It’s a Start

Never a company to miss opportunities for promoting its products, Amazon has published an inventory of what it proclaims are the “Best Books of the Year So Far.” Among those top 20 are several works of crime fiction: We Begin at the End, by Chris Whitaker; The Plot, by Jean Hanff Korelitz; The Other Black Girl, by Zakiya Dalila Harris; The Good Sister, by Sally Hepworth; and Girl A, by Abigail Dean.

A companion selection seeks to identify the “Best Mysteries and Thrillers of 2021 So Far.” Those novels include four of the five works mentioned above, plus The Last Thing He Told Me, by Laura Dave; The Sanatorium, by Sarah Pearse; Northern Spy, by Flynn Berry; Later, by Stephen King; Mirrorland, by Carole Johnstone, and others.

I haven’t yet given serious thought to which works might appear on my own “Best Crime Fiction of the Year So Far” list, but the following would all be worthy candidates:

• Blackout, by Simon Scarrow (Headline UK)
• Daughters of Night, by Laura Shepherd-Robinson (Mantle UK)
• In the Garden of Spite, by Camilla Bruce (Berkley)
• Nightshade, by E.S. Thomson (Constable UK)
• The Royal Secret, by Andrew Taylor (HarperCollins UK)
• The Trawlerman, by William Shaw (Riverrun UK)
• We Begin at the End, by Chris Whitaker (Henry Holt)
• Wedding Station, by David Downing (Soho Crime)

I still need to tackle a number of new releases from the opening six months of 2021, so this tally of “favorites” may change as time progresses. For now, though, it’s a good preliminary tally.

(Hat tip to In Reference to Murder.)