Views from Across the Pond

Crime-fiction critics continue to sound off on their favorite new releases of 2020. This weekend, Laura Wilson of Britain’s Guardian newspaper picked 21 books—“from hard-hitting debuts and gritty mysteries to a cozy caper and a swashbuckling maritime puzzle”—that she thinks are deserving of special attention. I’m familiar with most of them, but a handful of those titles sent me looking for more information. Among Wilson’s selections:

• The Man on the Street. by Trevor Wood (Quercus)
• Three-Fifths, by John Vercher (Pushkin Vertigo)
• Leave the World Behind, by Rumaan Alam (Bloomsbury)
• Magpie Lane, by Lucy Atkins (Quercus)
• The Last Protector, by Andrew Taylor (HarperCollins)
• The Devil and the Dark Water, by Stuart Turton (Bloomsbury)
• Cry Baby, by Mark Billingham (Little, Brown)

Meanwhile, The Daily Telegraph’s Jake Kerridge submits his own list of what he believes are “the best crime and thriller novels of 2020.” His recommendations include Ian Rankin’s A Song for the Dark Times (Orion), Robert Galbraith’s Troubled Blood (Sphere), Denise Mina’s The Less Dead (Harvill Secker), and Michael Nath’s The Treatment (Riverrun). Also winning thumbs-up from Kerridge is the non-fiction work Howdunit: A Master Class in Crime Writing by Members of the Detection Club, edited by Martin Edwards (Collins Crime Club).

Finally, the UK-based Financial Times has published two different rolls of suggestions for readers in search of top-notch works from this genre released over the last dozen months. Mentioned among Barry Forshaw’s general crime choices are Tana French’s The Searcher (Viking) and Don Winslow’s Broken (HarperCollins), while Adam LeBor’s must-reads in the thriller subgenre include Charles Cumming’s Box 88 (HarperCollins) and Holly Watt’s The Dead Line (Raven).

(Hat tip to Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine.)