Crime Novelists of the Future

摘要

At this time of the year, my life at Booklist is consumed with preparing our annual Mystery Showcase issue. One of the most interesting parts of that process is selecting the best crime novels of the year (with the year defined as the last 12months, May through April). When putting together this list, I make a well-intentioned attempt at democracy by consulting all our mystery reviewers for their ideas about the best of the year. What I'd really like to do, of course, is pick my own favorites and ignore everyone else--which is exactly what I'm going to do in this column. I'm even changing the rules. The four books below are the best crime novels I've read in the last year by relatively unheralded authors. You won't find any of the usual suspects here, even though some of them (Pelecanos, Crais, Harvey, Lehane) published fine books during this period. Those who follow crime fiction closely will probably already know at least some of the names appearing below, and those who don't should quickly learn them. These writers are very good right now, and they're going to be very good for a long time to come.