Diverging Opinions

I’m still in the midst of writing a column for the Kirkus Reviews Web site about my favorite crime novels of 2016 (it should appear next Tuesday). But in the meantime, other Kirkus reviewers offer their 18 picks of the Best Mysteries and Thrillers of 2016:

• The Black Widow, by Daniel Silva (Harper)
• Blind Sight, by Carol O’Connell (Putnam)
• Collecting the Dead, by Spencer Cope (Minotaur)
• Fall from Grace, by Tim Weaver (Viking)
• Fields Where They Lay, by Timothy Hallinan (Soho Crime)
• Fool Me Once, by Harlan Coben (Dutton)
• A Great Reckoning, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)
• I Let You Go, by Claire Mackintosh (Berkley)
• Livia Lone, by Barry Eisler (Thomas & Mercer)
• Missing, Presumed, by Susie Steiner (Random House)
• Only the Hunted Run, by Neely Tucker (Viking)
• Razor Girl, by Carl Hiaasen (Knopf)
• Rise the Dark, by Michael Koryta (Little, Brown)
• The Second Life of Nick Mason, by Steve Hamilton (Putnam)
• A Study in Scarlet Women, by Sherry Thomas (Berkley)
• The Watcher in the Wall, by Owen Laukkanen (Putnam)
• The Widower’s Wife, by Cate Holahan (Crooked Lan)
• You Will Know Me, by Megan Abbott (Little, Brown)

Publishers Weekly has followed suit, with a selection of 12 Best Mystery and Thriller Novels that only overlaps Kirkus’ in a few spots. Here are the PW critics’ faves:

• Blood of the Oak, by Eliot Pattison (Counterpoint)
• Don’t Turn Out the Lights, by Bernard Minier (Minotaur)
• The Father: Made in Sweden, Part I, by Anton Svensson (Quercus)
• Fields Where They Lay, by Timothy Hallinan (Soho Crime)
• A Great Reckoning, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)
• The Last Confession of Thomas Hawkins, by Antonia Hodgson (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
• London Rain, by Nicola Upson (Bourbon Street)
• Redemption Road, by John Hart (Thomas Dunne)
• Underground Airlines, by Ben H. Winters (Mulholland)
• The Vampire Tree, by Paul Halter (Locked Room International)
• The Widow, by Fiona Barton (NAL)
• You Will Know Me, by Megan Abbott (Little, Brown)