Best Books 2009 | Publishers Weekly - Mystery : Publishers Weekly

Bryant and May on the Loose

Christopher Fowler (Bantam)

London's Peculiar Crimes Unit gets a new lease on life as Bryant and May investigate gang crimes that could threaten the economic benefits expected from the 2012 Olympics in Fowler's blend of the comic and the grotesque.

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The Wrong Mother

Sophie Hannah (Penguin)

A brief affair with a man whose wife later apparently commits a heinous crime then kills herself leads to serious trouble for Sally Thorning, part-time environmental rescuer and full-time mother, in this psychological mystery paced like a ticking time bomb.

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The Dark Horse

Craig Johnson (Viking)

Wyoming sheriff Walt Longmire return to his cowboy roots as he goes undercover to investigate a murder outside his jurisdiction: a wife has confessed to shooting her rancher husband dead, but is she really guilty?

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The Silent Hour

Michael Koryta (Minotaur)

Koryta spins a dark tale of broken dreams and second chances in this mystery featuring PI Lincoln Perry, who helps a convicted murderer who's been paroled. It's a convoluted case in which a missing woman's brother heads a notorious Cleveland, Ohio, mob family.

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Londongrad

Reggie Nadelson (Walker)

New York City police detective Artie Cohen, a principled, street-smart guy with very human failings, travels to London to tell his best friend, shady Russian immigrant Tolya Sverdloff, that Sverdloff's daughter (who was also Cohen's girlfriend) has been murdered.

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The Lord of Death

Eliot Pattison (Soho Crime)

Edgar-winner Pattison mixes an eye-opening look at contemporary China with a traditional whodunit involving the gunning down of China's minister of tourism along with an American woman, a skilled climber, near Mount Everest.

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The Cloud Pavilion

Laura Joh Rowland (Minotaur)

Detective-turned-politician Sano Ichiro helps his estranged uncle find the uncle's missing daughter in the masterful 14th entry in a series that brings early 18th-century Japan to vivid life.

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