I’ve long believed that crime fiction runs along a spectrum between order and chaos, where the two seemingly disparate states are always intertwined, ever-changing, never settled. It makes sense that a genre offering a window into the way we really function in society and behave with one another would embrace constraints while also constantly subverting them. This year’s standout authors understood the assignment: to push boundaries, to reflect the world in its messy glory rather than in tidy narratives.
The God of the Woods
By Liz Moore
My crime novel of the year is “The God of the Woods,” which I had the great fortune of reading while at a writing residency. Somehow that change of scene — in a picturesque environment akin to the Adirondack summer camp where the 13-year-old daughter of the camp’s wealthy founders disappears one night in 1975 — heightened my attention to Moore’s note-perfect story, which is about the price of power, the enormity of loss and the ease of scapegoating. I expect to be thinking about this novel years from now.
Cahokia Jazz
By Francis Spufford
The narrative audacity of “Cahokia Jazz” isn’t altogether surprising for anyone who has read Spufford’s previous novels. Here he sets out to chronicle a vanished world that never had the chance to blossom, and allows it to breathe through the jagged, jazzy rhythms of hard-boiled detective fiction. In Spufford’s brilliant telling, 1920s-era Cahokia is a thriving, Indigenous-led American state roiling with racial tension. When an outsider arrives to investigate a murder, the ties that bind this supposed utopia can only blow apart.
The Hunter
By Tana French
Crime fiction fans were lucky to get a new novel from French, who has long displayed a languid but total command of the genre’s storytelling possibilities. “The Hunter” is a follow-up to “The Searcher,” bringing back the American expat and ex-cop Cal Hunter, who’s building a new life in an Irish village and mentoring a local teen, Trey Reddy. But when Trey’s no-good father reappears with a get-rich-quick scheme, murder follows. French takes her sweet time unwinding the tale, and the reader’s patience is amply rewarded.
Rough Trade
By Katrina Carrasco
“Second book syndrome” has caught on as shorthand for the quality dip that is said to often follow a successful debut. But there are three sophomore efforts, all series novels, that equal or exceed their predecessors. The first is “Rough Trade,” Carrasco’s historical thriller featuring the gutsy, Pinkerton-trained opium smuggler Alma Rosales, which brims with the sights and smells of late-19th-century Tacoma, where secrets swirl and betrayals mount.
Hall of Mirrors
By John Copenhaver
Copenhaver’s “Hall of Mirrors” brings back the crime-obsessed duo Judy Nightingale and Philippa Watson for a haunting exploration of closeted lives and shadow selves in 1950s Washington, D.C., as they track a serial killer they tried and failed to thwart years ago.
Blessed Water
By Margot Douaihy
“Blessed Water” brings back Douaihy’s New Orleans nun-slash-private eye, Sister Holiday, introduced to blistering effect in “Scorched Grace.” This time, the chain-smoking Holiday, “tattooed from my jawline to my toes,” discovers a body in the river “clad in all black, like me.” It’s a priest, and as she investigates his murder, the city storms.
Smoke Kings
By Jahmal Mayfield
Three debuts stood out from the rest this year. The first, “Smoke Kings,” is Mayfield’s examination of whether there can ever truly be restitution for the harm done to generations of Black people in America. If the only way is to do so by force, what are the moral costs?
Swallow the Ghost
By Eugenie Montague
Similar provocations suffuse Montague’s “Swallow the Ghost,” though her questions revolve around the making and breaking of crime narratives. I loved the way the three seemingly disparate sections, in markedly different styles, coalesce around deeper questions of whose story is most worth telling.
May the Wolf Die
By Elizabeth Heider
Heider is off to a roaring series start with her debut, which introduces the Italian investigator Nikki Serafino working the beat (and wrestling with personal demons aplenty) in seedy, beautiful, baroque Naples.
Nothing but the Truth
By Robyn Gigl
Finally, I continue to press Gigl’s books into readers’ hands with urgency, especially her fourth and best effort featuring the transgender New Jersey lawyer Erin McCabe. Gigl writes crackling courtroom scenes and ratchets up the suspense with every chapter, but the depth with which she renders Erin, her love for (and complicated relationships with) her family and friends, is what sticks with me. The personal is political, especially now, but character and humanity are what propel this series to continued excellence.
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