Just a Few Things on Our Radar

• Although there’s no word yet on when the 10-episode second season of Netflix’s The Lincoln Lawyer will debut, we do now know—thanks to Deadline—about three actors who’ve won recurring roles. Lana Parrilla (Why Women Kill, Once Upon a Time) will play “a beloved chef and community advocate struggling to keep her restaurant afloat as a predatory real estate developer threatens the neighborhood around her.” Yaya DaCosta (Chicago Med, Our Kind of People) “will portray Andrea Freemann, a cut-throat prosecutor and Mickey Haller’s (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) undefeated courtroom rival, who is also a friend of his ex-wife Maggie (Neve Campbell).” And Matt Angel (Dave) is set to play Henry Dahl, “a cosmopolitan erudite with a hipster haircut and clothes. He is the host of a successful true crime podcast that acts the role of a good Samaritan. Distrustful of Henry’s motives, Mickey … warns him not to interfere with an ongoing case.” The sophomore season of The Lincoln Lawyer is said to be based on Michael Connelly’s 2011 novel The Fifth Witness.

• Mystery Fanfare draws our attention to a couple of British crime dramas set to debut soon in the United States. Season 12 of Vera, the series starring Brenda Blethyn and based on Ann Cleeves’ Vera Stanhope mysteries, will show up this coming Sunday, January 29, on the BritBox streaming channel. Meanwhile, watch for the freshman season of DI Ray, a procedural starring Parminder Nagar as Detective Inspector Rachita Ray of the fictitious Birmingham, England, police force. (Birmingham actually falls under the purview of the West Midlands Police.) DI Ray’s four episodes will be available to those who subscribe to the PBS Passport on-demand service beginning on February 20, with the series’ PBS Masterpiece broadcast premiere coming on July 9. The Killing Times reports that DI Ray has already been renewed for a second season in the UK.

• Shots’ Mike Stotter charts the 20 most popular British TV detective shows, starting with Line of Duty and Unforgotten.

• Max Allan Collins’ latest blog post contains a fine half-hour interview he did with Titan editor Andrew Sumner about his 18th Nate Heller novel, The Big Bundle (Hard Case Crime), released this week.

• Peter May gives us the background on his own brand-new novel, a standalone titled A Winter’s Grave, in this piece for Shots.

• Moscow-born author Katja Ivar chats with Crime Fiction Lover’s Garrick Webster on the subject of her writing career and her third Cold War-era-set Hella Mauzer thriller, Trouble (Bitter Lemon Press), now on sale in Great Britain and due out in the States on February 21.

• And one more superior exchange to mention: Speaking of Mysteries host Nancie Clare’s discussion with debut crime novelist Iris Yamashita about the latter’s City Under One Roof (Berkley), a claustrophobic, Alaska-backdropped tale that Publishers Weekly says “heralds the arrival of a major new talent.”

• We’re going to be seeing less of Sarah Weinman in The New York Times. The January edition of her newsletter, The Crime Lady, includes mention of her “Crime & Mystery” column (which she took over from longtime critic Marilyn Stasio in early 2021) shifting from twice-a-month appearance to only monthly publication. “There are many reasons for this change,” she explains, “including scheduling and print space and making sure all the genre columns get equal play. But from my standpoint, it turns out reviewing eight books a month is hard! And having experienced column burnout in the past, I did not want it to repeat itself. A more sustainable schedule also means more time for other projects, some of which are already in the works.”

• What relationship is there between author John le Carré and serial-lying Republican U.S. congressman George Santos? From Vox:

Sean Wilentz, a Bancroft Prize-winning historian at Princeton University, told Vox that Santos was more a character out of American literature than American history, citing Herman Melville’s The Confidence-Man. “This is nothing that a historian can be much help on,” he said. “There is no example like it.” It’s not that Santos was an entirely foreign object—the huckster is an American archetype, and nothing is more clichéd than a dishonest politician. As Wilentz put it, he’s “made of materials that one can identify.” But that such a shadowy figure and compulsive liar wound up on Capitol Hill is still remarkable. “Embellishing happens a fair amount that a lot of people get away with,” Wilentz said. “This is a different order because this is a made-up life.”

He noted that “it’s one thing to be Marjorie Taylor Greene and making up all of this crazy stuff, and here you just have a cipher.” Using another literary reference, Wilentz compared Santos to the “kind of nothing man that drips all through the novels” of John le Carré.

• There were plenty of “Best Crime Fiction of 2022” lists pouring in at the end of last year, but that doesn’t mean everyone had their say. Kevin Tipple, of Kevin’s Corner fame, today delivered a rundown of his 10 favorites in the blog Lesa’s Book Critiques. They include Rick Helms’ A Kind and Savage Place, Claire Booth’s Dangerous Consequences, Lee Goldberg’s Movieland, Terry Shames’s Murder at the Jubilee Rally, and Laurie Loewenstein’s Funeral Train.

• If only I could be in Britain on March 4 for Mystery Fest …

• There was an intriguing, if passing, mention in The New York Times’ obituary of veteran TV news correspondent Bernard Kalb earlier this month, having to do with his early journalism experience: “After graduating from the City College of New York in 1942, Mr. Kalb spent two years in the Army, mostly working on a newspaper published out of a Quonset hut in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska. His editor was Sgt. Dashiell Hammett, the author of the detective novels ‘The Maltese Falcon’ and ‘The Thin Man.’” More on The Adakian, that daily mimeographed paper Hammett created for the Adak Army Air Base, can be found here. (Hat tip to Mark Coggins.)

• For CrimeReads, Zack Budryk looks back at how the “rampant corruption and incompetency” of U.S. president Warren G. Harding’s 1920s administration “pave[d] the way for a new century of politics.”

• Other recent CrimeReads pieces I’ve enjoyed include this one by Mark Ellis (Dead in the Water), asking whether historical accuracy actually matters in historical fiction; this other one, by Janice Hallett (The Twyford Code), focused on crime yarns featuring “recently released or escaped prisoners”; Samuel Martin’s exploration of what he calls “North Atlantic noir”; and Elizabeth Held’s contemplation of why teenage detectives remain so appealing.

• Devoted Rockford Files fan Jim Suza tells the story of how “several hundred film images” from the photo shoot for that 1970s series’ memorable opening title sequence were lost, almost trashed, and eventually found their way into his possession.

• Finally, if the new Netflix historical film The Pale Blue Eye has left you curious to learn the facts about Edgar Allan Poe’s short, self-sabotaged career at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York, click over to this piece from The Washington Post.

Best of the Bests

Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine editor George Easter, who kept very close track of “best crime/mystery/thriller fiction of 2022” lists during the last several months, has now tallied up the works that appeared most frequently among such picks. The top vote-getter, he found, was Don Winslow’s City on Fire (22 mentions), followed by Nita Prose’s The Maid (20), Michael Connelly’s Desert Star (18), Richard Osman’s The Bullet That Missed (16), Ian Rankin’s A Heart Full of Headstones (15), and Wanda M. Morris’ Anywhere You Run (13).

Click here to see his full accounting of last year’s top choices.

READ MORE: “Favorite 2022 Debut Novels” (Stop, You’re Killing Me!); “CBTB’s Top 10 Crime Books of 2022,” by Abby Endler (Crime by the Book); “Bill’s Best of 2022 Fiction,” by Bill Selnes (Mysteries and More from Saskatchewan); “Best Crime, Mystery and Thriller Books of 2022: Ultimate List” (Mystery Tribune); “Top Ten Tuesday: My Favorite Books of 2022,” by TracyK (Bitter Tea and Mystery); “TCF’s Best Crime Fiction Books of 2022,” by Mairi R.R. Campbell-Jack (True Crime Fiction); “Our Favorite Books of 2022” (Criminal Element).

Nick-of-Time Additions to Your TBR Stack

As 2022 ends its eventful run and clears the way for 2023, we’re surely nearing an end to our accounting of “best books of the year” lists. There are just a few stragglers left.

• Lesa Holstine and her Library Journal colleague Liz French published a joint “Best Crime Fiction of 2022” post earlier this month. But Holstine is now back with an idiosyncratic compilation, in her own blog, of “favorite books” that includes the full range of works she read over the last 12 months. Half of her 10 choices come from the crime/mystery stacks, including Terry Shames’ Murder at the Jubilee Rally and Jenn McKinlay’s The Plot and the Pendulum.

• In mid-November I highlighted Kirkus Reviews’ “Best Mysteries and Thrillers of 2022” picks. However, I failed to notice that Kirkus also released a “Best Indie Mysteries & Thrillers of 2022” tally. I confess to not having read any of those seven novels, but have heard complimentary things about Kim Hays’ Pesticide, and am already in possession of an advance reader copy of her next novel, Sons and Brothers, due out in April from Seventh Street Books.

• As I often include critiques from the blog Grab This Book in my “Revue of Reviewers” wrap-ups, I was interested to see which titles its UK-based author, Gordon McGhie, would applaud as his 10 most-prized works of the year. Simon Toyne’s Dark Objects, C.S. Robertson’s The Undiscovered Deaths of Grace McGill, and Neil Lancaster’s The Blood Tide are among those making the cut. Yet it’s Dominic Nolan’s Vine Street that McGhie calls “my favourite book of 2022—I wish I could have the chance to read it for the first time all over again.”

• One of my most auspicious blog finds this year was Reading Reality, in which Atlanta librarian Marlene Harris comments smartly on not only mystery fiction, but books of all sorts. Her baker’s dozen of endorsements for 2022 mentions several entries from this genre, notably Karen Odden’s Under a Veiled Moon (which made my own honorable mentions roster) and Mary Robinette Kowal’s The Spare Man (described invitingly as “The Thin Man in space”).

• Finally, ex-Rap Sheet contributor Jim Winter (aka T.S. Hottle), now a columnist for SleuthSayers, identifies the best book he read in 2022 as Under Color of Law, by Aaron Philip Clark.

READ MORE: “My Favorite Reads of 2022: Reading Room Recommendations,” by Kathy Reel (The Reading Room); “Review of the Year—2022,” by Steve Barge (In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel); “Raven’s Yearly Round-Up 2022 and Top 10ish Books of the Year,” by Jackie Farrant (Raven Crime Reads).

A Cache of Criminality

• The British blog Crime Fiction Lover concludes its series of “Top Five Books of 2022” postings with choices made by three of its better-known critics, Garrick Webster (aka CrimeFictionLover), Sandra Mangan (aka DeathBecomesHer), and Vicki Weisfeld. Deadly Pleasures editor George Easter rounds up all of CFL’s choices here.

• Booklist has its own opinions regarding this year’s finest crime, mystery, and thriller novels. It includes seven such releases among its 15 “Genre Fiction” picks for 2022: Wanda M. Morris’ Anywhere You Run, Adrian McKinty’s The Island, Ruth Ware’s The It Girl, Gary Phillips’ One-Shot Harry, Alex Segura’s Secret Identity, Kate Atkinson’s Shrines of Gaiety, and Chris Pavone’s Two Nights in Lisbon.

• Miriam Elizabeth Burstein, who blogs as The Little Professor, includes in her “My Year in Books” recap the following brief tribute to one of our favorite mystery writers: “Author whose willingness to make himself look terrible in fiction never ceases to amaze: Anthony Horowitz’s [Daniel] Hawthorne series.”

• Allyson K. Abbott’s A Toast to Murder? Anna Ashwood Collins’ Deadly Resolutions? Rufus King’s Holiday Homicide? Valerie Wolzein’s ’Tis the Season to Be Murdered? Who knew there were so many New Year’s Day-related mystery novels? Well, Janet Rudolph did, and in Mystery Fanfare, she lists those and dozens of additional works you can crack open thus Sunday to help kick off a joyous 2023.

Easter Finally Comes Clean

George Easter, the editor of Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine, has spent much of the last three months tracking down “best crime fiction of 2022” lists and featuring them in his blog. But until today, he’d withheld his own list of favorite reads of the year. “My list may appear long compared to some,” he writes, “but it was very difficult for me to limit it to the number I did.” Below is Easter’s top-24 rundown.

Best Mystery/Crime Fiction Novels:
• Desert Star, by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown)
• The Dark Flood, by Deon Meyer (Atlantic Monthly Press)
• The Botanist, by M.W. Craven (Constable UK)
• Shifty’s Boys, by Chris Offutt (Grove Press)
• Lying Beside You, by Michael Robotham (Sphere UK)
• City on Fire, by Don Winslow (HarperCollins)
• The Blackbird, by Tim Weaver (Michael Joseph UK)
• The Accomplice, by Steve Cavanagh (Orion UK)

Best First Mysteries:
• Even the Darkest Night, by Javier Cercas (Knopf)
• Blood Sugar, by Sascha Rothchild (Putnam)
• WAKE, by Shelley Burr (Morrow)
• The Maid, by Nita Prose (Ballantine)

Best Paperback Original Mysteries:
• The Lemon Man, by Keith Bruton (Brash)
• Goering’s Gold, by Richard O’Rawe (Melville House)
• May God Forgive, by Alan Parks (World Noir)
• Pesticide, by Kim Hays (Seventh Street)

Best Thrillers:
• Bad Actors, by Mick Herron (Soho Crime)
• The Runaway, by Nick Petrie (Putnam)
• Sierra Six, by Mark Greaney (Berkley)
• Alias Emma, by Ava Glass (Bantam)
• Killers of a Certain Age, by Deanna Raybourn (Berkley)
• Seventeen, by John Brownlow (Hanover Square Press)
• The Partisan, by Patrick Worrall (Bantam Press UK)

Best Short Story Collection:
Dalziel and Pascoe Hunt the Christmas Killer & Other Stories, by Reginald Hill (HarperCollins)

I read a handful of those same new novels, including Burr’s WAKE, Offutt’s Shifty’s Boys, and Parks’ May God Forgive. Yet only the first of that trio also appears among my favorites of 2022. A couple of others are still gathering dust in my to-be-read pile.

Clearly, Easter has either more time to spend in a reading chair than I do, or he gobbles up books a good deal faster. While I have so far completed almost 90 novels this year (which doesn’t count a dozen or so others I put down unfinished), he says he’s consumed 146 from the crime, mystery, and thriller field—just short of his 150 goal!

Slipping in Under the Wire

So there are a couple of very-late-comers to add to our “best books of 2022” round-up. First, Mary Picken, author of the Live and Deadly blog, weighs in with her 13 preferred reads of the year, mostly from the crime and mystery stacks (including C.S. Robertson’s The Undiscovered Deaths of Grace McGill and Alan Parks’ May God Forgive). Second, listeners to Shane Whaley’s excellent Spybrary podcast have submitted the lists of favorite espionage novels enjoyed over the last year, pretty evenly split between new books and re-read works.

Let it be known, too, that I shall post the last of The Rap Sheet’s own “bests” lists at noon today, this one from yours truly. I hope you’ve enjoyed the whole series, and will let us know if there are other superior titles you would like to recommend.

Saving the “Bests” for Last

The flood of “best crime fiction of 2022” lists is definitely diminishing, with The Rap Sheet about to deliver its final two sets of picks. But there are still a few sets of selections dribbling in.

For instance, the Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine blog has recently posted “best” choices from its reviewers Steele Curry, L.J. Roberts, and Ted Hertel. Crime Fiction Lover’s Sonja van der Westhuizen offers her five favorites of the year, including Charlie Higson’s Whatever Gets You Through the Night and Lee Goldberg’s Movieland.

And Literary Hub managing editor Emily Temple offers up what is headlined as “The Ultimate Best Books of 2022 List.” She has sifted through “35 lists from 29 publications” to determine which books, released over the last dozen months, appear most often on these end-of-the-year tallies. The only inarguable mystery/crime novel I see there is Deanna Raybourn’s Killers of a Certain Age (Berkley), which apparently showed up on just four of the lists surveyed.

Ayo’s Assortment

Let us take just a moment out from the self-indulgent exercise of revealing our critics’ “favorite crime fiction of 2022” lists to note that the talented Ayo Onatade, Shots contributor and principal author of its Shotsmag Confidential blog, this morning released her own picks of 2022’s “best.” The following 12 books are featured:

• Bad Actors, by Mick Herron (John Murray)
• The Devil Takes You Home, by Gabino Iglesias (Headline)
• Three Assassins, by Kotaro Isaka (Vintage)
• The Skeleton Key, by Erin Kelly (Hodder & Stoughton)
• Confidence, by Denise Mina (Vintage)
• Blue Water, by Leonora Nattrass (Profile)
• Breaking Point, by Olivier Norek (Quercus)
• Secret Identity, by Alex Segura (Flatiron)
• The Spirit Engineer, by A.J. West (Duckworth)
• City on Fire, by Don Winslow (HarperCollins)
• A History of Treason: The Bloody History of Britain Through the Stories of Its Most Notorious Traitors, by Chris Day, Daniel Gosling, Neil Johnson, and Euan Roger (John Blake) — non-fiction
• The Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and Their Creators, by Martin Edwards (HarperCollins) — non-fiction

* * *

Elsewhere in the world of British book blogging, Crime Fiction Lover is slowly revealing its reviewers’ 2022 top-five choices. It began with picks from Paul Burke, moved on to those from Michael Parker (aka RoughJustice), and today posted the selections of Erin Britton.

There are still more to come.

Success Stories

As we roll out our own many “favorite crime fiction of 2022” nominations, we also want to acknowledge the choices made by other critics, most of which have already been cited by Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine editor George Easter.

Among the most interesting are those compiled by Declan Hughes for The Irish Times; Edinburgh, Scotland’s The Herald; novelist Natasha Cooper for Literary Review; Shots’ Mike Ripley; and “Mystery “ Mike Bursaw of the Barry Award nominating committee. In addition, Paul Burke begins Crime Fiction Lovers’ series of critics’ picks; and several of Material Witness blogger Ben Hunt’s “favorite books of 2022” come from the crime, mystery, and thriller fiction stacks, including Simon Mason’s A Killing in November and C.J. Carey’s Queen High.

The Front Nine

Where once there was a trickle of “best crime fiction of 2022” compilations coming in, now we stand amid a deluge. The latest list comes from Liz French and Lesa Holstine of Library Journal, who recommend these new novels from the last 12 months:

• Shutter, by Ramona Emerson (Soho Crime)
• The Woman in the Library, by Sulari Gentill (Poisoned Pen Press)
• Alias Emma, by Ava Glass (Bantam)
• Anywhere You Run, by Wanda M. Morris (Morrow)
• A World of Curiosities, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)
• Killers of a Certain Age, by Deanna Raybourn (Berkley)
• Lavender House, by Lev A. C. Rosen (Forge)
• Last Call at the Nightingale, by Katharine Schellman (Minotaur)
• Geiger, by Gustaf Skordeman (Grand Central)

(Hat tip to Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine.)

Proudly Flaunting Their Biases

I’m always eager to see which crime, mystery, and thriller novels Tom Nolan will identify as his favorites of any given year. A critic for The Wall Street Journal ever since 1990, and a former contributor to January Magazine (which is how I met him), Nolan often shares my taste in this genre’s offerings. His top picks for 2022 appeared online earlier today, but as I’m not a Journal subscriber, I had to request that he send me the list (see below) via e-mail.

• Desert Star, by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown)
• The Christie Affair, by Nina de Gramont (St. Martin’s Press)
• The Enigma of Room 622, by Joël Dicker (HarperVia)
• The Murder of Mr. Wickham, by Claudia Gray (Vintage)
• The Twist of a Knife, by Anthony Horowitz (Harper)
• The Goodbye Coast, by Joe Ide (Mulholland)
• Dark Music, by David Lagercrantz (Knopf)
• The Bullet That Missed, by Richard Osman (Pamela Dorman/Viking)
• The Diamond Eye, by Kate Quinn (Morrow)
• The It Girl, by Ruth Ware (Scout Press)

Note that three of the fictionists mentioned here—Connelly, Osman, and Ide—were also featured on Nolan’s 2021 best-of-the-year roll. Which is fine, really; we all have our reliable, go-to wordsmiths. But it does cause me to reassess my own reading history. Although, in general, I seek to diversify my consumption of books every twelvemonth by sampling new-to-me authors, a record of my preferences over the last decade does find a few names recurring—Philip Kerr, Kelli Stanley, Walter Mosley, Megan Abbott, Peter May, and Laura Lippman among them. Maybe I haven’t been as good as I thought at widening my experience with modern writers.

* * *

Meanwhile, Steve Donoghue, whose book reviews appear frequently in The Christian Science Monitor and The Washington Post, has released a roster of his own crime- and mystery-fiction recommendations for 2022. He lists them in order of his liking:

1. The Bangalore Detectives Club, by Harini Nagendra (Pegasus)
2. The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown, by Lawrence Block
(LB Productions)
3. The Mitford Vanishing, by Jessica Fellowes (Minotaur)
4. Give Unto Others, by Donna Leon (Atlantic Monthly Press)
5. A Sunlit Weapon, by Jacqueline Winspear (Harper)
6. When Blood Lies, by C.S. Harris (Berkley)
7. Hatchet Island, by Paul Doiron (Minotaur)
8. Death and the Conjuror, by Tom Mead (Mysterious Press)
9. To Kill a Troubadour, by Martin Walker (Knopf)
10. Showstopper, by Peter Lovesey (Soho Crime)

* * *

Finally, Australian Jeff Popple, who this year celebrated his 40th anniversary (!) as a paid crime fiction and thriller reviewer, and writes regularly for both Canberra Weekly and Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine, weighs in with his personal selections of favorite crime and thriller novels published in 2022.

Best Crime Novels:
• Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone, by Benjamin
Stevenson (Penguin)
• The Dark Flood, by Deon Meyer (Hodder & Stoughton)
• Desert Star, by Michael Connelly (Allen & Unwin)
• A Heart Full of Headstones, by Ian Rankin (Orion)
• Those Who Perish, by Emma Viskic (Echo)
• Lying Beside You, by Michael Robotham (Hachette)
• The Furies, by John Connolly (Hodder & Stoughton)
• The Accomplice, by Steve Cavanagh (Orion)
• Day’s End, by Garry Disher (Text)

Best Thriller Novels:
• Bad Actors, by Mick Herron (John Murray)
• Yesterday’s Spy, by Tom Bradby (Bantam)
• The Match Maker, by Paul Vidich (Pegasus)
• Winter Work, by Dan Fesperman (Head of Zeus)
• One Step Too Far, by Lisa Gardner (Century)
• Cold Fear, by Brandon Webb and John David Mann (Bantam)

Elsewhere in his blog, Popple offers his choices of the year’s “Best Debut Crime Novels and Thrillers,” plus “Seven Good Books You May Have Missed in 2022.”

CrimeReads’ Own Crème de Crime

Not to let everyone else have all the fun, the editors of CrimeReads today announced their “Best Crime Novels: 2022” choices. Their primary list comprises 20 works, some of which are more noir fiction or fraught relationship dramas than classic crime yarns:

• Paradais, by Fernanda Melchor (New Directions)
• Don’t Know Tough, by Eli Cranor (Soho Crime)
• More Than You’ll Ever Know, by Katie Gutierrez (Morrow)
• Shrines of Gaiety, by Kate Atkinson (Doubleday)
• After the Lights Go Out, by John Vercher (Soho Press)
• The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Del Rey)
• The Devil Takes You Home, by Gabino Iglesias (Mulholland)
• Killers of a Certain Age, by Deanna Raybourn (Berkley)
• The Midcoast, by Adam White (Hogarth)
• Blackwater Falls, by Ausma Zehanat Khan (Minotaur)
• The Violin Conspiracy, by Brendan Slocumb (Anchor)
• Secret Identity, by Alex Segura (Flatiron)
• Like a Sister, by Kellye Garrett (Mulholland)
• On Java Road, by Lawrence Osborne (Hogarth)
• Anywhere You Run, by Wanda M. Morris (Morrow)
• An Honest Living, by Dwyer Murphy (Viking)
• Lady Joker, Volume 2, by Kaoru Takamura (Soho Crime)
• Complicit, by Winnie M. Li (Emily Bestler)
• Notes on an Execution, by Danya Kukafka (Morrow)
• The Family Chao, by Lan Samantha Chang (Norton)

There are several books among CrimeReads’ “Notable Selections” list at the end that deserve more attention, including Dan Fesperman’s Winter Work (Knopf), Grace D. Li’s Portrait of a Thief (Tiny Reparations), Don Winslow’s City on Fire (Morrow), Dervla McTiernan’s The Murder Rule (Morrow), Gary Philips’ One-Shot Harry (Soho Crime), Ava Barry’s Double Exposure (Pegasus), and Paraic O’Donnell’s The Maker of Swans (Tin House)—the last of which is, again, not quite a crime novel, but also not quite not a crime novel. Assembling this sort of list can often require relaxing genre boundaries.

READ MORE FROM CRIMEREADS: “The Best Espionage Novels of the Year”; “The Best Psychological Thrillers of 2022,” by Lisa Levy; “The Best Traditional Mysteries of the Year,” by Olivia Rutigliano; “The Best Gothic Fiction of the Year: 2022,” by Molly Odintz; “The Best Historical Fiction of the Year: 2022,” by Molly Odintz; “The Best International Crime Fiction of 2022,” by Molly Odintz; “The Best Critical Non-fiction/Biography Books of 2022”; “The Best Noir Fiction of 2022”; “The Best True Crime Books of the Year.”

A Multiplicity of Viewpoints

As we move deeper into this holiday season, “best books of 2022” lists are really proliferating. My wait for New York Times critic Sarah Weinman’s crime and mystery picks is finally over; she posted her 11 choices online today, breaking them down into five categories.

Best Debuts:
• Don’t Know Tough, by Eli Cranor (Soho Crime)
• Portrait of a Thief, by Grace D. Li (Tiny Reparations)

Best Standalones:
• Real Easy, by Marie Rutkoski (Henry Holt)
• The Lost Kings, by Tyrell Johnson (Anchor)
• Gangland, by Chuck Hogan (Grand Central)
• Anywhere You Run, by Wanda M. Morris (Morrow)

Best in a Series:
• Survivor’s Guilt, by Robyn Gigl (Kensington)
• Vera Kelly: Lost and Found, by Rosalie Knecht (Tin House)
• Secrets Typed in Blood, by Stephen Spotswood (Doubleday)

Best Overall:
Notes on an Execution, by Danya Kukafka (Morrow)

Best in Genre Non-fiction:
The Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and Their Creators, by Martin Edwards (Collins Crime Club)

* * *

Earlier this week, the Times’ Sarah Lyall revealed her selections of the “Best Thrillers of 2022.” It’s a short list, comprising only five titles.

• The Appeal, by Janice Hallett (Atria)
• Broken Summer, by J.M. Lee (Amazon Crossing)
• The Other Side of Midnight, by Adam Hamdy (Atria)
• Blood Sugar, by Sascha Rothchild (Putnam)
• The Murder Rule, by Dervla McTiernan (Morrow)
• The Island, by Adrian McKinty (Little, Brown)

* * *

Another reliable voice is that of Oline H. Cogdill, longtime mystery-fiction columnist for the South Florida Sun Sentinel. Her preferences from 2022 were also delivered today, in five different divisions.

Best Novels (in order of preference):
1. The Cartographers, by Peng Shepherd (Morrow)
2. Back to the Garden, by Laurie R. King (Bantam)
3. Anywhere You Run, by Wanda M. Morris (Morrow)
4. Secret Identity, by Alex Segura (Flatiron)
5. We Lie Here, by Rachel Howzell Hall (Thomas & Mercer)
6. Desert Star, by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown)
7. Things We Do in the Dark, by Jennifer Hillier (Minotaur)
8. Like a Sister, by Kellye Garrett (Mulholland)
9. Killers of a Certain Age, by Deanna Raybourn (Berkley)
10. Her Last Affair, by John Searles (Mariner)
11. Forsaken Country, by Allen Eskens (Mulholland)
12. The Fields, by Erin Young (Flatiron)
13. The Drowning Sea, by Sarah Stewart Taylor (Minotaur)
14. Two Nights in Lisbon, by Chris Pavone (MCD)
15. Racing the Light, by Robert
Crais (Putnam)
16. Counterfeit, by Kirsten Chen (Morrow)

Best Debuts (in alphabetical order,
by author):
• Jackal, by Erin E. Adams (Bantam)
• Pay Dirt Road, by Samantha Jayne
Allen (Minotaur)
• Before You Knew My Name, by Jacqueline Bublitz (Atria/Emily Bestler)
• Shutter, by Ramona Emerson (Soho Crime)
• The Marsh Queen, by Virginia Hartman (Gallery)
• All That’s Left Unsaid, by Tracey Lien (Morrow)
• The Verifiers, by Jane Pek (Knopf)
• Dirt Creek, by Hayley Scrivenor (Flatiron)
• A Flicker in the Dark, by Stacy Willingham (Minotaur)

Best Non-fiction:
American Demon: Eliot Ness and the Hunt for America's Jack the Ripper, by Daniel Stashower (Minotaur)

Best Short Stories:
• Marple: Twelve New Mysteries, by various authors (Morrow)
• Best American Mystery and Suspense 2022, edited by Jess Walter and Steph Cha (Mariner)
• Hotel California, edited by Don Bruns (Blackstone)

Best Reissue:
The New Annotated Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, edited by Leslie S. Klinger (Mysterious Press)

* * *

A few days ago, I pointed Rap Sheet readers to several favorites-of-the-year rolls assembled by Robin and Jamie Agnew, former proprietors of Aunt Agatha’s Bookstore in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Since then, they’ve also released a “Best of 2022” roster, on which appear 10 crime/mystery novels and one work of non-fiction:

• All the Queen’s Men, by S.J. Bennett (Morrow)
• The Lindbergh Nanny, by Mariah Fredericks (Minotaur)
• The Woman in the Library, by Sulari Gentill (Poisoned Pen Press)
• Blackwater Falls, by Ausma Zehanat Khan (Minotaur)
• Back to the Garden, by Laurie R. King (Bantam)
• The Wedding Plot, by Paula Munier (Minotaur)
• No Strangers Here, by Carlene O’Connor (Kensington)
• Under Lock and Skeleton Key, by Gigi Pandian (Minotaur)
• A World of Curiosities, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)
• Killers of a Certain Age, by Deanna Raybourn (Berkley)
• The Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and Their Creators, by Martin Edwards (Collins Crime Club)

* * *

Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine editor George Easter, who keeps better track of these “best of the year” rolls than I do, has recently led me to several additional picks lists. Two of them come from Ryan Stack, of The Real Book Spy. While this other one is from critic Margaret Cannon, withCanada’s Globe & Mail newspaper.

Wilson Weighs In

“All in all,” writes British author and critic Laura Wilson in today’s edition of The Guardian, assessing this last year’s fresh crop of crime fiction, “the genre seems in good shape: a broader church, less formulaic and more exciting.” To prove said thesis, Wilson identifies two dozen diverse releases that she identifies as “The Best Crime and Thriller Books of 2022”:

• The Bullet That Missed, by Richard Osman (Viking)
• The Cook, by Ajay Chowdhury (Harvill Secker)
• A World of Curiosities, by Louise Penny (Hodder & Stoughton)
• The Twyford Code, by Janice Hallett (Viper)
• Wrong Place, Wrong Time, by Gillian McAllister (Michael Joseph)
• The Devil Takes You Home, by Gabino Iglesias (Wildfire)
• The Undiscovered Deaths of Grace McGill, by C.S. Robertson
(Hodder & Stoughton)
• Meantime, by Frankie Boyle (John Murray)
• The Partisan, by Patrick Worrall (Transworld)
• Hawk Mountain, by Conner Habib (Transworld)
• WAKE by Shelley Burr (Hodder & Stoughton)
• More Than You’ll Ever Know, by Katie Gutierrez (Michael Joseph)
• The Maid, by Nita Prose (HarperCollins)
• A Heart Full of Headstones, by Ian Rankin (Orion)
• Give Unto Others, by Donna Leon (Hutchinson Heinemann)
• The Murder Book, by Mark Billingham (Little, Brown)
• Bleeding Heart Yard, by Elly Griffith (Quercus)
• May God Forgive, by Alan Parks (Canongate)
• Maror, by Lavie Tidhar (Apollo)
• Blue Water, by Leonora Nattrass (Viper)
• The Lost Man of Bombay, by Vaseem Khan (Hodder & Stoughton)
• Queen High, by C.J. Carey (Quercus)
• Breaking Point, by Olivier Norek (MacLehose Press)
• The Moose Paradox, by Antti Tuomainen (Orenda)

A very nicely balanced collection, this, comprising modern and historical works, prominent authors as well as newcomers, cozies and darker yarns, and an almost equal split of male and female writers. I’m especially pleased to see among Wilson’s picks Australian debut novelist Burr’s WAKE and Queen High, penned by Jane Thynne (the widow of Philip Kerr) under her recent pseudonym, both of which kept me riveted; and Rankin’s A Heart Full of Headstones, a book proving that while his now retired Edinburgh police detective has lost his badge, he's certainly not lost his bite.

* * *

Although Aunt Agatha’s Bookstore, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, closed its doors in 2018, proprietors Robin and Jamie Agnew remain active online. They have recently begun selecting their own favorite reads of the year, posting separate lists per category. Below, for instance, are their choices for the 10 best historical mysteries of 2022.

• Secrets of the Nile, by Tasha Alexander (Minotaur)
• Because I Could Not Stop for Death, by Amanda Flower (Berkley)
• A Bride’s Guide to Marriage and Murder, by Dianne Freeman (Kensington)
• A Bend of Light, by Joy Jordan-Lake (Lake Union)
• Light on Bone, by Kathryn Lasky (Woodhall Press)
• Mother, Daughter, Traitor, Spy, by Susan Elia MacNeal (Bantam)
• The Unkept Woman, by Allison Montclair (Minotaur)
• The Echoes, by Jess Montgomery (Minotaur)
• The Bangalore Detectives Club, by Harini Nagendra (Pegasus Crime)
• Murder in Westminster, by Vanessa Riley (Kensington)

Click here to see also the pair’s choices 2022’s best cozy mysteries, and here to check out their honorable mentions of this year.

Zgorski’s A-List

Since I very often include critiques by Baltimore resident and BOLO Books blogger Kristopher Zgorski in The Rap Sheet’s “Revue of Reviewers” posts, it’s only right that I should also feature here his new picks of the “Top Reads of 2022.” Zgorski is quick to point out that this is “not necessarily a Best Of list. Certainly these books are worthy of any Best Of list, but since I did not read everything published this year, I always hesitate to call it such and I question any venue that purports to highlight the best as I am fairly sure no one has read all the crime fiction books published in 2022.”

So, below are Zgorski’s, um, favorite crime reads of this last year.

Top Reads:
• The Last King of California, by Jordan Harper (Simon & Schuster UK)
• 1989, by Val McDermid (Grove Atlantic)
• Anywhere You Run, by Wanda M. Morris (Morrow)
• A World of Curiosities, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)
• Finlay Donovan Knocks ’Em Dead, by Elle Cosimano (Minotaur)
• Like a Sister, by Kellye Garrett (Mulholland)
• The Murder Rule, by Dervla McTiernan (Morrow)
• Secret Identity, by Alex Segura (Flatiron)
• The Secrets We Share, by Edwin Hill (Kensington)
• The Undiscovered Deaths of Grace McGill, by C.S. Robertson
(Hodder & Stoughton UK)

Top Reads—Debut Novels:
• Devil’s Chew Toy, by Rob Osler (Crooked Lane)
• Dirt Creek, by Hayley Scrivenor (Flatiron)
• Sinkhole, by Davida G. Breier (University of New Orleans Press)

Top Reads—Uncategorizable “Crime Fiction”:
• A History of Fear, by Luke Dumas (‎Atria)
• The Other Side of Night, by Adam Hamdy (Atria)

Bullet Points: World Cup Edition

• We’ve now entered the final round of voting in this year’s Goodreads Choice Awards competition. The original collection of 20 books vying for “Best Mystery & Thriller” honors has now been chopped in half, with the following candidates remaining:

— All Good People Here, by Ashley Flowers (Bantam)
— The It Girl, by Ruth Ware (Scout Press)
— Daisy Darker, by Alice Feeney (Flatiron)
— The Maid, by Nita Prose (Ballantine)
— Killers of a Certain Age, by Deanna Raybourn (Berkley)
— A Flicker in the Dark, by Stacy Willingham (Minotaur)
— Wrong Place, Wrong Time, by Gillian McAllister (Morrow)
— The Paris Apartment, by Lucy Foley (Morrow)
— The Book of Cold Cases, by Simone St. James (Berkley)
— The Bullet That Missed, by Richard Osman (Pamela Dorman/Viking)

Click here to select your favorite from among those, but tarry not—voting in this round will end on December 4, with winners in this and other categories to be announced on Thursday, December 8.

• Just when you thought you had heard the last of Lisbeth Salander, she’s back. The antisocial and troubled computer hacker, who made her initial appearance in Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2007) and was last spotted in David Lagercrantz’s third series continuation novel, The Girl Who Lived Twice (2019), returned earlier this month in Swedish author Karin Smirnoff’s Havsörnens Skrik, a thriller that’s set to be published in English next August 29 as The Girl in the Eagle’s Talons. The Guardian reported recently that “Smirnoff’s book moves Salander’s story from Stockholm to northern Sweden, which [the yarn’s] UK publisher MacLehose Press said was ‘an area vast and beautiful, but also dealing with economic and social problems and the effects of climate change and environmental exploitation,’” American readers should be pleased to learn that The Girl in the Eagle’s Talons will be brought out simultaneously on this side of the Atlantic under the Alfred A. Knopf imprint.

• English author Stuart Turton has won Germany’s 2022 Viktor Crime Award for The Devil and Dark Water, a standalone historical thriller first released in English in 2020—and one of my favorite books of that year. This announcement was made earlier in November at Mord am Hellweg, described as “Europe’s largest international crime film festival.” Also shortlisted for the 2022 Viktor Award were Kazltes Herz (Cold Heart), by Henri Faber, and Horvath und die verschwundenen Schüler (Horvath and the Missing Students), by Marc Hofmann. The Viktor Crime Award has been presented ever since 2018, when Michaela Kastel won it for her thriller So Dark the Forest.

• Double or Nothing, Kim Sherwood’s first (of three) Double 0 agents thrillers, hit the shelves in Britain early this last September; it won’t see print in the United States until April 2023. However, the author says she has already completed work on her second installment, which runs 101,042 words in length (before editing). That sequel’s title—if it even has one yet—has not been publicly circulated.

• Entries in next year’s Glencairn Glass Crime Short Story Competition are due by Saturday, December 31. Those stories should not exceed 2,000 words in length, and must not have been published previously in any format. The theme for this year’s brief yarns is “A Crime Story Set in Scotland.” Writers from anywhere in the world are eligible to take part in this contest, but all must be over 16 years old. Prizes of £1,000 and £500 will go, respectively, to the First Place winner and a Runner-up. “The overall winning entry,” says the Glencairn Glass Web site, “will be published in Scottish Field Magazine and online at www.whiskyglass.com.” Click here to enter.

• Well, this is unfortunate TV news. From Variety:

ABC has reversed course on the drama series “Avalon,” opting not to move forward with the show despite giving it a straight-to-series order in February.

“Avalon” hailed from David E. Kelley and executive producer Michael Connelly, with the show based on a short story that Connelly wrote. Neve Campbell was set to star in the lead role. Other cast members included Demetrius Grosse, Alexa Mansour, Steven Pasquale, and Roslyn Ruff.

Per the official logline, the show “takes place in the main city of Avalon on Catalina Island, where LA Sheriff Department Detective Nicole “Nic” Searcy (Campbell) heads up a small office. Catalina has a local population that serves more than 1 million tourists a year, and each day when the ferries arrive, hundreds of potential new stories enter the island. Detective Searcy is pulled into a career-defining mystery that will challenge everything she knows about herself and the island.”

According to an individual with knowledge of the situation, ABC opted not to move forward with the series order for “Avalon” after screening the pilot. A+E Studios is said to still be bullish about the project and are weighing options on how to proceed.

• Adam Graham, host of The Great Detectives of Old Time Radio, shares his authoritative opinions about “The Top Ten Police Foils In Old Time Radio” (click here and here), and “The Four Worst Old Time Radio Detective Police Characters.”

• The mid-November edition of Mike Ripley’s “Getting Away with Murder” column for Shots includes observations on the annual Richard Lancelyn Green lecture; Francis Clifford’s 1976 novel, Drummer in the Dark; this year’s “ultimate Christmas mystery,” Alexandra Benedict’s Murder on the Christmas Express; a quartet of Czechoslovakian thrillers; plus fresh releases from Louise Penny, Ant Middleton, and B.A. Paris. Read about all of that and more here.

• Congratulations to The Bunburyist for having clocked its one-millionth pageview! As I wrote in a brief comment attached to blogger Elizabeth Foxwell’s post yesterday about this achievement, “I check The Bunburyist regularly, and consider it a great source of both information and enjoyment.”

• Max Allan Collins’ 18th Nate Heller novel, The Big Bundle, isn’t due out until January (a month later than expected, because of shipping issues). But he says he’s already completed the writing of his 19th series entry, Too Many Bullets, which finds private eye Heller investigating Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 assassination. “It’s a big book,” he writes in his blog, “on the lines of [1983’s] True Detective, and in a sense it’s the bookend to that first Heller memoir. It’s been very difficult, in part because of my health issues (doing better, thanks) but also because it’s one of the most complicated cases I’ve dealt with.” The 74-year-old author says his next Heller tale for publisher Hard Case Crime will tackle the mysterious 1975 disappearance of labor union leader Jimmy Hoffa. After that? Collins admits he’s “wrestling with … how long I should to stay at it with Heller. The degree of difficulty ... is tough at this age. Right now I am considering a kind of coda novel (much like Skim Deep for Nolan and Quarry’s Blood for Quarry) that would wrap things up. … Should I go that direction, and should my health and degree of interest continue on a positive course, I might do an occasional Heller in a somewhat shorter format. Of course, the problem with that is these crimes are always more complex than I think they’re going to be.”

• On the subject of forthcoming works, English professor and author Art Taylor mentions in his blog that he has a new short-story collection, The Adventure of the Castle Thief and Other Expeditions and Indiscretions, due out from Crippen & Landru in February 2023 (though I see no Amazon ordering link yet). Packing in 14 abbreviated yarns, plus an introduction by the esteemed Martin Edwards, Castle Thief will be Taylor’s second book from Crippen, following 2020’s The Boy Detective & The Summer of ’74 and Other Tales of Suspense. Taylor was generous enough to send me an advanced readers copy of his new collection, but I’ve had to hold off opening it until after I get The Rap Sheet’s end-of-the-year features organized.

• Seriously, Universal Pictures is going to shoot a big-screen flick based on the 1981-1986 Lee Majors TV series The Fall Guy? Deadline reports Ryan Gosling, Emily Blunt, and Teresa Palmer are all in the cast, and that this movie will premiere in March 2024. The original series was about Hollywood stunt people who moonlight as bounty hunters. Click here to watch that show’s opening title sequence.

• Crime by the Book’s Abby Endler attended this month’s Iceland Noir festival in Reykjavik, and she wants to tell us all about it.

• Having greatly enjoyed the six-part, 2016 BBC One/AMC TV drama The Night Manager, based on John le Carré’s 1993 novel of that same name, I look forward to seeing how this project from the same producer turns out. As stated In Reference to Murder:

The Night Manager producer, The Ink Factory, is creating a TV version of John le Carré’s A Most Wanted Man almost a decade after making a feature film version, with Snabba Cash writer, Oskar Söderlund, serving as showrunner. No broadcaster is attached as of yet, although Söderlund’s version is said to be updated to a modern-day European context. One of le Carré’s best known works, A Most Wanted Man follows a young Chechen ex-prisoner who arrives illegally in Germany with a claim to a fortune held in a private bank. It was written against the backdrop of George W. Bush’s policy of “extraordinary rendition” and inspired by the real-life story of Murat Kurnaz.

• In The New Yorker, Jill Lepore asks that immortal question, “Is Mick Herron the Best Spy Novelist of His Generation?”

• There’s no topping George Easter when it comes to tracking down lists of 2022’s best crime, mystery, and thriller works. Just over the last few days, the Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine editor has pointed us toward collections in The Financial Times (by both Barry Forshaw and Adam LeBor), Crime Time (by columnist Maxim Jakubowski), The Irish Times (by author Jane Casey), New Zealand Listener magazine, and a couple of Web sites that are new to me: The List and Lifehacker AU. He has also helpfully edited National Public Radio’s original list of what it calls this year’s 46 best mysteries to remove horror fiction, young-adult works, non-fiction books, and others that exceed the limits of the genre.

• The only picks I don’t think Easter has mentioned yet are those from British blogger Rekha Rao, at The Book Decoder. She’s assembled a long post of book covers that lead to reviews written over the last 12 months. Her many categories of choices include Best Cozy Mystery (Series Debut), Best Crime and Mystery (in a Series), and Best Standalone Mysteries and Thrillers. There are also selections in the fields of general fiction and romance, if you swing that way.

• Although The New York Times hasn’t yet revealed its crime, mystery, and thriller “bests” of this year, it did recently come out with a rundown of “100 Notable Books of 2022.” Featured there are Harini Nagendra’s The Bangalore Detectives Club, Percival Everett’s Dr. No, and Elizabeth Hand’s Hokuloa Road.

• Mere days after announcing that Scottish actress Ashley Jensen will assume the helm of BBC One’s Shetland, now that Douglas Henshall has left his role on that TV series as Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez, The Killing Times asks: Was this new hire really a good idea? After all, it’s noted, viewers expected Perez’s number two, Detective Sergeant Alison “Tosh” McIntosh (played by Alison O’Donnell) to step into the breach. Editor Paul Hirons writes that “it felt like she was primed for a promotion—she had just become a mum, had come through a sticky moment after surviving a bomb attack in series seven, and had seemed to have accrued and soaked up all the knowledge and expertise from Jimmy she needed. Many will be disappointed that Tosh is not the show lead.” We’ll have to wait until Shetland’s eighth-season debut to see how Tosh herself views this surprising turn of events.

• This seems right: Dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster’s 2022 Word of the Year is … gaslighting. “In our age of misinformation—‘fake news,’ conspiracy theories, Twitter trolls, and deepfakes—gaslighting has emerged as a word for our time,” explains M-W editor at large Peter Sokolowski. “From politics to pop culture to relationships, it has become a favored word for the perception of deception.” Meanwhile, Washington Post columnist Paul Waldman reflects here on the recent history of gaslighting in politics.

• And Mystery Fanfare notes the death, on November 10, of Shelley Singer. It goes on to say that she was “the author of 12 novels, including the Jake Samson mystery series. She taught fiction writing and worked one-on-one with writers as a manuscript consultant on non-fiction, literary novels, and in every genre from memoir to mystery to science fiction to horror.” A resident of Minneapolis, Minnesota, Singer was 83 when she died of “heart failure and other complications.”

Keeping Up with Easter

After stepping away from blogging for a few days, in order to complete a new CrimeReads piece (more about that later), I now find myself woefully behind in locating and publicizing “Best Crime Fiction of 2022” rolls. Fortunately, George Easter, the editor of Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine has stayed hot on the beat. I won’t duplicate his work, but I want to share with readers a couple of new lists.

Below, for instance, are critic Jake Kerridge’s selections for The Daily Telegraph (his original, paywall-protected article is here; Easter’s shorthand version is here):

• Queen High, by C.J. Carey (Quercus)
• Lady Joker, Volume 1, by Kaoru Takamura (Baskerville)
• A Heart Full of Headstones, by Ian Rankin (Orion)
• A Season in Exile, by Oliver Harris (Little, Brown)
• The Bullet That Missed, by Richard Osman (Viking)
• Murder Before Evensong, by Reverend Richard Coles (Weidenfeld
& Nicolson)
• The Twyford Code, by Janice Hallett (Viper)
• The Companion, by Lesley Thomson (Head of Zeus)
• The Perfect Crime, edited by Vaseem Khan and Maxim Jakubowski (HarperCollins)
• The Ink Black Heart, by Robert Galbraith (Sphere)

The only one of these that passed clean by my radar was A Season in Exile. I’m currently enjoying Queen High, the sequel to 2021’s Widowland, both written under a nom de plume by Jane Thynne (who was married to author Philip Kerr until his passing in 2018).

Meanwhile, the New York Public Library has released its own rundown of crime/mystery favorites, all 10 of which were penned by women:

• The Appeal, by Janice Hallett (Atria)
• I’ll Be You, by Janelle Brown (Random House)
• Killers of a Certain Age, by Deanna Raybourn (Berkley)
• Like a Sister, by Kellye Garrett (Mulholland)
• Magic, Lies, and Deadly Pies, by Misha Popp (Crooked Lane)
• Never Name the Dead, by D.M. Rowell (Crooked Lane)
• Shutter, by Ramona Emerson (Soho Crime)
• Stay Awake, by Megan Goldin (St. Martin’s Press)
• You’re Invited, by Amanda Jayatissa (Berkley)

Interested in still more “best of” inventories? Then try this quartet:

She Reads Best Mystery/Thriller of 2022
Audible Best Mysteries and Thrillers of 2022
Indigo Top 10 Best Thrillers of 2022 (Canada)
Booktopia Best Crime and Thrillers 2022 (Australia)

Finally, Easter shares his thoughts—here—on the 2022 choices thus far.

Post Time

Perhaps the best part of delaying my own declaration of which crime, mystery, and thriller novels I especially relished in 2022 is to see, in the meantime, what other reliable critics have to say on the matter. The chances of their influencing me are slim, as I can’t expect to consume a horde of additional novels at this late hour in the process. But learning about their favorites does have some impact on my future reading, as it provokes me to add authors to my watch list whose work I have not previously sampled.

The Washington Post, which issued its “12 best thriller and mystery novels of 2022” rundown this morning, leaves me with regret for having passed over a couple of titles (Knock Off the Hat, for instance). I hope to get to them in coming weeks.

Here are the novels that won the Post’s seal of approval:

• Bad Actors, by Mick Herron (Soho Crime)
• The Bullet That Missed, by Richard Osman (Pamela Dorman/Viking)
• The Christie Affair, by Nina de Gramont (St. Martin’s Press)
• Insomnia, by Sarah Pinborough (Morrow)
• On Java Road, by Lawrence Osborne (Hogarth)
• Knock Off the Hat, by Richard Stevenson (Amble Press)
• The Love of My Life, by Rosie Walsh (Pamela Dorman)
• The Maid, by Nita Prose (Ballantine)
• One-Shot Harry, by Gary Phillips (Soho Crime)
• The Violin Conspiracy, by Brendan Slocumb (Anchor)
• The Verifiers, by Jane Pek (Knopf Doubleday)
• A World of Curiosities, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)

Sadly, none of these dozen tales also appears on the newspaper’s most-anticipated “10 Best Books of the Year” roll.

(Hat tip to Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine.)

The Choice Is Yours

With the end of this year (too) fast approaching, the Amazon-owned social cataloguing Web site Goodreads is back with its annual Choice Awards competition. There are 17 categories of nominees, with the winners to be determined through two rounds of public voting. The 20 contenders for “Best Mystery & Thriller” honors are:

• Jackal, by Erin E. Adams (Bantam)
• The Book of Cold Cases, by Simone St. James (Berkley)
• A Flicker in the Dark, by Stacy Willingham (Minotaur)
• The Family Remains, by Lisa Jewell (Atria)
• Things We Do in the Dark, by Jennifer Hillier (Minotaur)
• All Good People Here, by Ashley Flowers (Bantam)
• The Family Game, by Catherine Steadman (Ballantine)
• The Violin Conspiracy, by Brendan Slocumb (Anchor)
• Wrong Place, Wrong Time, by Gillian McAllister (Morrow)
• The It Girl, by Ruth Ware (Scout Press)
• The Golden Couple, by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen (St. Martin’s Press)
• Killers of a Certain Age, by Deanna Raybourn (Berkley)
• More Than You’ll Ever Know, by Katie Gutierrez (Morrow)
• The Overnight Guest, by Heather Gudenkauf (Park Row)
• Daisy Darker, by Alice Feeney (Flatiron)
• The Housemaid, by Freida McFadden (Grand Central)
• The Paris Apartment, by Lucy Foley (Morrow)
• The Maid, by Nita Prose (Ballantine)
• The Bullet That Missed, by Richard Osman (Pamela Dorman/Viking)
• The Night Shift, by Alex Finlay (Minotaur)

Click here to select your favorite novel from among those 20.

So you have between now and Sunday, November 27, to cast your ballots in this opening elimination round. The final voting will take place from November 29 through December 4, with winners in each category to be announced on Thursday, December 8.

(Hat tip to Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine.)

Attaining Amazon’s Approval

The latest in a recent series of “best crime and mystery fiction of 2022” lists comes from mega-retailer Amazon. I’ve read a few of these 20 books, and thought most of them quite respectable (although I found The Violin Conspiracy to be disappointing).

• City on Fire, by Don Winslow (HarperCollins)
• The Maid, by Nita Prose (Ballantine)
• Killers of a Certain Age, by Deanna Raybourn (Berkley)
• The Golden Couple, by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen
(St. Martin’s Press)
• The Lies I Tell, by Julie Clark (Sourcebooks Landmark)
• The Hacienda, by Isabel Cañas (Berkley)
• The Overnight Guest, by Heather Gudenkauf (Park Row)
• The Violin Conspiracy, by Brendan Slocumb (Anchor)
• Lavender House, by Lev A.C. Rosen (Forge)
• Shutter, by Ramona Emerson (Soho Crime)
• Hidden Pictures, by Jason Rekulak (Flatiron)
• What Happened to the Bennetts, by Lisa Scottoline (Putnam)
• The Housemaid, by Freida McFadden (Grand Central)
• Anywhere You Run, by Wanda M. Morris (Morrow)
• All Good People Here, by Ashley Flowers (Bantam)
• The Butcher and the Wren, by Alaina Urquhart (Zando)
• Carolina Moonset, by Matt Goldman (Forge)
• Bleeding Heart Yard, by Elly Griffiths (Mariner)
• Forsaken Country, by Allen Eskens (Mulholland)
• Winter Work, by Dan Fesperman (Knopf)

Winslow’s City on Fire, the first novel in a new trilogy, also appears on Amazon’s 10 “Best Books of 2022” roll.

(Hat tip to Mystery Fanfare.)