job” and “Second Books That Bode Well for the Future of Their Series.”

Coming Up: Favorite Crime Yarns of 2015

For the second year in a row, The Rap Sheet will play host to its own “best crime fiction of the year” lists. Beginning this afternoon, we’ll post a week’s worth of critical evaluations of the books--all published within the genre during 2015--that our critics think are especially deserving of widespread acclaim. While we don’t really intend this series of posts to be a spur for Chanukah, Christmas, or Kwanzaa present-buying, please feel free to write down a few titles if you need ideas for the crime-fiction fans on your gift list. Let us know, too, if there are other new works in this field that you found particularly noteworthy in 2015, but that we don’t mention.

Stasio’s Standouts

Although she doesn’t technically label it a “best of 2015” list, New York Times mystery-fiction critic Marilyn Stasio’s collection of mini-reviews covering “this year’s outstanding books about homicidal children, psychopaths and cold-blooded murderers” certainly looks to be exactly that. Her 10 picks--presented below--are noteworthy for being quite different from those appearing on other reviewers’ rundowns.

• Those We Left Behind, by Stuart Neville (Soho Crime)
• Rubbernecker, by Belinda Bauer (Atlantic Monthly)
• Reykjavik Nights, by Arnaldur Indridason (Thomas Dunne/Minotaur)
• Solitude Creek, by Jeffery Deaver (Grand Central)
• World Gone By, by Dennis Lehane (Morrow)
• Unbecoming, by Rebecca Scherm (Viking)
• Down Among the Dead Men, by Peter Lovesey (Soho Crime)
• Let Me Die in His Footsteps, by Lori Roy (Dutton)
• The Fatal Flame, by Lyndsay Faye (Putnam)
• The Redeemers, by Ace Atkins (Putnam)

You will find all of Stasio’s comments about these novels here.

You’re the Tops*

The Boston Globe is finally out with its “Best Books of 2015” feature, which includes (if you scroll down far enough on the page) 15 entries in the Mystery category. Adrian McKinty’s Gun Street Girl wins a mention, as do Steph Cha’s Dead Soon Enough, Deon Meyer’s Icarus, Sue Grafton’s X, and Duane Swierczynski’s Canary.

BOLO Books’ Kristopher Zgorski also weighs in with his “Top Reads of 2015” list (not confined to works first published this year). Becky Masterman (Fear the Darkness), Brian Panowich (Bull Mountain), Lori Rader-Day (Little Pretty Things), and Chris Holm (The Killing Kind) are among the 15 authors who should applaud Zgorski’s taste.

* And yes, I did have a certain Cole Porter song in mind when writing this.

Everybody Has an Opinion

Keeping up with “books of the year” lists will become harder as we move quickly now toward Hanukkah, Christmas, and the end of December. Britain’s Guardian newspaper today announced its 16 choices for “Best Crime and Thriller Books of 2015.” They include The Girl on the Train, by Paula Hawkins; Disclaimer, by Renée Knight; The Girl in the Spider's Web, by David Lagercrantz; Even Dogs in the Wild, by Ian Rankin; The Cartel, by Don Winslow; and a work that somehow sailed right past my radar--I Saw a Man, by Owen Sheers.

Although The New York Times Book Review’s “10 Best Books of 2015” tally shuts out crime and mystery fiction, its recent “100 Notable Books of 2015” selection finds room for Delicious Foods, by James Hannaham; Dragonfish, by Vu Tran; Leaving Berlin, by Joseph Kanon; and The Whites, by Richard Price writing as Harry Brandt.

“Girl” Crazy

After a month spent soliciting votes online, Goodreads today announced that its readers’ favorite crime/mystery novel of 2015 is The Girl on the Train, by Paula Hawkins (Riverhead). To achieve that honor, Girl beat 19 other nominees, receiving 106,149 votes. Stephen King’s Finders Keepers (Scribner) and Career of Evil, by Robert Galbraith (Mulholland), finished second and third.

Meanwhile, the folks at BookPage have posted a list of their own favorite mysteries and thrillers, all of which were published over the last 12 months. Those choices include the not-yet-released Ashley Bell, by Dean Koontz (Bantam); Dragonfish, by Vu Tran (Norton); and Jade Dragon Mountain, by Elsa Hart (Minotaur). The Hawkins and King novels feature in this top-10 selection as well.

Finally, the December edition of Mike Ripley’s “Getting Away with Murder” column in Shots mentions nine works of crime fiction that Ripley and two of his fellow Shots critics, Ayo Onatade and Mike Stotter, particularly enjoyed this year. Attica Locke’s Pleasantville (Serpent’s Tail) and Deon Meyer’s Icarus (Hodder & Stoughton) both made the cut. You can check out all nine picks here.

Forshaw’s Fortunate 13

British critic and author Barry Forshaw has come out with two completely different rundowns of what he believes are the most notable crime novels released in 2015. His first selection--eight books in total--was published in The Independent this last week. You can read more about them at the link, but here are the titles:

• The Girl Who Wasn’t There, by Ferdinand von Schirach
(Little, Brown)
• The Kind Worth Killing, by Peter Swanson (Faber and Faber)
• Camille, by Pierre Lemaitre (Quercus)
• Pleasantville, by Attica Locke (Serpent’s Tail)
• Snowblind, by Ragnar Jónasson (Orenda)
• Life or Death, by Michael Robotham (Sphere)
• Dark Corners, “the final novel by the late Ruth Rendell” (Hutchinson)

In addition, Forshaw recommends a biography: “The life of one of the great golden age crime writers is granted a forensic examination in Josephine Tey (Sandstone, £19.99) by Jennifer Morag Henderson, who has an unusual take on Tey’s much-disputed sexuality.”

Meanwhile, in The Financial Times (a story hidden inconveniently behind a paywall) Forshaw picks five other works as the “top crime reads of 2015.” They are as follows:

• Tell No Tales, by Eva Dolan (Harvill Secker)
• The Killing of Bobbi Lomax, by Cal Moriarty (Faber and Faber)
• Icarus, by Deon Myer (Hodder & Stoughton)
• The Mulberry Bush, by Charles McCarry (Head of Zeus)
• Wolf Winter, by Cecilia Ekbäck (Hodder & Stoughton)

What’s most interesting about these lists, at least from my perspective, are the touted works that haven’t yet been published in the States, including von Schirach’s The Girl Who Wasn’t There, Jónasson’s Snowblind, and Dolan’s Tell No Tales. I guess I’ll just have to direct the people generous enough to give me gifts during the holidays to purchase those works from the UK.

Talents Show

Just over a week ago, Kirkus Reviews announced the names of its regular critics’ 18 favorite crime, mystery, and thriller novels published during 2015. I wasn’t part of that selection process, but today I get my say, too. I’ve devoted my new Kirkus column to the 10 works of crime fiction I “found to be the most memorable” over the last year. These include works by David Morrell, Paula Hawkins, Philip Kerr, Lori Rader-Day, Max Allan Collins, and…well, you’ll just have to click here to peruse the full list of my picks.

The Post Posts Its Preferences

This is turning out to be a big week for publications announcing their favorite books published in 2015. The latest one to broadcast its reading preferences is The Washington Post, which has selected only five “Best Mystery Books and Thrillers” of the year:

• A Banquet of Consequences, by Elizabeth George (Viking)
• Brush Back, by Sara Paretsky (Putnam)
• Dark Corners, by Ruth Rendell (Scribner)
• Rogue Lawyer, by John Grisham (Doubleday)
• The Whites, by Richard Price as Harry Brandt (Henry Holt)

Meanwhile, a few novels that could just have well have been categorized under crime fiction instead show up in the Post’s list of general fiction:

• Delicious Foods, by James Hannaham (Little, Brown)
• Eileen, by Ottessa Moshfegh (Penguin Press)
• Finders Keepers, by Stephen King (Scribner)
• GBH, by Ted Lewis (Soho Crime)
• Girl Waits with Gun, by Amy Stewart (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
• The Strangler Vine, by M.J. Carter (Putnam)

“Kirkus” Singles Out Its Stars

Not to be left behind when it comes to choosing the “best mysteries and thrillers of 2015,” Kirkus Reviews has assembled a list of its critics’ favorite 18 works published during the last 11 months. Among the picks are Derek Haas’ A Different Lie, Sue Grafton’s X, Louise Penny’s The Nature of the Beast, John Connolly’s A Song of Shadows, Emily Schultz’s The Blondes, and David Mark’s Taking Pity.

Although I serve as Kirkus’ lead crime-fiction blogger, I was not involved in this selection process. My own (quite different) rundown of preferred reads from the genre will be posted next week.

Kirkus’ choices in other categories of fiction are available here.

Wait, That’s Not 10

Earlier it was Amazon’s picks. Now, via its Facebook page, comes The Strand Magazine’s list of its “Top Ten Books of 2015.”

1. The Killing Kind, by Chris Holm (Mulholland)
2. Solitude Creek, by Jeffery Deaver (Grand Central)
3. The Fixer, by Joseph Finder (Dutton)
4. Broken Promise, by Linwood Barclay (NAL)
5. Dark Places, by Reavis Z. Wortham (Poisoned Pen Press)
6. A Pattern of Lies, by Charles Todd (Morrow)
7. Constant Fear, by Daniel Palmer (Kensington)
8. The Girl on the Train, by Paula Hawkins (Riverhead)
9. All the Old Knives, by Olen Steinhauer (Minotaur)
10. The Stranger, by Harlan Coben (Dutton)
11. The Hot Countries, by Tim Hallinan (Soho Crime)
12. The Dead Student, by John Katzenbach (Mysterious Press)

Top Reads, Top Buys

We’re definitely into “best books of 2015” season now.

Just in time for present buying, online retailer Amazon has released its editors’ picks of this year’s top crime, mystery, and thriller novels. The 20 selections include works by David Lagercrantz, Don Winslow, Lee Child, Sue Grafton, and Robert Galbraith. The site gives top honors in this category to Paula Hawkins’ suspenseful The Girl on the Train (Riverhead). The only surprise on the list might be T.C. Boyle’s The Harder They Come (Ecco), which I missed reading, having not thought of it as crime fiction.

You’ll find Amazon’s “best books” choices in all categories here.

Bullet Points: Election Day Special

• While most print and online editors (myself included) are still planning out their Best Books of 2015 coverage, Publishers Weekly has released its favorites in a dozen categories, one of which is Mystery/Thriller. Among PW’s top-10 choices: Dark Rooms, by Lili Anolik (Morrow); House of the Rising Sun, by James Lee Burke (Simon & Schuster); The Girl on the Train, by Paula Hawkins (Riverhead); and The Cartel, by Don Winslow (Knopf). You’ll find the full list here.

• Meanwhile, Goodreads is asking its users to make their preferences known among dozens of 2015 nominees in 20 “best” categories. Mystery & Thriller contenders include Daniel Silva’s The English Spy (Harper), C.J. Sansom’s Lamentation (Mulholland), Stephen King’s Finders Keepers (Scribner), and Karin Slaughter’s Pretty Girls (Morrow). Click here to take part in this opening round of voting.

• Max Allan Collins reports that he’s seen “the first cut of the final episode of the eight-episode run” of Quarry, the forthcoming Cinemax TV series based on his novels about a hired killer of that same name. “Frankly it’s great,” he writes. “For the first time you see Quarry in Vietnam, in an extended series of flashbacks. Again I warn hardcore fans that the series is an extended look at the character’s back story, and often goes its own way, though always with underpinnings of my work. And I’m told if the series is picked up for a second season, the next batch of episodes will draw heavily on Quarry’s Choice, which is among my personal favorites of the novels.”

• Double O Section has posted the first trailer for BBC Two’s London Spy, a five-part espionage drama created and written by Tom Rob Smith (Child 44), and debuting in Britain on November 9 (and on BBC America at some still-to-be-decided date). Watch the trailer below.



• Click here to see Dame Diana Rigg being interviewed recently in association with the screening of a classic Avengers episode at the British Film Institute. “She is completely open, candidly discussing a number of aspects of The Avengers and her career at large,” writes blogger Matthew Bradford (aka Tanner).

• Speaking of The Avengers, is Hannibal creator Bryan Fuller serious about rebooting that 1961-1969 UK TV series? Talk is that he would like to see Eddie Izzard (really, that Eddie Izzard?) playing John Steed. Less outlandish, I think, would be to hire Jenna Coleman for the role of Mrs. Peel. We already know she looks great in leather!

• Yikes! I haven’t even gotten around to watching Season 4 of Longmire (which began streaming back in September), but already Netflix has announced that there will be a fifth season of that contemporary Western crime drama based on Craig Johnson’s books about Wyoming Sheriff Walt Longmire (Dry Bones).

• Two continuing projects worth following: The British blog Crime Fiction Lover has commenced rolling out its 2015 New Talent November features, including a look at Todd Moss’ new Minute Zero, Tom Callaghan’s A Killing Winter, and Saira Viola’s Jukebox; and Ellery Queen’s classic whodunits are much on the minds of several “bloggers who work in the general area of Golden Age Mysteries,” as they spend Tuesdays in November writing about Queen’s work. Noah’s Archives introduces the series here.

• Mike Ripley is up in Shots with his latest “Getting Away with Murder” column--and it turns out that yours truly makes an appearance there (thanks to my recent participation at Bouchercon). Also hitting Ripley’s radar: the sadly forgotten novels of Francis Clifford (The Naked Runner, Act of Mercy, etc.); Fergus Fleming’s new biography of his uncle, James Bond creator Ian Fleming, titled The Man with the Golden Typewriter; and new novels by Eva Dolan, Anthony Quinn, Phil Redmond, and Sophie Hannah.

• Robert Crais talks with Jon Jordan of Crimespree Magazine about his new Elvis Cole/Joe Pike novel, The Promise (Putnam).

• Congratulations to the blog Pulp International on its seventh anniversary. That’s seven whole years of sexy, funny, and sometimes outrageous posts. Good job, folks!

• Steve Scott, who writes about author John D. MacDonald in his blog, The Trap of Solid Gold, has posted an excellent interview with MacDonald. It was conducted by Miami Herald reporter Mike Baxter back in 1969, at the time the “first-ever Travis McGee movie, Darker Than Amber” (with Rod Taylor), was being filmed in Florida.

• Spectre, the 24th James Bond film, is set to premiere this weekend in the States. Capitalizing on that fact, author Simon Wood (The One That Got Away) has ranked all of the preceding flicks in the 007 series according to his idiosyncratic tastes. Which, I have to say, do not swing far from my own tastes in this matter.

• Actor, lawyer, politician, and lobbyist Fred Thompson, who served as a Republican U.S. senator from Tennessee before making a rather lackluster bid for the White House in 2008, and who appeared for several years on Law & Order (2002–2007) as the Manhattan district attorney, died in Nasvhille on October 1. He was 73 years old. The New York Times has more on his life and career here.

• Finally, Martin Dolan, who recently left the Arizona Republic newspaper editorial staff under an early retirement buyout plan, wrote a long and wonderful letter to his colleagues heading out the door with him as well as the folks remaining at the daily broadsheet, recalling his more than three decades in journalism. It contains one line that expresses exactly why I got into journalism so many years ago: “In the old days, being a journalist was about as cool as you could get. You hung around smart people every day, you knew stuff most other people didn’t and you knew it before they did.”