The end of the year is a nice time to reflect on the cornucopia of crime novels that brightened cold, dark days and enhanced the long, lazy hours of warm ones. In a rich and crowded year for good mysteries, the following should be required reading for all aficionados of the genre:

1. “The Tin Roof Blowdown” (Simon & Schuster, 373 pages, $26) by James Lee Burke. Hurricane Katrina and the good-hearted sheriff of nearby New Iberia, Dave Robicheaux, are spotlighted in the book of the year, with multiple crimes set against the harrowing background of a city devastated by a force of nature and the brutality of too many of its citizens.

2. “Silence” (Harcourt, 448 pages, $25) by Thomas Perry. This white-knuckle chase novel by the Edgar Award-winning master of the crime story is his most suspenseful best seller yet. When Wendy Harper witnesses something she shouldn’t, she is attacked by a baseball bat-wielding thug who tries to kill her. Afraid for her life, she goes to a former L.A. policeman and asks him to help her disappear. Six years later, her former lover is framed for Wendy’s murder. The only way to save him is to prove she’s alive, so the detective sets out to find her — followed by the most memorable team of assassins in crime fiction.

3. “Bad Luck and Trouble” (Delacorte, 377 pages, $26) by Lee Child. A team of former Army special investigators has been targeted for elimination, so its members call on their leader, Jack Reacher, a combination of John Wayne and James Bond, to join in battling their seemingly omniscient foe. Clear, straightforward prose moves this novel along like Carl Lewis with his pants on fire.

4. “The Overlook” (Little, Brown, 240 pages, $21.95) by Michael Connelly. LAPD detective Harry Bosch, a cross between the thoughtfulness of Phil Marlowe and the decisiveness of Dirty Harry Callahan, investigates when a doctor with access to most of the radioactive material in Los Angeles is killed. Enough of the stuff is missing to make a dirty bomb that could destroy the city. The killer is heard to have yelled “Allah Akbar” as he shot his victim, so fear of a terrorist attack brings in the FBI, including agent Rachel Walling, Bosch’s former girlfriend.

5. “Down River” (St. Martin’s Minotaur, 325 pages, $24.95) by John Hart. This Southern gothic has the rare combination of a complex yet rational plot and a timeless prose style of exceptional elegance. The narrator was driven from his home and the river he loved by a father and a town who believed him guilty of a murder he didn’t commit. Five years later, his best friend asks him to come home, only to find himself enmeshed in a series of violent and tragic events.

6. “The Watchman” (Simon & Schuster, 292 pages, $25.95) by Robert Crais. One of America’s most consistently entertaining and thoughtful mystery writers, Mr. Crais has moved series hero Elvis Cole to the sideline and allowed Joe Pike, Elvis’s iron-hard sidekick, to take center stage. After a wild, exhibitionistic girl sees some people she shouldn’t have seen together, she becomes the target of a group of assassins but is protected by Pike, a one-man military force who shoots the bad guys without question or remorse — the ACLU’s worst nightmare.

7. “Up in Honey’s Room” (Morrow, 304 pages, $25.95) by Elmore Leonard. Two German POWs escape from an internment camp in Oklahoma and head to Detroit, hoping for freedom and a chance to make a killing in the black market. U.S. Marshal Carlos Webster catches up with them after they’ve hooked up with a bunch of clowns who think they have formed a Nazi spy ring.

8. “Heartsick” (St. Martin’s Minotaur, 324 pages, $23.95) by Chelsea Cain. This chilling first novel owes everything to the early Thomas Harris novels, with a female serial killer from the Hannibal Lecter school of charm and torture.

9. “Christopher’s Ghosts” (Overlook Press, 272 pages, $27.95) by Charles McCarry. Two connected novellas by America’s greatest espionage writer, the first an achingly poignant tale of a teenaged Paul Christopher, the second, set 20 years later, offering a chance of revenge and redemption.

10. “Best American Mystery Stories 2007” (Houghton Mifflin, 326 pages, $28 cloth, $14 paper), edited by Carl Hiaasen. The 11th volume in this prestigious series, with stories by James Lee Burke, Joyce Carol Oates, William Gay, Louise Erdrich, John Sandford, etc. Only modesty keeps me (as series editor) from ranking it higher.

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 ottopenzler@mysteriousbookshop.com.