The Year’s Best Pursuits

As is the column’s custom, this year again I’ve pursued and reviewed some 7 dozen works of crime fiction, and scanned, skimmed or at least read the jacket copy of many dozens more. Of those I’ve read, these are the 10 I’ve admired the most, the ones I’ll hang on to in the hope of reading again one day. The order is roughly chronological by month of publication.

BUCKET NUT by Liza Cody (Doubleday) , a quirky, improbable but oddly appealing thriller centering on a lady wrestler who lives in a London junkyard and dreams of glory.

CHILD OF SILENCE by Abigail Padgett (Mysterious), a fine first novel about a social worker seeking to discover why a mute child was abandoned on a remote California reservation.

NO HAPPY ENDING by Paco Ignacio Taibo II (Mysterious Press), a hammer-tough, Hammett-like story of a detective fighting corruption and a vicious paramilitary group in Mexico City.

THE LATE MAN by James Preston Girard (Atheneum), a sensitive but subtly suspenseful study of three characters whose relationships are altered by the search for a serial killer. My choice for the year’s best.

A CONCERT OF GHOSTS by Campbell Armstrong (HarperCollins) : a loner who survived the ‘60s finds the decade won’t let him alone, in a swift, sardonic thriller--one long chase Hitchcock would have loved.

MISSING JOSEPH by Elizabeth George (Bantam), in which the California author who does Britain as well as P. D. James explores the death by herbal poisoning of a woman in a wrought-up village.

INTEREST OF JUSTICE by Nancy Taylor Rosenberg (Dutton), a second richly detailed and smartly plotted mystery set in the California court system where the author has worked, her heroine a judge under fire.

THE CROCODILE BIRD by Ruth Rendell (Crown), the prolific and splendid English author’s tantalizing portrait of a mother doing all she can (a lot) to keep her daughter unstained by a world the mother has reason to hate.

WIRELESS by Jack O’Connell (Mysterious Press), phantasmagoric goings-on, with style to match, in a fictional New England city, where an FBI man runs amok and radio is like nothing you ever heard.

THE SKELETON’S KNEE by Archer Mayor (Mysterious Press), a fresh and engrossing police procedural, fourth in a series set in Brattleboro, Vt., where the author lives, this time with a detour to Chicago in search of a prosthesis.

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It was a fertile year for crime fiction, with many a title likely to live on in softcover and library borrowings. The following, listed roughly in order of appearance during the year, all commend themselves to lovers of the mystery form:

ADMISSION OF GUILT by Harold Mehling (Carroll & Graf)

SOMETHING LIKE A LOVE AFFAIR by Julian Symons (Mysterious Press)

MORTAL MEMORY by Thomas H. Cook (Putnam)

THE DEVIL’S WALTZ by Jonathan Kellerman (Bantam)

THE MAN WHO UNDERSTOOD CATS by Michael Allen Dymmoch (St. Martin’s)

L.A. TIMES by Stuart Woods (HarperCollins)

THE WAY THROUGH THE WOODS by Colin Dexter (Crown)

CRUEL AND UNUSUAL by Patricia Cornwell (Scribner’s)

SHADOW PLAY by Frances Fyfield (Pantheon)

YOU CAN DIE TRYING by Gar Anthony Heywood (St. Martin’s)

THE BALLAD OF ROCKY RUIZ by Manual Ramos (St. Martin’s)

HEIR APPARENT by Kate Coscarelli (St. Martin’s)

MOTH by James Sallis (Carroll & Graf)

PRONTO by Elmore Leonard (Delacorte)

THE BLACK ICE by Michael Connolly (Little, Brown)

PRIME WITNESS by Steve Martini (Putnam)

SACRED CLOWNS by Tony Hillerman (HarperCollins)

THE SCULPTRESS by Minette Waters (St. Martin’s)

HALF LIGHT by Frances Hegarty (Pocket Books)

ANNA’S BOOK by Barbara Vine (Harmony)

SHERLOCK IN LOVE by Sena Jeter Naslund (Godine)

FINNEGAN’S WEEK by Joseph Wambaugh (Morrow)

DEAD MAN by Joe Gores (Mysterious Press)

LITERARY MURDER by Batya Gur (HarperCollins)

HEAD LOCK by Jeremiah Healy (Pocket Books)