CrimeReads has been accused of a bias toward noir in the past, and we’re sorry (not sorry) to report that this year’s best of the year so far list is noir AF—the world is, after all, getting darker, and cynical take-downs are often less depressing to read than fantasies of happiness (for those of us who don’t believe in happy endings, anyway). Noir is a cornerstone when it comes to fictional critiques of social mores and growing inequality, and the books below serve as either sendoffs of the corrupt and privileged, or as folk-hero tales of those who fight the system. You’ll see plenty of household names at the top of their game, plus rising new voices who will hopefully continue to write crime for quite some time. You’ll also see plenty of humor, alongside the suffering, because gallows jokes are what get many of us through the day, and humor is likely to exist alongside happiness and misery in equal measure. Below the 10 titles we picked as the best of the year, you’ll find a host of notable selections showcasing an extraordinary year of excellent mysteries.
Ivy Pochoda, Sing Her Down
(MCD)
Pochoda’s neo-western thriller makes for a wild, revelatory ride, one that’s rich with complex characters and an acerbic social critique that won’t soon be forgotten. Two women, brought together in an Arizona jail, earn an unexpected freedom, only to find their fates wrapped up together, thanks largely to the force of one’s obsession. The story moves from burnt-out desert to the beat-down streets of Los Angeles, all the while preserving an almost unbearable tension and charged atmosphere worthy of the best in the western tradition. Readers move along waiting for that final stand-off, but Pochoda is doing something larger in the background, painting a vivid, incisive portrait of our modern corruption. –Dwyer Murphy, CrimeReads editor-in-chief
Deepti Kapoor, Age of Vice
(Riverhead)
What an epic read. Deepti Kapoor’s Age of Vice is a vast take-down of the corruption of the wealthy, told from three main perspectives: a reluctant scion of an infamous family, a loyal manservant who cannot forget what he has witnessed, and a curious (but possibly corruptible) journalist. Kapoor’s genius is not only in her characterization, but also the carefulness of her plotting, setting up the convergence of characters and the real-life consequences of their moral choices with perfect interior logic and pacing. We need more stories about money, the having of it and the absence, as the world becomes increasingly economically stratified—we are in a new Gilded Age (perhaps, as Deepti Kapoor titles it, an Age of Vice) and Kapoor is an exemplary voice in exploring the woes of capitalism. –Molly Odintz, CrimeReads senior editor
Brendan Slocumb, Symphony of Secrets
(Anchor Books)
Slocumb’s follow-up to last year’s breakout debut, The Violin Conspiracy, is another heady investigation into art, history, and inspiration. In Symphony of Secrets, readers are brought along for an inter-generational mystery that moves across eras and art forms and leaves behind a beautiful, heart-breaking kind of ambiguity. A scholar is approached about authenticating a legendary piece of music, perhaps a lost masterpiece. But the job soon begins to unravel as signs point to another source that complicates the work’s attribution. Slocumb takes us through the world of music and scholarship with an expert’s assured hand, all the while building out a larger conspiracy that hints at something much darker, pushing us through to the shocking conclusion. The result is a highly rewarding and refined thriller, with plenty of heart. –DM
Jordan Harper, Everybody Knows
(Mulholland)
In this devastating L.A. noir, Harper follows a publicist/fixer who finally has enough of covering up the heinous actions of her clients and decides to go after the powerful, shadowy forces who killed her boss. First she has to find out what her boss was hiding, and it’s a secret that goes all the way to the top. Jordan Harper’s Everybody Knows feels like a #metoo Chinatown if it was written by Chandler. The book started out as a screenplay, and I’m hoping we get to see the movie soon (although, of course, not until the WGA strike is over). –MO
Rafael Frumkin, Confidence
(Simon & Schuster)
Not since Geek Love have I seen such an effective skewering of the search for inner peace and the inevitable American wish for shortcuts. Rafael Frumkin’s Confidence tells the story of two boys who meet in juvenile detention and find a shared love for scamming (and for each other). As their intense relationship develops, their scams get bigger and bigger, culminating in a Theranos-like (as Electric Lit called it) scheme to provide “instant enlightenment” to their customers via cleverly repackaged and completely ineffective technology. Both a beautiful queer love story and a hilarious and cutting sendoff of the American Dream. In the history book The King of Confidence, Miles Harvey posits that the quintessential American folk hero of the 19th century was the grifter, seen as one who rebels against a system stacked against them, and Frumkin’s novel proves that statement just as worthy a descriptor of the 21st century: either you’re a scammer, or you’ve been scammed. –MO
Megan Abbott, Beware the Woman
(Putnam)
Beware the Woman is a stylish, sensual thriller that unfolds like a fever dream, with Abbott’s uncanny talents on display like never before. From the first page, we’re launched into a rich feeling of claustrophobia, even as the wilderness expands around us. A pregnant woman accompanies her new husband on a visit to his father’s remote house in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. A creeping sense of dread warns her that all is not right here, and she soon finds herself in an increasingly vulnerable situation. Abbott handles every new suspicion and revelation with a craftsman’s care, but what really elevates this novel is the pitch-perfect atmosphere, crafted with an immediacy and a physicality that make the reading at once disorienting and utterly thrilling. –DM
S. A. Cosby, All the Sinners Bleed
(Flatiron)
S.A. Cosby does Thomas Harris!! And proves that the serial killer novel is back with his cleverly plotted and socially relevant take on the hunt for a monstrous killer. Cosby goes Southern Gothic with the backstory, focusing on the sins of society and how indifference and prejudice are the true culprits behind the most terrible acts. In true Cosby fashion, the novel manages to touch on all manner of hot button topics.
The novel begins with a school shooting, where a white police officer kills the shooter: a Black man who was a former student at the school, and who claims his victim, a popular teacher, was hiding a terrible secret. When the town sheriff, the first Black man elected to the post in the small Southern town, begins to investigate the teacher’s horrific acts, the townspeople are deeply resistant to the truth, and meanwhile, he’s got a showdown coming between right-wingers determined to protect a Confederate monument and the protestors who want it gone. A fast-paced book that will also have you asking deep questions about the nature of faith, All the Sinners Bleed is bound to be one of my favorite books of the year. –MO
Rebecca Makkai, I Have Some Questions For You
(Viking)
Makkai’s powerhouse novel has all the draw and momentum of the wildly entertaining mystery that it is, but lurking behind the plot is a series of escalating existential questions about trauma, memory, and the ever-shifting terrain of the past. Bodie Kane, a producer and podcaster, is tempted back to her old high school in New Hampshire, where she soon finds herself drawn into the uncertainties surrounding the investigation into her former roommate’s murder. Makkai brings to the story a vertiginous sensation of falling again and again into new doubts and desires, one that brings to mind Hitchcock at his best and forces the reader constantly to double back and wonder where the story has taken them, really. I Have Some Questions For You is a smart, sophisticated mystery, crafted with verve. –DM
Tania Malik, Hope You Are Satisfied
(Unnamed Press)
It’s 1990. The invasion of Kuwait sets off the first Gulf War, and in between waiting for the SCUD missiles and the Americans, the employees of a small travel agency promising luxury Saudi Arabian vacations spend their time bickering, sleeping together, and partying in clubs off-limits to the local citizens. Riya is worried about her sister and in need of some extra cash, and the urge to help her best friend with an expensive issue is the final push she needs to accept a dangerous gig from a shady character. Playful, cynical, and one of the best “Man Who Knew Too Much”-style spy thrillers I’ve ever read.–MO
Eli Cranor, Ozark Dogs
(Soho)
Cranor’s sophomore novel is an absolutely relentless, hair-raising thriller that manages to be just as full of emotion as it is adrenaline. In a small-town in Arkansas, a young woman is kidnapped the night of the homecoming game, launching her grandfather into a mad search for the one good thing in his life and maybe the possibility of some redemption. But this is a dark, tough story and nobody gets out unscathed. Cranor has staked himself a claim as one of the premier noir writers coming up today, but with Ozark Dogs, it’s the family feeling—that ache of love, obligation, and lineage—that really draws us into the story and drives us toward the fateful end. This is Southern Noir at its finest, and Cranor is an author on a rapid rise. –DM
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Notable Selections 2023
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Eleanor Catton, Birnam Wood (FSG) · Chloe Mehdi, Nothing Is Lost (Europa) · Eliza Clark, Boy Parts (Harper) · C.J. Leede, Maeve Fly (Tor Nightfire) · Rose Wilding, Speak of the Devil (Minotaur) · Adorah Nworah, House Woman (Unnamed Press) · Mirza Waheed, Tell Her Everything (Melville House) · Katie Williams, My Murder (Riverhead) · Bali Kaur Jaswal, Now You See Us (William Morrow) · Tara Ison, At the Hour Between Dog and Wolf (Ig Publishing) · Juan Martinez, Extended Stay (University of Arizona Press) · Chris Offutt, Code of the Hills (Grove Press) · Paul Goldberg, The Dissident (FSG) · Parini Shroff, The Bandit Queens (Ballantine) · Michael Bennett, Better the Blood (Atlantic Monthly Press) · Bret Easton Ellis, The Shards (Knopf) · Christoffer Carlsson (transl. Rachel Willson-Broyles), Blaze Me a Sun (Hogarth) · Stephen Graham Jones, Don’t Fear the Reaper (Saga) · Hank Phillippi Ryan, The House Guest (Forge) · Rachel Cochran, The Gulf (Harper) · Rachel Koller Croft, Stone Cold Fox (Berkley) · Thomas Mallon, Up With the Sun (Knopf) · Walter Mosley, Every Man a King (Mulholland) · Paz Pardo, The Shamshine Blind (Atria) · Peter Swanson, The Kind Worth Saving (William Morrow) · Joyce Carol Oates, 48 Clues into the Disappearance of My Sister (Mysterious Press) · Christopher Bollen, The Lost Americans (Harper) · James A. McLaughlin, Panther Gap (Flatiron) · V. Castro, The Haunting of Alejandra (Del Rey) · Dennis Lehane, Small Mercies (Harper) · Alice Slater, Death of a Bookseller (Scarlet) · Don Winslow, City of Dreams (William Morrow) · Adam Sternbergh, The Eden Test (Flatiron) · Molly Odintz, Scott Montgomery, Hopeton Hay eds, Austin Noir (Akashic Books) · Polly Stewart, The Good Ones (Harper) · Nisha Bose, Dirty Laundry (Ballantine) · Kwei Quartey, Last Seen in Lapaz (Soho) · Margot Douaihy, Scorched Grace (Zando, Gillian Flynn Books) · Samantha Jayne Allen, Hard Rain (Minotaur) · Daniel Weizmann, The Last Songbird (Melville House) · Clémence Michallon, The Quiet Tenant (Knopf) · Danielle Trussoni, The Puzzle Master (Random House) · Josh Haven, The Siberia Job (Mysterious Press) · Cara Black, Night Flight to Paris (Soho) · Gigi Pandian, The Raven Thief (Minotaur) · Jinwoo Chong, Flux (Melville House) · Elle Cosimano, Finlay Donovan Jumps the Gun (Minotaur) · Jesse Q. Sutanto, Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers (Berkley) · Sarah Penner, The London Seance Society (Park Row) · Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone (Mariner) · Azma Dar, Spider (Datura) · Wendy Heard, You Can Trust Me (Bantam) · Nick Medina, Sisters of a Lost Nation (Berkley)
