No Shortage of Superlatives

We’re winding down quickly toward the end of this year, yet the pace at which “best books of 2021” lists are appearing hasn’t yet slackened. Shots reviewer and blogger Ayo Onatade issued her own crime-related selections this last weekend, in the following two categories.

Fiction:
• Sunset Swing, by Ray Celestin (Pan Macmillan)
• Razorblade Tears, by S.A. Cosby (Headline)
• The Last Thing to Burn, by Will Dean (Hodder & Stoughton)
• Bullet Train, by Kotaro Isaka (Vintage Press)
• True Crime Story, by Joseph Knox (Transworld)
• Dream Girl, by Laura Lippman (Faber and Faber)
• Edge of the Grave, by Robbie Morrison (Pan Macmillian)
• Black Drop, by Leonora Nattrass (Profile)
• Turf Wars, by Olivier Norek (Quercus)
• Winter Counts, by David Heska Wanbil Weiden (Simon & Schuster)

Non-fiction:
• Shadow Voices: 300 Years of Irish Genre Fiction: A History in Stories, by John Connolly (Hodder & Stoughton)
• We Own This City: A True Story of Crime, Cops and Corruption in an American City, by Justin Fenton (Faber and Faber)
• My Life as a Villainess: Essays, by Laura Lippman (Faber and Faber)
• The Reacher Guy, by Heather Martin (Little, Brown)
• Murder: The Biography, by Kate Morgan (Harper Collins)

She has more to say about the individual books here and here.

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Abby Endler has posted her own top-10 choices of crime, mystery, and thriller fiction in her blog, Crime by the Book.

Best Book of 2021: 56 Days, by Catherine Ryan Howard (Blackstone)
Best Debut Thriller: My Sweet Girl, by Amanda Jayatissa (Berkley)
Best Plot Twist: Survive the Night, by Riley Sager (Dutton)
Best Setting: The Sanatorium, by Sarah Pearse (Pamela Dorman)
Best Dark Comedy: For Your Own Good, by Samantha
Downing (Berkley)
Best “Chiller”: The Lost Village, by Camilla Sten (Minotaur)
Best Action Thriller: Razorblade Tears, by S.A. Cosby (Headline)
Best Nordic Noir Series Installment: The Butterfly House, by Katrine Engberg (Gallery/Scout Press)
Best “Popcorn Read”: Shiver, by Allie Reynolds (Putnam)
Best Short Story Collection: The Jealousy Man, by Jo Nesbø (Knopf)

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Elsewhere, CrimeReads continues to discover more subdivisions of releases worth highlighting in what has now become its “best of 2021” series: Lisa Levy champions what she says are the finest psychological thrillers of this year, while Molly Odintz focuses on outstanding speculative thrillers. And I don’t think anybody has spent more energy lately on collecting “bests” lists than George Easter, the editor of Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine. Over just the last couple of days, he’s posted crime/mystery picks from Marie Clare magazine, Bookreporter, and the Web site Stop, You’re Killing Me! He also directed me to a top-5 list from pseudonymous blogger Death Becomes Her at Crime Fiction Lover. Another CFL contributor, Rough Justice, put up his or her own selections this morning.