THE BEST OF THE BEST
Each year George Easter from Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine does a mammoth job in collating the various best mystery, crime fiction and thriller lists from around the world and seeing what they tell us about the year’s best books.
In 2024 he found 108 ‘best lists’. There is a strong American flavour to the lists, but it also includes some from Australia, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada and India.
After gathering all the lists, George checked to see which books were the most popular (ie got the most mentions) across the various lists. He found that 74 individual books appeared on the 108 lists, all of which got 5 or more mentions.
This year the clear winner was Liz Moore’s literary crime novel The God Of The Woods, which received 37 mentions. The book was very popular with critics, but seems, from what I have seen, to have received a more mixed response from readers. Nevertheless, a marvellous achievement by Liz Moore. The Gods Of The Woods was followed, at 33 points, by Chris Whitaker’s All The Colors Of The Dark and Richard Osman’s We Solve Murders. These were followed by Tana French’s The Hunter (26), Amy Tintera’s witty debut novel Listen For The Lie, Attica Locke’s Guide Me Home (23) and Ashely Elston’s debut First Lie Wins (21). Rounding out the top ten were Michael Connelly’s The Waiting (19), The Return Of Ellie Black (16) by Emilo Jean, Smoke Kings by Jahmal Mayfield (15) and The Sequel (15) by Jean Hanff Korelitz. For the full list see George’s article at: http://new.deadlypleasures.com/2025/01/08/best-of-the-best-mystery-crime-fiction-and-thrillers-of-2024/
Not surprisingly, given the number of lists by newspaper and mainstream magazine critics, there is a slight literary feel to the top ten entries. Some of them vigorously, and quite rightly, pursue strong themes around racism, misogyny and other issues and offer biting social commentary, which might appeal more to critics than mainstream crime readers. I suspect that regular readers of the genre would be more inclined to have read and greatly enjoyed books from lower down on the list, by authors such as Frieda McFadden, M. W. Craven, Ann Cleeves and Steve Cavanagh, rather than some of the theme based books in the top ten. But this has always been the case with critical versus popular lists.
George astutely points out that the lists and the rankings merely reflect what the critics have read. Which means that the reading preferences of the critics largely influences what appears on the lists. If they are only reading more literary novels, or books from a particular sub-genre, then this is what is going to appear on the lists. I would also note that the occasional difference in release dates between America, the United Kingdom and Australia also influences where authors sit on the list. For instance Steve Cavanagh’s Witness 8 (6 mentions) will not be released in the United States until 2025, so did not feature on any US list, whereas his Kill For You, Kill For Me (7) was an 2023 release in the UK, but a 2024 release in the US, so would not have appeared on any UK lists. Effectively dividing the number of mentions for his books, and this is not the only case.
I read 20 of the 74 titles listed, including three from the top ten. Two of my favourite books of 2024 appeared in the top ten (Michael Connelly’s The Waiting and Amy Tintera’s Listen For The Lie) and another seven of my favourites were scattered throughout the 74, including Benjamin Stevenson’s Everyone On This Train Is A Suspect, which I read and reviewed in 2023. Sadly, the only other book on the list by an Australian author was Dervla McTiernan’s American based What Happened To Nina? I was surprised that a couple of books I struggled to enjoy appeared on the consolidated list, while others, such as Catherine Steadman’s Look In The Mirror, David Goodman’s espionage debut A Reluctant Spy, and John Connolly’s The Instruments Of Darkness did not appear at all. A number of very good Australian crime fiction titles were also missing, but this is mainly a reflection of when and how the books are released overseas.
Like always it is a fascinating exercise and provides many suggestions for further reading. Many thanks to George for his great efforts in pulling this together.
Here are links to my favourite books of 2024: https://murdermayhemandlongdogs.com/the-years-best-my-favourite-crime-novels-and-thrillers-of-2024/ and debuts: https://murdermayhemandlongdogs.com/best-debut-crime-novels-of-2024/