Another Year Over

Well, it took longer than expected, but January Magazine--for which I serve as crime-fiction editor--has finally posted all of its “best books of 2008” lists. It’s a very diverse and often eclectic collection of titles, running the gamut from children’s books and cookbooks, to art and culture titles, and lists of best non-fiction and fiction. The sections I’m most proud of, though, are the two posts in which our crime-fiction critics write about their favorite new reads from the last 12 months. Part I of that crime-fiction section can be found here, while Part II is here.

My own modest contributions are scattered across several categories, but I’ll list them all below:

Fiction
• The Given Day, by Dennis Lehane
• The Little Book, by Selden Edwards

Non-fiction
• American Lightning: Terror, Mystery, the Birth of Hollywood, and the Crime of the Century, by Howard Blum
• The Sun and the Moon: The Remarkable True Account of Hoaxers, Showmen, Dueling Journalists, and Lunar Man-Bats in Nineteenth-Century New York, by Matthew Goodman

Crime Fiction
• The Black Tower, by Louis Bayard
• Dancing for the Hangman, by Martin Edwards
• A Quiet Flame, by Philip Kerr

Of course, those meager contributions represent only the books about which I had time to write at length. Other works that I was especially pleased to read in 2008, but had no time to comment on, given the deadline, include (in no particular order):

Crime Fiction
• A Pale Horse, by Charles Todd
• The Black Dove, by Steve Hockensmith
• Fatal Lies, by Frank Tallis
• Stratton’s War, by Laura Wilson
• A Vengeful Longing, by R.N. Morris
• Steel Witches, by Patrick Lennon
• Child 44, by Tom Rob Smith
• Rapscallion, by James McKee
• Murder on the Brighton Express, by Edward Marston
• The Dawn Patrol, by Don Winslow
• Killing Frost, by R.D. Wingfield
• Moriarty, by John Gardner
• Second Violin, by John Lawton
• Fifty-to-One, by Charles Ardai
• Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, by John McFetridge
• Paying for It, by Tony Black

Non-fiction
• The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals, by Jane Mayer
• American Eve: Evelyn Nesbit, Stanford White: The Birth of the "It" Girl and the Crime of the Century, by Paula Uruburu

Every December 31, I swear to myself that I’m going to read more in the next year than I did in the previous one. But given what else was on my plate this year, I think my achievements for 2008 have been more than respectable. There are other books, too, that I read but that either weren’t published originally in 2008, or that, in retrospect, I should’ve left unread on the shelves. My only hope for 2009 is that I can be better at weeding out those works that are destined to disappoint. If I just had a functioning crystal ball ...