Spade Goes Back to Bird Hunting

Pinkerton detective-turned-author Dashiell Hammett realized he had something special on his hands when he submitted his revised, typewritten version of The Maltese Falcon to publisher Alfred A. Knopf in July 1929, asking that Knopf (who had previously handled his books Red Harvest and The Dain Curse) practice restraint in editing this latest manuscript. As Hammett scholar Richard Layman has explained: “He knew what he was doing, he said. Hammett wanted to get his third book right. It was a departure work for him, his attempt to break away from the formulas of pulp fiction to create a work with serious literary value.” Although the writer resisted changes by copy editors, he continued to tweak his own story—which had originally appeared (in slightly different form) in five monthly segments in Black Mask magazine—right up to when Knopf finally sent it away for printing. The completed novel was released on February 14, 1930.

Ninety-six years later, with the copyright on Hammett’s best-remembered (and most-filmed) tale having lapsed at the end of 2025, Iowa crime-fictionist Max Allan Collins seeks to add another “something special” to the Falcon legend. In Return of the Maltese Falcon, released this month by Hard Case Crime, he has boldly resuscitated the original book’s “hard and shifty” protagonist, San Francisco private investigator Samuel Spade, and sent him back out to locate the bejeweled bird of the title—which, you will likely recall, was never recovered in Hammett’s hard-boiled classic.

Penning a sequel to such a seminal genre work can only be characterized as intimidating. Indeed, Collins acknowledges that “avoiding strictly pure mimicry, and writing in my own style while honoring Hammett’s, was a tightrope to walk.” But the critical reception for Return of the Maltese Falcon has so far been generally favorable. Kirkus Reviews remarks that “Collins’ dialogue sounds pleasingly like Hammett’s; his plotting is even twistier; and if his descriptions mix Hammett’s terse, affectless minimalism with Raymond Chandler’s fondness for florid similes, that’s clearly, as he notes in an engaging coda, his intention. Fans convinced that nobody could possibly continue a tale that ends so definitely owe it to themselves to give Collins a try.” Reviewer Ray Palen of Bookreporter says Return is “a work of wonder, and I enjoyed every second of it. Collins has not just inhabited Hammett’s world but breathed new life into it and made it distinctly his own.” Finally, prolific author and blogger James Reasoner observes that, “stylistically, Collins’ fast-moving, straight-ahead prose isn’t quite as stripped down as Hammett’s, but it’s certainly in the same ballpark.” He adds: “The resolution of the mystery and the way the book wraps everything up are extremely satisfying.”

As Collins has stated in the past, he fell in love with The Maltese Falcon in 1961, when he was 13 years old and first watched the 1941 Humphrey Bogart movie adaptation on television. Not until much later did he consider recruiting Sam Spade into a new story—not necessarily a Falcon follow-up, but at least another novel starring the same principal. (Spade’s single other book-length appearance came in Joe Gores’ authorized 2009 Falcon prequel, Spade & Archer.) Collins’ idea for a sequel dates back to 2024, when he included it in a future-projects sales pitch to Titan Books, the British owner of Hard Case Crime. Like numerous other readers, Collins was curious to know what happened after the events recounted in Hammett’s yarn—not just what became of the ever-elusive falcon statuette, but, as he told CrimeReads recently, how Sam Spade might “extricate himself from the ruins he’s made of his life and business.”

To help him answer those crucial questions in Return of the Maltese Falcon, Collins brings back most of original novel’s cast—some in secondary roles—while beefing up the involvement of several players to whom Hammett had assigned lesser parts. (Have no doubt: You should definitely have read the 1930 book before tackling Return.)

His action begins in December 1928, shortly after Spade failed to locate the gold, gem-encrusted (but now black enamel-covered) falcon at the center of the earlier story, and handed over his fetching but deceitful client, Brigid O’Shaughnessy, to the San Francisco cops for the murder of his detective partner, Miles Archer. Effie Perrine, Spade’s “lanky, tawny-haired” secretary (at 23, a decade Spade’s junior), has erected a Christmas tree where Archer’s desk once sat, and their office is looking “moderately successful” despite the “bad publicity” of late. Through the door comes Rhea Gutman, the “pale and petite,” 18-year-old blonde “daughter” of corpulent criminal Casper Gutman, who supposedly spent years chasing after the Maltese falcon, a treasure crafted for the King of Spain in the 1500s, only to have it stolen by a Russian general named Kemidov, and replaced with a fake. It seems that, like her late progenitor, Rhea is hungry to get her hands on the black bird, and she’ll split the rich proceeds with Spade if he can bring it to her.

(Left) The Maltese Falcon, Alfred A. Knopf first edition, 1930.

Not surprisingly, the shamus accepts her offer. What he hadn’t expected was to then be approached by three more people wanting him to find the artifact (what he terms the “dingus”) on their behalf: Chicago gambler Dixie Monahan; a British Museum official, Steward Blackwood, who contends his institution holds true title to the falcon; and Brigid O’Shaughnessy’s younger sister, Corrine Wonderly. While raking in retainers from them all, he returns to his hunt for what has become the most famous “MacGuffin” in crime-fiction history. Spade’s investigation will eventually lead him to a violent clash with Casper Gutman’s erstwhile “gunsel,” Wilmer Cook; jail interviews with the aforementioned Miss O’Shaughnessy as well as dandyish Joel Cairo, familiar from the original tale and here claiming to know a private collector who’ll pay handsomely for the statuette; run-ins with police and the local district attorney; the discovery of an unidentified corpse in San Francisco Bay, in whose pocket is found Spade’s business card; a Golden Age-style gathering of suspects he hopes will flush out a killer; and late-in-the-game identity switches that I, for one, didn’t see coming.

When I first learned that Max Allan Collins would be revitalizing Sam Spade in a continuation novel—a sequel to one of American detective fiction’s founding yarns, no less—I felt a moment’s consternation. However, I reminded myself that Collins, who was named a Mystery Writers of America Grand Master in 2017, is a crackerjack tale-spinner who has given us two estimable series (a historical one starring Chicago gumshoe Nate Heller, and a second featuring the hit man known only as Quarry), and that he’s already succeeded in extending the life of another notable P.I., Mike Hammer, writing 13 new novels to add to the 13 Mickey Spillane had produced by the time he died in 2006. Furthermore, Collins put another iconic sleuth—Philip Marlowe—through his paces in “The Perfect Crime,” composed for the 1988 collection Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe: A Centennial Celebration, edited by Byron Preiss. (He subsequently swapped Marlowe for Heller and added that story to his 2001 “casebook,” Kisses of Death.)

If anyone had the chops and chutzpah necessary to extend Spade’s otherwise brief career, it was definitely Collins.

With its text having now entered the public domain, this seems to be the season to celebrate Dashiell Hammett’s third novel. Publisher Poltroon Press has brought a new, photo-embellished hardcover version of The Maltese Falcon to market that also features a pair of Spade short stories inked by modern San Francisco-area author Mark Coggins. Blackstone has released its own “collectors edition,” complete with black-and-white illustrations and artistically sprayed page edges. Meanwhile, Steeger Books is selling hardback (or paperback) copies of the Falcon as it was serialized in Black Mask, with more than 2,000 textual variations from the final, 1930 book, and including the original pulp-style interior art by Arthur Rodman Bowker. Finally, notebook maker Field Notes has packaged that same magazine edit in imitation of the World War II-era Armed Service Editions.

Return of the Maltese Falcon is altogether something bigger, though. In this, his 53rd year as a published author (Bait Money, his debut novel, came out in 1973), Collins has given us not only an homage to Hammett’s most memorable composition; he’s drawn a direct line between himself and that august scribbler of yore, emphasizing the fact that he wouldn’t have the award-winning career he does without Hammett and other ink-slinging pioneers having laid the foundations of the popular field in which he toils. There will be Hammett purists who object vociferously to Max Allan Collins, or anybody else, employing Sam Spade in fresh adventures. Yet when the results are as delightful, dramatic, and downright satisfying as Return of the Maltese Falcon, it’s hard to argue that the effort should never have been made.

Below are a few questions I addressed to Collins about the devising of his latest novel. I had intended to post this interview earlier in January, but was delayed by computer problems.

(Above) The Adventures of Sam Spade comic strip from June 6, 1948. You can enjoy more examples of this strip, with their Wildroot Cream-Oil promotions, by clicking here.

J. Kingston Pierce: When, and under what circumstances, did you first discover Dashiell Hammett and Sam Spade?
      
Max Allan Collins: I knew vaguely about him, as a kid, seeing Wildroot Cream-Oil ads in comic books and Sunday sections, tying in with the Sam Spade radio show. These were in comic-strip form and drawn, I believe, by the great Lou Fine.

The TV craze of private-eye shows, which followed the similar fad of TV westerns, led me to Dashiell Hammett’s novels when they were reprinted in 1961 with Harry Bennett covers. I thought then, and now, that The Maltese Falcon was the best private-eye novel ever.

JKP: And when in your career did you start thinking about writing a sequel to The Maltese Falcon? Did your ideas of what might happen in that book change significantly over time, or have the parameters of your latest novel been in place in your mind for a long while?
      
MAC: The Maltese Falcon’s 1929 publication date sparked the idea for my historical Nathan Heller novels—1929 was the year of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, which meant Al Capone and Sam Spade were contemporaries—meaning the private eye now existed in a historical framework. My Nate Heller could bump up against all sorts of real people and real crimes.

Probably around 20 years ago, I looked into when the novel would come into the public domain. The copyright I was looking at was 1930, when the 1929 Black Mask serial was collected in book form by Knopf. I was just keeping an eye on Sam Spade with no exact thought of doing a direct sequel—just another Spade story.

But when it came time to actually pitch the notion to a publisher (Titan/Hard Case Crime), the idea of picking up the story where it left off in Hammett seemed a natural.

(Right) The Maltese Falcon debuted in Black Mask in September 1929.

My wife, Barb, with whom I write the Antiques/Trash ’n’ Treasures mystery series [under the joint pseudonym Barbara Allan], told me to brace myself for attacks.

JKP: Indeed, some people might scold you for your gall in capitalizing on this famous detective tale. Others would ask why we need a Falcon sequel at all. How do you respond to such critics?
      
MAC: I didn’t write it for the critics, particularly the naysayers who haven’t read, or have no intention of ever reading, my book. The novel is born out of my love for Hammett and the P.I. form (which he birthed). As a fan of The Maltese Falcon, I had been frustrated by its inconclusiveness. In certain respects, that unsolved ending seems perfect, the overriding irony. But some readers, myself included, couldn’t help but wonder what might have happened next.

JKP: What do you think you bring to Spade's story that another author might not be able or willing to bring?
      
MAC: I felt up to the job. I knew I could accomplish, or come close to, Hammett’s limited omniscience—his stingy third-person, in which we are never told what the detective is thinking. In a very real way, Sam Spade—not the killings—is the mystery at the heart of The Maltese Falcon.

Spade reveals himself in the original novel in the last few chapters—his strict adherence to his own code of ethics, a personal morality in an amoral world. My novel explores where that leaves him at the end of Hammett’s masterpiece, and how certain things might resolve.

JKP: How did you go about preparing yourself to write a tale in the fashion of Hammett? What characteristics of his writing or storytelling style did you adopt? What, if any, compromises did you make?
      
MAC: The most important thing was to maintain Spade’s lack of inner monologue. The approach in The Maltese Falcon is often described as objective when it’s really quite subjective—Hammett tells us all sorts of things that Spade doesn’t. Consider this line about Brigid: “Her eyes were cobalt-blue prayers.”

I tried to honor the approach of Hammett and the character of Spade without completely abandoning my own style. That my novel was written so many decades later required me to consider it as at least somewhat a period piece. I allowed myself to describe clothing in a way Hammett might not have, for example, although he does do quite a bit of that himself.

But I researched San Francisco in the late ’20s and took Spade to locations that Hammett didn’t. My descriptions of buildings and neighborhoods and such are a slight departure from Hammett and might be considered a compromise. I consider it a necessity.

JKP: Before composing Return, did you re-read the original novel as well as the three Spade short stories he left behind? Did you draw on any academic or critical sources in preparation?
      
MAC: I read The Falcon again three times, twice taking notes, as the novel was of course the primary research source. I consulted no academic studies of Hammett, nor did I revisit other biographies, all of which I believe I’ve read. In addition, I listened to an audio-books version of the original serial in Otto Penzler’s The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories.

I did not re-visit either John Huston’s classic film or Roy Del Ruth’s earlier one, although I have of course seen both, the Huston film numerous times. I wanted to keep Bogart and the other famous players out and use only Hammett’s vision as he reported it.

I read Spade & Archer, by Joe Gores, on its publication in 2009 but did not revisit it. I stayed away from the AMC-TV series, Monsieur Spade. I wanted my sequel to be as pure as possible. I did re-read the three short stories, but used nothing from them. They are rather perfunctory for Hammett.

JKP: There are a number of familiar players revitalized for your story, some of whom—such as Iva Archer, the faithless wife of Spade’s late business partner—win more time in your sequel than they did in Hammett’s original yarn. But which characters did you bring to life that Hammett only mentioned? And of those enriched figures, which one or ones did you most enjoying developing?
      
MAC: I have two favorites, but discussing them would reveal a plot point I don’t wish to expose. Almost every character in Return of the Maltese Falcon appears or is mentioned in Hammett’s novel—Dixie Monahan, for example, and even the late Floyd Thursby, who is explored in some depth. A few have more stage time than Hammett gave them. Really, only Casper Gutman is absent, and that’s because he was killed—typically, off-stage—in The Maltese Falcon.

JKP: Spade actually gets to have sex in this novel! Of course, it's written in a much different era than that in which Hammett was working. Do you think Hammett would approve of your giving readers such an explicit window into his affairs?
      
MAC: Well, Spade had sex in The Maltese Falcon, too. He beds Brigid O’Shaughnessy, cold-bloodedly leaves her sleeping while he goes off to search her place, and later makes her strip. (None of that happens in Huston’s movie, but the earlier 1931 version comes close). I didn’t go anywhere, in that sense, that Hammett didn’t.

JKP: Ach! It’s been long enough since I read The Maltese Falcon, that Huston’s post-Motion Picture Production Code version—sans Spade’s amorous exploits—has supplanted my memory of the original plot, to some extent. But let’s move on.

In both Hammett's original and your new Return, Spade's “boyishly pretty” secretary, Effie Perine, never becomes a subject of her boss' sexual interest, although she seems quite open to the possibility. Did you consider changing their relationship, or is there something essential in their association that you did not want to upset?
      
MAC: I kept it the same, which is ambiguous. Effie licks the paper for one of Spade’s hand-rolled cigarettes while Spade, seated, leans his “weary” head against her hip, calling her “Honey.” To me, the implication in Hammett is that they had either slept together once—giving in to natural urges—or had come close, and decided it was a bad idea for their work relationship. They remain in an uneasy sexual truce.

(Right) Author Dashiell Hammett.

JKP: I must ask about the story you have Spade tell the lovely Rhea Gutman on pages 96 and 97 of your new novel, which involves his once having worked for the Continental Detective Agency (presumably in San Francisco) and how he was assigned to find “a young man named Collinson.” First off, that story reminds me very much of Spade’s Flitcraft parable in The Maltese Falcon. Second, “Peter Collinson” was a pseudonym Hammett used early on in his writing career. Third, this memory links Spade firmly to Hammett’s Continental Op, who also worked for Continental. And finally, some of the facets of the story Spade recalls make it clear that Collinson is based on Hammett himself. Brilliant! How much fun did you have in cooking up that digression for Return?

MAC: That was a good deal of fun, but a challenge. Hammett did seemingly discursive but actually pertinent parables, like the Flitcraft one in The Maltese Falcon and the dream referred to in the title of The Glass Key, in all five of his novels. Red Harvest has one, too, and you could argue that the background about the cult in The Dain Curse may serve the same purpose. It was a distinctive element in his style and approach, telling you what the book is about but even reveals something pertinent while seeming to be off on a tangent—for example, the Flitcraft parable can be read as an oblique warning to Brigid that Spade is onto her. I wanted to come up with something of that nature that wasn’t fashioned out of whole cloth. I combined an event from Hammett’s detective days and how his writing life evolved into an apparent block. That “Collins” was in “Collinson” was of course an element. But there had to be a Flitcraft equivalent in my novel. I required it of myself. And obviously Sam Spade had to be a former Continental op.

JKP: When Hammett wrote his novel, it was a "modern" work. Return is very much a historical tale. What efforts did you make to establish and build on the period flavor of Return? How much research did you do into San Francisco of 1928?
      
MAC: The major sources, beyond the original novel, were Don Herron’s wonderful The Dashiell Hammett Tour with its compact, excellent biography of Hammett as well as the locations cited and shown; the WPA guides to San Francisco and California, original editions; and the North Point Press presentation of The Maltese Falcon, which includes vintage photos of locations and is heavily footnoted. A friend also provided a historical photo book on San Francisco.

JKP: Do you appreciate The Maltese Falcon now more than ever, after having dissected it and worked intimately with its plot and players?
      
MAC: My deep appreciation for The Maltese Falcon began 60 years before the writing of this sequel. I should perhaps mention that one of my methods for learning how to write fiction was reading favorite novels as a writer and not a reader, analyzing them as to style and technique. What interested me, in reading Hammett’s introduction to the [1934] Modern Library edition, is his admission … or, anyway, claim … that he wrote the book without any plot outline or even vague idea of where he was headed.

That’s astonishing. But he’s a fiction writer and could be lying. Either that, or he had a hell of a subconscious pulling the strings.
      
JKP: Hammett wrote only one novel and a trio of short stories about Sam Spade. Had he not been enticed away to Hollywood and all but given up on composing fiction, do you believe he would have penned more Spade yarns? Was the protagonist interesting enough to him, or had he exhausted his use for that man called Spade?
      
MAC: That’s a hard call. The lack of enthusiasm that some see in the three Spade short stories might indicate Hammett’s disinterest in the character. But really, his disinterest came from other places—his drinking, the Hollywood and radio success making it unnecessary to write, the possibility he was secretly collaborating with Lillian Hellman.  The Hellman connection at least indicates the shift in his interest to more high-flown goals than writing mystery fiction.

If he had stayed in mystery-writing mode, I think he likely would have written more Spade novels. He wrote two Continental Op novels, didn’t he? And two more Thin Man screen stories—After the Thin Man and Another Thin Man.

JKP: Finally, who’s the woman artist Irvin Rodriguez portrays on his cover for Return of the Maltese Falcon? Or who do you think it is?
      
MAC: Absolutely no idea. I do think it’s a lovely cover, and hope it attracts readers.

And In Summation ...

Had it not been for the unexpected failure of my office technology, I would have posted about many things on this page before or immediately after the new year dawned. Among those was Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine editor George Easter’s “best of the best” list. As he explains, he collected 89 year-end lists of the “best” crime, mystery, and thriller fiction of 2025. “Then,” he says, “I collated the lists to find out which books appeared the most on those lists. This is my attempt to find some consensus in a world of arbitrary opinion.”

He wound up with a fairly diverse roster of 28 most-favored titles, nine of which, he points out, “are on my personal best list.” The top vote-getter was S.A. Cosby’s King of Ashes (with 32 appearances among best-of-the-year selections), followed by Richard Osman’s The Impossible Fortune (27), Mick Herron’s Clown Town and Lisa Jewell’s Don’t Let Him In (both with 18), Amity Gaige’s Heartwood (16), Louise Hegarty’s Fair Play and Louise Penny’s The Black Wolf (both winning 15 endorsements), Holly Jackson’s Not Quite Dead Yet and Belinda Bauer’s The Impossible Thing (each amassing 14), and Lou Berney’s Crooks (with 13). The remaining 18 “bests” can all be found here.

Domestic Differences

Malice Domestic has released its lists of contenders for the 2026 Agatha Awards. The winners are to be revealed during this year’s Malice Domestic conference, held from April 24 to 26 in Bethesda, Maryland.

Best Contemporary Mystery Novel:
• A Grave Deception, by Connie Berry (Crooked Lane)
• At Death’s Dough, by Mindy Quigley (Minotaur)
• Murder in the Fifth Position, by Lori Robbins (Level Best)
• The Devil Comes Calling, by Annette Dashofy (One More Chapter)
• Waters of Destruction, by Leslie Karst (Severn House)

Best Historical Mystery Novel:
• Bye Bye Blackbird, by Elizabeth Crowens (Level Best)
• The Girl in the Green Dress, by Mariah Fredericks (Minotaur)
• Murder at the Moulin Rouge, by Carol Pouliot (Level Best)
• The Case of the Christie Conspiracy, by Kelly Oliver (Boldwood)
• The Hindenburg Spy, by L.A. Chandlar (Oliver Heber)

Best Non-fiction:
• Bone Valley: A True Story of Injustice and Redemption in the Heart of Florida, by Gilbert King (Flatiron)
• Story of a Murder: The Wives, the Mistress, and Dr. Crippen, by Hallie Rubenhold (Dutton)
• The Sinners All Bow: Two Authors, One Murder, and the Real Hester Prynne, by Kate Winkler Dawson (Putnam)
• Vacations Can Be Murder: A True Crime Lover’s Travel Guide to the Mid-Atlantic States, by Dawn M. Barclay (Level Best)

Best First Mystery Novel:
• Murder in the Crazy Mountains, by K.L. Borges (Epicenter Press)
• Player Elimination, by Shelly Jones (Tule Press)
• Savvy Summers and the Sweet Potato Crimes, by Sandra Jackson-Opoku (Minotaur)
• Voices of the Elysian Fields, by Michael Rigg (Level Best)
• Whiskey Business, by Adrian Andover (Chestnut Avenue Press)

Best Children’s/Young Adult Mystery Novel:
• Death in the Cards, by Mia P. Manansala (Delacorte Books for Young Readers)
• Missing Mom, by Lynn Slaughter (Fire & Ice Young Adult Books)
• Risky Pursuit, by Nancy G. West (Fire & Ice Young Adult Books)
• Rufus and the Dark Side of Magic, by Marilyn Levinson (Level Best)
• Hurricane Heist, by James Ponti (Aladdin)

Best Mystery Short Story:
• “Baby Love,” by Barb Goffman (from Double Crossing Van Dine, edited by Donna Andrews, Greg Herren, and Art Taylor;
Crippen and Landru)
• “Boss Cat Rules,” by Nikki Knight (from Malice Domestic: Mystery Most Humorous, edited by John Betancourt, Michael Bracken, and Carla Coupe; Wildside Press)
• “Lola’s Last Dance,” by Kerry Hammond (from Celluloid Crimes, edited by Deborah Well; Level Short)
• “Six-Armed Robbery,” by Ashley Ruth-Bernier (from Malice Domestic: Mystery Most Humorous)
• “When the Iron Is Hot,” by Maddie Day (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, March-April 2025)

Congratulations to all of this year’s nominees!

Seeking Edgars Recognition

Mystery Writers of America today released its lists of nominees for the 2026 Edgar Allan Poe Awards, “honoring the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction and television published or produced in 2025.” Winners will be announced, and awards given out, during a special ceremony at New York City’s Marriott Marquis Times Square Hotel on April 29.

Best Novel:
• The Big Empty, by Robert Crais (Putnam)
• Fagin the Thief, by Allison Epstein (Doubleday)
• The Dream Hotel, by Laila Lalami (Pantheon)
• Wild Dark Shore, by Charlotte McConaghy (Flatiron)
• Hard Town, by Adam Plantinga (Grand Central)
• The Inheritance, by Trisha Sakhlecha (Pamela Dorman)
• Presumed Guilty, by Scott Turow (Grand Central)

Best First Novel by an American Author:
• Killer Potential, by Hannah Deitch (Morrow)
• All the Other Mothers Hate Me, by Sarah Harman (Putnam)
• Dead Money, by Jakob Kerr (Bantam)
• Johnny Careless, by Kevin Wade (Celadon)
• History Lessons, by Zoe B. Wallbrook (Soho Crime)

Best Paperback Original:
• Listen, by Sacha Bronwasser (Penguin)
• The Sideways Life of Denny Voss, by Holly Kennedy (Lake Union)
• Broke Road, by Matthew Spencer (Thomas & Mercer)
• The Backwater, by Vikki Wakefield (Poisoned Pen Press)
• One Death at a Time, by Abbi Waxman (Berkley)

Best Fact Crime:
• They Poisoned the World: Life and Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals, by Mariah Blake (Crown)
• Blood and the Badge: The Mafia, Two Killer Cops, and a Scandal That Shocked the Nation, by Michael Cannell (Minotaur)
• Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers, by Caroline Fraser (Penguin Press)
• Out of the Woods: A Girl, a Killer, and a Lifelong Struggle to Find the Way Home, by Gregg Olsen (Thomas & Mercer)
• Story of a Murder: The Wives, the Mistress, and Dr. Crippen, by Hallie Rubenhold (Dutton)

Best Critical/Biographical:
• V Is for Venom: Agatha Christie’s Chemicals of Death, by Kathryn
Harkup (Sigma)
• The Kingdom of Cain: Finding God in the Literature of Darkness, by Andrew Klavan (Zondervan)
• Edgar Allan Poe: A Life, by Richard Kopley (University of
Virginia Press)
• Cooler Than Cool: The Life and Work of Elmore Leonard,
by C.M. Kushins (Mariner)
• Criss-Cross: The Making of Hitchcock’s Dazzling, Subversive Masterpiece Strangers on a Train, by Stephen Rebello (Running Press)

Best Short Story:
• “Reading at Night,” by Graham Greene (The Strand Magazine,
August 2025)
• “The One That Got Away,” by Charlaine Harris (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine [EQMM], January-February 2025)
• “Orphan X: A Mysterious Profile,” by Gregg Hurwitz (Mysterious Press)
• “Lucky Heart,” by Tim Maleeny (from Blood on the Bayou: Case Closed, edited by Don Bruns; Down & Out)
• “The Kill Clause,” by Lisa Unger (Amazon Original Stories)
• “Julius Katz Draws a Straight Flush,” by Dave Zeltserman (Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, September-October 2025)

Best Juvenile:
• Montgomery Bonbon: Murder at the Museum, by Alasdair Beckett-King (Candlewick Press)
• What Happened Then, by Erin Soderberg Downing (Scholastic Press)
• A Study in Secrets, by Debbi Michiko Florence (Aladdin)
• Blood in the Water, by Tiffany D. Jackson (Scholastic Press)
• The Midwatch Institute for Wayward Girls, by Judith Rossell (Dial)
• Mystery James Digs Her Own Grave, by Ally Russell (Delacorte Press)

Best Young Adult:
• Under the Same Stars, by Libba Bray (Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Books for Young Readers)
• Catch Your Death, by Ravena Guron (Sourcebooks Fire)
• This Is Where We Die, by Cindy R.X. He (Sourcebooks Fire)
• The Scammer, by Tiffany D. Jackson (Quill Tree)
• Codebreaker, by Jay Martel (Wednesday)

Best Television Episode Teleplay:
• “End of the Line,” Ballard, written by Michael Alaimo and Kendall Sherwood (Amazon/Fabel)
• “Pilot,” Paradise, written by Dan Fogelman (Hulu)
• “Episode 101,” The Lowdown, written by Sterlin Harjo (FX on Hulu)
• “These Girls,” Long Bright River, written by Nikki Toscano and Liz Moore (Peacock)
• “Ye’iitsoh (Big Monster),” Dark Winds, written by John Wirth and Steven Paul Judd (AMC)

* * *

ADDITIONAL AWARDS

Robert L. Fish Memorial Award:
• “A Textbook Example,” by Luis Avalos (from Sacramento Noir, edited by John Freeman; Akashic)
• “How It Happened,” by Billie Kay Fern (EQMM, July-August 2025)
• “Baggage,” by Rick Marcou (EQMM, January-February 2025)
• “Bloodsurf,” by Tiffany D. Plunkett (from Hollywood Kills, edited by Adam Meyer and Alan Orloff; Level Short)
• “Grand Theft Auto in the Heart of Screenland,” by Robert Rotstein (from Hollywood Kills)

The Simon & Schuster Mary Higgins Clark Award:
• Five Found Dead, by Sulari Gentill (Poisoned Pen Press)
• Savvy Summers and the Sweet Potato Crimes, by Sandra Jackson-Opoku (Minotaur)
• No Comfort for the Dead, by R.P. O’Donnell (Crooked Lane)
• All This Could Be Yours, by Hank Phillippi Ryan (Minotaur)
• Last Dance Before Dawn, by Katharine Schellman (Minotaur)

The G.P. Putnam’s Sons Sue Grafton Memorial Award:
• Cold as Hell, by Kelley Armstrong (Minotaur)
• Rage, by Linda Castillo (Minotaur)
• Fallen Star, by Lee Goldberg (Thomas & Mercer)
• The Red Letter, by Daniel G. Miller (Poisoned Pen Press)
• Gone in the Night, by Joanna Schaffhausen (Minotaur)

The Lilian Jackson Braun Memorial Award:
• Mrs. Christie at the Mystery Guild Library, by Amandah
Chapman (Berkley)
• A Senior Citizen’s Guide to Life on the Run, by Gwen Florio
(Severn House)
• The Marigold Cottages Murder Collective, by Jo Nichols (Minotaur)
• Murder Two Doors Down, by Chuck Storla (Crooked Lane)
• Vera Wong’s Guide to Snooping (On a Dead Man), by Jesse Q.
Sutanto (Berkley)

Authors Donna Andrews and Lee Child were previously named as this year’s Grand Master winners. The 2026 Raven Award will go to Corte Madera, California, bookshop and café Book Passage, while John Scognamiglio, the editor-in-chief of Kensington Books, has been chosen to receive the Ellery Queen Award.

Back in Business

As you can discern by the presence of new posts on this page, my recent computer problems have been overcome—for the most part, anyway. My longtime IT guy swung on Friday afternoon to reinstall my machine, complete with a new hard drive, CD/DVD player, and scanner. The only remaining hassles are, I can’t retrieve my e-mail files (which I’m assured are still resident on my hard drive), nor can I receive messages sent to my usual address. Resolving those issues will take more time, as well as some back-and-forth between me and the sort of tech people with whom I barely share a language.

Going three weeks without computer access wouldn’t have proven so difficult, had I been on vacation or otherwise planned such a separation. However, being unable to function in my role as a writer was harder to bear when those circumstances were precipitously forced upon me. The upside of being without a computer was that I had much more time to read; I made it through a stack of books over the last three weeks, among them Thomas Dann’s Midnight in Memphis, Con Lehane’s The Red Scare Murders, and Malcolm Kempt’s A Gift Before Dying—all works of crime fiction—plus Jac Jemc’s delightful historical novel, 2024’s Empty Theatre, and Elyse Graham’s non-fiction work from that same year, Book and Dagger: How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II.

I also exhausted an inordinate number of hours in front of the television. This was beneficial, in that I could finally catch up with a few crime dramas I hadn’t found time to watch before, such as A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story, starring the ever-magnetic Lucy Boynton as the last woman hanged in Britain (see its trailer below); Jenna Coleman’s The Jetty; and the Jason Watkins/Robson Green thriller, The Game. Less rewarding, though, were the spans wasted in front of situation comedies I really didn’t need to see again.



Yet all of that is in the past now. I’m firmly planted back in my office chair, trying to complete several projects I had hoped to finish off before the calendar ever turned to 2026. Those should be rolling out over the next couple of weeks—provided no new technical nightmares play havoc with my schedule. Fingers firmly crossed!

It’s Now Time to Judge the Leftys

It’s been many moons since I last attended a Left Coast Crime gathering, but I’m fully registered and ready for the 2026 convention in San Francisco (February 26-March 1). In advance of that, event organizers have announced the nominees for this year’s Lefty Awards, all selected by LCC registrants.

Lefty for Best Humorous Mystery Novel:
• Solid Gold Murder, by Ellen Byron (Kensington)
• Star-Crossed Egg Tarts, by Jennifer J. Chow (St. Martin’s Paperbacks)
• Bye Bye Blackbird, by Elizabeth Crowens (Level Best)
• Scot’s Eggs, by Catriona McPherson (Severn House)
• All’s Faire in Love and Murder, by Cindy Sample (Cindy Sample)

Bill Gottfried Memorial Lefty for Best Historical Mystery Novel (books set before 1970):
• Huguette, by Cara Black (Soho Crime)
• The Girl in the Green Dress, by Mariah Fredericks (Minotaur)
• A Daughter’s Guide to Mothers and Murder, by Dianne
Freeman (Kensington)
• City Lights, by Claire M. Johnson (Level Best)
• Knave of Diamonds, by Laurie R. King (Bantam)
• The Case of the Missing Maid, by Rob Osler (Kensington)

Lefty for Best Debut Mystery Novel:
• Whiskey Business, by Adrian Andover (Chestnut Avenue Press)
• We Don’t Talk About Carol, by Kristen L. Berry (Bantam)
• Mask of the Deer Woman, by Laurie L. Dove (Berkley)
• The Retirement Plan, by Sue Hincenbergs (Morrow)
• Best Offer Wins, by Marisa Kashino (Celadon)
• Mortal Zin, by Diane Schaffer (Sibylline Press)

Lefty for Best Mystery Novel (not in other categories):
• Crooks, by Lou Berney (Morrow)
• Throwing Shadows, by Claire Booth (Severn House)
• Edge, by Tracy Clark (Thomas & Mercer)
• Waters of Destruction, by Leslie Karst (Severn House)
• River of Lies, bhy James L’Etoile (Oceanview)
• The Library Game, by Gigi Pandian (Minotaur)

Winners of the 2026 Leftys will be revealed during a banquet at the Hyatt Regency-Embarcadero on Saturday, February 28.

(Hat tip to Mystery Fanfare.)

MWA Allocates Its Esteem

The Mystery Writers of America organization this week revealed the winners of its three 2026 special prizes. Prolific authors Donna Andrews and Lee Child have been named as this year’s MWA Grand Masters, acknowledging them as having reached “the pinnacle of achievement in mystery writing.” Meanwhile, the Corte Madera, California, bookshop and café, Book Passage, is set to receive the 2026 Raven Award, a commendation that “recognizes outstanding achievement in the mystery field outside the realm of creative writing.” Finally, John Scognamiglio, the editor-in-chief of Kensington Books, will be presented with the Ellery Queen Award, honoring “outstanding writing teams and outstanding people in the mystery-publishing industry.”

All of these prizes are scheduled to be dispensed during the 80th-annual Edgar Awards Ceremony, to be held on Wednesday, April 29, at the Marriott Marquis Times Square in New York City.

Please Bear with Me

Sorry for the recent dearth of updates to this page, but my computer crashed right before Christmas, and it is still in for servicing. I shall resume posting once I have my machine back in hand.

This situation is extremely frustrating and has set me back, work-wise; I had planned to make several year-end additions to the blog, which may now not appear. But I am trying to keep up a positive attitude, and will be back on the crime-fiction beat as soon as possible.

In the meantime, thank you for your patience.

Revue of Reviewers: 12-20-25

Critiquing some of the most interesting recent crime, mystery, and thriller releases. Click on the individual covers to read more.

Eleventh-Hour Endorsements

As December slowly winds down, so does the number of “best books of the year” articles and lists being published. Marilyn Brooks, who writes the Marilyn’s Mystery Reads blog and teaches on the subject of crime fiction in association with the Brandeis Osher Lifelong Learning Institute in Massachusetts, revealed her 2025 favorites just yesterday:

• Havoc, by Christopher Bollen (Harper; first released in hardcover in December 2024, but republished in paperback in November 2025)
• Chain Reaction, by James Byrne (Minotaur)
• Edge, by Tracy Clark (Thomas & Mercer)
• Her Many Faces, by Nicci Cloke (Morrow)
• Too Old for This, by Samantha Downing (Berkley)
• The Queen of Fives, by Alex Hay (Graydon House)
• Nemesis, by Gregg Hurwitz (Minotaur)
• The Deepest Fake, by Daniel Kalla (Simon & Schuster)
• Midnight Burning, by Paul Levine (Amphorae)
• Hang On St. Christopher, by Adrian McKinty (Blackstone)
• Hotel Ukraine, by Martin Cruz Smith (Simon & Schuster)
• The Mailman, by Andrew Welsh-Huggins (Mysterious Press)

Additionally, she applauds the late Ariana Franklin’s Mistress of the Art of Death, even though it came out in 2007. “I had never heard of the author until I serendipitously found it on a shelf in my local library,” explains Brooks, “and I was struck both by the title and the cover art.”

* * *

Two other selections of top-drawer crime fiction are available as well. The first comes from Vicki Weisfeld, a regular contributor to the British blog Crime Fiction Lover, and features her top-five novels from 2025 (including Philip Lazar’s debut political thriller, The Tiger and the Bear). And CrimeReads’ latest in a series of reading recaps focuses on “the year’s best new legal thrillers,” among them Victor Suthammanont’s Hollow Spaces, “a psychological thriller about lawyers, in which the adult children of an acquitted murderer are spurred to reinvestigate the case that once tore their family apart.”

Selective and Subjective, but Solid

With Christmas and 2026 nigh upon us, print and electronic publications both have sped up their issuing “best crime and mystery fiction of 2025” lists. BOLO Books’ Kristopher Zgorski says the following 13 works “had the most resonance with me this year.”

Top Reads of 2025:
• Quantum of Menace, by Vaseem Khan (Zaffre UK)
• The Black Wolf, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)
• The Burning Grounds, by Abir Mukherjee (Pegasus Crime)
• Crooks, by Lou Berney (Morrow)
• The Girl in Cell A, by Vaseem Kahn (Hachette Morbius)
• The Girl in the Green Dress, by Mariah Fredericks (Minotaur)
• Head Cases, by John McMahon (Minotaur)
• Home Before Dark, by Eva Björg Ægisdóttir (Orenda)
• The Pastor’s Wife, by LynDee Walker (Bookouture)
• Under the Same Stars, by Libba Bray (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Top Debuts:
• The Betrayal of Thomas True, by A.J. West (Orenda)
• Death on the Island, by Eliza Reid (Poisoned Pen Press)
• Whiskey Business, by Adrian Andover (Chestnut Avenue Press)

* * *

Although I have no intention of trying to catalogue every one of the “best” selections presently rolling out (Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine’s George Easter is already making a good fist of that endeavor), let me also mention that CrimeReads has posted three new lists—“Traditional Mysteries,” “International Crime Novels,” and “Noir Fiction.” In addition, the Spybrary blog is reporting on its readers’ espionage-novel picks of the last year (Mick Herron’s Clown Town and R.N. Morris’ new Cover Story included). And contributors to Britain’s Crime Fiction Lover are revealing their own top-five choices; so far we’ve heard from Sonja van der Westhuizen, Sandra Mangan (aka DeathBecomesHer), and Paul Burke, with more to come.

Favorite Crime Fiction of 2025, Part VI: J. Kingston Pierce

(J. Kingston Pierce is the editor of both The Rap Sheet and Killer Covers, and the senior editor of January Magazine.)

At the close of 2024, as I looked back over the lengthy list of books I’d enjoyed that year, I realized two things: (1) I had read far fewer historical non-fiction releases than is my preference; and (2) I had read a disproportionate number of books by men, and considerably fewer by women authors. That latter fact may be attributed in part to my bias toward harder-edged tales, and my lazy presumption that men will satisfy me better in said arena. But it also pointed out that I was being less deliberate about the books I picked up, choosing cavalierly rather than consciously trying to sample a breadth of what was made available in this genre. Over the decades I have been reading and reviewing crime and mystery fiction, there’s been a significant upsurge in the number of women contributing to the field, and in 2024, I had failed to tailor my choices accordingly.

This isn’t about my trying to be “equitable” or “inclusive”—which have become charged terms during our ridiculous period of machismo’s revival, when the U.S. secretary of defense claims that women in the military have made our armed forces weaker, and Donald Trump openly spews abuse at women (especially female reporters). For me, seeking to read more books by women is a matter of self-education: I want to see what new things are possible within crime fiction, and many of the parameters are best being tested and expanded by women writers.

So in 2025, I made an effort to sift more books by distaff scribblers into my reading diet. This proved to be anything but a hardship; I’ve actually found myself more satisfied with the choices I made over these last 12 months than I was in 2024. In the end, about 50 percent of the books I bought and enjoyed this year were by women. And when it came time to select my favorite crime, mystery, and thriller works … well, what do you know? Eight of my dozen picks are by women! This is the first time since I began publishing “favorites” lists a decade and a half ago, that the balance has favored female wordsmiths.

Without further ado, here are my crime-fiction favorites of this last year, listed simply in the order I read them:

• The Naming of the Birds, by Paraic O’Donnell (Tin House)
• Victorian Psycho, by Virginia Feito (Liveright)
• Murder at Gulls Nest, by Jess Kidd (Atria)
• Marble Hall Murders, by Anthony Horowitz (Harper)
• Hotel Ukraine, by Martin Cruz Smith (Simon & Schuster)
• The Art of a Lie, by Laura Shepherd-Robinson (Atria)
• The Girl in the Green Dress, by Mariah Fredericks (Minotaur)
• The Rush, by Beth Lewis (Pegasus)
• The Dentist, by Tim Sullivan (Atlantic Crime)
• Guilty by Definition, by Susie Dent (Sourcebooks Landmark)
• Smoke in Berlin, by Oriana Ramunno (Hemlock Press UK)

The particularly perspicacious among you will notice right off the bat that most of these novels are of the historical fiction variety. That’s become my penchant; I like to learn about periods foreign to my experience at the same time as I delight in a wickedly knotty mystery or an intensely rendered novel of dastardly doings. O’Donnell’s The Naming of the Birds (his sequel to The House on Vesper Sands) transports us to 1894 London, where the slayings of prominent men may be linked to a dreadful long-ago fire at a Grimm-esque orphanage. The alternately macabre and hilarious Victorian Psycho introduces a 19th-century English governess who endures indignities visited upon her by society and priggish employers—until she snaps in a final sanguinary spree. Murder at Gulls Nest, easily the coziest of this lot, finds a sassy quondam nun venturing to the English coast in 1954, hoping to solve the disappearance of a novice from her old order. In The Art of a Lie, we get a confectioner bringing the Italian delicacy “iced cream” to mid-18th-century Londoners, while engaging in a battle of wits with a gentleman con artist. The Girl in the Green Dress imagines a headline-hungry New York City reporter teaming with Zelda Fitzgerald, the madcap mate of author F. Scott Fitzgerald, to solve the real-life murder of a bridge-playing playboy. In The Rush, we’re offered a trio of audacious Victorian women chasing down a killer amid Canada’s wild Klondike Gold Rush. And Ramunno’s Smoke in Berlin thrusts us into the bombed-out German capital in 1944, where police detective Hugo Fischer investigates the deaths of an ideologically divided couple and a Reich journalist; it’s the affecting follow-up to Ashes in the Snow.

The remaining three modern stories all benefit from quirky, multidimensional characters and more than a fistful of plotting surprises. Book editor-cum-sleuth Susan Ryeland (Magpie Murders, Moonflower Murders) returns in Marble Hall Murders to tease out the secrets behind the demise, two decades ago, of a famous children’s author. Smith’s 11th and last outing for Arkady Renko, in Hotel Ukraine, pits that dogged Moscow police inspector against national security and paramilitary forces (and his creeping Parkinson’s disease) as he digs for connections between a deputy defense minister’s murder and Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Autistic English police detective George Gross makes his American publishing debut in The Dentist, wherein he strives to link the ostensibly random strangling of a homeless man with a perhaps intentionally bungled 15-year-old homicide case. Finally, in Guilty by Definition, we meet lexicographer Martha Thornhill, who—with help from her eccentric staff of dictionary writers—struggles to make sense of anonymously submitted clues suggesting there’s more to know about why Martha’s sister went missing 10 years ago than has yet been revealed. Bonus: Author Dent peppers her pages with arcane words with which to impress your friends. “Conjobble,” anyone? Or “procaffeinate”?

Finally, let me recommend an exceptional historical true-crime release from earlier this year—also composed by a woman: Story of a Murder: The Wives, the Mistress, and Dr. Crippen (Dutton). In it, Hallie Rubenhold (who previously penned The Five) re-examines the bizarre case of Hawley Harvey Crippen, a mild-mannered homeopathic physician who, in 1910, poisoned his domineering spouse and then buried her partial remains beneath the brickwork floor of their London abode, before fleeing by ship to Canada with his young employee and lover. No matter how many times these incidents are revisited, whether in John Boyne’s Crippen (2004), Erik Larson’s Thunderstruck (2006), Martin Edwards’ Dancing for the Hangman (2008), or Peter Lovesey’s The False Inspector Dew (1982, which uses the Crippen affair as the starting point for an original mystery), I never tire of reading about their peculiarities and ill-starred protagonist.

Taylor, Barnstrom Secure Wolfe Approval

In Reference to Murder reports that Vermont author Sarah Stewart Taylor has won the Nero Award for her 2024 novel, Agony Hill (Minotaur), which introduced series detective Franklin Warren. The Nero is given out annually by the Wolfe Pack, a New York-based literary society, to “the best American mystery written in the tradition of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe stories.”

Additionally, news comes that “The Troubling Mr. Truelove,” by Pete Barnstrom (to be published in the July 2026 issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine), has picked up this year’s Black Orchid Novella Award, sponsored by the Wolfe Pack and AHMM “to celebrate the novella format popularized by Stout.” Several other short works were given Black Orchid honorable mentions:  Paul A. Barra’s “Beauty and Buford,” Craig H. Bowlsby’s “Last Train to Medicine Hat,” Libby Cudmore’s “Piano Man,” Tom Larsen’s “The Sheriff of Alabama Street,” Josh Pachter’s “Melancholia,” and Daniel Peyton’s “A Noir Satyr: Follow That MacGuffin.” Congratulations to them all!

Favorite Crime Fiction of 2025, Part V: Ali Karim

(Ali Karim is The Rap Sheet’s longtime British correspondent, a contributing editor of January Magazine, and assistant editor of the e-zine Shots. In addition, he writes for Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine and Mystery Readers International. This last fall, Ali was the Fan Guest of Honor at Bouchercon in New Orleans.)

This was my first full year of retirement, a course correction necessitated by problematic changes in my health but giving me more time to spend with family. Apart from some freelance writing on the subjects of industrial chemistry (my lifelong career) and firefighting, I have sought to keep my mind occupied with reading, reviewing books, and penning literary commentary on both crime and horror fiction. My rewards, after two years spent worrying about my heart, were (1) to take part in the final CrimeFest in May, and (2) to attend this last September’s Bouchercon “World Mystery Convention” in New Orleans, Louisiana. Planning for that latter excursion was extensive, particularly since I had to find robust medical insurance, but I was helped by my old comrade, Shots editor Mike Stotter, who then accompanied me across the Atlantic. The week we spent attending Bouchercon panel discussions, walking inside and outside the city’s French Quarter, and partaking of various Southern food specialties (though no grits!) was extremely gratifying. Yet most memorable by far were the hours we got to spend with our American friends, especially Rap Sheet editor Jeff Pierce, Deadly Pleasures editor George Easter, and DP associate editor Larry Gandle. It had been a decade since we’d last been in the United States, attending Bouchercon 2016 (also in New Orleans). But when we gathered as friends, it seemed that hardly any time had passed at all.

Of the many new crime, mystery, and thriller novel releases I read in 2025, these are the 10 I relished the most:

• Everybody Wants to Rule the World, by Ace Atkins (Corsair UK/Morrow U.S.)
• 13 Hillcrest Drive, by Gerald Petievich (Rare Bird U.S.)
• Kill Your Darlings, by Peter Swanson (Faber & Faber UK/Morrow U.S.)
• The Whyte Python World Tour, by Travis Kennedy (Penguin UK/Doubleday U.S.)
• Ordinary Bear, by C.B. Bernard (Blackstone U.S., 2024)
• Hero, by Thomas Perry (Mysterious Press U.S., 2024)
• Broken, by Jón Atli Jónasson (Corylus UK)
• Never Flinch, by Stephen King (Hodder and Stoughton UK/
Scribner U.S.)
• The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne, by Ron Currie (Atlantic UK/Putnam U.S.)
• The Oligarch’s Daughter, by Joseph Finder (Head of Zeus UK/
Harper U.S.)

While I enjoyed all of those novels, it’s the first three I revisit most often in my mind. Atkins’ Everybody Wants to Rule the World delivers laughs aplenty in an otherwise terrifying Cold War thriller about sleeper agents embedded in Atlanta, Georgia, seeking the truth behind the concept of “mutually assured destruction.” Petievich’s 13 Hillcrest Drive is a tough-as-nails police procedural about a cop struggling to overcome a past indiscretion at the same time he investigates a triple homicide case in Hollywood, California. And Swanson’s Kill Your Darlings tells of a poet who determines to kill her English professor husband, not because he’s a drinker with a notoriously wandering eye (and a fondness for young women students), but because he’s begun writing a mystery novel that may reveal a dark secret that has long cemented their union.

Let me also recommend two from the crime non-fiction shelves:

• Reacher: The Stories Behind the Stories, by Lee Child (Bantam UK/Mysterious Press U.S.)
• Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers, by Caroline Fraser (Fleet UK/Penguin Press U.S.)

And since I mentioned my fondness for horror fiction, let me tout a couple of works from that genre that appeared this year:

• Whistle, by Linwood Barclay (HQ UK/ Morrow Paperbacks U.S.)
• The End of the World as We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King’s The Stand, edited by Christopher Golden and Brian Hodge (Hodder & Stoughton UK/Gallery U.S.)

Finding Fine Crime in All Corners

Every December, I wait eagerly to see which crime, mystery, and thriller novels Wall Street Journal critic Tom Nolan will declare are his favorites of the year. Tom has been a contributor to the Journal for the last 35 years, but I first became acquainted with him when I interviewed him for January Magazine in 1999. He and I seem frequently to share reading preferences, so I like to see if there are any books he chooses that for some reason I missed. Sure enough, in his new article, “The Best Books of 2025: Mystery” (scheduled to appear in tomorrow’s print edition of the Journal, but available online today—behind a paywall), there are a couple of yarns I skipped originally, and will now have to catch up with in the weeks to come.

Here are the 10 crime tales Tom found most rewarding in 2025:

• The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne, by Ron Currie (Putnam)
• Beartooth, by Callan Wink (Spiegel & Grau)
• Murder at Gulls Nest, by Jess Kidd (Atria)
• Kill Your Darlings, by Peter Swanson (Morrow)
• Fair Play, by Louise Hegarty (Harper)
• The Impossible Fortune, by Richard Osman (Pamela Dorman)
• A Case of Mice and Murder, by Sally Smith (Raven)
• The Doorman, by Chris Pavone (MCD)
• The Diary of Lies, by Philip Miller (Soho Crime)
• The Good Liar, by Denise Mina (Mulholland)

* * *

In the meantime, The New York Times has sprung forth with two lists of interest to Rap Sheet readers. The first comes from Sarah Weinman, and covers her choices of the “Best Mystery Novels of 2025”:

• Dead in the Frame, by Stephen Spotswood (Doubleday)
• At Midnight Comes the Cry, by Julia Spencer-Fleming (Minotaur)
• Vera Wong’s Guide to Snooping (on a Dead Man), by Jesse Q.
Sutanto (Berkley)
• Glory Daze, by Danielle Arceneaux (Pegasus Crime)
• Notes on Surviving the Fire, by Christine Murphy (Knopf)
• History Lessons, by Zoe B. Wallbrook (Soho Crime)
• Her One Regret, by Donna Freitas (Soho Crime)
• Death Takes Me, by Cristina Rivera Garza (Hogarth)
• Heartwood, by Amity Gaige (Simon & Schuster)
• Hollow Spaces, by Victor Suthammanont (Counterpoint)

And Sarah Lyall submits her “Best Thrillers of 2025” selections:

• The Doorman, by Chris Pavone (MCD)
• Your Steps on the Stairs, by Antonio Muñoz Molina (Other Press)
• Venetian Vespers, by John Banville (Knopf)
• The Impossible Thing, by Belinda Bauer (Atlantic Monthly Press)
• Dissolution, by Nicholas Binge (Riverhead)
• The Vanishing Place, by Zoë Rankin (Berkley)
• A Beautiful Family, by Jennifer Trevelyan (Doubleday)
• The Good Liar, by Denise Mina (Mulholland)
• The Predicament, by William Boyd (Atlantic Crime)
• The Impossible Fortune, by Richard Osman (Pamela Dorman)

Both of these pieces are scheduled for inclusion in the print version of The New York Times this coming Sunday, December 14.

* * *

Finally for today, CrimeReads has added its six picks of this year’s best espionage fiction to its previous selections of 2025’s top 20 crime novels and best debut novels:

• Oxford Soju Club, by Jinwoo Park (Dundurn Press)
• Clown Town, by Mick Herron (Soho Crime)
• The Poet’s Game, Paul Vidich (Pegasus Crime)
• Pariah, by Dan Fesperman (Knopf)
• The Oligarch’s Daughter, by Joseph Finder (Harper)
• Mrs. Spy, by M.J. Robotham (Aria/Bloomsbury)