Crime Time has once again asked reviewers from the world of crime fiction for their best reads of 2019. The result is a varied list of what has proved to be another brilliant year for crime fiction publishing.
Selections from… John Dugdale, The Guardian • Jon Coates, Daily Express • Karen Robinson, Sunday Times Crime Club • Barry Forshaw, Financial Times, Crime Time • Craig Sisterson, Southern Cross Crime, Ngaio Marsh Awards • Doug Johnstone, The Big Issue • Dr Kat Hall, Mrs Peabody Investigates • Janice Pfister, Waterstones, Gower Street • Jake Kerridge, Daily Telegraph • Laura Wilson, The Guardian • Mark Sanderson, The Times, Evening Standard • Ali Karim, Shots • Maxim Jakubowski, Crime Time • Natasha Cooper, Literary Review • Nick Rennison, The Sunday Times • Paul Burke, NB Magazine, ‘The Verdict’ • Ayo Onatade, Shots • Russel McLean, freelance crime fiction reviewer • Sarah Ward, Crime Pieces • Stav Sherez, Catholic Herald • Woody Haut, Crime Time
THE CRIME TIME BOOK OF THE YEAR
(The book nominated by the most number of reviewers)
THE BORDER – DON WINSLOW (HarperCollins)
For over forty years, Art Keller has been on the front lines of America’s longest conflict: The War on Drugs. His obsession to defeat the world’s most powerful, wealthy, and lethal kingpin―the godfather of the Sinaloa Cartel, Adán Barrera―has left him bloody and scarred, cost him the people he loves, even taken a piece of his soul.
Now Keller is elevated to the highest ranks of the DEA, only to find that in destroying one monster he has created thirty more that are wreaking even more chaos and suffering in his beloved Mexico. But not just there.
Barrera’s final legacy is the heroin epidemic scourging America. Throwing himself into the gap to stem the deadly flow, Keller finds himself surrounded by enemies―men who want to kill him, politicians who want to destroy him, and worse, the unimaginable―an incoming administration that’s in bed with the very drug traffickers that Keller is trying to bring down.
Art Keller is at war with not only the cartels, but with his own government. And the long fight has taught him more than he ever imagined. Now, he learns the final lesson―there are no borders.
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HIGHLY COMMENDED
HEAVEN MY HOME – ATTICA LOCKE (Serpent’s Tail)
When the young son of an Aryan Brotherhood of Texas gang captain goes missing, Ranger Darren Matthews has no choice but to investigate the crime. Following the election of Donald Trump, a new wave of racial violence has swept the state. Dark, swampy and filled with skeletal trees, Caddo Lake is so large it crosses into Lousiana. This is deep country and the rule of law doesn’t mean much to the Brotherhood, beyond what it can do for them.
A further complication is that the Brotherhood is squatting on the land of a former Freedmen’s community, and one of the last descendants of these former slaves is actually a suspect in the possible murder of the missing boy.
Instructed by his lieutenant to use the investigation to gather more evidence that might help to take down the Texas chapter of the Brotherhood, Darren is playing very dangerous game indeed.
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SARAH JANE – JAMES SALLIS (No Exit Press)
Sarah Jane Pullman is a good cop with a complicated past. From her small-town chicken-farming roots through her runaway adolescence, court-ordered Army stint, ill-advised marriage and years slinging scrambled eggs over greasy spoon griddles, Sarah Jane unfolds her life story, a parable about memory, atonement, and finding shape in chaos. Her life takes an unexpected turn when she finds herself named the de facto sheriff of a rural town, investigating the mysterious disappearance of the sheriff whose shoes she’s filling –and the even more mysterious realities of the life he was hiding from his own colleagues and closest friends.
In the tradition of James Crumley’s The Last Good Kiss and Ivy Pochoda’s Wonder Valley, this kaleidoscopic character study sparkles in every dark and bright detail – a virtuoso work by a master of both the noir and the tender aspects of human nature.
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WORST CASE SCENARIO – HELEN FITZGERALD (Orenda Books)
Mary Shields is a moody, acerbic probation offer, dealing with some of Glasgow’s worst cases, and her job is on the line. Liam Macdowall was imprisoned for murdering his wife, and he’s published a series of letters to the dead woman, in a book that makes him an unlikely hero – and a poster boy for Men’s Rights activists.
Liam is released on licence into Mary’s care, but things are far from simple. Mary develops a poisonous obsession with Liam and his world, and when her son and Liam’s daughter form a relationship, Mary will stop at nothing to impose her own brand of justice … with devastating consequences.
A heart-pounding, relentless and chilling psychological thriller, rich with deliciously dark and unapologetic humour, Worst Case Scenario is also a perceptive, tragic and hugely relevant book by one of the most exciting names in crime fiction.
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COMMENDED
CONVICTION – DENISE MINA (Harvill Secker)
It’s just a normal morning when Anna’s husband announces that he’s leaving her for her best friend and taking their two daughters with him.
With her safe, comfortable world shattered, Anna distracts herself with someone else’s story: a true-crime podcast. That is until she recognises the name of one of the victims and becomes convinced that only she knows what really happened.
With nothing left to lose, she throws herself into investigating the case. But little does she know, Anna’s past and present lives are about to collide, sending everything she has worked so hard to achieve into freefall.
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LADY IN THE LAKE – LAURA LIPPMAN (Faber & Faber)
In 1966, Baltimore is a city of secrets that everyone seems to know—everyone, that is, except Madeline “Maddie” Schwartz. Last year, she was a happy, even pampered housewife. This year, she’s bolted from her marriage of almost twenty years, determined to make good on her youthful ambitions to live a passionate, meaningful life.
Maddie wants to matter, to leave her mark on a swiftly changing world. Drawing on her own secrets, she helps Baltimore police find a murdered girl—assistance that leads to a job at the city’s afternoon newspaper, the Star. Working at the newspaper offers Maddie the opportunity to make her name, and she has found just the story to do it: a missing woman whose body was discovered in the fountain of a city park lake.
Cleo Sherwood was a young black woman who liked to have a good time. No one seems to know or care why she was killed except Maddie—and the dead woman herself. Maddie’s going to find the truth about Cleo’s life and death. Cleo’s ghost, privy to Maddie’s poking and prying, wants to be left alone.
Maddie’s investigation brings her into contact with people that used to be on the periphery of her life—a jewelry store clerk, a waitress, a rising star on the Baltimore Orioles, a patrol cop, a hardened female reporter, a lonely man in a movie theater. But for all her ambition and drive, Maddie often fails to see the people right in front of her. Her inability to look beyond her own needs will lead to tragedy and turmoil for all sorts of people—including the man who shares her bed, a black police officer who cares for Maddie more than she knows.
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LITTLE SIBERIA – ANTTI TUOMAINEN (Orenda Books)
A man with dark thoughts on his mind is racing along the remote snowy roads of Hurmevaara in Finland, when there is flash in the sky and something crashes into the car. That something turns out to be a highly valuable meteorite. With euro signs lighting up the eyes of the locals, the unexpected treasure is temporarily placed in a neighbourhood museum, under the watchful eye of a priest named Joel.
But Joel has a lot more on his mind than simply protecting the riches that have apparently rained down from heaven. His wife has just revealed that she is pregnant. Unfortunately Joel has strong reason to think the baby isn’t his. As Joel tries to fend off repeated and bungled attempts to steal the meteorite, he must also come to terms with his own situation, and discover who the father of the baby really is.
Transporting the reader to the culture, landscape and mores of northern Finland Little Siberia is both a crime novel and a hilarious, blacker-than-black comedy about faith and disbelief, love and death, and what to do when bolts from the blue – both literal and figurative – turn your life upside down.
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THE LOST MAN – JANE HARPER (Abacus Books)
Why did Cameron Bright die?
He had started to remove his clothes as logic had deserted him, and his skin was cracked. Whatever had been going through Cameron’s mind when he was alive, he didn’t look peaceful in death.
Two brothers meet at the remote border of their vast cattle properties under the unrelenting sun of the outback. In an isolated part of Australia, they are each other’s nearest neighbour, their homes hours apart.
They are at the stockman’s grave, a landmark so old that no one can remember who is buried there. But today, the scant shadow it casts was the last hope for their middle brother, Cameron. The Bright family’s quiet existence is thrown into grief and anguish.
Something had been troubling Cameron. Did he choose to walk to his death? Because if he didn’t, the isolation of the outback leaves few suspects…
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THE WYCH ELM – TANA FRENCH (Penguin Books)
One night changes everything for Toby. He’s always led a charmed life – until a brutal attack leaves him damaged and traumatised, unsure even of the person he used to be. He seeks refuge at his family’s ancestral home, the Ivy House, filled with memories of wild-strawberry summers and teenage parties with his cousins.
But not long after Toby’s arrival, a discovery is made: a skull, tucked neatly inside the old wych elm in the garden.
As detectives begin to close in, Toby is forced to examine everything he thought he knew about his family, his past, and himself.
A spellbinding book from a novelist who takes crime writing and turns it inside out, The Wych Elm asks what we become, and what we’re capable of, if we no longer know who we are.
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OUR CONTRIBUTORS’ TOP PICKS
If you’d like to know the titles chosen by our amazing contributors, we’ve listed them below. You’ll not find a better reading list this year!
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