Dear TCL Readers:

Over the weekend, my Best Mystery Novels of 2025 appeared in the Sunday edition of the New York Times Book Review. They are, in author alphabetical order:

• Glory Daze by Danielle Arceneaux

• Her One Regret by Donna Freitas

• Heartwood by Amity Gaige

• Notes on Surviving the Fire by Christine Murphy

• Death Takes Me by Cristina Rivera Garza

• At Midnight Comes the Cry by Julia Spencer-Fleming

• Dead in the Frame by Stephen Spotswood

• Vera Wong’s Guide To Snooping (On a Dead Man) by Jesse Q. Sutanto

• Hollow Spaces by Victor Suthammanont

• History Lessons by Zoe B. Wallbrook

It was a pretty good year for crime fiction, and I hope my own list reflects the full range of the genre that was on offer, but as I say every year, it cannot reflect the totality of what was published, not just because I can’t read them all, but because there are great books by people I can’t review. (One more column, solely devoted to reissues, is slated to run before year’s end.)

So, as I do each year, here’s my “Shadow Docket” of crime novels by friends and colleagues that I also loved:

• El Dorado Drive by Megan Abbott

• Saint of the Narrows Street by William Boyle

• What Kind of Paradise by Janelle Brown

• We Are Watching by Alison Gaylin

• Murder Takes a Vacation by Laura Lippman

• Vantage Point by Sara Sligar

• Flashout by Alexis Soloski

• Kill Your Darlings by Peter Swanson

  

And if you’re looking for something unique to give your friends for the holidays, the omnibus translation of Jonas Kreppel’s The Adventures of Max Spitzkopf (aka the “Yiddish Sherlock Holmes”) by Mikhl Yashinsky is a delight through and through, stories that entertain and devastate in full measure while being just an utter joy to read.

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Two more favorites of 2025 lists, for good measure, starting with nonfiction:

• The Dazzling Paget Sisters by Ariane Bankes

• Baldwin: A Love Story by Nicholas Boggs

• One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad

• The Man Nobody Killed by Elon Green

• Bad Company by Megan Greenwell

• Motherland by Julia Ioffe

• The Secret History of the Rape Kit by Pagan Kennedy

• Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li

• Little Bosses Everywhere by Bridget Read

• True Nature by Lance Richardson

And fiction (old and new):

• To Smithereens by Rosalyn Drexler

• The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy

• Sky Daddy by Kate Folk

• Sons & Daughters by Chaim Grade

• I Who Have Never Known Men and Orlanda by Jacqueline Harpman

• Baby Driver by Jan Kerouac

• Find Him! by Elaine Kraf

• The Antidote by Karen Russell

• Effingers by Gabrielle Tergit

• Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood

I also read all three (so far) On the Calculation of Volume books by Solvej Balle which I love, but feel like it’s one book with four more chapters to go, and can’t really evaluate each one individually as a result.

Lastly, I’m tremendously grateful for Without Consent’s warm reception since its publication last month. I was especially glad for this conversation with Alison Stewart on WNYC’s “All of It” for getting into especially tough emotional territory.

I’m planning to send out one last newsletter before the end of the year, because I am, believe it or not, still working — a feature is due to be out around Christmas, and I have one last freelance deadline to meet. But I’ll be sneaking in some rest and relaxation of a staycation variety. Wishing you all, in the midst of so much tumult, trauma, and grief, a meaningful holiday season, however you wish to celebrate.

Until next time, I remain,

The Crime Lady