Kirkus Best Mysteries and Thrillers of 2021

NORTHERN SPY, Flynn Berry
RAZORBLADE TEARS, S. A. Cosby
INFINITE, Brian Freeman
THE CORPSE FLOWER, Anne Mette Hancock
THE OTHER BLACK GIRL, Zakiya Dalila Harris
BILLY SUMMERS, Stephen King
UNTRACEABLE, Sergei Lebedev
THE MAN WHO DIED TWICE, Richard Osman
UNTHINKABLE, Brad Parks
A LONELY MAN, Chris Power
FALSE WITNESS, Karin Slaughter
LADY JOKER, VOLUME 1, Kaoru Takamura
HARLEM SHUFFLE, Colson Whitehead

Editor’s note: I’ve read four of these and they all deserve to be on a list of best of the year. I tried to get into THE OTHER BLACK GIRL by Zakiya Dalila Harris, but it just wasn’t my kind of book. Larry Gandle read it and observes that it isn’t a mystery or crime novel. Perhaps it’s a suspense novel. There were two titles that I was unfamiliar with: A LONELY MAN by Chris Power and UNTRACEABLE by Sergei Lebedev. I’ll have to check those two out and find out more about them. This list has two of my top four reads of the year: RAZORBLADE TEARS and BILLY SUMMERS.