Barry Forshaw
Financial Times
Best Crime Fiction of 2022

A HEART FULL OF HEADSTONES, Ian Rankin
BLUE WATER, Leonora Nattrass
THE LOST MAN OF BOMBAY, Vaseem Khan
THE TWYFORD CODE, Janice Hallett (2023 title in U.S.)
THE DARK FLOOD, Deon Meyer

Comment: Short but good list. Barry Forshaw is one of Britain’s most perceptive crime fiction critics. THE DARK FLOOD is one of my favorites of the year. I’m half way through A HEART FULL OF HEADSTONES and enjoying it very much so it may appear on my Best of 2022 list. I have THE LOST MAN OF BOMBAY on my nightstand to read and I hope I get to it before year’s end. I was unfamiliar with BLUE WATER so I’ve checked it out.

BLUE WATER was published in the U.K. in October, 2022. Here is the plot:
This is the secret report of disgraced former Foreign Office clerk Laurence Jago, written on the mail ship Tankerville en route to Philadelphia. His mission is to aid the civil servant charged with carrying a vital treaty to Congress that will prevent the Americans from joining with the French in their war against Britain.

When the civil servant meets an unfortunate ‘accidental’ end, Laurence becomes the one person standing between Britain and disaster. It is his great chance to redeem himself at Whitehall – except that his predecessor has taken the secret of the treaty’s hiding place to his watery grave.

As the ship is searched, Laurence quickly discovers that his fellow passengers – among them fugitive French aristocrats, an American plantation owner, an Irish actress and her performing bear – all have their own motives to find the treaty for themselves. And as a second death follows the first, Laurence must turn sleuth in order to find the killer before he has an ‘accident’ of his own.