1 Donald Ray Pollock: The Heavenly Table
(in deutscher Übersetzung jüngst erschienen bei Liebeskind)
Yes, The Heavenly Table is an old-fashioned yarn with a pretty predictable plot – but that’s the point, and as with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (an obvious influence), it is also a riotous satire that takes on our hopeless faith in modernity, along with our endless capacity for cruelty and absurd pretension … As much as we’d like to take comfort in the thought that all of this happened far away and a century ago, the fact is that Pollock’s funny, damning novel belongs, more than ever, to the country we live in now.
2 Duane Swierczynski: Revolver
Impressive, intricately constructed … Well sequenced to maximize suspense … A twist-filled saga of family loyalties and civic corruption … Mr. Swierczynski’s innovative, life-affirming novel also affords the traditional pleasures of a police procedural, including humor.
3 Bill Beverly: Dodgers
I try not to read thrillers because they tend to keep me up to all hours of the night, and I don’t have the time. Bill Beverly’s Dodgers broke through my wall of self-denial and, yes, I did stay up late for two nights to finish it. Four black boys in a gang from Los Angeles are given a job: drive across the country to carry out a hit on a black judge. What can go wrong? Everything, of course. The prose is tight, the dialogue rhythmic, the pacing fast, the violence measured, and the ending unexpected. So what if I lost some sleep?
4 Stephen Dobyns: Is Fat Bob Dead Yet?
A thriller that evokes Elmore Leonard and Donald E. Westlake but adds several layers of absurdity and a narrative voice that suggests metafiction meets a Greek chorus meets Jane Austen … Yes, it’s absurd; yes, it’soutrageous; but here’s the thing: somehow, amid all the craziness, there’s a beating heart, too.”
5 Edward A. Dreyfus: The Midnight Shrink
The Midnight Shrink by Edward Dreyfus is a compelling, engaging novel. The storyline focuses on a psychologist who has decided that he can best serve the people who need the most help by meeting them on their territory, the streets of Los Angeles. He makes himself available during the dark hours of the night out of his van. Growing up on the streets of New York himself, he has a soft spot for these often overlooked people of the night.
6 Barry Eisler: Livia Lone
Readers may be reminded of Stieg Larsson’s beloved Lisbeth Salander when they meet Livia Lone, and will be totally riveted by the story of this woman on a mission to right the wrongs in her past.”
7 Lisa Lutz: The Passenger
In a stunning departure from her comic Spellman Files series, Lutz offers a dark psychological thriller. Tanya Dubois finds her husband dead and knows she can’t afford the police scrutiny that is soon to follow. So she hits the road—and not for the first time. Lutz develops riveting suspense by slowly revealing Tanya’s past while white-knuckling the reader with her gritty heroine’s increasingly tenuous bids at survival.
8 Lisa Sandlin: The Do-Right
Ex-con Delpha Wade takes a secretarial job with PI Tom Phelan, but quickly the two are working side by side. Sandlin vividly evokes the bayou country of 1973 Beaumont, Texas, while introducing a terrific character in Delpha, who is soaking up her freedom as she gets used to “wearing sky over her head.”