It’s Not Easy Staying Up-to-Date

I have not been nearly so diligent as George Easter, the editor of Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine, in keeping up with the publication of lists that purport to identify the best crime, mystery, and thriller novels of 2023. But I’ve been posting selections from prominent sources that I think can help readers discover books they might have failed to pay attention to over the last dozen months. I concede, though, that I’ve missed a few along the way.

For instance, I drew your attention to choices made in the cozy whodunits category by Aunt Agatha’s Mysteries, the blog spun off from Ann Arbor, Michigan’s old Aunt Agatha’s Bookstore. But then I failed to mention its nominations of the year’s finest historical mysteries (which include Tasha Alexander’s A Cold Highland Wind, James R. Benn’s Proud Sorrows, and I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died, the second Emily Dickinson mystery by Amanda Flower). In addition, I somehow overlooked that blog’s 12 “Best of 2023” endorsements, among them Hard Rain, by Samantha Jayne Allen; Glory Be, by Danielle Arceneaux; The Raging Storm, by Ann Cleeves; The Bones of the Story, by Carol Goodman; and Sarah Stewart Taylor’s A Stolen Child.

The Canadian TV and radio broadcaster CBC, meanwhile, asked a pair of crime novelists from north of the U.S. border to name their favorite reads from this past year. Angela Misri (The Detective and the Spy) and Sam Wiebe (Sunset and Jericho) picked these eight works:

• The Village Hall Vendetta, by Jonathan Whitelaw (HarperNorth)
• Code of the Hills, by Chris Offutt (Grove Press)
• The Golden Gate, by Amy Chua (Minotaur)
• Hard Rain, by Samantha Jayne Allen (Minotaur)
• That Others May Live, by Sara Driscoll (Kensington)
• Double Eagle, by Thomas King (HarperCollins)
• Gull Island, by Anna Porter (Simon & Schuster)
• Deus X, by Stephen Mack Jones (Soho Crime)

Finally, CrimeReads editor Olivia Rutigliano has posted her 13 candidates for “Best Crime TV of 2023” honors. Included are Poker Face (Season 1); HBO’s Perry Mason (Season 2), the third series of Happy Valley (a show that definitely does not justify its title), and a couple of Hulu programs I’ve relished lately: A Murder at the End of the World (Season 1) and Only Murders in the Building (Season 3).