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The following is a list of 2010 titles which have garnered excellent reviews from critics, booksellers and library journals.
The purpose of the list is to make available to you, the reader, current information of what books are generally considered to be among the best of the year. If you are so inclined to vote for fan awards such as the Barry Awards, the Anthonys, the Agathas and the Macavitys, then this list will give you a head start.
If any of the following novels received a glowing review in Deadly Pleasures, or a starred review in Publisher's Weekly, Kirkus, Booklist or Library Journal, it is indicated at the end of each entry with the abbreviations of the periodicals which gave such reviews.
Looking for good recommendations for paperback purchases or good all-around recommended reading lists? You may want to look at:
DP List 2009
DP List2008
DP List 2007
DP List 2006
DP List 2005
DP List 2004
DP List 2003
DP List 2002
DP List 2001
DP List 2000
Best Mystery/Crime Novels of 2010
BEST NOVELS
**PAGANINI’S GHOST, Adam, Paul (Minotaur, $25.95). Violinmaker Giovanni Castiglione searches for a long-lost instrument that was possessed by famed violinist Niccolo Paganini. Full of remarkable history and musical lore, Paganini's Ghost will enchant music lovers and Italophiles alike. PW & LJ
**NO MORE HEROES, Banks, Ray (HoughtonMifflinHarcourt, $26.00). It's the hottest summer on record in Manchester, England, and down-at-heel private eye Cal Innes is struggling to keep cool. He has taken a job evicting families on behalf of local slumlord Donald Plummer, while the English National Socialists bring racial tensions to the boiling point. A firebomb attack on a Plummer property thrusts Innes into the spotlight as he rescues a child from the burning building. But when Plummer hires him to track down the arsonists, Innes finds himself dealing with more than neo-Nazis and his rapidly worsening painkiller addiction. BL & LJ
**ELEGY FOR APRIL, Black, Benjamin (Henry Holt, $25.00). Quirke, the hard-drinking, insatiably curious Dublin pathologist, is back, and he's determined to find his daughter's best friend. Both an absorbing crime novel and a brilliant portrait of the difficult love between a father and daughter, this is Black at his sparkling best. PW & BL
**NOWHERE TO RUN, Box, C.J. (Putnam, $25.95). Joe Pickett's in his last week as the temporary game warden in the town of Baggs, Wyoming, but there have been strange things going on in the mountains, and his conscience won't let him leave without checking them out: reports of camps looted, tents slashed, elk butchered. And then there's the runner who simply vanished one day. BL, LJ, PW, DP & Kirkus
**THE GODFATHER OF KATMANDU, Burdett, John (Knopf, $25.95). Sonchai Jitpleecheep--Burdett's inimitable Thai police detective--is summoned to the most shocking and intriguing crime scene of his career. Sonchai is more interested in finding Nirvana than in solving murders, in Burdett's most inventive, darkly comic novel yet. Booklist & Kirkus
**THE GOOD SON, Gruber, Michael (Henry Holt, $26.00). A taut, multilayered, riveting novel of suspense focused on peace activists who are being held hostage in Pakistan. Kirkus, BL & PW
**FALSE MERMAID, Hart, Erin (Scribner, $26.00). Hart's chilling new suspense novel brilliantly combines forensics, archaeology, and history with Irish myth and mystery. Kirkus, BL & PW
**THE DIVINE SACRIFICE, Hays, Tony (Forge, $24.99). Malgwyn ap Cuneglas is a solider who lost his arm in battle but was saved by his king. Malgwyn hated Arthur for this gift, but he has come to grudgingly acknowledge that he yet may have some purpose in life. Arthur and Malgwyn are called to the abbey of Glastonbury to settle a matter of great political importance—tin is being mined for export to the Empire. While there, Malgwyn and Arthur meet St. Patrick, a legend in the Church who is there on a mission of his own, to root out the heresy of Pelagius. LJ & PW
**CEMETARY ROAD, Haywood, Gar (Severn House, $28.95). When Errol 'Handy' White returns to his native Los Angeles to attend the funeral of his old friend R.J. Burrow, who has been brutally murdered, a terrible secret threatens to reveal itself. Twenty-six years earlier, Handy, R.J. and O'Neal Holden pulled a heist that went horrible awry, and Handy's been waiting for it to come back and haunt them ever since. Was the murder linked to the past? PW & BL
**GUNSHOT ROAD by Adrian Hyland (Soho Crime, $25.00). Half-aboriginal amateur detective Emily Tempest in her second investigation set in the Australian outback. BL & PW
**IF THE DEAD NOT RISE, Kerr, Philip (Putnam, $26.95). If the Dead Rise Not Rise features twisted intrigue, tight plotting, quick-witted one-liners, and, most significant, a richer, wiser Bernie Gunther. PW, Kirkus & DP
**THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET’S NEST, Larsson, Stieg (Knopf, $27.95). Lisbeth Salander—the heart of Larsson’s two previous novels—lies in critical condition, a bullet wound to her head, in the intensive care unit of a Swedish city hospital. She’s fighting for her life in more ways than one: if and when she recovers, she’ll be taken back to Stockholm to stand trial for three murders. With the help of her friend, journalist Mikael Blomkvist, she will not only have to prove her innocence, but also identify and denounce those in authority who have allowed the vulnerable, like herself, to suffer abuse and violence. And, on her own, she will plot revenge—against the man who tried to kill her, and the corrupt government institutions that very nearly destroyed her life. BL, Kirkus & DP
**A QUESTION OF BELIEF, Leon, Donna (Atlantic Monthly, $24.00). Brunetti must contend with ingenious corruption, bureaucratic intransigence, and the stifling heat of a Venetian summer. With his hometown beset by hordes of tourists and baking under a glaring sun, Brunetti's greatest wish is to go to the mountains with his family, where he can sleep under a down comforter and catch up on his reading. But before he can go on vacation, a folder with court records has landed on his desk, brought by an old friend. It appears that cases at the local court--hardly known as a model of efficiency--are being delayed to the benefit of one of the parties. A creative new trick for corrupting the system, perhaps, but what can Brunetti do about it? And just when it looks like Brunetti will be able to get away, a shocking, violent crime forces him to stay in Venice. BL & PW
**FREEZE FRAME, May, Peter (Poisoned Pen Press, $24.95). A promise made to a dying man leads forensics ace Enzo Macleod, a Scot who's been teaching in France for many years, to the study which the man's heir has preserved for nearly twenty years. The dead man left several clues there designed to reveal the killer's identity to the man's son, but ironically the son died soon after the father. So begins the fourth of seven cold cases written up in a bestselling book by Parisian journalist Roger Raffin that Enzo rashly boasted he could solve (he's been successful with the first three). PW & LJ
**CRIMSON ROOMS, McMahon, Katherine (Putnam, $25.99). Still haunted by the death of her only brother, James, in the Great War, Evelyn Gifford is completely unprepared when a young nurse and her six-year-old son appear on the Giffords' doorstep one night. Kirkus & LJ
**DEVIL’S STAR, Nesbo, Jo (Harper, $25.95). Assigned to investigate a series of bizarre murders, detective Harry Hole is partnered with Tom Waaler, a colleague he neither likes nor trusts. Determined to find the killer and expose the crooked Waaler, Harry discovers the two investigations melding in unexpected ways. BL, LJ & PW
**OCCUPIED CITY, Peace, David (Knopf, $25.95). From the author of Tokyo Year Zero comes a fierce, exquisitely dark novel that returns readers to post-World War II occupied Japan: a Rashomon-like retelling of a murder (based on an actual event), its aftermath, and the hidden wartime atrocities that led to the crime. Kirkus, PW & BL
**THE SCENT OF RAIN AND LIGHTNING, Pickard, Nancy (Ballantine, $25.00). The man convicted of murdering Jody Lindner’s father is being released from prison and returning to the small town of Rose, Kansas. It has been twenty-six years since that stormy night when, as baby Jody lay asleep in her crib, her father was shot and killed and her mother disappeared, presumed dead. BL & PW
**FEVER DREAM, Preston, Douglas J. & Lincoln Child (Grand Central, $26.99). Special Agent Pendergast embarks on a quest to uncover the mystery of his wife's murder. But as Pendergast probes the circumstances of her death, he is faced with an even greater question: Who was the woman he married? LJ, BL & PW
**INVISIBLE BOY, Read, Cornelia (Grand Central, $24.99). Socialite Madeline Dare is shocked when she discovers the skeleton of a three-year-old boy in her family cemetery outside Manhattan. Determined to see that justice is served, Madeline finds herself examining the class and racial warfare that penetrates every level of society. PW
**WAKE UP DEAD, Smith, Roger (Henry Holt, $25.00). An amphetamine-fueled thriller about a bombshell American widow on the run in Cape Town's violent badlands. LJ & PW
**CITY OF DRAGONS, Stanley, Kelli (Minotaur, $25.95). In San Francisco's Chinatown, private investigator Miranda Corbie stumbles upon the fatally shot body of Eddie Takahashi. The Chamber of Commerce wants it covered up, and the cops acquiesce. All Miranda wants is justice--whatever it costs. Booklist, PW, LJ & DP
**THE NEAREST EXIT, Steinhauer, Olen (Minotaur, $25.99). Milo Weaver has nowhere to turn but back to the CIA in Steinhauer's brilliant follow-up to the bestselling espionage novel, The Tourist. BL
**THE TERRORIST, Steiner, Peter (Minotaur, $23.99). In this third electrifying installment of Steiner's highly acclaimed thriller series, ex-CIA operative Louis Morgon must find useful information for the CIA before a young friend’s fate is tragically sealed in a deadly game of international intrigue. BL & DP
**INNOCENT, Turow, Scott (Grand Central, $27.99). The sequel to the genre-defining, landmark bestseller Presumed Innocent, Innocent continues the story of Rusty Sabich and Tommy Molto who are, 20 years later, pitted against each other in a riveting psychological match. PW & Kirkus
**DEEP SHADOWS, White, Randy Wayne (Putnam, $25.95). Thirty minutes into what should have been an easy dive in a remote Florida lake, the rim of a cave collapses, trapping two of Doc Ford's friends. Ford himself manages to escape and quickly surfaces to find help--but that's when his troubles truly begin. PW & BL
BEST FIRST NOVELS
**BLACKLANDS, Bauer, Belinda (Simon & Schuster, $23.00). Bauer pens a psychological thriller about the cat-and-mouse game between a boy desperately seeking the truth about this uncle's murder and the murderer himself. Kirkus & BL
**GUTSHOT STRAIGHT, Berney, Lou (Morrow, $24.99). A fast and funny crime caper in the tradition of Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen, Gutshot Straight features Shake Bouchon, fresh out of prison and ready for life on the straight and narrow. BL
**BELLFIELD HALL, Dean, Anna (Mintaur, $23.99). Richard Montague rushes off from his engagement party, never to be seen again. Distraught with worry, his fiance, Catherine, sends for her spinster aunt, Miss Dido Kent, to discover the truth behind his disappearance. LJ & DP
**THE POACHER’S SON, Doiron, Paul (Mintaur, $24.99). Set in the wilds of Maine, this is an explosive tale of an estranged son thrust into the hunt for a murderous fugitive---his own father. LJ, Kirkus, PW & BL
**THE CROSSING PLACES, Griffiths, Elly (Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt, $25.00). When she's not on the job, quirky archaeologist Ruth Galloway lives in obscurity. But when a child's bones are found on a desolate beach nearby, Galloway is called into action. LJ, Kirkus, DP & BL
**HAZARD, Harris, Gardiner (Minotaur, $24.99). A down-trodden inspector investigates a deadly accident in a coal mine in a town where everyone is protecting a secret he might now want to uncover. LJ & PW
**RANDOM VIOLENCE, Mackenzie, Jassy (Soho Crime, $25.00). While investigating the car-jacking and murder of a wealthy woman in Johannesburg, Jade de Jong probes into other recent car-jacking cases. Soon, a pattern begins to emerge, one that goes back to her father's murder and involves a vast and intricate series of crimes for profit. PW & LJ
**ONCE A SPY, Thompson, Keith (Doubleday, $24.95). Drummond Clark was once a spy of legendary proportions. Now Alzheimer’s disease has taken its toll and he’s just a confused old man who’s wandered away from home, waiting for his son to fetch him. When Charlie Clark takes a break from his latest losing streak at the track to bring Drummond back to his Brooklyn home, they find it blown sky high—and then bullets start flying in every direction. PW & DP
BEST BRITISH NOVELS
**THE LAST 10 SECONDS, Kernick, Simon (Bantam Press, £14.99). The Undercover Cop - Having worked undercover the last ten years, Sean Egan is used to life on the edge. He's recently infiltrated one of London's most dangerous criminal gangs, and they've just informed him that they want him for a very special job: the daring abduction from police custody of a serial killer known as The Night Creeper. The Killer - Brutally violent yet highly intelligent, The Night Creeper has earned his reputation by torturing five young women to death. Arrested the previous night, he claims that he has a cast-iron alibi for one of the murders, and some highly important information that can prove his innocence - and implicates someone else. The Policewoman Di - Tina Boyd has an instinct for trouble, and a past that continues to haunt her. She was the policewoman who charged The Night Creeper. Now he's been kidnapped, and it's Tina's task to find him.
**CONTROL, Macken, John (Bantam Press, £12.99). Two murders, days apart but clearly linked. Each victim has had the tips of their fingers removed with a hacksaw. The killer is sending a message and wants his next victim to know who they are - and be very afraid. But beside the gruesome nature of their deaths there is no obvious connection between the two victims. Reuben Maitland, freshly returned to GeneCrime, must investigate the case. The forensics come in, DNA is sampled, the clues begin to mount up. Then the killer strikes again. Reuben's young son, Joshua, is snatched from his pram. The murderer sends Reuben a message: 'Stop hunting me. I will kill again, a third and final victim and you must not stop me. Come after me and your son will die.' If your child was kidnapped, how far would you go to get them back?
**THIRTEEN HOURS, Meyer, Deon (Hodder & Stoughton, £17.99). Some would call Detective Benny Griessel a legend. Others would call him a drunk. Either way, he has trodden on too many toes over the years ever to reach the top of the promotion ladder, and now he concentrates on staying sober and mentoring the new generation of crime fighters – mixed race, Xhosa and Zulu. But when an American backpacker disappears in Capetown, panicked politicians know who to call: Benny has just thirteen hours to save the girl and save his career.
**FALLOUT, Moffat, G. J. (Hachette, £14.99). Sequel to DAISY CHAIN. Logan Finch has made a new life for himself with his daughter Ellie. But a blossoming relationship with DC Rebecca Irvine is about to be put to the test when Irvine's old flame, drug-addicted rock star Roddy Hale, enters her life again. And there's the small matter of a professional killer following her every move – unbeknownst to her. Logan’s boss, Alex Cahill, close-protection operative and ex-US army special-forces soldier, hates babysitting celebrities. Maybe this time will be different. Tara Byrne is a Scots girl about to break into Hollywood and is back in Scotland for the premiere of a low-budget film as a favour for a friend. She is the target of a disturbed stalker and needs Cahill and his team to watch her back. As the clouds roll in to blanket the sky at the end of an Indian summer, violence erupts all round, putting everyone at risk.
BEST THRILLERS
**NEVER LOOK AWAY, Barclay, Linwood (Delacorte, $25.00). A warm summer Saturday. An amusement park. David Harwood is glad to be spending some quality time with his wife, Jan, and their four-year-old son. But what begins as a pleasant family outing turns into a nightmare after an inexplicable disappearance. A frantic search only leads to an even more shocking and harrowing turn of events. LJ & PW
**THE MIDNIGHT HOUSE, Berenson, Alex (Putnam, $25.95). Early one morning, a former CIA agent is shot to death in the street. That night, an army vet is gunned down in his doorway. The next day, John Wells gets a phone call. Come to Langley. Now. The two victims were part of an eleven-member interrogation team that operated out of a secret base in Poland called the Midnight House. For two years, they put the screws to the toughest jihadis, men thought to have knowledge of imminent threats. The interrogators used whatever means necessary. When they were disbanded in the wake of public controversy, they were given medals for their heroism, Prozac for their nightmares. Now Wells must find out who is killing them. LJ & DP
**THE BRICKLAYER, Boyd, Noah (Morrow, $24.99). Steve Vail is an ex–FBI agent who is been fired for insubordination but is lured back to the Bureau to work a case that has become more unsolvable—and more deadly—by the hour. DP
**61 HOURS, Child, Lee (Delacorte, $28.00). A tour bus crashes in a savage snowstorm and lands Jack Reacher in the middle of a deadly confrontation. In nearby Bolton, South Dakota, one brave woman is standing up for justice in a small town threatened by sinister forces. If she’s going to live long enough to testify, she’ll need help. Because a killer is coming to Bolton, a coldly proficient assassin who never misses. Reacher’s original plan was to keep on moving. But the next 61 hours will change everything. BL, LJ, Kirkus & DP
**THE 13TH HOUR, Doetsch, Richard (Morrow, $24.99). A man is given the chance to go back in time in one hour increments to prevent the murder of his wife--a crime the police think he committed. BL & LJ
**THE EYE OF THE RED TSAR, Eastland, Sam (Bantam, $25.00). Shortly after midnight on July 17, 1918, the imprisoned family of Tsar Nicholas Romanov was awakened and led down to the basement of the Ipatiev house. There they were summarily executed. Their bodies were hidden away, the location a secret of the Soviet state. A decade later, one man lives in purgatory, banished to a forest on the outskirts of humanity. Pekkala was once the most trusted secret agent of the Romanovs, the right-hand man of the Tsar himself. Now he is Prisoner 4745-P, living a harsh existence in which even the strongest vanish into the merciless Soviet winter. But the state needs Pekkala one last time. The man who knew the Romanovs best is given a final mission: catch their killers, locate the royal child rumored to be alive, and give Stalin the international coup he craves. Kirkus, LJ & DP
**SILENCER, Hall, James W. (Minotaur, $25.00). Silencer pits brother against brother and wife against husband in a thriller that proves once again that Hall is a master of suspense. PW & BL
**CRASHERS, Haynes, Dana (Minotaur, $24.99). A team of experts from NTSB investigate a major airplane crash near Portland, Oregon. Pilot error or sabotage? If sabotage, will it occur again? LJ & DP
**I, SNIPER, Hunter, Stephen (Simon & Schuster, $26.00). Bob Lee Swagger is back, facing off against one of his most ruthless adversaries yet to clear the name of a fellow soldier-in-arms. BL & PW
**HOUSE JUSTICE, Lawson, Mike (Atlantic Monthly, $22.00). An American defense contractor goes to Iran to sell missile technology, and the CIA knows all about it thanks to a spy in Tehran. But the story is leaked to an ambitious journalist and the spy is burned, brutally tortured, and executed. The director of the CIA isn’t about to let the callous sacrifice of his valuable spy go unpunished. DeMarco’s boss, Speaker of the House John Fitzpatrick Mahoney has his own reasons to get to the bottom of the leak: he once had a fling with the journalist, and now that she’s in jail for refusing to reveal her source, she is threatening to tell all unless he helps get her out. BL & DP
**ONCE A SPY, Thompson, Keith (Doubleday, $24.95). A former spy now ravaged by Alzheimer's is thrust back into danger--and now his son is in deep as well. PW & DP
BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINALS
**BLACK RAIN, Brown, Graham (Dell, $7.99). Danielle Laidlaw, an investigator for a covert branch of the National Research Institute, heads into the jungle at the head of a small force of mercenaries, renegades, rogues, and scholars to make her bones—and reputation, now that her mentor has been called back to the US—by finding an ancient Mayan city and a possible source for clean energy in some radioactive crystals kept undercover.
**DO THEY KNOW I’M RUNNING, Corbett, David (Ballantine, $15.00). Roque Montalvo is wise beyond his eighteen years. Orphaned at birth, a gifted musician, he's stuck in a California backwater, helping his Salvadoran aunt care for his damaged brother, an ex-marine badly wounded in Iraq. When immigration agents arrest his uncle, the family has nowhere else to turn. Roque, badgered by his street-hardened cousin, agrees to bring the old man back, relying on the criminal gangs that control the dangerous smuggling routes from El Salvador, through Guatemala and Mexico, to the U.S. border. PW & BL
**LONG TIME COMING, Goddard, Robert (Bantam, $15.00). Stephen Swan is amazed when he hears that the uncle he thought had been killed in the Blitz is actually alive. But in this tale of revenge and redemption, justice is an illusion. PW
**THE SERIALIST, Gordon, David (Simon & Schuster, $15.00). A writer is forced to play detective when a serial killer hires him to tell his story--and three women turn up dead. BL & DP
**THE DEAD LIE DOWN, Hannah, Sophie (Penguin, $15.00). Ruth Bussey once did something wrong-horribly wrong-and was nearly destroyed by her punishment. Now, she has tentatively rebuilt her life and unexpectedly found love with a man named Aidan Seed. But Aidan also has a secret-he killed someone years ago, a woman named Mary Trelease. Ruth's horror turns to confusion when she realizes that she knows Mary Trelease, and Mary is very much alive. PW & BL
**THE BAD BOOK AFFAIR, Sansom, Ian (Harper, $13.99). Israel Armstrong, one of literature's most unlikely detectives, returns for more crime-solving adventure in this hilarious fourth novel in the Mobile Library series. Booklist
**THE BLACK MINUTES, Solares, Martin (Grove Press, $14.00). When a young journalist named Bernardo Blanco is killed in the fictional Mexican port city of Paracuán, investigation into his murder reveals missing links in a disturbing multiple homicide case from twenty years earlier. As police officer Ramón “el Macetón” Cabrera discovers, Blanco had been writing a book about a 1970s case dealing with the murder of several young schoolgirls in Paracuán by a man known as el Chacal. Cabrera realizes that whoever killed Blanco wanted to keep the truth about el Chacal from being revealed, and he becomes determined to discover that truth. BL & PW
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