That task will be made significantly harder by the deluge of publications scheduled to debut in stores on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean between now and New Year’s Day. With just four months to go now in 2018, and with the daunting prospect of having to choose my favorite crime, mystery, and thriller works of the year, I feel a bit under the gun to cull out and consume only the new books I think will be especially worthy of attention. However, it has certainly detracted from my ability to talk with friends and colleagues about what current books they should sample.

That shift of focus has been important to my continuing education in the breadth and history of this genre we all love. DeAndrea, Lyndsay Faye, Benjamin Black, and others. While recent works by Laura Lippman, John Straley, Megan Abbott, Matthew Pearl, Edward Marston, Lori Rader-Day, and Dan Fesperman all still await my attention, I have been poring through vintage books by George Harmon Coxe, Thomas Polsky, and Erle Stanley Gardner, and re-reading yarns by William L. Thanks to my work for CrimeReads, as well as for Down & Out: The Magazine, during the last eight months I’ve had my nose in at least as many older crime and mystery novels as in new ones.

This has been an unusual reading year for me thus far.

Hearts of the Missing by Carol Potenza