I find some of my best new mysteries from these lists: The Booklist Year's Best Crime Fiction Debuts

This annual list includes crime fiction reviewed in Booklist since last Year's Best Crime Novels list (essentially from May 2012).

Booklist's Top 10 Crime Fiction Debuts 2013
The mini-reviews are from Booklist

The Andalucian Friend by Alexander Soderberg 2013
Suspense. Sophie Brinkman trilogy # 1

Swedish author Soderberg claims the coveted Booklist Mystery Showcase daily double by placing on both our crime fiction top 10 lists. FYI: Stieg Larsson didn’t do that.
Here is the Booklist mini-review:
Superficial similarities to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2008) aside, this gripping Scandinavian crime novel, the first in a trilogy, deserves to stand entirely on its own. Sophie Brinkman seems an unassuming nurse and single mother, but after she finds herself in the middle of a Swedish gang war, she steps up and shows her Lisbeth Salander mettle. A fast-paced thriller whose multi-stranded plot holds together as exquisitely as finely wound silk.
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The Beggar’s Opera by Peggy Blair 2013

Blair’s exciting debut stars Inspector Ricardo Ramirez, the troubled head of Havana’s Major Crimes Unit, who has a hot potato of a case on his hands involving a Canadian policeman suspected of murder. Blair interweaves the stories of cop and suspect beautifully, but she also invests Havana geography (with its decaying buildings and rusted American cars) with new vigor.
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Black Fridays by Michael Sears 2012

A sad-sack investment broker goes to prison for fiddling the books, then loses his wife, and now finds himself trying to raise his autistic son on his own. Then a job comes along: investigate someone else fiddling books. The writing is fresh and vivid, and the portrait of pension-stealing Wall Street greedheads is harrowing.
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East of Denver by Gregory Hill 2012

Stacey “Shakespeare” Williams returns to the family farm in eastern Colorado to bury his cat and winds up planning a bank robbery with “a paralyzed asshole, an anorexic fatso, and my prematurely senile father.” A little country noir and a lot of black comedy equal a terrific opening salvo from a very talented writer.
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Ghostman by Roger Hobbs 2013

Like Alexander Soderberg, Hobbs pulls off the daily double, landing on our overall top 10 and our top 10 crime debuts. Nicely done for the twenty-something Hobbs, who sold his novel to an agent on the day he graduated from college.
Here's the Booklist mini-review:
Jack White is the Ghostman, a pseudonymous loner living far off the grid who specializes in disappearing. After high-level heists, he makes sure that all traces of the capers vanish. Except one time it didn’t work, and the organizer of that job wants Jack dead. First-novelist Hobbs possesses that rare ability for first unleashing and then shrewdly directing a tornado of a plot, but he also evokes Elmore Leonard in the subtle interplay of his characters.

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A Good Death by Christopher R. Cox 2013

PI Sebastian Damon travels to Bangkok to investigate the death of a Laotian refugee who ultimately became vice president of a Boston bank. So begins a story that channels Conrad, Kipling, and Francis Ford Coppola. An insightful, transcendent adventure.
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The Old Turk’s Load by Gregory Gibson 2013

It’s 1967, and a shipment of the world’s finest heroin goes missing en route to Angelo DiNoto, New Jersey’s top crime boss. Gibson’s elliptical, ever-evolving plot combines Raymond Chandler complexity and Donald E. Westlake comic haplessness into a thoroughly original whole.
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Three Graves Full by Jamie Mason 2013

Mason hooks the reader with her first sentence, “There is very little peace for a man with a body buried in his backyard.” Even less when the bodies keep piling up, but their provenance remains murky. An astonishingly accomplished debut.
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The Thing about Thugs by Tabish Khair 2012

At first glance, this slim Victorian thriller seems no more than an exposé of British imperialism wrapped in a Kill Bill plot. Soon, though, the reader is drawn into a deeply thought-provoking literary suspense novel that evokes Collins and Dickens.
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The Twenty-Year Death by Ariel S. Winter 2012

Former bookseller Winter tells an epic tale in the form of three novels written in the style of three different crime-fiction legends: Simenon, Chandler, and Jim Thompson. What might seem at first like an amusing exercise for mystery buffs becomes by the end immersive, exhilarating, and revelatory.
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## Related MBTB post: Booklist: The Year's Best Crime Novels
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posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:
The Coroner
by M.R. Hall

Book # 1 with Jenny Cooper, a small-town lawyer newly appointed as Severn Vale District Coroner, in Gloucestershire, England

Description: When lawyer Jenny Cooper is appointed Severn Vale District Coroner, she's hoping for a quiet life and space to recover from a traumatic divorce, but the office she inherits from the recently deceased Harry Marshall contains neglected files hiding dark secrets and a trail of buried evidence. Could the tragic death in custody of a young boy be linked to the apparent suicide of a teenage prostitute and the fate of Marshall himself? Jenny embarks on a lonely and dangerous one-woman crusade for justice which threatens not only her career but also her sanity.

This is one of my favourite lists: The Booklist Year's Best Crime Novels

This annual list includes crime fiction reviewed in Booklist since last Year's Best Crime Novels list (essentially from May 2012).

Booklist's Top 10 Crime Novels 2013
The mini-reviews are from Booklist

The Andalucian Friend by Alexander Soderberg 2013
Suspense. Sophie Brinkman trilogy # 1

Superficial similarities to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2008) aside, this gripping Scandinavian crime novel, the first in a trilogy, deserves to stand entirely on its own. Sophie Brinkman seems an unassuming nurse and single mother, but after she finds herself in the middle of a Swedish gang war, she steps up and shows her Lisbeth Salander mettle. A fast-paced thriller whose multi-stranded plot holds together as exquisitely as finely wound silk.

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The Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penny 2012
Canadian police procedural. # 8 with Armand Gamache, Chief Inspector of the Sûreté du Québec, in the village of Three Pines, in southern Quebec

Penny’s latest begins when the choir director of a monastery in a remote corner of Quebec is murdered. Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and Inspector Jean-Guy Beauvoir are charged with finding a killer among a group of largely silent monks, whose recording of Gregorian chants has made them famous. Roiling human passion set against the sublime serenity of the chants produces a melody of uncommon complexity and beauty.

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Dare Me by Megan Abbott 2012

Cheerleading noir? In Abbott’s bloodstained hands, why not? When a new coach upends the power structure behind a high-school cheer team, the ousted captain lashes back with stunning ferocity. This is cheerleading as blood sport, Bring It On meets Fight Club — just try putting it down.

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Ghostman by Roger Hobbs 2013

Jack White is the Ghostman, a pseudonymous loner living far off the grid who specializes in disappearing. After high-level heists, he makes sure that all traces of the capers vanish. Except one time it didn’t work, and the organizer of that job wants Jack dead. First-novelist Hobbs possesses that rare ability for first unleashing and then shrewdly directing a tornado of a plot, but he also evokes Elmore Leonard in the subtle interplay of his characters.

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Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn 2012

When Nick Dunne’s beautiful and clever wife, Amy, goes missing on their fifth wedding anniversary, the media descend on the Dunnes’ Missouri McMansion with all the fury of a Dateline episode. In the year’s biggest crossover best-seller, Flynn combines a corkscrew of a plot with her own twisted sense of humor. A compelling thriller and a searing portrait of a marriage.

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Live by Night by Dennis Lehane 2012

Lehane’s latest historical thriller continues the author’s propulsive narrative train ride across twentieth-century American history. This time the train stops during Prohibition, and the individual focus is on Joe Coughlin, a Boston cop’s son by birth but a gangster by choice. A magnetic re-imagining of the great themes of popular fiction—crime, family, passion, betrayal—set against an exquisitely rendered historical backdrop.

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The Rage by Gene Kerrigan 2013

If you like hard-boiled Irish thrillers in the Ken Bruen mold, and you don’t know about Kerrigan, you’re at least two Guinnesses behind. This tense, thoughtful thriller about an armored-car robbery gets into the heads of both the robber and the Dublin copper who tracks him. Start the word-of-mouth going: Kerrigan is the real deal.

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Shatter the Bones by Stuart MacBride 2012
British police procedural. Book # 7 with Logan McRae, a detective sergeant in Aberdeen, Scotland

MacBride’s seventh Logan McRae novel, starring the Aberdeen, Scotland, police detective, may be the most harrowing yet—and that’s saying something. The crimes (two kidnappings) are breathtakingly awful, the pacing is breakneck, and the stakes are higher than ever. There’s little comfort in the bleak ending, but still: Brilliant. Bloody. Brilliant.

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Suspect by Robert Crais 2012

Two PTSD sufferers — Scott, an LAPD cop, and Maggie, a German shepherd veteran of the Iraq War—bond during tryouts for the department’s K-9 unit and soon join forces to solve a murder. Who would have thought that the most multifaceted and appealing new protagonist in crime fiction this year would be a hard-boiled dog?

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What Comes Next by John Katzenbach 2012

An abducted teenager. A perverted villain (or villains). A chase to save the victim. These are not unfamiliar ingredients in crime fiction, but Katzenbach reinvents the formula several times over in this absolutely gripping novel. Combining the intricacy of psychological fiction with the pulse-pounding narrative of plot-driven suspense, this is certainly among the most original thrillers of the year.

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Watch for upcoming post Booklist Top Crime Fiction Debuts, coming soon.

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:
Scratch Deeper
by Chris Simms

British police procedural

Book # 1 with Iona Khan, a feisty detective constable in the Counter Terrorism Unit, in Manchester, England

Description: Detective Constable Iona Khan investigates when a Sri Lankan student begins asking suspicious questions about Manchester's tunnel system prior to the start of the Labour Party conference.

The Arthur Ellis Awards celebrate excellence in Canadian crime writing.
These awards are organized by the Crime Writers of Canada

The Nominees for the Best Crime Novel:

Linwood Barclay: Trust Your Eyes
Summary: A schizophrenic, map-obsessed, shut-in who tours the world using a computer program witnesses what he believes to be a murder in downtown New York City and enlists his caretaker brother in an effort to investigate.

Giles Blunt: Until the Night
Book # 6 with John Cardinal, a police detective near Algonquin Bay, Ontario
Summary: Detectives John Cardinal and Lise Delorme investigate the murders of a man found in a hotel parking lot and a senator's wife found frozen in the ruins of a hotel in the woods.

Sean Chercover: The Trinity Game
Summary: Vatican investigator Daniel Byrne is sent to America to look into the predictions of Reverend Tim Trinity, a sleazy televangelist and admitted con man who has suddenly been gifted with the real ability to see the future. His newfound ability has drawn a lot of attention--the mob wants him dead, the Vatican wants him discredited, and people worldwide want to know if he's for real--and Byrne must work quickly to uncover his secrets if he hopes to save his life.

Stephen Miller: The Messenger
Summary: Daria is recruited from a refugee camp and sent by terrorists to New York on a mission to infect as many people as possible with smallpox.
Seeking redemption after being falsely accused and disgraced in the anthrax inquiries after 9/11, Dr. Sam Watterman is recruited by the FBI to locate this bio-terrorist threat.

Carsten Stroud: Niceville
Summary: When a young boy literally disappears before security cameras while walking home from school, an ensuing search is conducted by ex-Special Forces veteran Nick Kavanaugh, who with his lawyer wife encounters an ancient malevolent power linked to a deep crater.

The winners will be announced May 30.

Watch for an upcoming post: Arthur Ellis Best First Crime Novel nominees

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:
Cold Grave
by Kathryn Fox

Forensics/Investigator

Book # 6 with Dr. Anya Crichton, a forensic pathologist in Sydney, Australia

Summary: A family-friendly, floating palace. But, as Anya Crichton soon discovers, cruise ships aren't all that they seem...
So when a teenage girl is discovered, dead on the deck of the ship that she is holidaying on, Anya feels compelled to get involved. There's no apparent cause of death, but Anya's forensics expertise uncovers more than the ship's doctors can... or want to.

See the 2012 Dagger Award winners here, including all the nominees.

Check out this article at examiner.com about this year's ceremony and the winners.

The International Dagger:

The Potter's Field by Andrea Camilleri
(# 13 in the Inspector Montalbano series)
Summary: An unidentified corpse is found near Vigáata, a Sicilian town known for its soil rich with potter's clay. Meanwhile, a woman reports the disappearance of her husband, a Colombian man with Sicilian origins who turns out to be related to a local mobster. Then Inspector Montalbano remembers the story from the Bible-- Judas's betrayal, the act of remorse, and the money for the potter's field, where those of unknown or foreign origin are to be buried-- and slowly, through myriad betrayals, finds his way to the solution to the crime. NoveList

The Ian Fleming Steel Dagger:

A Foreign Country by Charles Cumming
Summary: When a newly appointed first female Chief of MI6 disappears weeks after two possibly related cases, disgraced former MI6 officer Thomas Kell is offered a chance to redeem his career by conducting a discreet operation that uncovers a shocking conspiracy. NoveList
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The John Creasey New Blood Dagger:

A Land More Kind Than Home by Wiley Cash

Summary: Jess Hall, growing up deep in the heart of an unassuming mountain town that believes in protecting its own, is plunged into an adulthood for which he is not prepared when his autistic older brother, Stump, sneaks a look at something he isn't supposed to, which has catastrophic repercussions. NoveList
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The Gold Dagger:

The Rage by Gene Kerrigan No SILS locations yet. Watch for this book, coming soon.

Summary: Vincent Naylor is a professional thief, as confident as he is reckless. Just ten days out of jail, and he's preparing his next robbery. But his plan is already unravelling.
While investigating the murder of a crooked banker, Detective Sergeant Bob Tidey gets a call from an old acquaintance, Maura Coady. The retired nun believes there's something suspicious happening in the Dublin backstreet where she lives alone.
Maura's call inadvertently unleashes a storm of violence that will engulf Vincent Naylor and force Tidey to make a deadly choice. Fantastic Fiction

WHAT I'M READING NOW:
Paradise City by Archer Mayor

Book # 23 with [Joe Gunther, now head of the new Vermont Bureau of Investigation]

Summary: Investigating a series of seemingly unrelated burglaries targeting high-end electronics and antiques, Joe Gunther and his team discover ties between their case, the murder of an elderly woman from Boston, and the activities of a powerful purchaser of stolen goods. NoveList

First book: Open Season

Here are the Agatha Award Winners. They were announced at Malice Domestic on April 28, 2012 (The awards are for books published in 2011).

This organization salutes the traditional mystery — books best typified by the works of Agatha Christie. The genre is loosely defined as mysteries which contain no explicit sex or excessive gore or violence. (description from malicedomestic.org About Malice)

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Best Novel:

Three-Day Town by Margaret Maron
# 17 with Deborah Knott, district judge in North Carolina

While in New York, Judge Deborah Knott has been asked to deliver a package to Lt. Sigrid Harald of the NYPD. Sigrid offers to swing by the apartment with her husband to pick up the box, but when they reach the apartment, they discover that the box is missing and the doorman has been murdered.

## Related post: MBTB review of Rituals of the Season # 11

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Best First Novel:

Learning to Swim by Sara J. Henry
# 1 with Troy Chance, a freelance writer in Lake Placid, New York

When Troy Chance rescues a boy who falls off a ferry she discovers he can only speak French and that no one seems to be looking for him. Thus begins a dangerous journey across the eastern United States and Canada as Troy attempts to uncover the mysteries surrounding the special little boy she comes to care for deeply.

## Related post: MBTB mini-review of Learning to Swim

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Best Historical Novel:

Naughty in Nice by Rhys Bowen
# 5 with Lady Georgiana, minor royalty in 1930s England

In the French town of Nice to recover the Queen's stolen snuff box, Lady Georgiana Rannoch participates in a Coco Chanel fashion show where a necklace also belonging to the Queen goes missing, forcing her to search for both priceless items and solve a murder.

## Related posts:
MBTB review of Her Royal Spyness # 1
MBTB review of Royal Flush # 3
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Check out the MBTB post Agatha Award Nominees 2012 for the full list of nominees with series descriptions.

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:
Beastly Things by Donna Leon

Book # 21 with Guido Brunetti, a police commissario in Venice, Italy

Summary: Commissario Brunetti investigates the death of an animal lover whose murdered body was found in a Venice canal.

First book: Death at La Fenice

The Edgar Awards were presented by the Mystery Writers of America on April 26, 2012.

Check out the website TheEdgars.com for the complete list of nominees in all categories (e.g. best nonfiction crime, best young adult) and the MBTB blog post 2012 Edgar Nominees for series descriptions and library holdings of the nominees.

The winners:

Best Novel

Gone by Mo Hayder

# 5 with Jack Caffery, a troubled police detective, and police diver Sergeant Flea Marley in the West Country, England
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Best First Novel

Bent Road by Lori Roy

Celia Scott and her family move back to her husband's hometown in Kansas, where his sister died under mysterious circumstances twenty years before, and where Celia and two of her children struggle to adjust--especially when a local girl disappears.
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Best Paperback Original

The Company Man by Robert Jackson Bennett

After eleven union men are found dead in a trolley car in 1919, a man named Hayes must discover the truth behind the murders--and behind the McNaughton Corporation and the Evesden, the company town it built--before he meets a grim end.
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posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:
The Strange Return of Sherlock Holmes
by Barry Grant

Here's what Booklist had to say:

After an embedded tour in Afghanistan, journalist James Wilson returns to England, intending to settle into a quiet life in a small town. Looking to share the rental on a cottage, he is introduced to Cedric Coombes, a tall, thin man in his 60s. Coombes, who instantly reminds Wilson of someone, turns out to be a curious fellow: a cocaine user and amateur violin player possessed of the most astonishing deductive powers. No, this isn’t a spoof of the Holmes stories; it’s played straight. Coombes really is who you think he is, and there’s a perfectly logical (although inherently fantastical) explanation as to how he comes to be living here in the twenty-first century. Grant devises an engaging mystery for our returning hero to solve .....

The Edgar Awards will be presented by the Mystery Writers of America on April 26, 2012.

Check out the website TheEdgars.com for the complete list of nominees in all categories (e.g. best nonfiction crime, best young adult).

Winners are indicated by *

Here are the nominees for
Best Novel

The Ranger by Ace Atkins

# 1 with Quinn Colson, an army ranger returning home from Afghanistan, in rural northeast Mississippi
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* Gone by Mo Hayder

# 5 with Jack Caffery, a troubled police detective, and police diver Sergeant Flea Marley in the West Country, England
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The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino

A clever mathematics teacher orchestrates a cover-up after a confrontation between a violent man and his terror-stricken ex-wife results in the man's accidental death.
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1222 by Anne Holt

# 8 with Hanne Wilhelmsen, a lesbian police officer in Oslo, Norway. In this book, she is in a wheelchair, having been wounded in the line of duty. She is no longer a police officer.

## Related post: MBTB mini-review of 1222

Field Gray by Philip Kerr

# 7 with Bernie Gunther, a German private eye who hates the Nazis, in Berlin, Germany, 1936-1947, and later in Argentina, Cuba, and elsewhere

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Best First Novel

Red on Red by Edward Conlon

Follows an unlikely partnership between two NYPD detectives, including one who is drawn to cases of rough urban combat and another who is compelled by suicide, missing persons, and supernatural cases.

Last to Fold by David Duffy

# 1 with Turbo Vlost, an ex-KGB operative, now a private investigator in New York City
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All Cry Chaos by Leonard Rosen

# 1 with Henri Poincaré, a veteran Interpol agent
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* Bent Road by Lori Roy

Celia Scott and her family move back to her husband's hometown in Kansas, where his sister died under mysterious circumstances twenty years before, and where Celia and two of her children struggle to adjust--especially when a local girl disappears.

Purgatory Chasm by Steve Ulfelder

# 1 with Conway Sax, a no-nonsense auto mechanic with a knack for solving difficult problems, around Framingham, Massachusetts
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Best Paperback Original

* The Company Man by Robert Jackson Bennett

After eleven union men are found dead in a trolley car in 1919, a man named Hayes must discover the truth behind the murders--and behind the McNaughton Corporation and the Evesden, the company town it built--before he meets a grim end.

The Faces of Angels by Lucretia Grindle

A sweltering day in Florence, and newly-wed Mary Warren breaks away from her tour group in the Boboli Gardens to wander into a shady tunnel of trees. But the tranquil setting conceals a complex maze and a masked killer: within minutes Mary is severely attacked and her husband brutally murdered. A year later, and the murderer is still at large.
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The Dog Sox by Russell Hill

Follows the adventures of Ray Adams and his girlfriend Ava after Ray buys her a semi-professional baseball team in Knights Landing, California, for her birthday and renames it the Dog Sox.
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Death of the Mantis by Michael Stanley

# 3 with David Bengu, a large assistant police superintendent known as “Kubu” (hippopotamus), in Botswana
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Vienna Twilight by Frank Tallis

# 5 with Max Liebermann, a psychoanalytic detective in turn-of-the-20th-century Vienna, Austria
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posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:
The Fifth Victim
by Zoë Sharp

Investigator/Action/Adventure

Book # 9 with Charlotte “Charlie” Fox, a self-defense expert

Description: Charlie Fox is hired as a bodyguard for the daughter of a rich businesswoman whose circle of friends are increasingly the target of kidnappings while also seeking vengeance against the man who put her partner in a coma.

First book: Killer Instinct

The Killer is Dying
James Sallis

In this novel of suspense set in Phoenix, Arizona, Sallis explores the thoughts and motives of three very difference characters, including a dying gun for hire.

The Cut
George Pelecanos

Spero Lucas, a 29 year old Iraq war vet, does special investigations for a Washington, D.C defense attorney in this remarkable first in a new crime series.

Northwest Angle
William Krueger

A violent storm strans PI Cork O’Connor and his grown daughter, Jenny, on a remote island in Minnesota’s Northwest Angle, where they discover the dead body of a teenage girl and her barely alive infant son.

Freezing
Clea Koff

The inadvertent discovery of a bundle of frozen body parts leads FBI agent Scott Houston to Agency 32/1, a nonprofit missing person identification resource center, in Koff’s forensic thriller debut.

Plugged
Eoin Colfer

Irish author, Colfer, best known for his middle-grade Artemis Fowl series, makes his much anticipated crime novel debut with this pitch-perfect comic noir.

The House of Silk
Anthony Horowitz

Authorized by the Conan Doyle estate, this new Sherlock Holmes novel captures the authentic Watsonian voice. Contains some disturbing content.

Trackers
Deon Meyer

When Lemmer, a freelance South African bodyguard, agrees to help a wealthy farmer smuggle two rare black rhinos out of Zimbabwe, he soon finds himself in big trouble.

Agent 6
Tom Rob Smith

Set in 1965, Smith’s third novel takes Leo Demidov, a former Soviet secret police agent, to the United States to investigate a crime against a member of his family.

Operation Napoleon
Arnaldur Indridson

The crash of a German airplane on a glacier in Iceland in the waning days of WWII has series present day repercussions in this thriller, a departure for crime author Indridson.

The Boy in the Suitcase
Lene Kaaberbol and Agnette Friis

After Nina Borg, a Red Cross nurse, discovers a three-year old boy inside a suitcase, she begins a dangerous quest to find out who his is and to whom he belongs.

Posted by Shiela

This list is from Publisher's Weekly online article: Fall 2011 Announcements

Also check PW Top Mysteries for 2011

Here are the Agatha Award Nominees. The winners will be announced at Malice Domestic on April 28, 2012.
UPDATE: winners indicated by *
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Best Novel:

The Real Macaw by Donna Andrews
# 13 with Meg Langslow, decorative blacksmith in a southern town

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The Diva Haunts the House by Krista Davis
# 5 with Sophie Winston, an event planner in Alexandria, Virginia, in the Domestic Diva mysteries

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Wicked Autumn by G.M. Malliet
# 1 with Max Tudor, a former MI-5 agent, now vicar at St. Edwold’s in the idyllic village of Nether Monkslip, England

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* Three-Day Town by Margaret Maron
# 17 with Deborah Knott, district judge in North Carolina

## Related post: MBTB review of Rituals of the Season # 11

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A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny
# 7 with Armand Gamache, Chief Inspector of the Sûreté du Québec, in the village of Three Pines, in southern Quebec

## Related post: MBTB review of Still Life # 1

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Best First Novel:

Dire Threads by Janet Bolin

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Choke by Kaye George (watch for this title coming to the library soon)
# 1 with Imogene Duckworthy, a 22-year-old waitress, living with her mother Hortense, and baby daughter Nancy Drew, in Saltlick, Texas

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* Learning to Swim by Sara J. Henry
# 1 with Troy Chance, a freelance writer in Lake Placid, New York

## Related post: MBTB mini-review of Learning to Swim

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Who Do, Voodoo? by Rochelle Staab
# 1 with Liz Cooper, a clinical psychologist who is skeptical about the paranormal, in Los Angeles, California, in the Mind for Murder mysteries

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Tempest in the Tea Leaves by Kari Lee Townsend
# 1 with Sunny Meadows, a fortune teller leaving New York City for rural Divinity, in upstate New York, in the Fortune Teller mysteries

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Best Historical Novel:

* Naughty in Nice by Rhys Bowen
# 5 with Lady Georgiana, minor royalty in 1930s England

## Related post: MBTB review of Her Royal Spyness # 1

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Murder Your Darlings by J.J. Murphy
# 1 with Dorothy Parker, the real-life witty writer in 1920s Manhattan, New York City, in the Algonquin Round Table mysteries

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Mercury's Rise by Ann Parker
# 4 with Inez Stannert, a saloon owner, around 1880 in Leadville, Colorado, in the Silver Rush mysteries

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Troubled Bones by Jeri Westerson
# 4 with Crispin Guest, a disgraced knight reduced to living by his wits on the mean streets of 1384 London, England

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A Lesson in Secrets by Jacqueline Winspear
# 8 with Maisie Dobbs, a psychologist and investigator based in 1920s and 1930s London, England

## Related posts:
MBTB full review of Maisie Dobbs # 1
MBTB mini-review of The Mapping of Love and Death # 7

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:
India Black and the Widow of Windsor by Carol K. Carr

Book # 2 with India Black, a young madam running a brothel catering to gentlemen, in 1870s London, England

Summary: A spy for British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, India Black disguises herself as a servant to protect Her Highness the Queen from a possible assassination attempt by Scottish nationalists while spending the Christmas holidays in Balmoral.

First book: India Black

Welcome to Sharon's Top Mystery Reads of 2011, part one.
I've taken a tip from Margaret Cannon's list this year - I also have 11 top books.
Not all these books were published in 2011 - my only criteria is that I read them in 2011.

Download a printable copy of the entire list here.

Lee Child: The Affair (2011)

Investigator. Action/adventure.

Book # 16 with ex-military policeman Jack Reacher, now drifting around the U.S.

This is a prequel to the series, back when Reacher was still in the military police. You could go right from this one to the first book in series - the perfect circle. After a woman is murdered in a small town near a military training base in the U.S., Reacher is sent to town undercover to see what he can find out. Interesting to see Reacher in the military.

First book: Killing Floor

## Related posts:
MBTB review of Bad Luck and Trouble # 11

MBTB review of 61 Hours # 14

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Michael Connelly: The Drop (2009)

American police procedural.

Book # 17 with renegade cop Harry Bosch, now with the LAPD Cold Case squad.

The case: Harry gets a special request by a city councilor to investigate the death of the councilor’s son. It looks like the man jumped or fell or was pushed from his hotel balcony. Bosch and the councilor never got along and Bosch can feel the influence of backroom politics and manipulations. Lots of good twists. Reminds me why I love this author.

First book: The Black Echo

## Related post: MBTB review of Nine Dragons # 15

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Tana French: Faithful Place (2010)

All Tana French’s books feature police detectives on the murder squad in Dublin, Ireland. They are not a series, but loosely connected. This one features Frank Mackey, a senior undercover cop.

A suitcase is found belonging to his girlfriend from 20 years ago who he was planning to run away with. She disappeared that very night. Not a standard police procedural.

First book: In The Woods

## Related post: MBTB review of The Likeness # 2

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Sara J. Henry: Learning to Swim (2011)

Amateur sleuth

Book # 1 with Troy Chance, a young woman who works in Lake Placid, NY.

While on a ferry trip across the lake, Troy thinks she sees a child fall from a passing ferry. Without thinking, she jumps in and yes, a 6-year-old boy has been tied into a sweatshirt and is underwater. She rescues him and heroically swims to shore. The pace hardly slows down after she traces the boy’s father to Ottawa and accompanies the child back home. Troy is determined to get to the bottom of who threw the child in the water, and she doesn’t completely trust that the father had nothing to do with it. Enthralling writing style, a good balanced character in Troy and an interesting narrative voice. A great read.

The author’s website says the next book will be out in 2012.

## Related post: MBTB mini-review of Learning to Swim

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Stuart MacBride: Shatter the Bones (2011)

British police procedural (Scottish noir)

Book # 7 with Logan “Lazarus” McRaie, DS, in Aberdeen, Scotland.

The case: a young mother and daughter singing sensation from a competition TV show have been kidnapped for ransom and the police have very little to go on. There is a breakneck pace to the policing and McRaie’s personal life that makes the book hard to put down.

First book: Cold Granite

## Related posts:
MBTB review of Cold Granite # 1

MBTB review of Dark Blood # 6

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Margaret Maron: Three-Day Town (2011)

Book # 17 with Judge Deborah Knott, now married to police officer Dwight.

This book is set in New York City where Deborah and Dwight are taking a delayed honeymoon. Staying in a friend’s apartment, they are invited down the hall to a neighbour’s party. When they return to their apartment, there is a dead body in it. NYPD detective Sigrid Harald from Maron’s other series plays a big part.
Nicely done from multiple points of view – mostly Deborah and Sigrid. It’s refreshing to see Deborah operate outside the cloying cushion of her endless relatives on the home front in North Carolina.

First book: Bootlegger’s Daughter

## Related post: MBTB review of Rituals of the Season # 11

Watch for upcoming post: Sharon's Top Mystery Reads of 2011, part two

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:
The Innocent
by Taylor Stevens

Investigator/Action/Adventure

Book # 2 with Vanessa Michael Munroe, the daughter of American missionaries in Africa, now works all over the world as a researcher and investigator

Description: Eight years ago, five-year-old Hannah was spirited out of school and into the closed world of a cult known as The Chosen. Ever since, followers of its leader, The Prophet, have hidden the child and shielded her abductor. Now, childhood survivors of The Chosen who have escaped to make a life for themselves on the outside know where to find Hannah and turn to Vanessa Michael Munroe for help. . .
Munroe must navigate unpredictable cult members, their dangerous cohorts and the struggle against her own increasingly violent nature so she can rescue the child.... (book jacket)

First book: The Informationist