"Technically this shouldn’t be on the list because it is the first in a series of six featuring Detective Sergeant George Cross, a man with Aspergers who is completely misunderstood by his peers yet he has the highest solve rate on the force so his idiosyncrasies are tolerated by his bosses. I include it this year because it has been a very frustrating few years trying to get this series into the States. Here one day, gone the next, with no real rhyme or reason. If you like British police procedurals here’s your next series! Finally, Atlantic Crime has U.S. distribution rights and soon all six will available here with no trouble and I can’t wait."

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Pete

"There’s something about South Africa as a setting that allows its writer’s to just let it all hang out. They have so many good ones writing crime fiction, Malla Nunn, the great Deon Meyer, and I have to mentionZuluby Caryl Ferey because it has a scene with a machete that still gives me nightmares. Now comes Irma Venter. HerRed Tide,set in a small town deep in the South African desert, is a story of jealousy, of talents misused, and the dogged persistence of one retired detective to find out why his niece died a week before her wedding. For three long years he seeks answers, alienating friends and family, but slowly he pieces the story together and what a satisfying conclusion. This is one to savor."

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Pete

"This is a dark comedy about life in peacetime after years at war, when the calm isn’t so serene, and when living the 9-to-5 life really isn’t a life at all. Skwerl worked for the CIA’s paramilitary branch while his friend Big Cheese Aziz was an ace Afghan pilot. Both are down on their luck so when an easy score, repossessing a private jet stranded somewhere in Africa, comes their way they jump at it. Of course, nothing is as it seems and their misadventures take them across the world as they attempt to double-cross the ones trying to double-cross them. A rollicking plot, with scintillating dialogue makes this a nice change of pace from the usual cloak and dagger spy story."

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Pete

"Anybody out there ever hear of the Body Farm at the University of Tennessee, it’s where scientists can study human decomposition? Well, this wonderfully twisted story has its own version on a dilapidated old industrial estate outside of London. Hidden out of sight from prying eyes it is the pet project of a precocious young teenager and road kill she finds. That is until one night she discovers the body of a classmate in her hidden nook and her world changes from one of curiosity to one of suspicion of pretty much everyone around her. Smart and edgy with terrific characters and a setting that oozes gloom and despair without being out and out depressing, this is one of those whodunits that can really keep you up at night."

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Pete

"I’m really not into glamorizing the rich but I don’t mind visiting vicariously their posh havens, where us plebes aren’t welcomed unless we’re serving the canapes and drinks, especially when a murder is involved. In 1992 a young mother falls to death from the villa on the Isle of Capri her family stays at every year, and the case is never solved. Thirty years later a necklace she was supposedly wearing is waiting for the family as they arrive. Cracks have been forming over the years and trust eroding to the point the only things keeping everyone civil are lots of booze and food but even that doesn’t pave over the festering distrust. A sneaky good plot, beautiful scenery, and lots of gossip, will have you turning the pages faster than Elon Musk making (or losing) another billion dollars."

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Pete

"This book is the perfect example of why you don’t mess with mothers, they will f**k you up! Babs Dionne is not you’re your usual single mom trying to keep everything together while providing a healthy, wholesome environment for her children. Nope, she’s a civic minded crime boss who, along with her four best friends, rule the small Maine town of Waterville with an iron fist. So successful is she that Waterville catches the attention of a crime syndicate north of the border who slowly encroach upon her territory. When her daughter is found dead, she knows who to blame and, well, let’s just say all hell breaks loose. Told with a sharp wit and great empathy, Ron Currie has created a character in Babs, and a story that will stick with you long after you finish reading."

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Pete

"This is easily the most creative novel I’ve read in a while. It starts in the 1920’s England with the proliferation of upper crust egg collectors paying poor land holders to raid coastal bird rookeries, then then segues into the present when one such egg, nestled in an ornate case, the last of six, long thought lost, is discovered in the attic of a house recently inherited by the deceased’s daughter and grandson. Not knowing what he’s found the grandson puts the egg up for sale on Ebay and hours later is bound and gagged and the egg stolen. From there he sets out, with his best friend, to recover the egg and along the way learns all about the nefarious history of egg collecting. This was so much fun, so interesting, so different and so much more than just a crime novel. I can’t wait to read more from truly original author!"

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Pete

"It’s not often that a big-name best-selling author makes the Beltie list but an exception needs to be made here. James Lee Burke is one of our finest writers, bar none, and this is a perfect introduction to those many out there who have never read him before. Bessie Holland is a very smart fourteen-year-old, who sees the good in most people and recognizes the schemers and the purely dangerous with twenty/twenty vision. Living in hard scrabble Texas she has to be and this is her story and the birth of the Holland family fortune as only James Lee Burke can tell it. With prose so descriptive, so vivid, along with the magic realism that imbues all his work, he creates stories that make us think and see all that exists around us. A true master of the written word. AI will never be able to copy him."

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Pete