Greg Fleming’s picks of 2018
THE MAN WHO CAME UPTOWN
by George Pelecanos
(Orion, $38)
This short novel, written between George Pelecanos’ television commitments (The Wire, Treme, The Deuce) is a perfect summation of Pelecanos’ talents and proof the sojourn in TV land has only brought focus and precision to his prose. This is a powerful and moving meditation on crime, redemption, family and, most surprisingly, the power of literature. Despite rapid gentrification, life on Washington’s streets is hard, especially for newly released Michael Hudson; his shot at redemption comes via books dispensed by a prison librarian. It’s a beautifully crafted crime novel that builds to a violent finale but its ambitions are wider and more nuanced. “I’m a crime novelist, yes,” Pelecanos told me when I interviewed him last month, “but in the end all I’m trying to do is write good books and leave something of worth behind. I hope I am getting better as a writer. That’s my goal.” He is — and this is a moving look at the small triumphs and moral struggles of a changing America.
THE LOST MAN
by Jane Harper
(MacMillan, $38)
It’s hard to avoid Jane Harper in lists like this. Her previous novel, Force of Nature, was one of the finest thrillers of 2017 and The Lost Man
is even better. On one level, it’s another Australian Outback whodunnit like her debut The Dry but this novel (her first without damaged police agent Aaron Falk) is most memorably a dark, family drama. A man is found dead on a stockman’s grav. His car 9km away. That’s the mystery to be solved but, again, Harper takes the opportunity to look at questions of power, family and isolation in a brooding and malevolent landscape. Magnificent.
DARK SACRED NIGHT
by Michael Connelly
(Little, Brown and Company, $38)
“If it worked the first time . . . then you go back to the well,” says Michael Connelly about his return to character Renee Ballard, who helmed 2017’s The Late Show. Ballard’s a fierce young LAPD detective who lives on the beach and works the graveyard shift. This time, Connelly pairs her with the now iconic Harry Bosch, who (no surprise) is investigating a cold case involving a young prostitute. Both are outsiders by nature and seem to understand what makes the other tick. A Connelly novel is a highlight of any thriller fan’s year and this is another skilfully crafted outing; if there’s a weakness here it’s in the temperamental similarities Bosch and Ballard share. Still, it’s highly recommended.
SUNBURN
by Laura Lippman
(William Morrow, $33)
Sunburn is Laura Lippman’s celebration of the hard-boiled genre, inspired by her love of James M. Cain. The premise? What if the genders in The Postman Always Rings Twice were flipped and the gorgeous drifter was a woman? The sexy wife-on-the-lam is Polly Costello, who leaves a husband and young daughter in search of a better life. Then a PI tracks her down (something to do with a fraudulently claimed insurance policy from her last husband whom she stabbed while he slept) and, this being noir, he falls for her charms. Lippman’s a writer who just keeps getting better and this, which reads like it was a blast to write, is one of her finest.
A LADDER TO THE SKY
by John Boyne (Doubleday, $37) A guaranteed page-turner, this is a dark but delicious tale of an ambitious young writer, Maurice Swift, who plays fast and loose with the lives of all around him because, ultimately, he’s talentless. At least at writing; not at plotting his own rise and rise. Packed with literary references and sly asides about the world writers inhabit, it’s a psychological thriller, told from multiple points of view, which traverses the seven deadly sins to become a modern morality tale. By the time Maurice’s full malevolence becomes apparent, you’re off kilter and uncertain whether to despise or secretly admire him. Dionne Christian