Crème de la Crime
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
In some ways, this is my favorite column of the year, and the easiest to write. In another way, it is the most difficult. The idea is to select what I believe to be the best mystery fiction of the year. It gives you a chance to catch up on something you might have missed, and is also the perfect shopping list.
It’s my favorite because I love to talk or write about my favorite books, and it’s easy to say nice things about something for which you have great affection. I read a lot of crime fiction every year and some of it is superb, some of it is unspeakably awful, and most of it falls somewhere in between.
It’s a hard column to put together because coming up with the final list is no easy task. There are more good books than I have word allotment for in this column, so I agonize over it. Even though I offer the caveat that taste is subjective, I have every confidence that you will enjoy the following -after all, my taste is impeccable.
“Red Leaves” (Harcourt, 289 pages, $23) by Thomas H. Cook is possibly the best book of the year, and is certainly the most poetically enchanting. It is a crime novel in that a young girl goes missing and the teenage boy, her neighbor, who was babysitting her is suspected. But it is more than a crime novel, so much more that calling it a mystery is like calling “The Old Man and the Sea” a fishing story.
Although the boy protests the accusation, all fingers point to him, causing even his own father to disbelieve him. The ramifications of the doubt, the disintegration of love and trust, will haunt your nights. (Full disclosure: I didn’t review this book on publication because I was the editor and understand the term “conflict of interest.” However, to neglect it now would simply be unfair to Mr. Cook’s finest novel since his Edgar-winning “The Chatham School Affair.”)
“The Lincoln Lawyer” (Little, Brown, 404 pages, $26.95) by Michael Connelly is easily the best legal thriller I’ve read in years, and all the more remarkable because it is the author’s debut foray into this somewhat arcane world, normally reserved for such authors as Scott Turow, John Grisham, Linda Fairstein, and John Lescroart – who were, in fact, lawyers.
A sleazy lawyer, whose primary office is the back seat of one of his Lincoln Town Cars, gets a case that is his greatest fear and biggest dream. He’s never wanted to defend an innocent client because, as his lawyer father once wrote, “if you [mess] up and he goes to prison, it’ll scar you for life.” On the other hand, the very rich man accused of being a brutal rapist and murderer could be his franchise client, the one who makes him genuinely wealthy.
Memorable characters, sharp dialogue, and unnerving surprises – Mr. Connelly is at the height of his powers.
“The Forgotten Man” (Doubleday, 337 pages, $24.95) by Robert Crais is an Elvis Cole private eye novel that powerfully explores the limits of paternal and filial love and loss. It’s a memorable addition to this distinguished series in which the cool guy described as “the world’s greatest detective” learns that a dying man has asked for him, claiming to be his father – the father who abandoned him and his mother so many years ago.
“Swing” (Random House, 372 pages, $24.95) by Rupert Holmes is a delightful re-creation of the World War II era. Mr. Holmes gained fame as the singer of what is known as the pina colada song, was a multiple Tony winner for writing the book, words, and music for “The Mystery of Edwin Drood,” and continues to work on Broadway while writing mystery novels.
“Swing” is intelligently plotted and witty, told in the first person by jazz saxophonist Jack Sherwood. A young dancer in the Folies Bergeres asks Jack to marry her, pointing out her fine figure and healthy teeth. He declines, seeing as how he’d never met her before, and soon she plunges to her death from a nearby tower.
The assumption is that she committed suicide in desperation: Jewish and destined to return to Vichy France, the promise of her future was worse than death. But the enormously talented Mr. Holmes throws more curves at the reader than there are on stage at the Folies Bergeres.
“The Hot Kid”(William Morrow, 312 pages, $25.95) by Elmore Leonard is an old-fashioned gangster story set during the Depression era. As a boy, Carlos Webster thought U.S. marshals were cool and grew up to be one. He goes after a bad man named Jack Belmont, whose major life goal was to be Public Enemy no. 1. Along the way, he has to deal with Pretty Boy Floyd, his sort-of girlfriend, Louly, and a vigilante FBI agent who wants to get rid of Belmont with the help of some Klansman. It’s all the usual great stuff from America’s no. 1 writer of cool dialogue.
“The Right Madness”(Viking, 289 pages, $24.95) by James Crumley defies plot description. One doesn’t read Mr. Crumley’s books for plot.The lush style and the powerful language wash over the reader and pull him along no matter how indecipherable the storyline nor improbable the sequence of events. Too much alcohol, too many killings, too many drugs – it’s all over the top, but irresistible from cover to cover.
Other books that belong on any list of the year’s best include Ken Bruen’s “Magdalen Martyrs” (St. Martin’s, 274 pages, $22.95), John Harvey’s “Ash & Bone” (Harcourt, 384 pages, $25), Juris Jurjevics’s “The Trudeau Vector” (Viking, 400 pages, $24.95), Robert Littell’s “Legends” (Overlook, 395 pages, $25.95), Lawrence Block’s “All the Flowers Are Dying” (William Morrow, 288 pages, $24.95), Ed McBain’s “Fiddlers” (Harcourt, 272 pages, $25), Andrew Klavan’s “Shotgun Alley” (Forge, 301 pages, $24.95), Michael Connelly’s “Closers” (Little, Brown, 416 pages, $26.95), and the book I’m probably not allowed to mention (conflict of interest again), “Best American Mystery Stories 2005,” edited by Joyce Carol Oates (Houghton Mifflin, 352 pages, $27.50).
It would take a Christmas stocking big enough to fit Roseanne Barr’s leg to hold all these, but they’re worth trying.
Mr. Penzler is the proprietor of the Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan and the series editor of the annual “Best American Mystery Stories.” He can be reached at openzler@nysun.com.