The Year’s Best Pursuits

For a year’s worth of Criminal Pursuits columns, I read more than 100 works of crime fiction, and skimmed a great many others. For sheer pleasure I read another few titles that were reviewed elsewhere. Choosing a Best 10 (for which read a favorite 10) from among them all is as frustrating an endeavor as picking 10 top films used to be for me. But here goes.

The order is not a ranking but roughly chronological as the books appeared during the year.

CRITIC’S CHOICEST:

The Bulrush Murders by Rebecca Rothenberg (Carroll & Graf). A fine first novel set in the California agribusiness country.

A Strange White Radiance by James Lee Burke (Hyperion). Dave Robicheaux confronts Louisiana family skeletons in a book by one of crime fiction’s most eloquent voices.

Strange Loyalties by William McIlvanney (Morrow). For me, the year’s very best, by a Scottish poet-novelist here writing about a detective exploring his brother’s death.

Maria’s Girls by Jerome Charyn (Mysterious Press). Bizarre, almost phantasmagoric but mesmerizing goings-on in a slightly future New York in which almost everyone and everything seems bent or corrupt.

The Long-Legged Fly by James Sallis (Carroll & Graf), a passionate first novel about a black private eye who is trying to find and rescue himself.

All That Remains by Patricia Cornwell (Scribner’s). Third in an excellent series about a female medical examiner in Richmond, Dr. Kay Scarpetta.

Contents Under Pressure by Edna Buchanan (Hyperion). Miami revealed in all its contrasts and tensions by a journalist who knows and writes vividly about her turf.

Witness to the Truth by Paul Lindsay (Random House). Another fine first novel by a Detroit FBI agent, about the good guys against the bureaucracy.

Night Butterfly by Patricia McFall (St. Martin’s). An excellent first novel about an American woman working as a nightclub hostess in Japan, by an American woman who studied in Japan and now teaches in Orange County.

32 Cadillacs by Joe Gores (Mysterious Press). Probably the funniest crime novel of the year. See the review in this month’s column.

And for good measure, here is an additional list of titles that seem likely to live well beyond their year of publication. As gifts to yourself or any mystery-loving friends, you can’t go wrong with any of these:

Guardian Angel by Sara Paretsky (Delacorte)

Just Cause by John Katzenback (Putnam’s)

Blanche on the Lam by Barbara Neely (St. Martin’s)

Compelling Evidence by Steve Martini (Putnam’s)

The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter by Sharon McCrumb (Scribner’s)

King Solomon’s Carpet by Barbara Vine, a.k.a. Ruth Rendell (Harmony/Crown)

Cassandra in Red by Michael Collins (Donald I. Fine)

All Around the Town by Mary Higgins Clark (Simon & Schuster)

Kissing the Gunner’s Daughter by Ruth Rendell (Mysterious Press)

I Is for Innocent by Sue Grafton (Henry Holt)

Scent of Evil by Archer Mayor (Mysterious Press)

Double Deuce by Robert B. Parker (Putnam’s)

For the Sake of Elena by Elizabeth George (Bantam)

Shallow Graves by Jeremiah Healy (Pocket Books)

Flanders Sky by Nicolas Freeling (Mysterious Press)

Rum Punch by Elmore Leonard (Delacorte)

Driving Force by Dick Francis (Putnam’s)

Witness of Bones by Leonard Tourney (St. Martin’s)

Voodoo, Ltd. by Ross Thomas (Mysterious Press)

Ripley Under Water by Patricia Highsmith (Knopf)

The Whitechapel Horrors by Edward Hanna (Carroll & Graf)

Copy Kat by Karen Kijewski (Doubleday)

Women on the Edge edited by Martin H. Greenberg (Donald I. Fine)

Boneyards by Robert Campbell (Pocket Books)

A Walk Among the Tombstones by Robert Block (Morrow)