Best Books of 2009: Mystery and Suspense

I read a good bit of mystery/suspense this year, but to be honest, most of it wasn't very good. So here's what was left, the best of the mystery/suspense/action/thriller/noir books I read in 2009:


The Grifters (1963) - Jim Thompson

Several thoughts on this one here.


The Little Sleep (2009) - Paul Tremblay

Don't let this little jewel slip under the radar; seek it out. South Boston PI Mark Genevich suffers from narcolepsy. That's right, a private investigator who can fall asleep while questioning someone, while on a case, while driving, while... well, you get the picture. A wonderful combination of the hard-boiled and surreal with plenty of humor and power. Definitely worthy of your time. Check it out.


The Girl Who Played with Fire (2006/2009) - Stieg Larsson

If you haven't yet caught Larsson fever, start with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Just understand that this second book, The Girl Who Played with Fire, is even better.



Knots and Crosses (1987) - Ian Rankin

My first experience with Rankin and his Scottish detective John Rebus. Good, solid (if somewhat dark) detective fiction. I read the first three books in the series this year and while Hide and Seek and Tooth and Nail were both good, Knots and Crosses is the best of the three for my money. (Thanks to my friend Tom for recommending Rankin.)



The Siege (2009) - Stephen White

I’d never read anything by White before now, but I may keep reading him on the basis of this one. The action takes place at Yale, where someone is holding an unknown number of students inside the building of one of the university’s secret societies. At various intervals, prisoners are released to deliver messages from their captor, messages which are sometimes confusing, sometimes deadly.



Ravens (2009) - George Dawes Green

When a Georgia family wins over $300 million in the lottery, two low-life drifters try to cash in on the winnings by holding members of the family hostage. It seems a lot of reviewers have dismissed Ravens as out-of-control, over the top and simply unbelievable. I think it’s one of the most revealing looks at the culture of greed and, oddly enough, how the Stockholm Syndrome works.




The Long Goodbye (1953), Farewell My Lovely (1940) - Raymond Chandler

I hadn’t read any Chandler since reading The Big Sleep a few years ago, so taking on two of his novels was a real treat. The Chandler imitators are a dime a dozen, but nobody captures the spirit of hardboiled like Chandler when he’s penning Philip Marlowe tales. Marlowe is a tough, hard-drinking thinker of a private detective getting involved in cases that have no tidy solutions, mostly because, beneath his jaded hard shell, he is a moral man who can’t help but at least try to do the right thing, even at a cost to himself. I love everything about these novels: the gritty L.A. atmosphere, the 1940s and 1950s feel, the language, the femme fatales, everything.



Rogue Male (1939) - Geoffrey Household

Something of a forerunner of Frederick Forsyth’s The Day of the Jackal. A man attempts to assassinate an unnamed tyrant (obviously Hitler) and is captured before he can carry out his mission. The would-be assassin escapes and provides the reader with what reads like a memoir on how to lose yourself from those intent on finding you at any cost.



9 Dragons (2009) - Michael Connelly

Connelly’s best Harry Bosch novel since Echo Park (2006). The killing of an Asian convenience store owner in Los Angeles seems somewhat routine until Bosch gets an anonymous phone call telling him to back off the case. In no time at all, Bosch receives a video on his cell phone showing that his daughter in Hong Kong has been kidnapped. Connelly remains one of my favorite crime fiction writers.

Next time: The rest of Fiction