O ur best of the year lists combine prestigious crime shortlists with some of our own favourites, and you can find our best mysteries of 2022 below, in (very approximate) order of preference:
☆ Shortlisted for the 2022 Edgar Allan Poe Awards
No One Will Miss Her is an excellently plotted mystery. It’s also incredibly touching with a heartwrenching main protagonist. We’ve put it at the top of this list because it’s our favourite of the mystery books we’ve read this year.
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The Ink Black Heart is the sixth book in Robert Galbraith’s Cormoran Strike series, one of our favourite crime fiction series. The plot revolves around a cartoon and an online game based on that cartoon, and London’s Highgate Cemetery plays a key role in events (if you’ve never visited, you should: both Karl Marx and Douglas Adams are buried there, amongst hundreds of graves and ash trees growing all over the place. All in all, an ideal setting for a murder). The book is long, and it’s for readers who enjoy living daily life with the two main protagonists, Strike and Robin, as they go out about running their detective agency, rather than a pacy thriller you rush through at speed to find out whodunnit. As we’ve noted previously, this is a series where character development is important and while you can read each of the books as standalones, it’s best to start at the beginning with The Cuckoo’s Calling
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☆ Shortlisted for the 2022 Edgar Allan Poe Awards
☆ Shortlisted for the 2022 CWA Gold Dagger
If you loved S.A Cosby's last book, Blacktop Wasteland Razorblade Tears, is much more satisfying: it's driven along not only by memorable characters but also by the plot.
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“Razorblade Tears is a moody Southern thriller with fast-paced action, the story of two men—one black, one white, both ex-cons—who team together to solve the murder of their sons, who were married to one another. It’s a gritty tale that looks into questions of race, poverty, and other bias through the lens of both violence and compassion.” Read more...
The Best Thrillers of 2022
Tosca Lee ,
Novelist
A brutal murder in an Oxford college is the theme of Ruth Ware's latest psychological thriller. The story is told ten years on by her roommate and best friend, whose life has fallen apart since the crime.
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by Nita Prose, narrated by Lauren Ambrose
☆ Shortlisted for the 2023 Edgar Allan Poe Awards
The Maid by Nita Prose falls into the cosy mystery genre , though it has an edge to it that makes it extremely memorable. It's set in a boutique hotel in New York and the narrator is the guileless and perfectionistic Molly, who cleans rooms there. The audiobook of The Maid is outstanding, chosen by AudioFile magazine
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“Molly Gray works as a maid at the Regency Grand Hotel in an unnamed city in the U.S. She has a profound love for order and cleanliness and takes pride in her work and comfort in restoring order. She also has the propensity to take things literally and social interactions can be challenging. After the death of her grandmother, who raised her, Molly finds herself even more isolated. During the course of her work, Molly finds a guest murdered in the penthouse suite. Through a series of misadventures, she finds herself framed for his murder. I have a late diagnosis of autism and so found the portrayal of some of Molly’s traits, which could be perceived as neurodivergent, interesting with regards to the challenges which could land her in difficulties, but also the strengths she brings to bear to try and discover the truth of the matter.” Read more...
The Best Amateur Detective Novels
Jess Kidd ,
Novelist
***Shortlisted for the 2021 CWA Gold Dagger***
The books in Abir Mukherjee's Wyndham and Banerjee series are set in India in the last decades of the Raj. In this book, Gandhi is in the background and communal violence in the foreground, but like all the books in the series, The Shadows of Men is very lighthearted in tone. India's first elections had taken place a few years before, in 1920. The two main protagonists, Sam Wyndham and Surendranath Banerjee, are based in colonial Calcutta but in this book also travel to Bombay . If you like your mysteries set in the past but not too heavy, this series is ideal. The Shadows of Men is the fifth book in the series, if you want to start at the beginning, the first is A Rising Man .
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Before adding a book to this list, we often think about it for a few weeks, to see if it sticks with us. Reputation does. It's a book about what it's like to be a female politician, and so is significant not just as a good read, but for its insight into the price paid by women to participate actively in a democracy. It's scary and depressing and helps question what's important in life—even if the answer is uncomfortable.
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***Shortlisted for the 2022 CWA Gold Dagger***
Before You Knew My Name is a touching story set mainly in New York's Upper West Side. The author Jacqueline Bublitz is from Australia/New Zealand, so it's a little bit of an outsider's perspective. The focus of the book is violence against women and it's a little bit more than just a crime novel.
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***Winner of the 2022 Edgar Allan Poe Awards***
Five Decembers is a mystery set in World War II, starting off in Hawaii just before Pearl Harbor. The main protagonist is a Honolulu Police Department detective, who ends up travelling to Wake Island, Guam, Hong Kong and Tokyo in his search for the perpetrator of two brutal murders. Though many books feature World War II , it’s interesting to have the war in Asia as the backdrop, including the firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945.
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***Winner of the 2022 CWA Gold Dagger***
Sunset Swing is the fourth and final novel in Ray Celestin's City Blues Quartet , intertwining the history of jazz and the mob across six decades and each set in a different American city: New Orleans, Chicago and New York. Los Angeles in 1967 is the backdrop for Sunset Swing and one of the main characters is on leave from service in the Vietnam War to find her brother. Another wants to leave town to set up a vineyard. Louis Armstrong makes an appearance. Overall, the plot is slightly disjointed and the book does not work well as a standalone read. Like a few other mystery books on this list, it may be worth starting with the first book in the series, The Axeman's Jazz, to appreciate this one.
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If you haven't read any Lucy Foley before, they're always good, pacy mysteries, somewhat similar in structure and style. The Paris Apartment is a good one. Part of the attraction is that it's set in Paris. The two main characters (siblings) also feel more real or perhaps are more touching than in her previous bestsellers (The Hunting Party , The Guest List ).
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***Shortlisted for the 2022 CWA Gold Dagger***
This is one of two books on the 2022 Gold Dagger shortlist set in the Vietnam War era. John Hart is a good writer and The Unwilling draws you in. You will connect with the main characters, two brothers, and want to read on to find out what happens next. That said, the plot has a disconnected feel, almost as if it's two books instead of one. If you haven't read John Hart before, it might be worth turning to some of his earlier books, like Down River
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***Shortlisted for the 2022 Edgar Allan Poe Awards***
How Lucky by Will Leitch is a mystery told in the voice of a young man with spinal muscular atrophy or SMA, who is confined to a wheelchair and heavily dependent on others to stay alive. It's very touching and life-affirming and it was not a surprise, at the end of the book, to find out that the author was inspired to write it from knowing a young boy suffering from the genetic condition.
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Dead of Winter is a mystery by Swedish crime writer (and former police officer) Anders de la Motte, set in Skåne, the southernmost part of Sweden. The book divides between the present and events in 1987, when a fire ends up killing Laura, the main protagonist’s, best friend. It’s a nice evocation of a rural region—a place of lakes and forests—and it has a reasonably good plot.
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It’s taken a couple of decades, but the protagonist of The Cutting Room As the author of Trainspotting put it in his interview with us, “to my mind she is not really a crime writer. She is a very serious literary writer working in crime”
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***Shortlisted for the 2022 CWA Gold Dagger***
The Trawlerman is a mystery set on a beautiful piece of Kent coastline near Dungeness nuclear power station. The book is part of a series featuring a police officer called DS Alexandra Cupidi, who combines a tough job with being a single parent to a teenage daughter. In terms of plot, the book does work as a standalone. However, it is hard to feel very invested in the characters or their lives—Cupidi is recovering from PTSD—so it may be worth exploring the first book in the series, Salt Lane , before trying this one.
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☆ Shortlisted for the 2022 Edgar Allan Poe Awards
The Venice Sketchbook by Rhys Bowen is a work of historical fiction (or possibly historical romance ) set in both the present and the lead up to World War II . We’ve included it because it’s been shortlisted for an Edgar, but it’s not really a mystery in the classic sense of having you guessing whodunnit. The plot revolves around a woman learning more about the past life of her recently deceased great aunt, with most of the action taking place in Venice (aka La Serenissima).
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