Booklist’s Best Crime

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May is Mystery Month over at Booklist and to celebrate they’ve put together “Best of” reading lists with loads of Macmillan titles! 
Best Crime Novels

Top 10 Crime Fiction

THE CAIRO AFFAIR by Olen Steinhauer
Steinhauer follows his acclaimed Milo Weaver trilogy with a stand-alone that is as emotionally rich as it is layered with intrigue. A career diplomat is shot dead in Budapest in front of his disbelieving wife, who is determined to find out why. This complex tale leaves us with the feeling that, despite all the information won, lost, hoarded, and put to use, the world of intelligence is no stronger than the fragile, fallible human beings who navigate it.

HOW THE LIGHT GETS IN by Louise Penny
Chief Inspector Armand Gamache has a new case involving the murder of the last surviving sister of quintuplets, a woman with ties to Three Pines, the idyllic, off-the-grid village outside Montreal where several of Gamache’s previous adventures have been set. The novel not only puts Gamache in harm’s way but also exposes Three Pines to defilement—a cozy setting under attack from a decidedly hard-boiled world. Another bravura performance from the magnificent Penny.

THE ORPHAN CHOIR by Sophie Hannah
Teetering on the edge of sanity, Louise Beeston retreats to a country home in England, hoping to escape the haunting choir music she hears continually. This riveting stand-alone, in which suspense snowballs to a climax that is all the more dire for its everyday contemporary English setting, is absolutely haunting, in every sense of the word.


Best Crime Fiction Debuts

DECODED by Mai Jia
Yan-Shi, an aging Chinese code-cracker, views his life labor as “a sort of madness that pulls you close to insanity and to genius.” We skate that line separating insanity from genius in this riveting tale of cryptographic warfare. In a narrative challenging readers to do their own decoding of its ruptures and inversions, Mai leaves us pondering the collective sanity of a world shrouding knowledge in enigmas.

PRECIOUS THING by Colette McBeth
A March 2014 LibraryReads selection!
When they met in high school, awkward Rachel and beautiful Clara formed an unlikely bond. Now the question is whether Clara, who has disappeared, is trying to frame Rachel, or whether Rachel has gone mad. McBeth’s Gone Girl–style psychological thriller will be an instant hit with readers who favor dark drama with possibly unreliable narrators.

Crime Fiction for Youth

Top 10 Crime Fiction for Youth

COMPLICIT by Stephanie Kuehn
Kuehn is the Morris Award-winning author of CHARM & STRANGE and her second book, COMPLICIT already has three starred reviews
Seventeen-year-old Jamie falls back into old disturbing patterns when his sister is released from juvie. Kuehn writes with the fleetness of a trained thriller author.

 

Crime Audiobooks

Top 10 Crime Fiction Audiobooks

THE EDGE OF NORMAL by Carla Norton, read by Christina Delaine
Delaine’s mesmerizing narration sets the tone for this harrowing, suspenseful tale of a young woman who escaped captivity. When she agrees to mentor a recently freed victim, she suddenly finds herself back in danger.

HOW THE LIGHT GETS IN by Louise Penny, read by Ralph Cosham
Cosham’s masterful narration places listeners with Gamache as he investigates two murders while dodging threats from his nemesis, the head of Sûreté, in this emotionally packed series entry.