This
year I sadly did not read as many books as I wanted to. However there
were a number of books that I read that certainly made my favourites list this
year and a number that are also honourable mentions. They are as follows
in no particular order (that is to say as a how I remembered them).
The Wolf in Winter by John Connolly. John Connolly is one of those writers whose
writing continues to fascinate in a myriad of ways. With his latest Charlie Parker novel he has
once again written a stylish novel that reminds longstanding readers as to why
he is one of our foremost thrillers writers. In The Wolf in Winter the community of Prosperous, Maine has
always thrived when others have suffered. Its inhabitants are wealthy,
its children's future secure. It shuns outsiders. It guards its
own. And at the heart of the Prosperous lie the ruins of an ancient
church, transported stone by stone from England centuries earlier by the
founders of the town . . . But the death of a homeless man and the disappearance
of his daughter draw the haunted, lethal private investigator Charlie Parker to
Prosperous. Parker is a dangerous man, driven by compassion, by rage, and
by the desire for vengeance. In him the town and its protectors sense a
threat graver than any they have faced in their long history, and in the
comfortable, sheltered inhabitants of a small Maine town, Parker will encounter
his most vicious opponents yet. Charlie Parker has been marked to die so
that Prosperous may survive. I have always loved John Connolly’s Charlie
Parker series and this one in my opinion is one of the best in the series.
The Fever is by Megan
Abbott in which the Nashes are a close-knit family. Tom, a popular
teacher, is father to the handsome, roguish Eli and his younger sister Deenie,
serious and sweet. But their seeming stability is thrown into chaos when
two of Deenie's friends become violently ill, and rumours of a dangerous
outbreak sweep through the whole community. As hysteria swells and as
more girls succumb, tightly held secrets emerge that threaten to unravel the
world Tom has built for his kids, and destroy friendships, families, and the
town's fragile idea of security. For me Megan Abbott is a writer whose
novels always fascinate and always have a sense of place whether it is writing
noir stories that evoke sexy, dark and tormented characters or teenage angst
and family dilemmas.
The Axeman's Jazz by Ray
Celestin. New Orleans, 1919. As a dark serial killer - The
Kill Your Boss by Shane Kuhn - If
you're reading this, you're a new employee at Human Resources, Inc.
Congratulations. And condolences. At the very least, you're
embarking on a career that you will never be able to describe as dull.
You'll go to interesting places. You'll meet unique and stimulating
people from all walks of life. And kill them. You will make a lot
of money, but that will mean nothing to you after the first job. Assassination,
no matter how easy it looks in the movies, is the most difficult, stressful,
and lonely profession on the planet. Even when you're disguised as an
intern. John Lago is a hit-man. He has some rules for you.
And he's about to break every single one. Kill Your Boss is
subversive, funny, twisty, ultra violent, and darkly comedic. It is a
novel that is destined to become a classic.
After I'm Gone by Laura
Lippman. When Felix Brewer meets nineteen-year-old Bernadette 'Bambi'
Gottschalk at a Valentine's Dance in 1959, he charms her with wild promises,
some of which he actually keeps. Thanks to his lucrative if not always
legal businesses, she and their three little girls live in luxury. But on
the Fourth of July, 1976, Bambi's world implodes when Felix, newly convicted
and facing prison, mysteriously vanishes. Though Bambi has no idea where
her husband — or his money — might be, she suspects one woman does: his devoted
young mistress, Julie. When Julie herself disappears ten years to the day
that Felix went on the lam, everyone assumes she's left to join her old lover —
until her remains are found in a secluded wooded park. Now, twenty-six
years after Julie went missing, Roberto 'Sandy' Sanchez, a retired Baltimore
detective working cold cases for some extra cash, is investigating her
murder. What he discovers is a tangled web of bitterness, jealously,
resentment and greed stretching over the three decades and three generations
that connect these five very different women. And at the centre of every
woman's story is the man who, though long gone, has never been forgotten: the
enigmatic Felix Brewer. Somewhere between the secrets and lies connecting
past and present, Sandy could find the explosive truth... After Your Gone is a classic story
of murder and mystery, in which one man's disappearance echoes through the
lives of his wife, daughters — and mistress. Laura Lippman is as skilful
at plotting as she is at characters and setting and she is a writer of some of
the best contemporary crime writing being written today. Any of her
novels are worth reading but with After I’m Gone she has written a
novel that focuses on crimes of the heart and the repercussions that have an
effect on so many.
Foxglove Summer by Ben
Aaronovitch. If you haven’t read this series then I would urge you to do
so. This time around Peter Grant is out of whatever comfort zone he might
have found and out of London - to a small village in Herefordshire where the
local police are reluctant to admit that there might be a supernatural element
to the disappearance of some local children. But while you can take the
London copper out of London you can't take the London out of the copper.
Travelling west with Beverley Brook, Peter soon finds himself caught up in a
deep mystery and having to tackle local cops and local gods. And what's
more all the shops are closed by 4pm. Think police procedural and magic
and murder. However, for all the murder and mayhem, this is a darkly
comic read with characters you can't help but like. Easily read by adults
and young adults alike.
A Cruel Necessity by LC Tyler - The
theatres are padlocked. Christmas has been cancelled. It is 1657
and the unloved English Republic is eight years old. Though Cromwell's
joyless grip on power appears immovable, many still look to Charles Stuart's
dissolute and threadbare court-in-exile, and some are prepared to risk their
lives plotting a restoration. For the officers of the Republic, constant
vigilance is needed. So, when the bloody corpse of a Royalist spy is discovered
on the dung heap of a small Essex village, why is the local magistrate so
reluctant to investigate? John Grey is a young lawyer with few clients at
the time of Oliver Cromwell and Charles Stuart. Grey is drawn into a
vortex of plot and counter-plot and into the all-encompassing web of intrigue
spun by Cromwell's own spymaster, John Thurloe. So when nothing is what
is seems, can Grey trust anyone? LC Tyler is best known for his comedic
crime novels featuring Ethelred Tressider a mid-list crime writer and Elsie his
trusty agent. However in A
Cruel Necessity, LC Tyler has started a new historical series which is
richly drawn and where it is clear that painstaking research has given
this new series a strong sense of credibility and historical accuracy. As
a character John Grey is engaging as much as he is sympathetic. This is a series that will no doubt get
better and garner a loyal following. Hopefully I am at the head of the
queue.
The Final Silence by Stuart
Neville. Rea Carlisle has inherited a house from an uncle she never knew. It doesn’t take her long to clear out the
dead man’s remaining possessions, but one room remains stubbornly locked. When Rea finally forces it open she discovers
inside a chair, a table — and a leather-bound book. Inside its pages are locks of hair,
fingernails: a catalogue of victims. Horrified, Rea wants to go straight
to the police but when her family intervene, Rea turns to the only person she
can think of: DI Jack Lennon. But Lennon
is facing his own problems. Suspended
from the force and hounded by DCI Serena Flanagan, the toughest cop he’s ever
faced, Lennon must unlock the secrets of a dead man’s terrifying journal.
Whilst the characters in The Final Silence are not all likeable they
do bring a sense of depth. He’s not
afraid of violence, less than perfect characters or controversial plot
developments; all of which make his stories more realistic and thrilling. The
Final Silence has a very dark noirish quality to it as can be expected
in the novels of Stuart Neville. It is gloomy and violent, but it is also
wickedly funny at times. Most of its
bitter characters are mired in the past; like one has come to expect from
Stuart Neville this is not a book for the fainthearted. It is
intriguingly complex, and Neville's dialogue is profane and caustic. Perfect.
The Missing by Sam Hawken.
Jack Searle, an American widower, is bringing up his two stepdaughters, Lidia
and Marina, alone in the border town of Laredo. One night, Marina crosses
the border into Mexico to go to a concert with her cousin Patricia in Nuevo
Laredo — a dangerous city, controlled by drug cartels and devastated by
violence and corruption. They never come
back. A frantic hunt begins, with Jack and Inspector Gonzalo Soler
leading the way. But soon the whole
police force is suspended due to endemic corruption, the army takes over the
city and missing girls are forgotten. Jack
and Gonzalo must take the law into their own hands, but in their efforts to
find the girls they uncover truths about Nuevo Laredo that neither of them ever
wanted to face. It is clear that he is preoccupied by current events in
Mexico and the events are very sharply portrayed in his novels. From his
first novel Tequila Sunset (which is my personal favourite) to The Missing, Hawken manages to
enthral readers . His prose is razor
sharp and it is an exceptionally crafted novel that resonates with urgency, emotion,
and danger. It’s a gritty, visceral
novel you won’t want to put down. My only problem with The Missing is the
fact that I felt that it was too short.
The Burning Room by Michael
Connelly. I always have a soft for Harry Bosch and in this latest
novel Michael Connelly has reaffirmed why he is the best in the business.
In the LAPD's Open-Unsolved Unit, not many murder victims die a decade after
the crime. So when a man succumbs to
complications from being shot by a stray bullet ten years earlier, Bosch
catches a case in which the body is still fresh, but any other clues are
virtually non-existent. Even a veteran
cop would find this one tough going, but Bosch's new partner, Detective Lucia
Soto, has no homicide experience. A
young star in the department, Soto has been assigned to Bosch so that he can
pass on to her his hard-won expertise. Now Bosch and Soto are tasked with
solving a murder that turns out to be highly charged and politically sensitive. Beginning with the bullet that has been
lodged for years in the victim's spine, they must pull new leads from years-old
evidence, and these soon reveal that the shooting was anything but
random. As their investigation picks up speed, it leads to another
unsolved case with even greater stakes: the deaths of several children in a
fire that occurred twenty years ago. But
when their work starts to threaten careers and lives, Bosch and Soto must
decide whether it is worth risking everything to find the truth, or if it's
safer to let some secrets stay buried. As can be expected this is a
well-drawn police procedural. The
beautifully constructed plot involves political corruption, greed, lust, and
vengeance. It excels as a look at how
power, prestige, and the media can override the best intentions.
Skeleton Road by Val
McDermid. In the centre of historic Edinburgh, builders are preparing to
demolish a disused Victorian Gothic building.
They are understandably surprised to find skeletal remains hidden in a
high pinnacle that hasn’t been touched by maintenance for years. Who do the bones belong to, and how did they
get there? Could the eccentric British
pastime of free climbing the outside of buildings play a role? Enter cold case detective Karen Pirie, who
gets to work trying to establish the corpse’s identity. And when it turns out the bones may be from
as far away as former Yugoslavia, Karen will need to dig deeper than she ever
imagined into the tragic history of the Balkans: to war crimes and their
consequences, and ultimately to the notion of what justice is and who serves it. One of the things McDermid excels in is
writing standalone novels. This is not to say that there is anything
wrong with her series books but it seems that she writes with an extra fervour
with these. In Skeleton Road we have a murder mystery moves
seamlessly to an exploration of geopolitics and genocide. This is one of
her best being complex and thought provoking. With a multi stranded story
and some very haunting and evocative details about the atrocities in the
Balkans, this was really part murder mystery and part history lesson. At
the heart of the story is a real opportunity to explore themes of loss and
revenge. It is not surprising with
novels like Skeleton Road that
Val McDermid is considered to be one of our finest crime writers.
Grandville Noël by Bryan
Talbot. This is not strictly a novel but a graphic novel. A
steampunk graphic novel to be precise. I mean how else can one explain
the head of Scotland Yard Inspector LeBrock, a muscular, talking badger who has
penchant for bareknuckle fights. Not
only badgers, but also rats, dogs, and every other kind of talking animal
populate Talbot’s alternate nineteenth-century Britain and France.
In Granville Noël Detective
Inspector LeBrock is alone in Grandville, stalking a growing religious cult led
by a charismatic unicorn messiah who, along with his con-men partners, are
responsible for horrific mass murder.
With Paris in the grip of the mysterious crime lord Tiberius Koenig and
increasingly violent attacks by human terrorists, can LeBrock stop the
inevitable slide into fascism? And could
these conditions all be the manipulations of a centuries-old conspiracy to
throw the world into war? This is the
latest book in the series in this beautifully illustrated murder mystery that
is one part Sherlock Holmes, another part Wind in the Willows, wrapped in a
steampunk veneer. It is not to be
missed.
Honourable
mentions go to Sarah Hilary’s Someone
Else’s Skin, A possibility of
Violence by D A Mishani, The Ghost
Runner by Parker Bilal, This Dark
Road to Mercy by Wiley Cash, The
Silent Boy by Andrew Taylor and Euro
Noir by Barry Forshaw.
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