A few of my favorite things

Here they are, my recommended books that I've read over the past year.

by Dietrich

Like Terry, I'm quite taken by Mick Herron's Slough House books. Slow Horses, from 2010, is the first in this remarkable series about Slough House, where washed-up MI5 agents are relegated to while away what's left of their failed careers. But when a Pakistani youth is kidnapped and threatened with beheading by a right-wing extremist group, the Slow Horses spring into action, and in spite of their shortcomings they’ll have you rooting for them all the way.

Dead Lions, 2013, is the second in the series, and in this one the top slow horse, Jackson Lamb, uncovers a Russian spy with an old grudge to settle. All of the rest in the series are also great reads: Real Tigers, Spook Street, London Rules, Joe Country, Slough House, and Bad Actors. If you’re looking for a gift idea, the whole series is available as a boxed set.

I also enjoyed reading the Lew Griffin stories by James Sallis, published between 1994 and 2001. Start with The Long-Legged Fly, 1992, and you’ll be moving on to Moth, Black Hornet, Eye of the Cricket, Bluebottle, and Ghost of a Flea. Lew Griffin is a PI living in New Orleans and the stories revolve around the mysterious events that just keep coming his way.

Another entry in one of my favorite series is The Spread by Dana King, 2023. He just has a way of bringing the characters, situations, and the whole fictional town of Penns River to life. Crime fiction/police procedurals of the first order.

Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy, 2022, is the companion novel to The Passenger, and the final novel published before his death. The novel is a series of conversations between a patient who’s a math prodigy, conflicted by her father’s contribution to the development of the atomic bomb, and her psychiatrist. The dialogue is just what you'd expect from McCarthy, it's absolutely brilliant.

And there were some great stand-alones that I read this year. First up is Drive from 2005, another one by James Sallis. It tells the story of a Hollywood stunt driver who goes simply by Driver, and who does some getaway work on the side. As far as the crimes go, he just drives — that is till he’s double-crossed. It’s a well-paced story, with interesting characters and plot twists, and it’s told with style, and there’s the equally good sequel from 2012, Driven.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett is one incredible debut novel. It's moving and funny with delightful characters. It tells the story of black maids working in white Southern homes in the early 1960s in Jackson, Mississippi.

Snow Falling on Cedars by David Gutterson, from 1994, was another favorite — the tale of a Japanese fisherman accused of murdering a man in a close-knit community in the Strait of Juan de Fuca in Washington State.

Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye from 1970 was her debut and a true literary masterpiece that looks hard at race, class, and gender. 

The Trackers by Charles Frazier, author of Cold Mountain, was published this past year. It takes readers through ramshackle towns, and it’s a terrific look at depression-era America as seen through the eyes of a painter who goes in search of a woman who mysteriously fled home.

The Ice Harvest was the debut for Scott Phillips, published in 2000. It’s Christmas Eve in Wichita, and a mob lawyer skips town with the money. What could go wrong? Yet, the only thing for sure is readers will be in for a dark, funny, and tightly-knit crime novel. 

There's no crime in it, but if you need a laugh or two, you won’t go far wrong with the weirdly, sometimes inappropriate, often foul-mouthed I’m Dreaming of a Black Christmas, by Lewis Black, originally published in 2010.

I wish everyone the best over the Holidays, and here’s to a great New Year.