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It’s that time of year again… the time when the staff of The Mystery Bookstore chooses our favorites of the past year. Some of these books may still be available as signed first editions from us, but all of them are worth tracking down – if not as first editions, then as paperbacks, when they become available next year.
Mark Billingham, THE BURNING GIRL. William Morrow, $16.95. Detective Tom Thorne’s fierce independence has deadly consequences in the fourth and strongest book of this series so far.
Jodi Compton, SYMPATHY BETWEEN HUMANS. Delacorte, $22.00 Sarah Pribek, another police officer breaking rules, learns about the price of silence.
Michael Connelly, THE LINCOLN LAWYER. Little, Brown, $26.95. Connelly’s best book in years introduces defense lawyer Mickey Haller, whose worst nightmare is an innocent client.
John Connolly, THE BLACK ANGEL. Atria, $25.00. The culmination of detective Charlie Parker’s five-book journey of grief and thwarted redemption, a harrowing mix of history, theology, and deep mystery.
Tod Goldberg, SIMPLIFY. University of Illinois, $14.95 (trade paperback). All of the stories in this amazing collection boil down to the last line of “Comeback Special”: “Some of the simplest questions are the hardest, I think. Where are you going? How are you doing? Who do you love? What makes you happy? … When are you coming back?”
Michael Gruber, VALLEY OF BONES. William Morrow, $24.95. The prime suspect in Gruber’s second series entry is a former nun who may be a murderess, a saint, or both.
Laura Lippman, TO THE POWER OF THREE. William Morrow, $24.95. Nothing in the world is more dangerous than a teenaged girl.
David Morrell, CREEPERS. CDS Books, $24.95. A group of urban explorers ventures into what they think is an abandoned hotel in Asbury Park, NJ, and find themselves in danger they couldn’t have imagined.
Julia Spencer-Fleming, TO DARKNESS AND TO DEATH. St. Martin’s Minotaur, $23.95. Reverend Clare Ferguson and police chief Russ Van Alstyne hunt for a missing woman and find themselves confronting hard truths over a stretch of 24 hours.
Jess Walter, CITIZEN VINCE. Regan Books, $24.95. A meditation on the rights and responsibilities of citizenship, set in the days before the 1980 Presidential election. Each of Walter’s books has been wildly different from the others, and each has been better than the last.