Viewpoints May Vary

2019 may be safely behind us now, but there are still several “best books of the year” rolls left to mention and ponder. First off, I want to cite the choices made by Wall Street Journal critic Tom Nolan. Since I don’t subscribe to the Journal, I have been unable to read his comments about each of the 10 books he applauded in mid-December, but he was kind enough to e-mail me his list:

• Big Sky, by Kate Atkinson
• Your House Will Pay, by Steph Cha
• Confessions of an Innocent Man, by David R. Dow
• The Sentence Is Death, by Anthony Horowitz
• Lady in the Lake, by Laura Lippman
• Heaven, My Home, by Attica Locke
• A Better Man, by Louise Penny
• The Darwin Affair, by Tim Mason
• Conviction, by Denise Mina
• The Good Cop, by Peter Steiner

Sadly, I didn’t find time over the last year to read a few of Nolan’s picks. But I’m most pleased to see Mason’s The Darwin Affair—one of my own favorite historical crime novels—make the cut.

Meanwhile, the British site Crime Fiction Lover appears to have concluded its rollout of reviewers’ reading choices. That page’s final selections include William Shaw’s Deadland, Elizabeth Haynes’ The Murder of Harriet Monckton, Philip Kerr’s Metropolis, Ann Cleeves’ The Long Call, and Adrian McKinty’s shocker, The Chain.

Over at Shotsmag Confidential, Ayo Onatade presents a terrific catalogue of 2019 preferences, among them Laura Shepherd-Robinson’s Blood & Sugar, James Lee Burke’s The New Iberia Blues, and John Curran’s The Hooded Gunman: An Illustrated History of Collins Crime Club. MysteryPeople weighs in with two lists, one from Scott Montgomery (mentioning William Boyle’s A Friend Is a Gift You Give Yourself, Jake Hinkson’s Dry County, etc.), the other by a part-time bookseller named Meike (cheering Lisa Lutz’s The Swallows, Mark Pryor’s The Book Artist, etc.). And the blog Raven Crime Reads presents a top 10 inventory that extends from James Delargy’s 55 and Alan Parks’ February’s Son to Ilaria Tuti-Flowers’ Over the Inferno and Nicolás Obregón ’s Unknown Male.

The anonymous blogger at For Winter Nights includes tales beyond crime fiction in his/her list, but the choices made from this genre (Jane Harper’s The Lost Man, Fiona Cummins’ The Neighbour, and others) are certainly estimable. Reviewer/blogger L.J. Roberts offers both “bests” and “honorable mentions” in her rundown, with Tuti-Flowers’ Over the Inferno being her “#1 book of the year.” In Murder, Mayhem and Long Dogs, Australian Jeff Popple turns thumbs up on Garry Disher’s Peace, Dervla McTiernan’s The Scholar, Adrian Magson’s Terminal Black, and more. Finally, The Nick Carter & Carter Brown Blog salutes five works not published this last year, including Jonathan Valin’s Final Notice and Frank Kane’s The Lineup.

To find additional “best crime fiction of 2019” assortments, click here, or refer to this compilation in Mystery Fanfare.

If You Need Last-Minute Present Ideas …

It seems that no matter how much I try to step away from The Rap Sheet, if only to enjoy a bit of relaxation during the holidays, it keeps drawing me back to work. Today I am called to update the extensive lists, by multiple blogs and Web sites, of the best books of 2019.

The Real Book Spy’s Ryan Steck has finally issued his selections of the “best thrillers of 2019,” breaking them down into seven obvious categories. Among his choices are Joseph Kanon’s The Accomplice, John le Carré’s Agent Running in the Field, Sandie Jones’ The First Mistake, and Alex Segura’s Miami Midnight. However, Steck’s pick for the Best Book of 2019 is Backlash, by Brad Thor.

At the same time, CrimeReads adds to its previous lists one spotlighting what it says are the best historical crime novels of the year, including C.J. Sansom’s Tombland, Sara Collins’ The Confessions of Frannie Langton, Alix Nathan’s The Warlow Experiment, and Sujata Massey’s The Satapur Moonstone. In his Sons of Spade blog, Jochem Vandersteen identifies his favorite private-eye novel of 2019 as Behind the Wall of Sleep, by James D.F. Hannah. And Andrew Nette, co-editor of the fascinating new book Sticking It to the Man: Revolution and Counter Culture in Pulp and Popular Fiction, 1950 to 1980, cites his own top 10 reads of the last 12 months, not all of them new.

Bullet Points: Impeachment Edition

• With the end of 2019 now two weeks away, “best books of the year” selections are rolling out onto the Web in increasing number. CrimeReads offers several different themes. It’s “10 Best Crime Novels of 2019” listicle includes Lisa Lutz’s The Swallows, Don Winslow’s The Border, Steph Cha’s Your House Will Pay, and Alan Bradley’s The Golden Tresses of the Dead. Also offered are choices for best international crime fiction, best psychological thrillers of 2019, best debut works, the year’s finest espionage fiction, best true-crime books, best traditional mysteries, and the foremost noir fiction of the last 12 months.

• Meanwhile, the British site Crime Time is up with its own “books of the year” choices. As is true also of CrimeReads’ lists, there are few unexpected picks among Crime Time’s top 10. But if you read down a bit further, into the preferences of individual contributors, there are some more interesting suggestions, among them Andrew Williams’ Witchfinder, Robert Jeffrey’s Man at the Window, Ray Celestin’s The Mobster’s Lament, and Laura Shepherd-Robinson’s Blood & Sugar (which I highlighted in my own top-five rundown).

• Abby Endler, author of the blog Crime by the Book, provides Criminal Element with a catalogue of 12 titles—one chosen from every month of 2019—that she believes deserve particular applause. Winning her approval are Alex Michaelides’ The Silent Patient, Alice Feeney’s I Know Who You Are, Riley Sager’s Lock Every Door, Sara Shepard’s Reputation, and eight others.

• MysteryPeople, the crime-fiction department of Austin’s famously large and commercially independent BookPeople store, is up with its “five favorite Texas crime novels of 2019.”

• The various contributors to Crime Fiction Lover are still in the process of announcing their “top five books of 2019.”

• And in its concluding episode of 2019, the Paperback Warrior podcast “revisit[s] the greatest books we read this year.” Keep in mind that the Paperback Warrior blog’s focus is on older works (predominately crime and thriller fiction), so don’t expect any overlap between its “greatest books” and those mentioned above.

• Mystery Fanfare’s Janet Rudolph reports that “with just days to go before it would have to close its doors forever, San Diego’s science fiction, fantasy, young adult, mystery, and horror bookstore Mysterious Galaxy has found a new location and new owners: Jenni Marchisotto and Matthew Berger have bought the store and will run it at its new home, 3555 Rosecrans St., Suite #107, San Diego, CA 92110. Everyone’s keeping their jobs, too. It’s a Christmas miracle.”

• Speaking of Mystery Fanfare, Rudolph has updated her extensive catalogue of Christmas-related crime fiction. There are three parts, divided according to author last names: A-E, F-L, and M-Z. She’s also added titles to her set of Hanukkah/Chanukkah mysteries, and to her inventory of Christmas short stories, novellas, and anthologies.

• Back in August, we alerted you to the start of the third annual Six-Word Mystery Contest, sponsored by the Rocky Mountain Chapter of Mystery Writers of America. It offered prizes to writers who could condense a crime story into just half a dozen words. The victors in five categories have now been announced, but the overall winner is Jeffrey Lockwood, an author and professor of natural sciences and humanities at the University of Wyoming. His punchy submission:

36D, 44 magnum, 20 to life

A press release says that “forty writers from 10 states and Australia submitted 211 six-word mysteries to this year’s competition.”

• Actor Danny Aiello may be remembered best for his roles in movies such as Moonstruck (1987) and Do the Right Thing (1989), but when I heard that he died last week at age 86, my thoughts jumped immediately to his 1997-1998 CBS-TV crime drama, Dellaventura. Yes, that 13-episode series—in which he played Anthony Dellaventura, a former New York City police detective turned private eye, who “rounds up a bunch of crackerjack crime-fighters to right wrongs that are beyond the reach of the criminal justice system”—was derided variously as a knock-off of either The Equalizer or Telly Savalas’ Kojak. However, the Daily News’ Denis Hamil argued in 1997 that the Dellaventura role was “a perfect fit” for Aiello. And as you can see in this episode of the program, “Above Reproach” (the only one I could find on YouTube, with a guest appearance by Tony Franciosa), it boasted an engaging dark air leavened by moments of humor. Aiello seemed fully comfortable leading a cast that also included his son Ricky and Anne Ramsey from Mad About You. And the opening title sequence—featuring a version of Dion DiMucci’s classic “I Was Born to Cry,” and embedded below—set the show’s tone splendidly.



• While searching around for Dellaventura installments, I stumbled across this video collection of memorable clips from the 1984-1987 CBS series Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer, in which star Stacy Keach catches too-brief looks (in multiple episodes) at an alluring young brunette—referred to simply as “The Face”—“who popped into frame and just as quickly popped out again, much to the chagrin of Mike Hammer, who was dying to meet her.” As the blog TV Character Nicknames reminds us, “The general public was also kept in the dark as to her identity until her credit line appeared on an episode of ABC’s Perfect Strangers. It revealed that ‘The Face’ was model-actress Donna Denton. Finally, after three years of just glimpses, Mike Hammer got to meet the mysterious woman in the spring 1987 episode entitled ‘A Face in the Dark.’” (Actually, the title was “A Face in the Night,” and it was broadcast originally on May 13, 1987). Of all the women Keach’s Hammer knew—or, in this instance, didn’t know—Denton’s persistently elusive lovely remains my favorite.

• A very sad change for Seattle: First and Pike News—formerly Read All About It—a newsstand landmark in the city’s historic Pike Place Market, is slated to close on December 31 after four decades in business. Back in the days when I covered the media business for Seattle Weekly, this corner shop was one of my most regular stops, a place where I could pick up not only U.S. magazines and newspapers, but also foreign publications. Want to learn more about that enterprise? Read all about it here and here.

• In Reference to Murder brings this film news:

Universal Pictures is developing Tapping the Source, based on the “surfer noir” novel by Kem Nunn. The story follows a man who heads to Huntington Beach [California] to look for his missing sister and for the three men who may have murdered her⁠—a search that takes him on a journey through a twisted world of crazed Vietnam vets, sadistic surfers, drug dealers, and mysterious seducers.

You can check out Rap Sheet contributor Steven Nester’s review of Nunn’s 1984 first novel by clicking here.

• A note in Elizabeth Foxwell’s The Bunburyist leads us to a post on the British Film Institute’s Web site in which freelance writer Pamela Hutchinson selects “10 great whodunnit mysteries,” suspect-packed pictures “in which the audience plays sleuth.”

• The site Best Thrillers has named what it contends are “The 21 Best Legal Thrillers of the 21st Century,” including Michael Connelly’s The Lincoln Lawyer, Marcia Clark’s Blood Defense, Max Allan Collins’ Supreme Justice, and Lisa Cottoline’s Corrupted.

• If you’re planning to attend next year’s Bouchercon in Sacramento, California (October 15 to 18), consider registering by December 31. Until then, the cost is $200; on January 1, it will climb to $225.

• This item comes from The Killing Times:

Acclaimed screenwriter and Endeavour creator, Russell Lewis, has adapted two of international bestseller Peter James’ award-winning novels for ITV from the Roy Grace series, starring John Simm in the lead role of the tenacious detective.

Entitled Grace, the two feature-length screenplays will narrate the first two stories in the series, Dead Simple and Looking Good Dead, which introduced Brighton based Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, a hard-working police officer who has given his life to the job.,

• For Criminal Element, Andrew Nette, co-editor of the new book Sticking It to the Man: Revolution and Counter Culture in Pulp and Popular Fiction, 1950 to 1980, highlights “six pulp, crime, and popular fiction writers from the counterculture era who may have slipped your radar, but are ripe for rediscovery.” And yes, “Mike Barry” (aka science-fiction author Barry Malzberg) ranks among them.

• Lastly, yesterday added a sad but necessary event to America’s timeline: the impeachment of Donald John Trump. Sad, because the office of the U.S. president is traditionally due respect, but Trump’s corrupt and unconstitutional efforts to pressure a foreign country (Ukraine) to interfere in the 2020 presidential campaign for his personal gain, and then his going to extraordinary lengths to cover up that perfidy, brings shame upon the office. Necessary, because as House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-New York) put it, “We cannot rely on the next election as a remedy for presidential misconduct when the president threatens the very integrity of that election. He has shown us he will continue to put his selfish interests above the good of the country. We must act without delay.” I didn’t vote for Republican Trump in 2016, and I never shall; I don’t believe he’s fit, either emotionally or intellectually, to fill the position he holds. What I have learned about him over the last few years—that he’s a bigot, a misogynist, a narcissist, and a serial sex abuser; that he cheats on his wives and demands loyalty from others, but will turn on anyone when the going gets tough; that he’s a braggart and a bully, a whiner and a con man; that he’s petty and paranoia, driven by grievance and a sucker for conspiracy theories; that he’s a habitual liar—none of those characteristics commends him as a leader or a role model, or even as a man. Trump’s mendacity is particularly pernicious. It drew special attention earlier this week, when The Washington Post counted the lies he’s told over the last three years, and came up with 7,688. One of those became Politifact’s 2019 Lie of the Year: his assertion that the still-anonymous whistle-blower who first drew public attention to Trump’s Ukraine scandal was “almost completely wrong.” A more honorable, more thoughtful, and more experienced president would not be due such condemnations.

Our Favorite Crime Fiction of 2019

There’s been no shortage of new books churned out this year. Over the last 12 months, in four separate seasonal reports (here, here, here, and here), we have highlighted more than 1,500 crime, mystery, and thriller works worth investigating. Some of those (even a few by prominent, best-selling authors) ultimately proved to be disappointing, and many others managed to be diverting and sufficiently satisfying without ever being memorable. However, a much smaller number of novels in this genre not only caught our attention, but held it—and we went on to recommend them to fellow readers.

Admittedly, we had neither the time nor manpower to tackle and judge every newly published title that drew our eyes. So we won’t maintain that our preferences represent the incontestable “best” of new crime, mystery, and thriller releases on offer in 2019. Yet we think they’re as valid as anyone else’s, and certainly worth sharing. So below, four regular Rap Sheet contributors present their favorite discoveries in this genre from the last twelvemonth. Each critic has briefly reviewed one novel of particular merit, and thereafter listed several additional choices they found to be outstanding. Almost all of the titles mentioned here first appeared in bookstores during 2019. And except where noted, the publishers mentioned are American.

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Kevin Burton Smith is the Montreal-born founder and editor of that essential 21-year-old resource, The (New) Thrilling Detective Web Site, as well as the Web Monkey for The Private Eye Writers of America and a contributing editor of Mystery Scene. He lives in Southern California’s High Desert region, where he’s still working on a non-fiction book about married detective couples with his wife, mystery author D.L. Browne (aka Diana Killian and Josh Lanyon).

• Save Me from Dangerous Men, by S.A. Lelchuk (Flatiron):

Is there anyone out there who’s actually for violence against women? If so, please leave the room. But how about violence by women?

It’s a hot-button topic these days, in some crime-fiction circles. I guess we can blame it all on Lisbeth Salander (star of the best-selling The Girl Who Tattooed “Rapist” on a Dude series), arguably the first modern-era heroine to lay a little hands-on justice on a man who just doesn’t get it. But author Stieg Larsson was a dude himself, so does that even count? Since then, though, there have been several female protagonists, all delivering their own versions of rough justice, utilizing everything from judo chops and brass knuckles to carving knives, on deserving male members of the species (and sometimes on the members of those members). A swift kick to the balls is also quite popular.

Which brings us to troubled private investigator/avenger Nikki Griffin, created by the gender-neutral (but revealed to be male) S.A. Lelchuk, cast by some as the perfect vigilante hero for the #MeToo age. Her powerful, if at times disturbing debut comes in Save Me from Dangerous Men, a ballsy mash-up of agitprop and vengeance porn; a cautionary tale (or cheap thrill read) full of sadistic, abusive men (Boo! Hiss!), with a violent, possibly unbalanced woman who often makes Ms. Salander (slyly name-checked several times) look like a pillar of mental stability (Hip-Hip-Hooray?).

“I’m not some psycho. There are people in this world who need help,” Nikki says, but her firm proclamation of sanity would go over better if it wasn’t in response to a question asked by her court-ordered therapist. Nonetheless, it’s moments like these, plus Nikki’s own self-doubts, that suggest both she and her creator may have many more depths yet to plumb.

So is this tale a socially sensitive call-to-arms, or opportunistic ca-ching? Or both? I’ve read plenty of books this year, and possibly better ones, but Save Me’s the one that really begs a sequel. And answers.

Other 2019 Favorites: Bellini and the Sphinx, by Tony Bellotto (Akashic); The Bitterest Pill, by Reed Farrel Coleman (Putnam); The Butterfly Girl, by Rene Denfield (Harper); Metropolis, by Philip Kerr (Putnam); A Time to Scatter Stones, by Lawrence Block (Subterranean); and Your House Will Pay, by Steph Cha (Ecco).

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Ali Karim is The Rap Sheet’s longtime British correspondent, a contributing editor of January Magazine, and the assistant editor of Shots. In addition, he writes for Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine, Crimespree, and Mystery Readers International.

• Cari Mora, by Thomas Harris (Grand Central):

Like his 1975 debut, Black Sunday, Harris’ sixth novel is a standalone, so does not feature his singular character, Dr. Hannibal Lecter. Instead, Cari Mora offers a furtive glance into something considerably worse: the very best, and the very worst of the people and monsters that surround us. And at both extremes, they wear our skin.

We are introduced here not only to tall, hairless, and sadistic criminal Hans-Peter Schneider (an ex-medical student, who’d been “asked to leave on ethical grounds”), but also to those clients he provides with unspeakable entertainment and horrific services—namely, the mysterious Mr. Gnis of Mauritania and Mr. Imran (both of whom remain mostly off-stage, or are mentioned only in dispatches). When we do see Mr. Imran, he’s accompanied by a burly bodyguard, one who keeps his distance and wears “archery armguards” under his tailored suits. (Schneider remarks at one point that “Mr. Imran was a biter.”)

Brought into this tale, too, is Jesus Villarreal, a dying man in Colombia who knows about some $25 million in gold bars—a secret legacy of the late drug lord Pablo Escobar—concealed in a Miami Beach residence. Villarreal needs to provide for his family, so in exchange for help, he tells the story of that gold to Schneider, but also to Don Ernesto, the head of a Colombian crime syndicate. And he warns both men that those riches are locked in a solid steel safe, booby-trapped with plastic explosives.

Now enter the eponymous Caridad “Cari” Mora, a young South American woman, clinging to her life in Miami by the thread of a precarious immigration status. A former kidnapped child-soldier, she managed to survive (and escape) the clutches of a ruthless militia, but not without “scars on her arms. Truly,” writes Harris, “they are only snaky lines on her clear brown-gold skin. The scars are more exotic than disfiguring. Like cave paintings of wavy snakes. Experience decorates us.”

Apart from the gold, Hans-Peter Schneider also wishes to capture the lovely Ms. Mora, for he has designs, unspeakable desires that are detailed on a sketch pad, and have been shared with Mr. Gnis and Mr. Imran. And there hangs this tale, a cat-and-mouse game between the Colombian criminals and the creepy Schneider.

Cari Mora lends credence to the axiom that “less is more” when a narrative is in the hands of a master. Judiciously edited, this extraordinary novel puts Harris’ ability to craft truly nightmarish villains on full and frightening display.

Other 2019 Favorites: Elevator Pitch, by Linwood Barclay (Morrow); My Sister, the Serial Killer, by Oyinkan Braithwaite (Atlantic UK); No Mercy, by Martina Cole (Headline UK); The Warehouse, by Rob Hart (Crown); and The Whisper Man, by Alex North (Celadon). Plus, from the non-fiction shelves—Crime Fiction: A Reader’s Guide, by Barry Forshaw (Oldcastle UK).

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Jim Napier is a crime-fiction critic based in Quebec, Canada. Since 2005, his reviews and interviews have appeared in several Canadian newspapers and on various crime-fiction and literary Web sites, including January Magazine and his own award-winning review site, Deadly Diversions. His debut crime novel, Legacy, was published in the spring of 2017, and the second book in that series, Ridley’s War, is scheduled for release in the spring of 2020.

• Night Watch, by David C. Taylor (Severn House):

On a September morning in 1956, Detective Michael Cassidy (NightLife, Night Work) is having his share of problems. He’s suffering from nightmares dating back to the Second World War, and to make matters worse, someone is trying to kill him—but not before tormenting him first. Cassidy discusses the threat with his police partner, Tony Orso, over breakfast, but they realize they have nothing to go on: it’s just a matter of wait and see.

So Cassidy continues doing the work for which he’s paid, and it’s not long before the cauldron that is New York City spits out a new case to capture his attention. On the southern fringes of Central Park, near Columbus Circle, a corpse has been discovered in the early morning mist. It’s the body of a middle-aged man, and he has been murdered. Although at first glance it seems like a simple mugging—the victim’s wallet is missing—the autopsy reveals that he’s been stabbed in the skull, an extremely thin, sharp blade having penetrated his brain not once, but several times. On the face of it, the victim is an unlikely target, an immigrant who takes tourists around Central Park in his carriage. Not a wealthy man, then. Cassidy is handed the case … and his investigation will lead him to a complex conspiracy involving people in the highest echelons of political power, endangering his own life and the lives of those around him.

David Taylor’s writing is simply superb, deftly capturing the noir atmosphere of postwar Manhattan, and sweeping the reader through the story line until the final page. And it’s not all plot—the atmosphere is gripping, too:

Cassidy hated the night watch. The worst of people seeped out during the night. They did things they would not do in daylight, as if darkness could hide their actions: children were thrown against the wall for not finishing dinner, women were beaten for changing the channel, rapists and muggers, stick-up artists, the perverted, and the weird, they all slid out of the shadows looking for prey. Cassidy remembered the magazine photographs of zebras and antelope gathered around a waterhole at night. The flash revealed the glowing eyes of predators waiting in the bushes—New York City after midnight.

Hammett and Chandler would have been well pleased. Readers seeking a compelling, finely honed series that is rooted in history and perfectly captures the immediacy of those deceptively placid times simply cannot do better than to grab this novel.

Other 2019 Favorites: Broken Ground, by Val McDermid (Atlantic Monthly Press); One False Move, by Robert Goddard (Bantam Press UK); Run Away, by Harlan Coben (Grand Central); and The Stranger Diaries, by Elly Griffiths (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).

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J. Kingston Pierce wears more hats than his head can firmly hold. He is the editor of both The Rap Sheet and Killer Covers, the senior editor of January Magazine, a contributing editor of CrimeReads, and a columnist with Down & Out: The Magazine.

• Blood & Sugar, by Laura Shepherd-Robinson (Mantle UK):

It’s the summer of 1781, and a young man is found hanging cruelly from a hook at Deptford Dock, on the River Thames east of London, his body displaying signs of torture and the brand of an Atlantic slave trader. Not long afterward, a widow named Amelia Bradstreet calls at the townhouse of Captain Henry Corsham, an aspiring politician and hero of Britain’s unsuccessful wars to hold onto its American colonies. She is the disgraced sister of Thaddeus “Tad” Archer, a barrister and fervent anti-slavery campaigner who was once Corsham’s closest friend. It seems Tad disappeared after traveling recently to Deptford, a town notorious for its role in the highly remunerative commerce involving African bondservants, and Amelia wants Corsham to go in search of him. She’s particularly concerned, because her sibling had told her before heading off that he’d discovered a secret capable of finally destroy the slave trade.

Not surprisingly, that Deptford lynchee was Tad, and his slaying provokes Corsham to begin searching for the killers. In order to succeed, the captain must reconstruct his old chum’s investigation into an appalling incident on board a trans-Atlantic slave ship. This leads him, further, to clash with men—wealthy, powerful, ruthless—who will do anything, conspire in any way necessary to perpetuate the selling of human flesh. Assailed by threats and alarmed by the spread of death in his wake, Corsham pursues the truth in Tad’s stead, despite it endangering his life, his family’s stability, and his prospects as a future member of Parliament; and despite fears that it will force him to reckon with a secret from his own past that he’d prefer remain concealed.

Although this is Shepherd-Robinson’s first novel, Blood & Sugar is extraordinarily sophisticated in its plot construction and most confidently written. Her portrayal of Georgian England, both its wealthy and wanton extremes, is deftly and convincingly executed (I can only imagine how many history books she must have enlisted in this endeavor!). Her characters are provided with full, sometimes surprising, dimensions. And she hesitates not for a moment to display the moral depravities of the slave trade in all their rawness. Let’s hope Shepherd-Robinson has a sequel in the works.

Other 2019 Favorites: The Darwin Affair, by Tim Mason (Algonquin); Lady in the Lake, by Laura Lippman (Morrow); Metropolis, by Philip Kerr (Putnam); and The Wolf and the Watchman, by Niklas Natt och Dag (Atria). Plus, from the non-fiction shelves—The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper, by Hallie Rubenhold (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).

No Shortage of Opinions

The “best crime and mystery fiction of 2019” lists continue to proliferate over the Web. At this link, you’ll find New York Times critic Marilyn Stasio’s 10 top picks. They were pretty predictable, though she does step off the beaten track just far enough to applaud Lisa Sandlin’s The Bird Boys and James Sallis’ Sarah Jane. And click here to look over Oline Cogdill’s choices for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, among them Owen Laukkanen’s Deception Cove, Jamie Mason’s The Hidden Things, and Allen Eskens’ Nothing More Dangerous.

A couple of mystery-fiction bookshops, both of them now operating exclusively online, are expressing their opinions on these matters, too. Aunt Agatha’s Bookstore, once prominent in Ann Arbor, Michigan, has named a dozen works of merit published over the last 12 months. Among that bunch: James R. Benn’s When Hell Struck Twelve, Melanie Golding’s Little Darlings, and S.J. Rozan’s Paper Son. Meanwhile, Portland, Oregon’s Murder by the Book offers this list of noteworthy crime novels, which includes Tim Johnston’s The Current, Kate Atkinson’s Big Sky, and Blake Crouch’s Recursion.

One final set of selections comes from the British “social cataloguing” Web site Dead Good. It asked 19 different authors, all of whom are well known in this genre, to recommend novels that first appeared this year. Gillian McAllister, for instance, suggests The Turn of the Key, by Ruth Ware. Abir Mukherjee touts Joe Country, by Mick Herron. And Jane Corry nominates The Family Upstairs, by Lisa Jewell.

(Hat tip to Mystery Fanfare.)

What You Should Have Read This Year

We have a fresh handful of works boldly purported to be the “best books of 2019.” First up are Laura Wilson’s crime and thriller nominees in The Guardian. Among her picks: Philip Kerr’s Metropolis, Attica Locke’s Heaven, My Home, Adrian McKinty’s The Chain, and Lucy Foley’s The Hunting Party.

Next up are Kristopher Zgorski’s 16 choices for BOLO Books, almost all of them written by women. Included are Alafair Burke’s The Better Sister, Ann Cleeves’ The Long Call, Tara Laskowski’s One Night Gone, and Alex Michaelides’ The Silent Patient.

Finally comes The New York Public Library’s 100 Books of the Year list. “This one is noteworthy to me,” opines Literary Hub’s Jonny Diamond, “because it reflects, shall we say, a more direct engagement with people who read books outside of professional exigencies, who are neither critics nor writers nor editors nor vampiric media types always conjuring listicles, the better [to] destroy literary culture as we know it.” Fiction and non-fiction are covered in 13 different categories. The 10 “Mystery and Suspense” choices take in Lauren Wilkinson’s American Spy, Kevin Barry’s Night Boat to Tangier, Tim Johnson’s The Current, Lara Prescott’s The Secrets We Kept, and more.

Headline Grabbers

In a follow-up to its declaration, made earlier this week, of what it believes to be “The 10 Best Books of 2019”—none of which can strictly be described as a crime novel—The New York Times has now announced its list of “100 Notable Books of 2019.”

Again, the crime, mystery, and thriller selections are frustratingly few. But at least they exist, including Lauren Wilkinson’s American Spy, Stephen King’s The Institute, Hannalore Cayre’s The Godmother, Helen Phillips’ The Need, and W.M. Akers’ Westside.

Click here to see the paper’s full 2019 “notables” inventory.

Recent Reading Recommendations

It’s that time of year again, when newspapers, magazines, and Web sites of all sorts start publishing their lists of the “best” crime, mystery, and thriller novels issued during the preceding 12 months. We will try to keep track of them on this page as they appear.

Early out of the gates is The Washington Post, which last Thursday published its selections of 10 books not to be missed. Among the choices are Kate Atkinson’s Big Sky, Liam McIlvanney’s The Quaker, Swedish author Malin Persson Giolito’s Beyond All Reasonable Doubt, and Andrea Camilleri’s The Other End of the Line.

Concurrently, Kirkus has posted its own top choices. Among those: C.J. Box’s The Bitterroots, Steph Cha’s Your House Will Pay, Attica Locke’s Heaven, My Home, and Adrian McKinty’s The Chain.

Tell us if you spot “best of the year” lists we may have missed.

A Record 10 Years in the Making

What were the highest quality—or most interesting—crime, mystery, and thriller novels published during the last 10 years? As we rush toward the beginning of a new decade, it’s understandable that various publications have already or will soon consider that question. The latest to do so is CrimeReads, which earlier this week published a feature titled “The 10 Best Crime Novels of the Last Decade.”

Setting aside the reality that any such compilation is subjective, and the word “best” in this context makes a promise it cannot hope to keep, the fact is that the top works cited by CrimeReads all have their fans, even if I didn’t read or wasn’t particularly enamored of every one. (I actually found many more to appreciate in the “Notable Selections” section at the bottom of the feature—and was reminded by that list of several books I’d forgotten about over time.) I look forward to other Web sites and blogs assembling their own, undoubtedly dissimilar end-of-decade choices. Between them all, some agreement might (I repeat, might) be found on which crime-fiction yarns readers will still recognize 20, 50, or perhaps 100 years on.

Meanwhile, the CrimeReads piece sent me back to look over which novels I have mentioned as personal favorites during every twelvemonth since 2010.

As you will see by clicking on the year-by-year links below, I started out posting these sorts of picks in January Magazine (to which I have contributed since 1997), but moved from there to Kirkus (which asked for top-10 tallies), and eventually to The Rap Sheet and CrimeReads. Studying the 78 titles here, I find myself smiling at memories of those that once held me in singular thrall, such as Peter May’s The Blackhouse, Antonia Hodgson’s The Devil in the Marshalsea, Derek B. Miller’s Norwegian by Night, and Steven Price’s delightful doorstop, By Gaslight. And I confess to being rather puzzled now by my decisions to not also include such exceptional tales as House of the Hunted, by Mark Mills (2012); Solo, by William Boyd (2013); The Stone Wife, by Peter Lovesey (2014); Invisible City, by Julia Dahl (2014); The Storm Murders, by John Farrow (2015); and the long-overdue Bertha Cool/Donald Lam private-eye novel, The Knife Slipped, by Erle Stanley Gardner (2016). The time or space pressures that forced that cataloguing economy must have frustrated me, indeed.

2010

(see here and here)

• The Anniversary Man, by R.J. Ellory
• City of Dragons, by Kelli Stanley*
• Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, by Tom Franklin*
• The Death Instinct, by Jed Rubenfeld
• Gone ’til November, by Wallace Stroby
• Peeler, by Kevin McCarthy*
• A Razor Wrapped in Silk, by R.N. Morris

(Works marked with asterisks above were reviewed by others in January Magazine that year. I’d have liked to applaud them, too, but did not in order to avoid duplication.)

2011

• City of Secrets, by Kelli Stanley
• The Cut, by George Pelecanos
• The End of Everything, by Megan Abbott
• Field Gray, by Philip Kerr
• The House of Silk, by Anthony Horowitz
• The Keeper of Lost Causes, by Jussi Adler-Olsen
• Stealing Mona Lisa, by Carson Morton
• Stolen Lives, by Jassy Mackenzie
• White Heat, by M.J. McGrath
• A Wild Surge of Guilty Passion, by Ron Hansen

2012

• The Blackhouse, by Peter May
• Broken Harbor, by Tana French
• The Candle Man, by Alex Scarrow
• Disappeared, by Anthony Quinn
• Dominion, by C.J. Sansom
• The Gods of Gotham, by Lyndsay Faye
• The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln, by Stephen L. Carter
• The Paris Deadline, by Max Byrd
• Prague Fatale, by Philip Kerr
• The Yard, by Alex Grecian

2013

• A Commonplace Killing, by Siân Busby
• The Confessions of Al Capone, by Loren D. Estleman
• Dead Man’s Land, by Robert Ryan
• Death on Demand, by Paul Thomas
• Irregulars, by Kevin McCarthy
• Little Green, by Walter Mosley
• A Man Without Breath, by Philip Kerr
• Norwegian by Night, by Derek B. Miller
• Perfect Hatred, by Leighton Gage
• Tatiana, by Martin Cruz Smith

2014

• After I’m Gone, by Laura Lippman
• Children of the Revolution, by Peter Robinson
• Darkness, Darkness, by John Harvey
• The Devil in the Marshalsea, by Antonia Hodgson
• The Lewis Man, by Peter May
• An Officer and a Spy, by Robert Harris
• Really the Blues, by Joseph Koenig
• The Secret Place, by Tana French
• Sometimes the Wolf, by Urban Waite
• Sweet Sunday, by John Lawton

2015

• The Axeman, by Ray Celestin
• The Girl on the Train, by Paula Hawkins
• Inspector of the Dead, by David Morrell
• A June of Ordinary Murders, by Conor Brady
• A Killing in Zion, by Andrew Hunt
• The Lady from Zagreb, by Philip Kerr
• Little Pretty Things, by Lori Rader-Day
• The Mulberry Bush, by Charles McCarry
• Quarry’s Choice, by Max Allan Collins
• The Whites, by Richard Price writing as Harry Brandt

2016

• Beloved Poison, by E.S. Thomson
• Better Dead, by Max Allan Collins
• By Gaslight, by Steven Price
• Charcoal Joe, by Walter Mosley
• Darktown, by Thomas Mullen
• Heart Attack and Vine, by Phoef Sutton
• The Invisible Guardian, by Dolores Redondo
• Little Sister, by David Hewson
• The Other Side of Silence, by Philip Kerr
• Underground Airlines, by Ben H. Winters
• You Will Know Me, by Megan Abbott

2017

• The Dry, by Jane Harper
• The Force, by Don Winslow
• If We Were Villains, by M.L. Rio
• Lightning Men, by Thomas Mullen
• Magpie Murders, by Anthony Horowitz

2018

• American by Day, by Derek B. Miller
• Greeks Bearing Gifts, by Philip Kerr
• The Ruin, by Dervla McTiernan
• Gallows Court, by Martin Edwards
• Sunburn, by Laura Lippman

(My choices in 2018 were limited to five. But two other works really deserved to be included: A Gentleman’s Murder, by Christopher Huang; and The Second Rider, by Alex Beer.)

I’m currently struggling to narrow down my candidates for “favorite crime novels of 2019,” without which my final assessment of the decade’s top-notch entries to this genre cannot be achieved. Watch for those on this page in early December.

While you wait, contemplate the question: Which crime, mystery, and thriller novels—first released during the last 10 years—do you remember most fondly? Please let us all know your answers in the Comments section at the bottom of this post.

READ MORE: “The Crime Fiction Series That Defined the Last
Decade” (CrimeReads).

Just a Handful of Short Takes

• We’ve now entered the concluding round of Goodreads’ voting process to select the winners of its 2019 Choice Awards. The 10 finalists in the Best Mystery and Thriller category include Ruth Ware’s The Turn of the Key, Alex Michaelides’ The Silent Patient, Jane Harper’s The Lost Man, Sally Hepworth’s The Mother-in-Law, and Harlan Coben’s Run Away. Click here before December 2 to make your preferences known. Winners in this and 19 other book categories are supposed to be announced on Tuesday, December 10.

• Meanwhile, Amazon has chosen The Silent Patient as its “best mystery and thriller of the year.” That site’s top 20 picks are here.

• I’m very pleased to hear that British social historian Hallie Rubenhold has won the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-fiction for her book The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper. It’s an excellent work that overturns some of our most common beliefs about the Ripper’s “canonical victims.”

• Max Allan Collins mentions, in his most recent blog post, that he’s concocting a follow-up to his 1987 novel Spree, which has long been the penultimate entry in his series about professional thief Nolan. That protagonist last appeared in 1999’s Mourn the Living.

• Brash Books publisher Lee Goldberg reports on Facebook that a never-before-published 13th installment in the Ralph Dennis’ Jim Hardman crime series is set for release early next year. He explains:

For decades, it was believed there were only 12 books in the late Ralph Dennis’ legendary and acclaimed Hardman series, which was published in paperback in the 1970s and that inspired a generation of crime writers, including Joe R. Lansdale (Hap & Leonard) and screenwriter Shane Black (Lethal Weapon). But this summer, we discovered an unpublished 13th Hardman manuscript, written by Dennis in London in 1977, that was stashed away decades ago in a cardboard box in an attic in Chapel Hill, NC.

Brash Books is publishing the novel, All Kinds of Ugly, in February 2020 with an afterword that details the exciting discovery and editing of this final, long-lost adventure in the Hardman series.

• I probably watched the entire run of Don Johnson’s second TV crime drama, Nash Bridges, but I never expected to see any more than that show’s original 122 episodes. Now comes this item from B.V. Lawson’s In Reference to Murder:

Don Johnson, set to reprise the title role in USA Network’s upcoming Nash Bridges revival, confirmed today that longtime co-star Cheech Marin will be back for the reboot reprising his role as Inspector Joe Dominguez. The original series, which ran on CBS from 1996 to 2001, starred Johnson as an investigator in an elite Special Investigations Unit of the San Francisco Police Department.

Hmm. Johnson will turn 70 years of age this coming December 15. Might that not make him a tad too old to again be chasing through the Bay Area after big-time criminals? You can watch the main title sequence from the original Nash Bridges here.

• Oh, no. Not a Columbo revival too. Can’t we just be happy with Peter Falk’s long-running classic series? Yes, at least for now. Apparently, Steven Moffat—the co-creator of Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock—was hoping to reboot Columbo for new viewers, but was “thwarted by red tape,” according to The Columbophile.

• As I mentioned previously on this page, I’ve been looking forward to watching BBC Two’s three-part production of Vienna Blood, based on Frank Tallis’ Max Liebermann/Oskar Rheinhardt novels. So I was disappointed to read The Killing Times’ take on Episode 1 of the show, which calls it “pretty much a compendium of clichés, handsomely dressed but fairly pedestrian” that “doesn’t do much original with its source material.” The review continues: “All the expected components are present and correct—a bit of psychoanalysis, a bit of hypnotism, a bit of fascism—and the authentic locations bring something to the party, but neither lead performance is compelling, and we feel we’ve found out everything there is to know about the two characters (one insecure and driven, the other grief-stricken by the death of his daughter). … So will Vienna Blood prove to have hidden depths of meaning in the next two episodes? Well, as Sigmund Freud famously probably didn’t say, ‘Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.’”

• The Killing Times also brings news that British performer Gary Oldman (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Child 44) will star as the politically incorrect and flagrantly flatulent Jackson Lamb in an Apple TV+ adaptation of Mick Herron’s modern espionage series. To be called Slow Horses (the title of Herron’s first book in that series), it will follow “a team of British intelligence agents who serve in a dumping ground department of MI5—Slough House. Lamb is the brilliant but irascible leader of the spies who end up in Slough House due to their career-ending mistakes.” No word yet on a premiere date.

• And here is the trailer for Dare Me, the USA Network program based on Megan Abbott’s 2012 novel of that same name. Dare Me, which will follow the lives of some competitive high school cheerleaders in “a small Midwestern town,” is set to debut on December 29, with Abbott as one of its executive producers.

Of Surveys, Series, and Circus Clowns

• After having solicited numerous nominations online for its annual Dead Good Reader Awards, the British crime-fiction Web site Dead Good is now asking people to vote for their favorites in six categories, everything from The Nosy Parker Award for Best Amateur Detective and The Jury’s Out Award for Most Gripping Courtroom Drama to The Cat and Mouse Award for Most Elusive Villain. Included among the candidates this year are The Taking of Annie Thorne, by C.J. Tudor; Thirteen, by Steve Cavanagh; The Passengers, by John Marrs; and Beautiful Liars, by Isabel Ashdown. Click here to take part in this competition. Polls will remain open through Wednesday, July 17, with winners set to be announced on Friday, July 19, at the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate, England.

• If five seasons of Bosch haven’t already satisfied your craving for Michael Connelly television adaptations, then here’s good news: Deadline reports that CBS-TV “has given a series production commitment to The Lincoln Lawyer.” David E. Kelly, creator of The Practice and Ally McBeal, will apparently write the show and serve as one of its three executive producers, along with Connelly and Ross Fineman (Goliath). As with the 2011 big-screen picture based on Connelly’s novel of the same name, CBS’ The Lincoln Lawyer “centers on Mickey Haller, an iconoclastic idealist, who runs his law practice out of the back of his Lincoln Town Car, as he takes on cases big and small across the expansive city of Los Angeles.” There’s no word yet on who’ll play Haller in the series.

• Believe it or not, there’s still no official news yet regarding which books and authors are finalists for the 2019 Nero Award, to be given out by The Wolfe Pack, a New York City-based Nero Wolfe/Archie Goodwin fan organization. In mid-June, Mystery Fanfare blogger Janet Rudolph posted a partial list of contenders—The Fallen Architect, by Charles Belfoure, and The Man Who Couldn’t Miss, by David Handler—based solely on Web chatter. However, that’s everything either she or I know so far. I have e-mailed Nero Award chair Stephannie Culbertson in search of information, but have heard nothing back. Last year’s Nero recipient was August Snow, by Stephen Mack Jones.

• CrimeReads has released an inventory of what its editors believe are “the best books of the year (so far).” Among those 25 picks are Lauren Wilkinson’s American Spy, Don Winslow’s The Border, Niklas Natt och Dag’s The Wolf and the Watchman, Lyndsay Faye’s The Paragon Hotel, Philip Kerr’s Metropolis, and Ausma Zehanat Khan’s A Deadly Divide. Several of CrimeReads’ choices also appeared on my own my own list of early 2019 crime-fiction preferences.

• Crime-fiction expert and Financial Times contributor Barry Forshaw selects four novels he thinks every reader of crime and mystery fiction should investigate this summer.

• Tim Mason, author The Darwin Affair, recalls Charles Dickens’ great interest in London’s mid-19th-century police force, which helped give rise to what was “perhaps his greatest novel,” Bleak House (1853). In turn, it was Bleak House that inspired Mason’s excellent new historical mystery, The Darwin Affair, which stars Scotland Yard detective Charles Frederick Field, the often impulsive flesh-and-blood model for Dickens’ famous Inspector Bucket.

• In a two-part post for his blog, Mysteries and More from Saskatchewan (see here and here), attorney Bill Selnes reassess the controversial involvement of New York City prosecutor-turned-novelist Linda Fairstein in the notorious Central Park Five case. It was her role in that pursuit of charges against five alleged teenage rapists (beginning in 1990) that has led of late to the Mystery Writers of America withdrawing her nomination as one of its Grand Masters, and to her publisher booting Fairstein from its stable.

• For Mystery Scene magazine, Ben Boulden surveys the long, colorful history of mysteries set around circuses and carnivals.

• New Zealand actress-singer Lucy Lawless, best known for her ass-kicking role in Xena: Warrior Princess (1995–2001), is returning to television—at least in Australia. According to The Killing Times, she will play Alexa Crowe, “a brilliant, charismatic and ever-so-slightly scruffy ex-homicide detective,” in My Life Is Murder, a 10-part crime drama scheduled to debut Down Under within the next several weeks. Let’s hope this show eventually makes it to the States.

• And who remembers the 1985 made-for-TV movie Izzy and Moe, featuring Jackie Gleason and Art Carney (formerly co-stars of The Honeymooners) as a pair of Prohibition-era federal cops, their characters based on highly successful, real-life liquor-law enforcers? At least for the nonce, that 92-minute film is available on YouTube in 10 parts. Watch it now, before it disappears!

How About Some Villainy and Vice to Go Along with This Season’s Sand and Sunshine?

It’s happening already: print magazines, blogs, and other Web sites are announcing their choices of “the best books of 2019 (so far).” The Guardian, Real Simple, Esquire, New York magazine’s Vulture site—they have all done it, racing ahead of the usual November/December ritual of choosing the foremost works released during the preceding 12 months, as if their editors can’t possibly wait another half-year to broadcast their considered, if perhaps premature, opinions.

This isn’t an exercise in which I customarily take part. However, I have been impressed by a number of the crime, mystery, and thriller novels I’ve tackled over the last six months. Impressed enough that I have decided to applaud 10 of them early:

— Blood & Sugar, by Laura Shepherd-Robinson (Mantle)
— The Darwin Affair, by Tim Mason (Algonquin)
— The Devil Aspect, by Craig Russell (Doubleday)
— The King’s Evil, by Andrew Taylor (HarperCollins)
— Metropolis, by Philip Kerr (Putnam)
— The Moroccan Girl, by Charles Cumming (St. Martin’s Press)
— The Paragon Hotel, by Lyndsay Faye (Putnam)
— Smoke and Ashes, by Abir Mukherjee (Pegasus)
— The Summer of Ellen, by Agnete Friis (Soho Crime)
— The Wolf and the Watchman, by Niklas Natt och Dag (Atria)

In addition, I should mention British author-historian Hallie Rubenhold’s The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), a sedulously researched work that currently ranks as my favorite true-crime tale of 2019.

Of course, none of the aforementioned titles is guaranteed a spot on my year-end register of reading preferences; there are far too many books in this genre, due out between now and New Year’s Day, that still await my attention and may prove to be even more to my liking. For instance, Martin Walker has a new Bruno Courrèges yarn, The Body in the Castle Well (Knopf), just out, and we can look forward later in June to fresh fiction from Kate Atkinson (Big Sky), Mick Herron (Joe Country), Denise Mina (Conviction), and Andrew Martin (The Winker). As we move deeper into summer, we’ll also be offered new stories by Adrian McKinty (The Chain), Laura Lippman (Lady in the Lake), Richard Russo (Chances Are …), Helen Phillips (The Need), Peter Lovesey (Killing with Confetti), S.J. Rozan (Paper Son), James Oswald (Nothing to Hide), Christobel Kent (A Secret Life), Robert Crais (A Dangerous Man), Louise Penny (A Better Man), Alex Segura (Miami Midnight), Lisa Lutz (The Swallows), and Max Byrd (The Sixth Conspirator). Keep a watch, too, for Swedish author David Lagercrantz’s final Lisbeth Salander adventure, The Girl Who Lived Twice; a collection of unpublished works by Gil Brewer, Death Is a Private Eye; Jo Nesbø’s Knife, his 12th case for Norwegian detective Harry Hole; what I hope will be a wonderful anthology of vintage crime-fiction short stories, The Best of Manhunt; the third entry in John A. Connell’s World War II-era series about U.S. Army investigator Mason Collins, Blood of the Innocent; and Sticking It to the Man: Revolution and Counterculture in Pulp and Popular Fiction, 1950 to 1980, edited by Andrew Nette and Iain McIntyre, a non-fiction release to which I contributed an essay.

Below, you will find a curated selection of more than 400 books—all due to appear in stores (on both sides of the Atlantic) during the next three, warmer months—that should be of particular interest to devotees of crime and thriller fiction. Those marked with asterisks (*) belong on the non-fiction shelves; the rest are novels or short-story collections. To learn which of them I find most engrossing, you’ll have to be patient until I post my “best of 2019” list in December.

JUNE (U.S.):

• The Adventures of Maud West, Lady Detective: Secrets and Lies in the Golden Age of Crime, by Susannah Stapleton (Picador)*

• All the Lost Things, by Michelle Sacks (Little, Brown)

• Assassin of Shadows, by Lawrence Goldstone (Pegasus)

• Aunt Dimity and the Heart of Gold, by Nancy Atherton (Viking)

• Backlash, by Brad Thor (Atria/Emily Bestler)

• Beautiful Liars, by Isabel Ashdown (Kensington)

• Before I Wake, by David Morrell (Subterranean)

• Beyond All Reasonable Doubt, by Malin Persson Giolito (Other Press)

• Big Sky, by Kate Atkinson ( Little, Brown)

• The Body in Question, by Jill Ciment (Pantheon)

• The Body in the Castle Well, by Martin Walker (Knopf)

• The Body Lies, by Jo Baker (Knopf)

• Bone Deep, by Sandra Ireland (Gallery)

• Breaking the Dance, by Clare O’Donohue (Midnight Ink)

• The Buy Back Blues, by Ralph Dennis (Brash)

• Chai Another Day, by Leslie Budewitz (Seventh Street)

• Charlie-316, by Colin Conway and Frank Zafiro (Down & Out)

• City of Fear, by Larry Enmon (Crooked Lane)

• Conviction, by Denise Mina (Mulholland)

• The Cutting Room, by Ashley Dyer (Morrow)

• The Darwin Affair, by Tim Mason (Algonquin)

• Dead Big Dawg, by Victoria Houston (Gallery)

• Dead Wrong: The Continuing Story of City of Lies, Corruption and Cover-Up in the Notorious BIG Murder Investigation, by Randall Sullivan (Atlantic Monthly Press)*

• Death in Kew Gardens, by Jennifer Ashley (Berkley)

• Death in Summer, by Michael Theurillat (Manilla)

• Deep Waters: Mysteries on the Waves, edited by Martin Edwards (British Library)

• Die Behind the Wheel: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Music of Steely Dan, edited by Brian Thornton (Down & Out)

• The Disappearance of Alistair Ainsworth, by Leonard
Goldberg (Minotaur)

• The Ditch, by Herman Koch (Hogarth)

• Drink to Every Beast, by Joel Burcat (Headline)

• Fake Like Me, by Barbara Bourland (Grand Central)

• A Family of Strangers, by Emilie Richards (Mira)

• The First Mistake, by Sandie Jones (Minotaur)

• The Friend, by Joakim Zander (Harper)

• Girl Gone Missing, by Marcie Rendon (Cinco Puntos Press)

• Girl in the Rearview Mirror, by Kelsey Rae Dimberg (Morrow)

• The Gone Dead, by Chanelle Benz (Ecco)

• Gone Too Long, by Lori Roy (Dutton)

• Grab a Snake by the Tail, by Leonardo Padura (Bitter Lemon Press)

• Her Daughter’s Mother, by Daniela Petrova (Putnam)

• Hitchcock and the Censors, by John Billheimer (University
Press of Kentucky)*

• I Know You, by Annabel Kantaria (Crooked Lane)

• I’ll Never Tell, by Catherine McKenzie (Lake Union)

• Joe Country, by Mick Herron (Soho Crime)

• Just One Bite, by Jack Heath (Hanover Square Press)

• Killing State, by Judith O'Reilly (Head of Zeus)

• A King Alone, by Jean Giono (NYRB Classics)

• The Last House Guest, by Megan Miranda (Simon & Schuster)

• The L.A. Quartet: The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, White Jazz, by James Ellroy (Everyman’s Library)

• The Last of the Armageddon Wars, by Ralph Dennis (Brash)

• The Last Pirate of New York: A Ghost Ship, a Killer, and the Birth of a Gangster Nation, by Rich Cohen (Spiegel & Grau)*

• The Last Widow, by Karin Slaughter (HarperCollins)

• Like This Afternoon Forever, by Jaime Manrique (Kaylie Jones/Akashic)

• A Long Way Down, by Randall Silvis (Poisoned Pen Press)

• Man of the Year, by Caroline Louise Walker (Gallery)

• A Matter of Will, by Adam Mitzner (Thomas & Mercer)

• The Mausoleum, by David Mark (Severn House)

• A Merciful Promise, by Kendra Elliot (Montlake Romance)

• Miss Pinkerton, by Mary Roberts Rinehart (American Mystery Classics)

• Mrs. Mohr Goes Missing, by
Maryla Szymiczkowa (Oneworld)

• Murder in Bel-Air,
by Cara Black (Soho Crime)

• Murder in the Crooked House,
by Soji Shimada (Pushkin Vertigo)

• My Life as a Rat,
by Joyce Carol Oates (Ecco)

• A Nearly Normal Family, by M.T. Edvardsson (Celadon)

• Norco ’80: The True Story of the Most Spectacular Bank Robbery in American History, by Peter Houlahan (Counterpoint)*

• One Night at the Lake, by Bethany Chase (Ballantine)

• The Perfect Fraud, by Ellen LaCorte (Harper)

• The Perfect Plan, by Bryan Reardon (Dutton)

• A Philosophy of Ruin, by Nicholas Mancusi (Hanover Square Press)

• A Plain Vanilla Murder, by Susan Wittig Albert (Persevero Press)

• The Playground Murders, by Lesley Thomson (Head of Zeus)

• Rag and Bone, by Joe Clifford (Oceanview)

• Random Act, by Gerry Boyle (Islandport Press)

• Recursion, by Blake Crouch (Crown)

• The Right Sort of Man, by Allison Montclair (Minotaur)

• The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes: The Greatest Detective Stories, 1837-1914, edited by Graeme Davis (Pegasus)

• Rogue Strike, by David Ricciardi (Berkley)

• Rouge, by Richard Kirshenbaum (St. Martin’s Press)

• The Safe House, by Kiki Swinson (Dafina)

• Searching for Sylvie Lee, by Jean Kwok (Morrow)

• The Secret Mother, by Shalini Boland (Grand Central)

• Seven Ways to Get Rid of Harry, by Jen Conley (Down & Out)

• The Shallows, by Matt Goldman (Forge)

• Shoot the Bastards, by Michael Stanley (Poisoned Pen Press)

• A Shot of Murder, by J.A. Kazimer (Midnight Ink)

• Sleepless Summer, by Bram Dehouck (World Editions)

• Smallbone Deceased, by Michael Gilbert (Poisoned Pen Press)

• The Snakes, by Sadie Jones (Harper)

• The Spies of Shilling Lane, by Jennifer Ryan (Crown)

• The Starter Wife, by Nina Laurin (Grand Central)

• Ten Swedes Must Die, by Martin Österdahl (Amazon Crossing)

• Their Little Secret, by Mark Billingham (Atlantic Monthly Press)

• Thin Air, by Lisa Gray (Thomas & Mercer)

• This Storm, by James Ellroy (Knopf)

• Those People, by Louise Candlish (Berkley)

• Traitor’s Codex, by Jeri Westerson (Severn House)

• The Truffle Underground: A Tale of Mystery, Mayhem, and Manipulation in the Shadowy Market of the World’s Most Expensive Fungus, by Ryan Jacobs (Clarkson Potter)*

• The Ugly Truth, by Jill Orr (Prospect Park)

• Ungentlemanly Warfare, by Howard Linskey (No Exit Press)

• Unraveling, by Karen Lord (DAW)

• The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone, by Felicity McLean (Algonquin)

• Wherever She Goes, by Kelley Armstrong (Minotaur)

• The Woman in Our House, by Andrew Hart (Lake Union)

• The Woman Who Spoke to Spirits, by Alys Clare (Severn House)

• Your Life Is Mine, by Nathan Ripley (Atria)

JUNE (UK):

• The Art of Deception, by Louise Mangos (HQ)

• The Beijing Conspiracy, by Shamini Flint (Severn House)

• Black Summer, by M.W. Craven (Constable)

• The Boy Who Fell, by Jo Spain (Quercus)

• The Colours of Murder, by Ali Carter (Point Blank)

• Date with Poison, by Julia Chapman (Pan)

• Death at Burwell Farm, by Betty Rowlands (Bookouture)

• Death in Avignon, by Serena Kent (Orion)

• The End of the Line, by Gillian Galbraith (Polygon)

• The Exiled, by David Barbaree (Zaffre)

• A Fatal Game, by Nicholas Searle (Viking)

• The Friend Who Lied, by Rachel Amphlett (Saxon)

• Girl at Midnight, by Katarzyna Bonda (Hodder & Stoughton)

• I Looked Away, by Jane Corry (Penguin)

• The Killing Gene, by E.M. Davey (Duckworth)

• The Lies We Tell, by Niki Mackay (Orion)

• A Line of Forgotten Blood, by Malcolm Mackay (Head of Zeus)

• Mr. Campion’s Visit,
by Mike Ripley (Severn House)

• Mosaic, by Caro Ramsey (Severn House)

• The Most Difficult Thing,
by Charlotte Philby (Borough Press)

• The Mother-in-Law,
by Sally Hepworth (Hodder)

• Murder at Whitby Abbey, by Cassandra Clark (Severn House)

• Naked Flames,
by Graham Ison (Severn House)

• The Nanny, by Gilly Macmillan (Century)

• Now You See Me, by Chris McGeorge (Orion)

• The October Man, by Ben Aaronovitch (Gollancz)

• One Way Out, by A.A. Dhand (Bantam Press)

• Our Little Secrets, by Peter Ritchie (Black and White)

• The Perfect Betrayal, by Lauren North (Corgi)

• The Serpent’s Mark, by S.W. Perry (Corvus)

• Shadowplay, by Joseph O’Connor (Harvill Secker)

• The Sleepwalker, by Joseph Knox (Doubleday)

• Somewhere Close to Happy, by Lia Louis (Trapeze)

• Spring Cleaning, by Antonio Manzini (Harper)

• Tell Me Your Secret, by Dorothy Koomson (Headline Review)

• Trap Lane, by Stella Cameron (Creme de la Crime)

• The Unseen Hand, by Edward Marston (Allison and Busby)

• White Hot Silence, by Henry Porter (Quercus)

• Who Killed Ruby? by Camilla Way (HarperCollins)

• Who’s Sorry Now? by Maggie Robinson (Poisoned Pen Press)

• The Winker, by Andrew Martin (Corsair)

• Wolves at the Door, by Gunnar Staalesen (Orenda)

• Your Truth or Mine? by Trisha Sakhlecha (Macmillan)

JULY (U.S.):

• Almost Midnight, by Paul Doiron (Minotaur)

• American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century, by Maureen Callahan (Viking)*

• The Arrangement, by Robyn Harding (Gallery/Scout Press)

• Bad Axe County, by John Galligan (Atria)

• Bark of Night, by David Rosenfelt (Minotaur)

• Beijing Payback, by Daniel Nieh (Ecco)

• The Best of Manhunt, edited by Jeff Vorzimmer (Stark House Press)

• Betrayal in Time, by Julie McElwain (Pegasus)

• The Bird Boys, by Lisa Sandlin (Cinco Puntos Press)

• Black Sun, by Owen Matthews (Doubleday)

• Blindsided, by Kate Watterson (Crooked Lane)

• Blood in Eden, by Peter Tremayne (Severn House)

• Bodies from the Library 2: Forgotten Stories of Mystery and Suspense by the Queens of Crime and other Masters of Golden Age Detection, edited by Tony Medawar (Collins Crime Club)

• The Body in Griffith Park, by Jennifer Kincheloe (Seventh Street)

• Bones of the Innocent, by John A. Connell (Nailhead)

• A Capitol Death, by Lindsey Davis (Minotaur)

• The Chain, by Adrian McKinty (Mulholland)

• Chances Are …, by Richard Russo (Knopf)

• The Churchgoer, by Patrick Coleman (Harper Perennial)

• The Content Assignment, by Holly Roth (Dover)

• The Dead Girl in 2A, by Carter Wilson (Poisoned Pen Press)

• Dead Silence, by Wendy Corsi Staub (Morrow)

• Death in a Desert Land, by Andrew Wilson (Washington Square Press)

• Deep Dive, by Chris Knopf (Permanent Press)

• Dragonfly, by Leila Meacham (Grand Central)

• The Dreaming Tree, by Matthew Mather (Blackstone)

• The Escape Room, by Megan Goldin (St. Martin’s Press)

• First Tracks, by Catherine O’Connell (Severn House)

• Fragments of Fear, by Carrie Stuart Parks (Thomas Nelson)

• Frozen Secrets, by Michael L. Douglas (MCP)

• Game of Snipers, by Stephen Hunter (Putnam)

• The Ghost Clause, by Howard Norman (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

• Girls Like Us, by Cristina Alger (Putnam)

• Good Girl, Bad Girl, by Michael Robotham (Scribner)

• Goodnight Stranger, by Miciah Bay Gault (Park Row)

• The Gomorrah Gambit, by Tom Chatfield (Mulholland)

• Grave Expectations, by Heather Redmond (Kensington)

• Greasy Bend, by Kris Lackey (Blackstone)

• Gretchen, by Shannon Kirk (Thomas & Mercer)

• Growing Things and Other Stories, by Paul Tremblay (Morrow)

• The Hallows, by Victor Methos (Thomas & Mercer)

• The Hard Stuff, by David Gordon (Mysterious Press)

• The Haunted Martyr, by Kenneth Cameron (Felony & Mayhem)

• The Heart Keeper, by Alex Dahl (Berkley)

• Heart of Barkness, by Spencer Quinn (Forge)

• Heavy on the Dead, by G.M. Ford (Thomas & Mercer)

• Her Deadly Secrets, by Laura Griffin (Gallery)

• The Honorary Jersey Girl, by Albert Tucher (Shotgun Honey)

• Hope Rides Again, by Andrew Shaffer (Quirk)

• The Hound of Justice, by Claire O’Dell (Harper Voyager)

• A House Divided, by Jonathan F. Putnam (Crooked Lane)

• Invisible Blood, edited by Maxim Jakubowski (Titan)

• Killer in the Carriage House, by Sheila Connolly (Minotaur)

• Killing with Confetti, by Peter Lovesey (Soho Crime)

• Knife, by Jo Nesbø (Knopf)

• Labyrinth, by Catherine Coulter (Gallery)

• Lady in the Lake,
by Laura Lippman (Morrow)

• The Last List of Miss Judith Kratt, by Andrea Bobotis (Sourcebooks Landmark)

• Layover, by David Bell (Berkley)

• Lock Every Door, by Riley Sager (Dutton)

• The Magic Chair Murder,
by Diane James (Severn House)

• Maigret’s Childhood Friend, by Georges Simenon (Penguin Classics)

• Marah Chase and the Conqueror’s Tomb, by Jay Stringer (Pegasus)

• Marked Men, by Chris Simms (Severn House)

• The Mountain Master of Sha Tin, by Ian Hamilton
(House of Anansi Press)

• Murderabilia, by Carl Vonderau (Midnight Ink)

• Murder at Crossways, by Alyssa Maxwell (Kensington)

• A Necessary Murder, by M.J. Tjia (Legend Press)

• The Need, by Helen Phillips (Simon & Schuster)

• Never Have I Ever, by Joshilyn Jackson (Morrow)

• Never Look Back, by Alison Gaylin (Morrow)

• The New Girl, by Daniel Silva (Harper)

• The Night of Rome, by Carlo Bonini and Giancarlo de
Cataldo (World Noir)

• Off the Grid, by Robert McCaw (Oceanview)

• One Good Deed, by David Baldacci (Grand Central)

• One Little Secret, by Cate Holahan (Crooked Lane)

• The Other Mrs. Miller, by Allison Dickson (Putnam)

• Paper Son, by S.J. Rozan (Pegasus)

• Pretty Revenge, by Emily Liebert (Gallery)

• Purgatory, by Guido Eekhaut (Skyhorse)

• The Reunion, by Guillaume Musso (Little, Brown)

• Rocket to the Morgue, by Anthony Boucher (American
Mystery Classics)

• The Russian, by Ben Coes (St. Martin’s Press)

• Season of Darkness, by Cora Harrison (Severn House)

• Second Sight, by Aoife Clifford (Pegasus)

• Shamed, by Linda Castillo (Minotaur)

• The Shameless, by Ace Atkins (Putnam)

• Sherlock Holmes: Adventures in the American West,
by John S. Fitzpatrick (Riverbend)

• Sherlock Holmes: The Sign of Seven, edited by Martin
Rosenstock (Titan)

• Sherlock Holmes vs. Cthulhu: The Adventure of the Innsmouth Mutations, by Lois H. Gresh (Titan)

• Shibumi (40th Anniversary Edition), by Trevanian (Rare Bird)

• A Shroud of Leaves, by Rebecca Alexander (Titan)

• A Sinner’s Prayer, by M.P. Wright (Black and White)

• Slugger, by Martin Holmén (Pushkin Vertigo)

• Smokescreen, by Iris Johansen (Grand Central)

• Snowball, by Jimmy Sangster (Brash)

• Someone We Know, by Shari Lapena (Pamela Dorman)

• Speaking of Summer, by Kalisha Buckhanon (Counterpoint)

• A Stranger on the Beach, by Michele Campbell (St. Martin’s Press)

• The Subject of Malice, by Cynthia Kuhn (Henery Press)

• Surfeit of Suspects, by George Bellairs (Poisoned Pen Press)

• Tangled Roots, by Marcia Talley (Severn House)

• Tell Me Everything, by Cambria Brockman (Ballantine)

• Temper, by Layne Fargo (Gallery/Scout Press)

• Theme Music, by T. Marie Vandelly (Dutton)

• This Side of Night, by J. Todd Scott (Putnam)

• Too Close, by Natalie Daniels (Harper)

• True Believer, by Jack Carr (Atria/Emily Bestler)

• Triumph of the Spider Monkey, by Joyce Carol Oates
(Hard Case Crime)

• The Two Lila Bennetts, by Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke (Lake Union)

• Under the Cold Bright Lights, by Garry Disher (Soho Crime)

• An Unsettled Grave, by Bernard Schaffer (Kensington)

• The Venetian Masquerade, by Philip Gwynne Jones (Constable)

• Watchers of the Dead, by Simon Beaufort (Severn House)

• We Went to the Woods, by Caite Dolan-Leach (Random House)

• Whisper Network, by Chandler Baker (Flatiron)

JULY (UK):

• The Bear Pit, by S.G. MacLean (Quercus)

• The Bone Fire, by S.D. Sykes (Hodder & Stoughton)

• A Breath on Dying Embers, by Denzil Meyrick (Polygon)

• Call Him Mine, by Tim MacGabhann (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)

• The Closer I Get, by Paul Burston (Orenda)

• Come Back for Me,
by Heidi Perks (Century)

• Darkest Truth, by Catherine Kirwan (Arrow)

• Death’s Dark Valley,
by Paul Doherty (Headline)

• Don’t Tell Teacher, by Suzy K. Quinn (HQ)

• A Grave for Two, by Anne Holt (Corvus)

• The Hidden Wife,
by Amanda Reynolds (Wildfire)

• The Holiday, by T.M. Logan (Zaffre)

• The Home, by Sarah Stovell (Orenda)

• The Housemate, by C. L. Pattison (Headline)

• Hudson’s Kill, by Paddy Hirsch (Corvus)

• The July Girls, by Phoebe Locke (Wildfire)

• The Maltese Herring, by L.C. Tyler (Allison and Busby)

• Nothing to Hide, by James Oswald (Wildfire)

• On My Life, by Angela Clarke (Mulholland)

• The Poison Garden, by Alex Marwood (Sphere)

• The Possession, by Michael Rutger (Zaffre)

• The Room of the Dead, by M.R.C. Kasasian (Head of Zeus)

• Sanctuary, by Luca D’Andrea (MacLehose Press)

• A Secret Life, by Christobel Kent (Sphere)

• Short Range, by Stephen Leather (Hodder & Stoughton)

• Stone Cold Heart, by Caz Frear (Harper)

• Tightrope, by Marnie Riches (Trapeze)

AUGUST (U.S.):

• An Artful Assassin in Amsterdam, by Michael Grant (Severn House)

• Below the Line, by Howard Michael Gould (Dutton)

• Below the Radar, by Dana Ridenour (Wise Ink)

• A Better Man, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)

• The Birthday Girl, by Melissa de la Cruz (Dutton)

• The Bitterroots, by C.J. Box (Minotaur)

• The Broken Fixer, by Ralph Dennis (Brash)

• Careful What You Wish For, by Hallie Ephron (Morrow)

• The Catholic School, by Edoardo Albinati (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

• City of Pearl, by Alys Clare (Severn House)

• City of Windows, by Robert Pobi (Minotaur)

• The Cold Way Home, by Julia Keller (Minotaur)

• Cold Woods, by Karen Katchur (Thomas & Mercer)

• A Conspiracy of Wolves, by Candace Robb (Crème de la Crime)

• A Dance of Cranes, by Steve Burrows (Oneworld)

• A Dangerous Man, by Robert Crais (Putnam)

• A Darker State, by David Young (Bonnier Zaffre)

• Dead at First Sight, by Peter James (Pan Macmillan)

• A Deadly Deception, by Tessa Harris (Kensington)

• Death Comes to Dartmoor, by Vivian Conroy (Crooked Lane)

• Death Is a Private Eye, by Gil Brewer (Stark House Press)

• Devotion, by Madeline Stevens (Ecco)

• The Doll Factory, by Elizabeth Macneal (Atria/Emily Bestler)

• The Dragon Lady, by Louisa Treger (Bloomsbury Caravel)

• Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, by Olga
Tokarczuk (Riverhead)

• Empty Hearts, by Juli Zeh (Nan A. Talese)

• Forgotten Bones, by Vivian Barz (Thomas & Mercer)

• The Ghosts of Eden Park: The Bootleg King, the Women Who Pursued Him, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz-Age America,
by Karen Abbott (Crown)*

• The Girl on the Porch, by Richard Chizmar (Subterranean)

• The Girl Who Lived Twice, by David Lagercrantz (Knopf)

• Gumshoe Rock, by Rob Leininger (Oceanview)

• The Hidden Things, by Jamie Mason (Gallery)

• Inheritance Tracks, by Catherine Aird (Severn House)

• Invitation to Die, by Barbara Cleverly (Soho Crime)

• Killer’s Choice, by Louis Begley (Nan A. Talese)

• The Lake of Learning, by Steve Berry and M.J. Rose
(Evil Eye Concepts)

• The Last Good Guy, by T. Jefferson Parker (Putnam)

• The Last Widow, by Kari Slaughter (Morrow)

• Lost You, by Haylen Beck (Crown)

• Love and Death Among the Cheetahs,
by Rhys Bowen (Berkley)

• Maigret and the Killer,
by Georges Simenon (Penguin Classics)

• The Man in the White Linen Suit,
by David Handler (Morrow)

• The Man Who Wouldn’t Die,
by A.B. Jewell (Morrow)

• The Memory Police,
by Yoko Ogawa (Pantheon)

• Miami Midnight, by Alex Segura (Polis)

• The Missing Ones, by Edwin Hill (Kensington)

• Murder in the Mill-Race, by E.C.R. Lorac (Poisoned Pen Press)

• No Good Deed, by James Swain (Thomas & Mercer)

• The Passengers, by John Marrs (Berkley)

• The Peaceful Valley Crime Wave, by Bill Pronzini (Forge)

• The Pearl Dagger, by L.A. Chandler (Kensington)

• The Perfect Son, by Laura North (Berkley)

• The Perfect Wife, by J.P. Delaney (Ballantine)

• Play with Fire, by William Shaw (Mulholland)

• Relative Fortunes, by Marlowe Benn (Lake Union)

• The Runaway, by Hollie Overton (Redhook)

• Run, Hide, Fight Back, by April Henry (Henry Holt)

• Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession, by Rachel Monroe (Scribner)*

• The Second Biggest Nothing, by Colin Cotterill (Soho Crime)

• Simply Dead, by Eleanor Kuhns (Severn House)

• Singapore Sapphire, by A.M. Stuart (Berkley)

• The Sixth Conspirator, by Max Byrd (Permuted Press)

• Sticking It to the Man: Revolution and Counterculture in Pulp and Popular Fiction, 1950 to 1980, edited by Andrew Nette and
Iain McIntyre (PM Press)*

• Stolen Things, by R.H. Herron (Dutton)

• The Swallows, by Lisa Lutz (Ballantine)

• The Third Mrs. Durst, by Ann Aguirre (Midnight Ink)

• Thirteen, by Steve Cavanagh (Flatiron)

• This Poison Will Remain, by Fred Vargas (Penguin)

• Tin Badges, by Lorenzo Carcaterra (Ballantine)

• The Turn of the Key, by Ruth Ware (Gallery/Scout Press)

• Twisted at the Root, by Ellen Hart (Minotaur)

• Vanishing in the Haight, by Max Tomlinson (Oceanview)

• The Warehouse, by Rob Hart (Crown)

• The Warlow Experiment, by Alix Nathan (Doubleday)

• What You Did, by Claire McGowan (Thomas & Mercer)

• The Whisperer, by Karin Fossum (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

• The Whisper Man, by Alex North (Celadon)

• The Wolf Wants In, by Laura McHugh (Spiegel & Grau)

• The Woman in the Park, by Teresa Sorkin and
Tullan Holmqvist (Beaufort)

AUGUST (UK):

• The Art of Dying, by Douglas Lindsay (Mulholland)

• The Art of Dying, by Ambrose Parry (Canongate)

• At Your Door, by J.P. Carter (Avon)

• Bad Day at the Vulture Club, by Vaseem Khan (Mulholland)

• The Bastille Spy, by C.S. Quinn (Corvus)

• Black Ops, by Chris Ryan (Coronet)

• The Burning Land, by George Alagiah (Canongate)

• The Cabin, by Jørn Lier Horst (Michael Joseph)

• Control, by Hugh Montgomery (Zaffre)

• The Darker Arts, by Oscar de Muriel (Orion)

• The Dirty Dozen, by Lynda La Plante (Zaffre)

• Don’t Say a Word, by Rebecca Tinnelly (Hodder)

• Drowned Lives, by Stephen Booth (Sphere)

• The Family Upstairs, by Lisa Jewell (Century)

• Fugitive 13, by Rob Sinclair (Orion)

• How the Dead Speak, by Val McDermid (Little, Brown)

• Ice Cold Heart, by P.J. Tracy (Michael Joseph)

• Impolitic Corpses, by Paul Johnston (Severn House)

• I Spy, by Claire Kendal (HarperCollins)

• Laetitia Rodd and the Case of the Wandering Scholar,
by Kate Saunders (Bloomsbury)

• The Murder Map, by Danny Miller (Bantam Press)

• Night, by Bernard Minier (Mulholland)

• Sanctuary, by V.V. James (Gollancz)

• The Sanctuary Murders, by Susanna Gregory (Sphere)

• Take It Back, by Kia Abdullah (HQ)

• Then She Vanishes, by Claire Douglas (Penguin)

• Time for the Dead, by Lin Anderson (Macmillan)

• The Victim, by G.D. Sanders (Avon)

• The White Feather Killer, by R.N. Morris (Severn House)

When compiling this list, I sought a mix of darker, hard-edged crime and lighter-weight fiction, historical and modern stories, and both plot-driven and character-propelled yarns. If you believe I’ve missed mentioning any works of particular note, please let us all know about them in the Comments section at the end of this post.