South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
Best mystery novels of 2018
This was another banner year for mystery fiction, making it once again difficult to narrow down the best from among the 129 new books I read this year. Here are my picks for the year’s best mystery fiction of 2018. Happy reading.
Top novels
1. “November Road” by Lou Berney (Morrow): While set immediately after President Kennedy’s assassination, “November Road” is not about that crucial historic day in Dallas. Instead, Edgar winner Lou Berney’s powerful story is about how people can reinvent themselves, and the restorative forces of love and redemption. The unlikely pairing of a New Orleans mobster and an Oklahoma housewife who meet during a cross-country automobile trip delivers an emotional story, and a rousing piece of crime fiction.
2. “If I Die Tonight” by Alison Gaylin (Morrow): A high school outcast is the prime suspect when a popular football star is left in a coma following a carjacking. The crime’s repercussions flow through the community as Gaylin’s superb plot touches on parental issues, teenage angst, loneliness and fame.
3. “Give Me Your Hand” by Megan Abbott (Little, Brown): Two women scientists — friends and rivals — vying for a spot on a high-profile research project continues Abbott’s look at
female empowerment. Abbott uses science to enhance the plot but not overtake it as the stressful environment of a research lab — “a nest of vipers” — stands in for any challenging career whether at a law firm, a hospital, police force or a newsroom. Abbott shows the thin line between goals and blind ambition.
4. “Dark Sacred Night” by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown): Police detective Harry Bosch is successfully paired with LAPD detective Renée Ballard, introduced in last year’s “The Late Show.” Their union is not always smooth, but it is based on a growing respect for each other. Each sees the other through their own eyes. Connelly keeps his novels fresh as he again delivers an exciting police procedural, only this time with two unique characters.
5. “Jar of Hearts” by Jennifer Hillier (Minotaur): Flashbacks, surprises and a polarizing heroine punctuate this outstanding psychological thriller. Newly released from prison for the role she played when her boyfriend murdered her best friend, Georgina “Geo” Shaw finds a different kind of jail on the outside. Geo’s complicated personality elicits both sympathy and repulsion as she manages to always keep us on her side.
6. “Sunburn” by Laura Lippman (Morrow): Melding a classic hardboiled mystery with a contemporary domestic thriller, “Sunburn” is a scorching intense story about characters hiding their identities even from themselves. Polly Costello walks away from her husband, Greg, and 3-year-old daughter, Jani, during a beach vacation, planning to revel in solitude. The last thing she wants, or needs, is to fall into a relationship with Adam Bosk, a cook at the diner where she finds a job as a waitress. A paean to Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain and Anne Tyler, “Sunburn” touches on murder and insurance as each character struggles with the dichotomies of who they are. Each is fragile and fearless, caring and cruel.
7. “The Wife” by
Alafair Burke (Harper): Angela Powell’s carefully calibrated life spins out of control when her highly respected husband, Jason, is accused of sexual harassment. While Jason’s explanation sounds plausible, doubts increase when another claims Jason raped her. Angela fears that her socially conscious husband will be ruined and her marriage in tatters, but also that her past will be dredged up. When she was a teenager, she was held captive for years until rescued.
8. “Lonely Witness” by William Boyle (Pegasus Books): The gritty area of Gravesend, Brooklyn, is really a small town for its residents, especially for Amy Falconetti, who has left her life as a hard-drinking party girl. Her return to religion saved her, but also left her numb as she tries to reconcile her previously destructive nature and her lonely existence. The reappearance of her father, who abandoned her when she was 12, brings back her feelings of inadequacy, and why she has been “searching for an identity my whole life, trying all these different lives. I’ve never been comfortable anywhere.” Her actions after witnessing a murder don’t make sense to her, but help to energize her.
9. “Safe Houses” by
Dan Fesperman (Dutton): Espionage thrillers seldom address the emotional dangers of undercover work, or how young female spies can be at risk for sexual abuse, or worse. The spy trade is like any business in which women can face sexism and disrespect, keeping them powerless in the workplace. Alternating between West Berlin in 1979 and a small Maryland town in 2014, “Safe Houses” does double duty as a spy novel and a family drama.
10. “Death of a Rainmaker” by Laurie Loewenstein (Kaylie Jones Books/Akashic):
Set in an Oklahoma small town during the Great Depression, this launch of a promising new series is as vivid as the stark photographs of Dorothea Lange. Vermillion, Okla., residents are desperate because there has been no rain for 240 days, making the economic downturn worse. But the arrival of a man claiming he can make it rain ends in disaster. The heart of the story is Sheriff Temple Jennings and his wife, Etha, good people with compassion for their neighbors and a sense of justice.
11. “Lullaby Road” by James Anderson (Crown): Utah trucker Ben Jones deals with treacherous curves, unpredictable weather and eccentric people along his remote delivery route. Despite the seemingly harmless oddballs Ben delivers supplies to, the road never feels safe. Ben’s routine is interrupted when he finds a child and a protective white dog in his truck along with a note suggesting the 6-year-old is in trouble. The beauty and harshness of Utah’s high desert add to Ben’s isolation.
12. “Leave No Trace” by Mindy Mejia (Emily Bestler Books/Atria): A young woman with past mental problems becomes involved with a young man who disappeared with his father more than a decade ago in Minnesota’s Boundary Waters wilderness, along the Canadian border. It’s an insightful look into mental health issues, a media frenzy and life in the wild.
13. “The Disappearing” By Lori Roy (Dutton): An eerie atmosphere churns the Southern gothic-esque story about Lane Fielding, who returns to her small Florida town where her father has been accused of having beaten, and, perhaps, murdered several boys when he was headmaster of the now shuttered reform school. Now, two young women with connections to the Fieldings have disappeared. An abandoned scary place and hidden graveyards add to the chills.
14. “The Three Beths” by Jeff Abbott (Grand Central): A woman searching for her missing mother learns that two other women also named Beth, as is her mom, are missing. Devastated since her mother vanished, Mariah Dunning also contends with the fact that her father is the prime suspect and that her family is under constant scrutiny of by her Austin community.
15. (tie) “River Bodies” by Karen Katchur (Thomas & Mercer): A town divided by the regular residents and a motorcycle gang provides a compelling metaphor for a woman whose fractured childhood shaped her as an adult. Veterinarian Becca Kingsley’s return to her hometown coincides with a murder eerily similar to another killing that her estranged father, the former police chief, investigated more than 20 years before.
15. (tie) “Under a Dark Sky” by Lori Rader-Day (Morrow): A “dark sky” park where not even a sliver of light permeates is the evocative backdrop for this story about Eden Wallace, consumed by grief since her husband’s death. Visiting a dark sky park in Michigan, Eden expects solitude. Instead, Eden is thrown together with six strangers who are friends since college. The complicated relationships sour during the weekend, culminating with the murder of one of them.
Best debuts
(in alphabetical order)
“Caged” by Ellison Cooper (Minotaur): A concentration on people and a realistic look at science elevate this intense hunt for a serial killer that introduces FBI special agent and neuroscientist Sayer Altair. Prickly and intelligent, the biracial Sayer is a formidable heroine with a “burning pitch” for justice.
“Dodging and Burning” by John Copenhaver (Pegasus): A riveting look at life for gay men and lesbians during America’s post-WWII era set in a small Virginia town and in the military. It is as much a coming-of-age story as it is a coming-out tale.
“Sweet Little Lies” By Caz Frear (Harper): A British police procedural melds with the psychological thriller and a solid look at a fractured family. As a child, Cat Kinsella, now a London detective constable, adored her father until she began to suspect his role in a teenager’s disappearance. Prickly but compassionate, Cat can trace her complicated psyche and her decision to become a cop to the relationship with her father.
“Last Girl Gone” by J.G. Hetherton (Crooked Lane): Returning to her small North Carolina town after being fired from her Boston Globe job, Laura Chambers tries to restart her journalism career writing “small town” stories for the Hillsborough Gazette. A story about the 30-year-old unsolved cases of missing girls energizes Laura as she teams up with an FBI agent and a retired sheriff. A realistic look at newsroom culture and small town life enhances the plot.
“The Other Woman” by Sandie Jones (Minotaur): Emily Havistock feels she might have a fighting chance if the other woman vying for the affections of Adam Banks was another girlfriend. Instead, the woman who keeps coming between Emily and Adam is his mother. Mindful that Adam’s previous girlfriend died in mysterious circumstances, Emily navigates a minefield of veiled insults and passive aggressive actions by her mother-in-law while trying to save her marriage.
“The Other Side of Everything” by Lauren Doyle Owens (Touchstone): The murder of an elderly Fort Lauderdale woman rocks a South Florida neighborhood and affects three seemingly unconnected residents. The once-thriving neighborhood now on the decline illustrates the generational concerns of the young, middle-aged and the elderly. Here, gossip and a festering hatred can erupt into violence.
“Ways to Hide in Winter” by Sarah St. Vincent (Melville House): Young widow Kathleen McElwain’s hermit-like life is upended by a stranger who appears at the store at which she works “tucked away in the forgotten forests of Pennsylvania.” The man claims to be a student from Uzbekistan and his stories make Kathleen consider finally leaving the area. The tightly plotted tale combines a story of regret with the war on terror.
“The Chalk Man” by C.J. Tudor (Crown): Before the discovery of a body near their home in the British village of Anderbury, five friends enjoyed a carefree childhood, drawing chalk men as secret signals to each. But 30 years later, each of these adults is drawn back to that day that affected the kind of adult they became. As children, they thought they knew everything that happened in their village. Now adults, they realize how little they knew about their own families.
Nonfiction
“The Real Lolita: The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel That Scandalized the World” by Sarah Weinman (Ecco): The 1948 kidnapping of an 11-year-old New Jersey girl may have been the real-life inspiration for “Lolita,” Vladimir Nabokov’s classic 1955 novel.
Short stories
“Florida Happens: Tales of Mystery, Mayhem, and Suspense from the Sunshine State” Edited by Greg Herren (Three Rooms): These 21 stories capture the vagaries of Florida, from frozen iguanas, fake hit men, alligators kept in purses and more.