Best Books Reviewed in 2019

Now that 2020 has arrived, a new year and a new decade, we have a chance to look back and contemplate the books we read (and reviewed) in 2019.

As a book critic for the New York Journal of Books, I reviewed a grand total of 40 titles last year, exactly the same number as in 2018. Consistency is a good thing, apparently.

While books are always selected in the hope that they will be good enough to earn a positive review, they occasionally disappoint. 

There were several titles that fell into that category in 2019. James Ellroy's This Storm was unreadable, Jon Land's Strong As Steel was ludicrously bad, and John Lescroart's The Rule of Law did nothing to bolster his status as an A-list bestseller. As well, Helene Tursten's Hunting Game proved that Scandinavian noir gets much better distribution than it deserves.

On the other hand, there were other titles that really rang the bell. So what were the five best books I had the pleasure of reviewing in 2019?

5. Black Sun, by Owen Matthews (July 22; Doubleday)
A debut thriller by a former Moscow bureau chief for Newsweek, this novel takes us back to the intrigue surrounding an attempt in 1961 by the Soviet Union to build a doomsday device that could destroy the world. Well plotted, with engaging characters.
(Read the review.)

4. The Satapur Moonstone, by Sujata Massey (May 13; Soho Crime) 
Massey's series featuring Perveen Mistry, Bombay's only female lawyer in the 1920s, continues to entertain, and this one is a gem. 
(Read the review.)

3. Like Lions, by Brian Panowich (April 30; Minotaur Books)
Panowich's sequel to his acclaimed debut Bull Mountain is terrific. Call it rural noir if you must, but his writing is just plain outstanding.
(Read the review.)

2. The Book of Dreams, by Nina George (April 9; Crown) 
Originally published in Germany in 2012, this novel is a sensitive, insightful exploration of the emotional landscapes of George's characters. Not to be missed. No excuses, now. Read it!
(Read the review.)

1. The Tale Teller, by Anne Hillerman (April 9; Harper)
Hillerman reaches a new level of storytelling in her latest title featuring Joe Leaphorn, Jim Chee, and Bernadette Manuelito. Not just an outstanding crime novel set in the Southwest, it's a reading experience not to be missed.
(Read the review.)

Best wishes to all avid readers out there, and high hopes for a rich crop of books to enjoy in 2020!

Pulp Fiction and the Hard-Boiled Tradition

My July 15th post, which touched on social realism in crime fiction, got me thinking of the old-time pulp magazine writers who helped make the "hard-boiled" style a staple of crime fiction. Many of these writers published their first stories in the Black Mask pulp magazine. (I'll leave the history of that magazine to another day.)

Dashiell Hammett - In his early life, Hammett was a prolific writer with more than 80 short stories, many of them serialized in the Black Mask, and five novels. Hammett is noted for his realism, his crisp, colorful language, and his “lean” story-telling style. He was a major influence on Raymond Chandler, who said of Hammett in The Simple Art of Murder: “He was spare, frugal, hard-boiled, but he did over and over again what only the best writers can ever do at all. He wrote scenes that seemed never to have been written before."

Raymond Chandler - Chandler began his writing career at the age of 44 by publishing short stories in the  Black Mask. Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade and Chandler's Philip Marlowe are considered to be the original hard-boiled detectives. They paved the way for Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer, John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee, Robert B. Parker's Spenser, and Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch, among others. Chandler's ability to depict the California setting so that it became a metaphor for both the opulence and decay of modern American society also had a major influence on the works of both Ross Macdonald and Michael Connolly.

Erle Stanley Gardner -  Gardner began his writing career by contributing short stories to the pulp magazines of the day. He was a regular and popular contributor to the Black Mask under the pen name Charles M. Green. Renowned for his Perry Mason novels, he described the character as “a fighter possessed of infinite patience”. Gardner drew upon his own experience in creating Mason: his love for trial work and his defence of the underdog. His creation of a lawyer/crime solver in the character of Perry Mason laid the foundation for such modern-day characters as John Lescroart's Dismas Hardy and Michael Connelly's Mickey Haller.

I've adapted some of this material from my Open Investigations blog, where you can find my original posts on Hammett, Chandler, and Gardner.