Publishers Weekly’s
Editor’s Choice list
for the Best of 2004: Mystery
(alphabetical by author)
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Relative Danger Charles Benoit “In Benoit’s smashingly good, action-packed first novel, the search for a stolen gem takes a young Pennsylvania brewery worker on a hilarious and often murderous chase through North Africa, the Middle East and Asia.” |
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The Damascened Blade Barbara Cleverly “British author Cleverly out-Christies Agatha Christie in her third fair-play historical, involving skulduggery on India’s northwest frontier in 1922.” Winner, CWA Ellis Peters Historical Dagger Award |
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Wife of Moon Margaret Coel “Drawing on Edward S. Curtis’s real-life early 20th-century Plains Indians photographs, Coel blends authentic history with an ingenious plot in her 10th whodunit to feature Arapaho lawyer Vicky Holden.” |
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The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Edited by Leslie Klinger • Introduction by John le Carre “Modeling his efforts on William S. Baring-Gould’s classic Annotated Sherlock Holmes, Klinger provides fascinating scholarly commentary on the 56 canonical short stories in this two-volume set.” |
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Good Morning, Darkness Ruth Francisco “A human arm washed up on a Malibu beach leads to serpentine and sanguinary plot complications in Francisco’s outstanding stand-alone, her second novel after 2003’s Confessions of a Deathmaiden.” |
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Bethlehem Road Murder Batya Gur “An attractive young woman’s murder points to a scandalous government cover-up in Gur’s fifth mystery to feature Chief Inspector Michael Ohayon, Israel’s answer to P.D. James’s Adam Dalgliesh.” |
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Summer of the Big Bachi Naomi Hirahara “In Hirahara’s seamless and shyly powerful first novel, elderly Japanese-American gardener Mas Arai opens old emotional wounds in order to solve a murder with roots in the atomic blast that leveled Hiroshima in 1945.” |
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Little Scarlet Walter Mosley “The terror and moral ambiguities of the Watts Riots of 1965 sear the pages of this Easy Rawlins mystery, the finest novel to date from the prolific and multitalented author.” |
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The Judgment of Caesar Steven Saylor “At the top of his form in his 10th Gordianus the Finder book, Saylor dares make the mystery—the identity of a poisoner who does in the royal taster and almost kills Caesar and Cleopatra—a late subplot.” |
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