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Top Five Crime And Mystery Novels Of 2008
NPR (National Public Radio) in the US has picked its top five crime novels of the year.
- Small Crimes, by Dave Zeltserman
- The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson, translated from the Swedish by Reg Keeland
- The Chinaman, by Friedrich Glauser, translated from the German by Mike Mitchell
- Death Vows, by Richard Stevenson
- The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved, by Judith Freeman
To swipe the immortal lines uttered by Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon, a great mystery should take "the lid off life and let [you] look at the works." Sure, entertainment is important; if these stories weren't fun, who would read them?
But the corpses, stolen gems and purloined letters that litter the pages of the classic detective tale are just excuses to set the plot in motion; they're not the point. A great crime story also tackles the big mysteries: love, death, the problem of God, the presence of evil in the world. This year's top five mysteries all provide suspenseful plots with satisfying solutions while also affirming that the eternal enigmas can't be cracked.
The NPR list features short excerpts from each book.
- Small Crimes, by Dave Zeltserman
- The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson, translated from the Swedish by Reg Keeland
- The Chinaman, by Friedrich Glauser, translated from the German by Mike Mitchell
- Death Vows, by Richard Stevenson
- The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved, by Judith Freeman
To swipe the immortal lines uttered by Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon, a great mystery should take "the lid off life and let [you] look at the works." Sure, entertainment is important; if these stories weren't fun, who would read them?
But the corpses, stolen gems and purloined letters that litter the pages of the classic detective tale are just excuses to set the plot in motion; they're not the point. A great crime story also tackles the big mysteries: love, death, the problem of God, the presence of evil in the world. This year's top five mysteries all provide suspenseful plots with satisfying solutions while also affirming that the eternal enigmas can't be cracked.
The NPR list features short excerpts from each book.
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