Choosing the best crime novels of the past year never gets
easier, but here’s a well-placed stab at it. Here’s a list of favorites,
alphabetically by author:
Harry Bingham,Talking to the Dead (Delacorte).
This remarkable book’s secret weapon is its protagonist, Welsh police
detective Fiona Griffiths: blunt, blue collar, slightly unhinged — and
with an unnamed, haunting “illness” in her past. But she’s also deeply
compassionate toward the saddest of life’s victims, a trait well paired
with her obsessive nature as she hunts the killer of an addict and her
young daughter.
Barbara Cleverly, Not My Blood (Soho).
Cleverly’s books about ’30s era Scotland
Yard detective Joe Sandilands
are reliably intricate, erudite and witty. The young son of Sandilands’
old friends takes refuge with the detective, convinced that he
accidentally killed a brutish teacher. Sandilands’ investigation reveals
a harrowing story of, among other monstrous topics, abuse and eugenics.
Dan Fesperman,The Double Game(Knopf).
As fiendishly clever a spy story as you could hope for. Bill Cage’s
magazine profile of Edwin Lemaster, a retired spy turned novelist,
unwittingly damaged Lemaster’s reputation and trashed Cage’s own career.
Years later, cryptic messages send Cage barreling across Europe,
hunting for secrets about his diplomat father, long-buried espionage and
Lemaster himself. These messages, based on passages from classic spy
novels, are a guaranteed delight for any espionage fan.[a few Signed Copies still Available.]
Nick Harkaway, Angelmaker (Knopf).
This gleeful mashup of genres throws together, among other
bits and
pieces, killer monks, mechanical bees, an elderly assassin, a fiend in
human form, a doomsday machine, and a clock repairman who channels his
gangster father. (It’s complicated.) Amazing stuff — wholly original,
deeply strange and funny as hell.
Bruce Holbert, Lonesome Animals (Counterpoint).
A gripping murder story and incandescent moral fable, set in
hardscrabble Eastern Washington during the Great Depression. Retired
lawman Russell Strawl is literally back in the saddle, hired to roam the
land and find the brutal killer of local Indians. What he learns is
shocking but, in retrospect, inevitable. Added punch: Spokane resident
Holbert loosely based Strawl on his great-grandfather — Indian scout,
early settler and all-around tough old bastard. [a few Signed Copies still Available.]
Dennis Lehane, Live by Night (Morrow). Set
during wide-open Prohibition, Lehane’s rip-roaring book
is part
gangster story, part grand romance. It traces Joe Coughlin’s career in
organized crime, from petty Boston crook to Florida-based bootlegging
mogul. Joe’s progress unfolds into a moving story of love, loss,
well-plotted revenge and a shot at redemption. [Signed Copies Available]
Rosamund Lupton, Afterwards (Crown).
A woman and her daughter are near death in a London hospital after an
arson fire. But their spirits are somehow able to move around, seeking
answers to the crime as their grieving husband/father seeks healing for
his family. Lupton’s blend of psychological suspense, literary thriller
and the paranormal confirms something her first book, “Sister,”
promised: she’s not just good — she’s wicked good.
Peter Robinson, Before the Poison (Morrow).
Best known for his series starring British police
inspector Alan Banks,
Robinson here offers a superb, Gothic-tinged psychological thriller. A
composer returns to his native England and finds that the mansion he
bought, sight unseen, once belonged to a woman executed for murdering
her husband. The composer, a specialist in film scores, becomes
increasingly obsessed with the dead woman’s story — so it’s time to cue
up the soundtracks for unsettling movie classics like “Laura” and
“Rebecca.”
Adam Woog's column on crime and mystery fiction appears on the second Sunday of the month in The Seattle Times.
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