Best Mysteries and Thrillers 2021
Below you see the choices of Washington Post columnists Maureen Corrigan and Richard Lipez for best mysteries and thrillers of 2021:
I now beg your leave, Dear Reader, to weigh in on this topic.
First, may I say that I’ve already read four out of ten of these titles: Northern Spy, Sleep Well, My Lady, Dream Girl, and Silverview. Of those four, the one I like best is easy to choose: Flynn Berry’s Northern Spy. This is not just one of the best crime fiction titles I’ve read this year – it’s one of the best novels, period.
Here is how it begins:
We are born with a startle reflex. Apparently it’s caused by the sensation of falling. Sometimes, in his crib, my son will fling out his arms, and I hold my hand to his chest to reassure him.
Tessa will need all the strength she possesses to insure the safety not only of her small son Finn but herself as well. For they are living amidst the perilous uncertainty of Northern Ireland. Tessa works for the BBC and is trying desperately to remain above the noisy fray of partisan politics. But this leaves her with a narrow, treacherous path to navigate. Crucial decisions confront her at every turn.
Tessa has a sister Marian, to whom she’s very close. And Marian has secrets – dangerous secrets. So: Tessa, Finn, Marian…what’s to become of them?
In Northern Spy, we get equal measures of suspense, passion, and deep human feeling. This is an extremely wonderful novel.
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I’m a great fan of Kwei Quartey’s crime fiction. He sets his stories primarily in Ghana, his native land, and in his hands the country comes vividly to life. Thus far, he has produced two series: The first is a police procedural featuring Darko Dawson; in the second, Emma Djian, originally also a member of the police force, changes direction and becomes a private investigator. So far, there are two entries in the latter series, The Missing American and Sleep Well, My Lady. I was delighted when the first was nominated for an Edgar Award last year. It was excellent! I personally did not enjoy Sleep Well, My Lady to the same extent. Nevertheless, I was glad that it earned a place on the Post’s ‘best of’ list.
I also highly recommend the Darko Dawson books. I’ve read four out of the five books currently in that series. While I’m very pleased with the creation of the character Emma Djian, I really love spending time with Darko and his family, and I’m hopeful that Kwei Quartey will continue that series.
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Laura Lippman is an author whose books I read, as they appear – no waiting around for reviews. That said, Dream Girl was thoroughly entertaining, but not – at least, for me – her absolute top work.
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And then there’s Silverview. Being as this was the final effort from the pen of the great John le Carré, I knew I waned to read it. Plus it’s quite short, always plus for me these days. Nevertheless….
There were so many characters, and so much going on with the plot, that towards the midpoint of the novel, I almost gave up. Then somehow, toward the conclusion, things got clarified, and the old magic began to work. So give it a try; it’s worthwhile.
Ave atque vale, John le Carré. We don’t have that many great fiction writers that we could spare you.
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At present, I’m eagerly awaiting my reserve on A Line To Kill. As I’ve said before, Anthony Horowitz, creator of Foyle’s War, author of several episodes of Midsomer Murders, and creator of fictional sleuths Atticus Pond and Daniel Hawthorne, is one of my favorite writers. As for the remaining five titles on the Post list, I have them all on reserve at the library, a process which takes longer and longer these days, for whatever reason.
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I don’t want to sign off without recommending a terrific new series by Elly Griffiths. The first two titles are The Stranger Diaries and The Postscript Murders. In these novels, Griffiths introduces us to DS Harbinder Kauer. She is, in her own (privately spoken) words, “the best gay Sikh detective in West Sussex.” She’s also the most thoroughly engaging new protagonist I’ve encountered in a long time. I love her! and her family too.
Intrigue, murder…and a basset hound named Balzac
This time, it’s a cold case that’s got the attention of Bruno Courrèges, Chief of Police in St. Denis, a picture postcard gem of a town in the Dordogne region of France. Properly speaking, the case belongs to Bruno’s boss, Chief of Detectives Jalipeau. J-J, as he is called by his friends and colleagues, had landed this case early in his career – and never solved it. In the way of such things, it has been nagging at him ever since. Now, thirty years later, an intriguing clue has emerged. Bruno and his friends and colleagues join in the effort to find the solution to this mystery.
As usual in this series, the plot serves as the structure upon which to festoon the many wonders of this magical region of France. We learn about Audrix, a nearby town that holds a night market. People go there to select their preferred dishes from various vendors and sit outside in the summer evenings and enjoy a tasty dinner. Très civilisé, n’est-ce pas?
In this region, there are caves containing prehistoric art, and a museum devoted to this and other artifacts of the time. There are medieval castles, perched high on cliffs overlooking the Dordogne River.
Bruno, acting as tour guide for his cousin Alain and his fiancée Rosalie, gets a chance to show off some of the wonders of nearby Sarlat:
Other than the shopwindows, it was a place that seemed barely changed over the past four hundred years. Renaissance town houses led to a grand square and cathedral and narrow alleys that were full of restaurants and shops selling local delicacies. Bruno took them around the back of the cathedral to see the Merovingian royal tombs from the centuries after the Roman Empire fell, and the Lanterne des Morts, a tall, conical tower built eight centuries earlier from whose top a lantern glowed each night to mark the place of the dead.
Above all, there i Bruno, one of the most likeable, empathetic, and intelligent characters in contemporary detective fiction. He lives in a snug home where he gardens ambitiously, keeps poultry, and above all, enjoys the companionship of Balzac, his basset hound. Balzac is, bar none, the most irresistibly lovable canine character I’ve yet encountered in fiction. Among is numerous skills, he is being trained to detect the presence of truffles underground. “Cherche”, Balzac, his master urges him, “Cherche!” (Bruno also owns a horse named Hector; he is stabled with a friend who runs a riding school nearby.)
I imagine that Balzac looks something like this:
(I want him!)
I cant’ write about these books without mentioning Bruno’s culinary skills. He’s a gourmet cook, and loved to treat h is friends to his delicious concoctions. At one point, he finds himself with a dinner guest who is a vegan. He takes this circumstance on as a challenge:
First, he turned the oven on, set to one hundred seventy degrees centigrade. He chopped the pumpkins into slices about an inch thick and put them into the biggest roasting pan he could find with a small head of celery, equally sliced. He then mixed a quarter pint of maple syrup into the same amount of olive oil, poured the mixture into the roasting pan and tossed the pumpkin and celery slices until they were all coated. He added salt and pepper and put the pan into the oven for twenty-five minutes. In that time, he made the soup, chopping four fat green peppers, peeling and then chopping two cucumbers, and tossing them all into a blender with two chopped onions. He added several cloves of garlic puree squeezed through a press, salt, pepper, olive oil, tarragon vinegar and two glasses of Bergerac Sec white wine. Once the mixture was blended he put the soup into the freezer to chill.
Whew! And that’s just the beginning. There’s a delicious fruit compote of sorts for dessert, but we’ll leave that for another time.
There is a companion cookbook to this series, but to far as I can tell, it’s only been published in German.
Books to the Ceiling 