Best Crime fiction of 2025: mysteries and espionage, and memories of great crime writers past….
And then again, too few to mention…
Well, I’ll mention them anyway, then I’ll comment on the small number:
With the exception of Endless Night, none of the above titles are fresh in my mind. So I’ll just state the following: Michael Connelly is one of the few authors whose books I pick up as soon as they roll off the press. He never disappoints me. (Same is true of Donna Leon.) I haven’t read that much of Val McDermid’s crime fiction, but what I’ve read, I’ve liked very much. I’ve also read several titles by Denise Mina. I’m going to recommend The Good Liar, despite the fact that I wasn’t quite as thrilled with it as most reviewers were.
Now, as for Transcription and The Predicament. These were both espionage novels that took place some years in the past. The Boyd title was a fast read and a terrifically enjoyable one. Transcription is set during the Second World War. A naive young woman goes to work transcribing the conversations of a group of British people who are passing secrets to the enemy. As the narrative proceeds, tension steadily mounts. On the surface, the setup is very static; in reality, it is anything but.
Kate Atkinson is a marvelous writer. Her masterpiece, in my view, is Life After Life, a book that plays with timelines in an incredibly cunning and devastating way.
So why so few crime fiction titles for the whole year? I guess this is just my own problem, but out of all the mystery subgenres, I love British police procedurals the best. Oh, where are those authors of yesteryear?? Colin Dexter (Morse), Peter Robinson (Alan Banks), P.D. James (Adam Dalgliesh), Ruth Rendell (Reginald Wexford), Reginald Hill (Dalziel and Pascoe), Peter Lovesey (Peter Diamond)…all gone to Crime Writers Heaven, alas.
Very few crime writers are producing procedurals these days. One that is is Cynthia Harrod-Eagles. Her Bill Slider novels are great reads and exceptionally witty as well. (Val McDermid’s Karen Pirie novels are also procedurals.)
Finally, a return to Dame Agatha. Endless Night is a late entry in her oeuvre; it was originally published in the UK in 1967. It features neither Hercule Poirot nor Miss Marple. Like The Pale Horse, it has a somewhat darker tone than her earlier novels and stories. Plus it has an ending that’s…well, I don’t want to say anything about it except that it caught me completely off guard.
The novel’s title comes from “Auguries of Innocence,” a poem by William Blake. The third section of this haunting work contains the following lines:
‘Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born.
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.’
Book (and Magazine) News
Behold a nifty little mag that Ron and I have become very fond of:
Among its other virtues, The Week devotes two pages in each issue to book news and reviews. I am deeply grateful for this feature!
Each week, an author or other literary luminary selects six favorite books and annotates each title. It’s always interesting to see who chooses what. (I always like to see which ones I’ve read – or tried to read.) In the January 16 issue, the author picks were chosen by Matthew Pearl. Here they are:
Matthew Pearl is obviously an admirer of Patricia Highsmith’s fiction. Here’s a write-up I did on a book discussion of Strangers on a Train back in 2009. Every now and then, The Usual Suspects, a discussion with my mystery book group back in Maryland, really nailed it. This is a good example of that phenomenon.
The only title from Matthew Pearl’s list that I have not read is Ripley’s Game.
This exercise as made me ponder what six books, if asked, I would select. These two immediately came to mind:
I’ve written in this space about both of these superb works of nonfiction, A Sultry Month and Poets in a Landscape. (Scroll down to the bottom of this post for the latter.) Then there’s Penelope Fitzgerald’s brilliant work of historical fiction, The Blue Flower.
Oh and of course I’d have to choose an Anthony Trollope title – I don’t yet know which one!
And on and on….
Matthew Pearl is a writer who is of special interest to me. His aunt, ‘C’, is my oldest friend – we’ve known each other since junior high! (That’s Nautilus Junior High, in Miami Beach, Florida.) C’s sister ‘S’, Matthew’s mother, is a woman of strength, tenderness, and steadfast devotion. I admire them both enormously, and love them both.
Matthew Pearl’s latest work is entitled The Award. This novel is a wicked, no-holds-barred skewering of the world of writing as it is today. Authors, publishers, publicists, critics – all take it on the chin! It’s a highly enjoyable read.
Best Reading, 2025: Fiction
The Eleventh Hour by Salman Rushdie. Nothing stops Salman Rushdie, not even being nearly killed by a savage knife attack at Chautauqua in 2022.
This novel features a not very likeable protagonist. In fact, one could almost call him an obnoxious snob. But oh well, watching his his amour propre get dented and pretty much destroyed on the honeymoon from Hell – he manages to misplace his wife! – is rather entertaining, plus as a setting, La Serenissima is hard to beat.
A poignant story about loss and mourning, beautifully written. Definitely the first novel I’ve ever read that is translated from the Bulgarian language! And really, he had me with those first sentences: “My father was a gardener. Now he is a garden.”
Audition by Katie Kitamura. The first sentence of my review of this work is “Audition is a strange book.”
So I wasn’t sure whether to include this book in this post. In the first half of the story, we meet the unctuous and appropriately named Mr. Fox, a middle school teacher no less, with some unforgivable proclivities. The second half relates the police investigation into Fox’s fate, which no one could possibly lament. This part of the book had me truly mesmerized. But I think the novel should come with a warning: you may find some of the content simply too disturbing to deal with. I’m not sure what is says about me that I was so powerfully drawn into this depiction of evil that pulls no punches.
Whew! Well, so now I can move on to novels with far more engaging themes and characters. I speak, of course, of the wonderful works of Anthony Trollope.
Just a few weeks a go, several of us who are members of the Trollope Society USA concluded our online discussion of The American Senator. This is the second such discussion I’ve participated in; the first was Mr. Scarborough’s Family. In both instances, the novels and the discussions were hugely enjoyable. We connect via Zoom, so that members from various places can easily participate.
Our next selection for discussion is Framley Parsonage. This is the fourth title in Trollope’s six-book saga Barchester Chronicles. I’ve already read it twice. Third time, here I come! Meanwhile, I wanted to slip in another Trollope, one which I hadn’t previously read. My choice, which I just finished, was Bullhampton Vicarage. This novel centered on a situation frequently encountered in Trollope’s novels; namely, lovers who yearn to marry but cannot due to financial or other obstacles. The crisis moment, when it finally occurs late in the novel, is truly harrowing.
Our group’s leader has stated the opinion that Trollope is the true inheritor, from Jane Austen, of the marriage plot. (I agree with her.)
And now, for my four favorite contemporary fiction titles of the year:
Kiran Desai covered all the bases in this magisterial work. The action ricochets from India to America, with stops in Italy and a few other places along the way. While Sonia and Sunny are trying to work out their respective fates, the crowded canvas presents us with sundry other characters – friends, family, and others who just wander in and out of the narrative. The writing is lovely:
‘Mama sat out with Babayaga until late, looking upon the enchantment of the forest. A scops owl came out to hunt a squirrel. The owl was disrupted by the branches and found it difficult to land; the squirrel ran from branch to branch; the bird followed but still couldn’t catch the squirrel. The squirrel was silent, the owl was silent. Briefly, before they vanished, the squirrel running, the bird gliding, the owl swiveled and looked at Mama. The woods filled with cool moonlight.’
The Loneliness of Sunny and Sonia made it onto several Best of 2025 lists, including the New York Times selection of Ten Best Books of the Year.
In Fonseca, Jessica Francis Kane imagines in enchanting detail a trip that novelist Penelope Fitzgerald made to Mexico. Fitzgerald has gone there in hopes of securing a legacy from two childless, rather eccentric sisters-in-law. She and her husband Desmond need the money. (Fitzgerald actually did make this trip in 1952.)
Desmond has not accompanied Penelope on this fact-finding mission, but she does bring along her six-year-old son. His name is Valpy. He is one of the most irresistible children I’ve ever had the pleasure of spending fictional time with! I kept wishing I could make him materialize in front of me and give him a robust embrace, and then send him on his way.
Fonseca seems to have flown under the radar of those literary worthies in charge of compiling best-of-the-year lists. I urge them, and you, to read this absolute gem of a novel. Having done that, or before doing it, treat yourself to one of Penelope Fitzgerald’s terrific historical novels. My two favorites are The Beginning of Spring and The Blue Flower.
I’ve already reviewed the last two books in this group. The first is by one of my favorite authors, Ian McEwan. In What We Can Know, he is writing at the height of his considerable powers. I cannot praise highly enough McEwan’s eloquent, meticulous prose and his provocative storytelling. In my view, he stands at the summit of novel writing:
‘As was noted long ago, we are all innocent children in the tall forest of our clever inventions. What brings our students round to the beginning of a mature understanding of history and an appreciation of what the past has imagined is – simply – detail. The everyday life of, say, a mid-twenty-first-century junior doctor as told by her digital traffic, recording her week: dropping her young children at nursery, dealing with intractable illnesses, difficult patients, useless or gifted colleagues, low pay, constant pressure, keeping watch on troubling political developments, meeting friends, loving or ceasing to love her husband, paying bills, streaming new music, planning a holiday, worrying about a pain, ordering the shopping – and so on, a picture made up of countless points of different colours, like a landscape by Seurat, whose work we display and explain, can arouse even the dullest of our students into an acceptance of shared humanity across an immensity of time.’
Finally, there is Evensong by Stewart O’Nan. It is hard to put into words what to my mind makes this novel so exceptional. It features a cast of quite ordinary characters, living in a quite ordinary suburb. The individuals in question are growing old, and they seek to help one another with daily tasks, especially regarding transportation. They each feel a mixture of empathy and exasperation. And, to some degree, fear. This book struck me so forcibly; it strove to depict the divine element that resides in every human being.
From a chapter entitled Requiem:
‘They all had their losses, and if time made them easier to bear, the dead were also more remote and harder to recall, a silent slideshow of old memories unchanging as the past. Emily and Arlene had been alone for so long. It was the fate that awaited Kitzi, and while she vowed that she would sell the house after Martin died rather than inhabit an empty shell, she wasn’t certain she could leave everything she knew behind for a box of an apartment in Maxon Towers or the Morrowfield, no matter how cozy. Susie, who had done exactly that, was still surprised to wake up in a new place with a cat and now some mornings a strange man, as if her other life had never happened. She missed not Richard but her garden and the woods beyond, the deer and turkeys silently passing through the birches as she watched from the window over the sink. Gone, all of it, the children grown, the house sold. There was no going back.’
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Next up: the best crime and espionage fiction. Oh and I wish to leave you with this Bach piece, Sing Unto the Lord a New Song, to welcome in the New Year:
Books to the Ceiling