drfell1
15.12.08, 09:48
Jak widać nastał czas wyborów najlepszych kryminałów 2008 roku. Na razie
znalazłem jeden z The Seattle Times.:
"The Likeness" by Tana French (Viking). A murder victim is the near-double of
Dublin detective Cassie Maddox, and to find the killer Cassie "becomes" Lexie
and joins her college roommates, concocting a story of survival. Truth and
untruth then blur in this mesmerizing blend of cop story, character study and
psychological suspense.
"The Spies of Warsaw" by Alan Furst (Random House). Furst still hits gold with
his atmospheric, intelligent and heartfelt espionage novels set in Europe
before and during World War II. Amid the chaos of Warsaw in 1937, the French
embassy's military attaché protects a nervous German turncoat.
"The Private Patient" by P.D. James (Knopf). Top-notch work from a master. A
journalist enters an exclusive hospital to lose a disfiguring scar — and is
strangled in her bed after the operation. Enter Adam Dalgliesh, a Scotland
Yard detective with a poet's soul, a keen eye for the truth and a steel spine.
They don't call him Commander Dalgliesh for nothing.
"The Night Following" by Morag Joss (Delacorte). A driver accidentally kills
an elderly bicyclist and leaves the scene. Overcome with guilt, she spies on
the grieving widower, then starts sneaking in to cook and clean for him. The
widower, increasingly unhinged, thinks his dead wife does the work.
Psychological suspense at its most unsettling.
"Touchstone" by Laurie R. King (Bantam). In this smart and nuanced historical
tale, an agent for the FBI's precursor hunts for an anarchist post-WWI. The
search takes him to England and Bennett Grey, whose war injury gave him an
unusual power — he knows, unerringly, if people are telling the truth.
"A Most Wanted Man" by John le Carré (Scribner). Espionage's reigning master
chronicles the story of a Muslim refugee who feverishly insists that he owns a
fortune concealed in a Hamburg bank. The intricacies of post-9/11 spydom
around him pull a British banker and an idealistic German lawyer into this
deft story.
"Another Thing to Fall" by Laura Lippman (Morrow). Smarty-pants private eye
Tess Monaghan baby-sits a TV miniseries' wayward star. Tess — an irreverent,
empathetic, and colorful storyteller — is a wonderful companion through
Lippman's beloved Baltimore.
"L.A. Outlaws" by T. Jefferson Parker (Dutton). By night, a schoolteacher
morphs into a high-end car thief. She loves educating teens almost as much as
she loves donating much of her ill-gotten profit to charity. But this good bad
girl enters a world of trouble when she stumbles on 10 dead guys and a fortune
in diamonds.
"The Turnaround" by George Pelecanos (Little, Brown). Pelecanos is a virtuoso
at finding the darker corners of love, loyalty, racism, rivalry and hope.
Three white teens drive into a black neighborhood in D.C.; only two leave
alive. Decades later the principals cross paths, with shattering results.
"Lush Life" by Richard Price (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). Price has two
degrees in dialogue and a Ph.D. in deadpan humor, and this brash, brainy,
emotionally fluent book is serious literature that is also a wicked pleasure.
In Manhattan's Lower East Side, where gentrification is pushing out ethnic
groups, criminals and housing projects, a single event — a street robbery gone
bad — lights a fuse that ignites the whole city.
"Exit Music" by Ian Rankin (Little, Brown). Tough copper John Rebus, days from
retirement, is still incapable of playing nice with authorities. Trolling the
seamy edges of Edinburgh, he investigates the death of an expatriate Russian
poet. A splendid end to Rebus' long, gritty career.
"Salt River" by James Sallis (Walker). Turner — ex-con and ex-therapist turned
sheriff — is lounging around his Tennessee town, philosophizing with the local
doctor, when the former sheriff's son crashes a car into City Hall. Hell of a
note, and that's just the beginning of Turner's troubles in this lean, elegiac
gem.
"This Night's Foul Work" by Fred Vargas (Penguin). Commissaire Adamsberg of
the Paris police is a delight — sloppy, ironic and an intuitive genius at
connecting seemingly random events. He grapples here with murdered drug
dealers, an "angel of death," animal mutilations in rustic Normandy and a
vengeful fellow from his past.
Honorable mentions
"Hit and Run" by Lawrence Block (Morrow); "Nothing to Lose" by Lee Child
(Delacorte); "The Brass Verdict" by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown); "Sins of
the Assassin" by Robert Ferrigno (Scribner); "Cold In Hand" by John Harvey
(Harcourt); "House Rules" by Mike Lawson (Atlantic); "The Comforts of a Muddy
Saturday" by Alexander McCall Smith (Pantheon); "Dirty Money" by Richard Stark
(Grand Central); "The Big Both Ways" by John Straley (Alaska Northwest); "The
Dawn Patrol" by Don Winslow (Knopf); "An Incomplete Revenge" by Jacqueline
Winspear (Holt).
