Every year, one of my favorite tasks is assembling my Top 10 List, which usually (actually always) involves winnowing and eliminating – at the end of the list, there are even more titles I really enjoyed. This year I’m moving two perennials to the “Emeritus” category – Louise Penny and William Kent Krueger – they are almost always on the list so, while including the wonderful book each of them wrote this year, I’ve left room for 10 other titles as well. Happy reading!
I love remembering back over the year to the books that gave me a thrill or a delightful character or a great story or a memorable setting or gorgeous prose – or all of these. It’s always tough to winnow this list to 10 – I’ve listed other titles at the end of this list that were also great. For the month of December 2012, we offer these titles, including the extra recommendations, at 15% off. (Please contact us in order to receive the discount.) This list is alphabetical.
No Mark Upon Her, Deborah Crombie, William Morrow, $25.99.
Mysteries set in the world of music are few and far between, but those that are musically inclined tend to be excellent. Perhaps it’s because a gifted musician also has some of the skills of a mathematician and so is skilled at assembling a good puzzle, but whatever the reason, the addition of music as a “setting” always adds quite a bit to a good read.
My favorites are Cynthia Harrod-Eagles series where the main character’s partner/wife plays for an orchestra, and Gerald Elias’ wonderful series that reflect his own skills as a classical violinist. Rick Blechta’s novel, The Fallen One, features a female opera singer. This was new territory for me, as I’ve seen an opera once or twice – but decades ago – so my knowledge of opera (other than knowing titles of famous operas) is limited. I enjoyed what Blechta had to share about this art form.
Jim Huang’s publishing imprint is re-issuing P.M. Carlson’s enjoyable series featuring Maggie Ryan, which begins with Maggie as a student at a small, upstate New York college. The college is staging Hamlet and has decided to bring in some “real” New York actors to play the main parts, with the students filling out the rest of the cast and supplying the crew.
Carlson is an “old school” cozy writer – at times, the situations she is writing about aren’t so cozy, and the world she is writing about, while it has a hook (in this case both academia and the theater), what she’s really interested in are the characters and their relationships to one another. This series fits nicely next to Sharyn McCrumb’s Elizabeth McPhearson books or Nancy Pickard’s long lived Jenny Cain series. There are eight books in this series, with Maggie growing from a young student into a woman, but this first one almost embraces her naiveté.
Laura Lippman keeps growing as a writer. For a reader, this is a true delight, and each novel is something of a surprise. She’s hewing more, lately, to the standalone model than to the Tess Monaghan novels that started her career, and she has plenty to say. This novel is both a good story and a nuanced look at ethical behavior and choices.
Her central character is Heloise Lewis, who, it quickly becomes apparent, is a high class madam in the Heidi Fleiss mode. Making the novel a look at the politics of prostitution from the opening scene, Heloise overhears a conversation in line at the Starbucks about the recent suicide of a “suburban madam”. As she challenges the easy assumptions of the couple behind her in line, she’s really challenging her own assumptions. The articulation of her thoughts to a strange couple merely starts her own thought process.
It’s not too hard to deduce that old Mr. Private Eye is getting a little long in the tooth. Modern day masters such as Loren D. Estleman are able to cook up a delicious P.I. novel every year, but many of the older crowd, like Robert B. Parker, are no longer with us, while the newer contenders, such as Dennis Lehane and Michael Koryta, seem to have hit the wall. The game’s been going on since Hammett after all, and it seems like most of the gumshoe combinations have been played out. Women writers gave the genre a burst of vitality not long ago when they made Sam Spade into Samantha, but even that sex change has lost its novelty.
Jennings has a note at the end of this novel about the source of her title – it’s from Dickens’ A Christmas Carol: “…most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom unless the writing be erased.” Jennings skills as a novelist are somewhat similar to Charles Dickens skills, so this is an appropriate quote in many ways. Her Dickensian talents lie in her ability to create an entire universe within her pages, bulging with characters, none of them – from the central character of Tom Tyler down to a briefly met matron in a bomb shelter – forgettable.
I’m not generally a cozy reader, but for some reason I picked this book up and was hooked by the end of the first chapter. Viets’ sense of humor is never cloying, her central character, Helen, is smart, and the premise is wonderful. Helen is a clerk in an ultra fancy boutique in Ft. Lauderdale – a boutique so fancy that customers are buzzed in only at the whim of the manager – she rejects women whom she thinks are too heavy, who have ugly shoes, hair or purses, etc. (I know which side of the door I’d be on). It’s so fancy there are no price tags on the clothes – if you have to ask, you can’t afford the $500 halter top – and the clerks aren’t allowed to sit down. Viets’ description of a typical customer is classic:
The fifth book in Viets’ lively Helen Hawthorne series doesn’t disappoint, despite Viets’ taking on another potentially boring job (pet store clerk) and somehow milking it for satire and interest despite the odds. This time around, Helen isn’t working in a boring chain pet store but in one of those fancy pet boutiques that sell cute little coats, booties and fancy treats for super spoiled dogs. Catering to the ultra rich of Ft. Lauderdale, Helen finds herself schlepping bags of dog food out to waiting BMWs and driving to client’s homes to pick up their pooches for a session with the fabulous groomer at the Pampered Pet Boutique, Jonathan. Helen, for the uninitiated, works off the books for cash so her ex-husband, whom she caught with her best friend, can’t track her down and take half her assets away (he wants alimony from her). So Helen lives in a picturesque apartment building populated with all kinds of interesting eccentrics, including her boyfriend, undercover agent Phil, who handily lives next door but who is frequently out of town on assignment. This is a rich background for all the stories, as the characters at the apartment building stay the same (except for the rotating bunch of criminals in a certain apartment), while Helen’s different jobs provide a whole new slew of characters in every novel. It’s a neat and useful premise.
I’ve said this about every Elaine Viets book, I think – with each installment, I am always sure (I don’t know why) that it will actually be impossible for Ms. Viets to maintain the funny yet intelligent and somehow compulsively readable book she’s supplied with each outing. As usual, and happily, I was again wrong. Reading about the intrepid Helen Hawthorne’s job as a hotel maid was just as compelling as her telemarketer, bridal salesperson, retail clerk and fancy pet store jobs, and what’s more, Viets finally resolves a huge issue in this book – she deals with Helen’s ex-husband who is on the prowl and who seems to have at last tracked her down.