My usual rhythm for New Yorker is a political and legal commentary, so before I list my favorite recent mystery novels, I’ll ask true experts of the genre for insight. For example, I am not the person to say which of Louise Penny’s twenty “Chief Inspector Gamache” novels is the best. (“Still life,” a friend told me.) But there are overlaps in specialties: Many of the best mysteries concern the imperfect harmony between law and justice, and, as in politics, skewed balances of power, if only at home, and the tension between public and private identities. I love the puzzles that such books present. Here are four greats of the last twenty years, plus a bonus.
“Intrusive,by Tana French
He has written ten novels in French (the “Dublin Murder Squad” sextet, the “Cal Hooper” trilogy and a stand-alone novel), and the real debate is in what order of magnitude to put them. Times It is the film most frequently included by any author in the “Best Thrillers of the Century” list. The only “trespasser” didn’t make that list. I stand by my choice. The book about a young Irish woman murdered in her hard-earned home is the French novel that often comes to my mind uninvited. Sometimes I would take it off the shelf just to re-read the final interrogation scene.
“When Will the Good News Come?by Kate Atkinson
There is plenty of good Atkinson in the mystery (and non-mystery) department, as there is in French. “When Will the Good News Come?” The third in the “Jackson Brodie” series and an example of narrative control over chaos. Set mostly in Scotland, the book is about the disappearance of a woman and her baby long after a family murder. Reggie Chase, the babysitter who draws Brodie onto the case, returns as a detective himself in later Atkinson novels.
“The Girl with the Dragon Tattooby Stieg Larsson
Its rich afterlife alone might earn this novel a place on the list: it has been widely imitated (and parodied); An element that accelerated the rise of Nordic Noir; the template for a certain kind of hacker-detective; the basis for two sequels and two films. But still, I was hesitant when I first read it; It was delayed partly because of all the hype, but also perhaps because of what the book presents as current responses to sexual trauma. But when I picked it up again this summer, I found it more nuanced, interesting, and multi-layered than I remembered.
“Wild Dark Shore“By Charlotte McConaghy
It’s a bit of a wild card, a move into the climate fiction genre. The setting is a science station on an Antarctic island that must be evacuated due to rapidly rising sea levels; We can call it a locked seed bank mystery. A shipwrecked woman confronts the mystery of a missing researcher, an unexplained grave, beached whales, and the question of what can or should be saved. In many ways, this is a balancing act that offers a very different vision of resilience to “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.”