my usual rhythm for new yorker is political and legal commentary, so I’ll beg the indulgence of a true expert in the genre before listing my favorite recent suspense novels. For example, I’m not one to say which of Louise Penny’s twenty Gamache novels is the best. (“still life“A friend told me.) But there is an overlap in expertise: Most of the best mystery novels deal with the imperfect fit between law and justice, as well as the distortion of the balance of power in politics (if only within families) and the tension between public and private identities. I love the puzzles that such books present. Here are four great books from the past two decades, plus a bonus.
“intruder,” Tana French
French has written ten novels (the “Dublin Murder Squad” six-part series, the “Carl Hooper” trilogy and a stand-alone novel), and the real debate is how to rank them in order of greatness. Nine of them were selected as the most recent novel by readers. era It has been voted the most “Best Thriller of the Century” by any writer. “Invaders” is the only one No Make this list. I stick to my choice. This book, about a young Irish woman murdered in her hard-won homeland, is the French novel I most automatically think of. Sometimes I pull it off the shelf just to reread the final interrogation scene.
“When will there be good news?” Kate Atkinson
As with the French, there are plenty of excellent Atkinsons in the mystery (and non-mystery) department. “When Will There Be Good News?” is the third installment in her “Jackson Brody” series and a model of her control over chaotic narratives. Set primarily in Scotland, the book tells the story of a woman and her child who disappear after a domestic murder. Reggie Chase, the nanny who draws Brody into the case, herself returns as a detective in Atkinson’s later novels.
“The girl with the dragon tattoo” by Stieg Larsson
The novel deserves a spot on the list just for its rich afterlife: heavily imitated (and parodied); a catalyst for the rise of Nordic noir; a template for a sort of hacker detective; the basis for two sequels and two movies. However, upon first reading, I had ambivalent feelings—partly because of all the hype, but perhaps also because the book seemed to present available responses to sexual trauma. However, when I picked it up again this summer, I found it to be more detailed, engaging, and richly layered than I remembered.
“wild dark coast” by Charlotte McConaughey
This book is a bit of a wild card, a crossover of the climate novel genre. The setting is a science station on an Antarctic island that must be evacuated due to rapidly rising sea levels—a locked-down seed vault mystery, one might say. A shipwrecked woman faces the mysteries of a missing researcher, an unexplained grave, a beached whale, and the question of what can or should be saved. In many ways, it rivals The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, offering a very different vision of resilience.