Highly Recommended Reads for 2008

In order of preference...

• No Time for Goodbye by Linwood Barclay (2007)
  In this strikingly original twist on a traditional thriller plot, a fourteen year old girl wakes up one morning to discover her family is missing from the house. No trace. No note. No nothing. And that's the way it remains for twenty-five years. Then, happily married and with a daughter of her own, she begins to discover hints about what happened. A marvelous thriller that's nearly impossible to put down.

• Saving Room for Dessert by K.C. Constantine (2002)
  Part of the Rocksburg, PA series, but not featuring Mario Balzac or Rugs Carlucci. Nevertheless, a brilliant book. Constantine continues to amaze. His novels are compelling even though they spend less time on action than the people involved. This depiction of a catastrophic series of neighborhood disputes is writing and character development at their finest.
• Empire of Lies by Andrew Klavan (2008)
  Klavan sets an unlikely hero in the middle of a terrorist plot only he can stop. Fast, fun, entertaining, and complete with a hilarious description of the ultimate, red-carpet-line act of one-upmanship. Or should that be one-upswomanship?
• The Turnaround by George Pelecanos (2008)
  Three white boys drive into a black neighborhood looking for trouble, and get it when they find there's no way out -- only the turnaround. Thirty years later, fate brings two men from opposite sides of that confrontation together with the possibility of redemption, or adding a deadly coda to that night of violence.
• By the Time You Read This by Giles Blunt (2007)
  Detective John Cardinal can't accept his wife's suicide even though she left a note and had a history of serious problems with depression. You may not know Canadian writer Giles Blunt. If not, it's time to rectify that.
• Invisible Prey by John Sandford (2007)
  Series mysteries usually grow tired by their 17th installment. Not Sanford's. An elderly woman and her maid have been brutally beaten to death. But if the motive was robbery, why were so many valuable antiques left behind?
• The Final Country by James Crumley (2001)
  Neither age nor prosperity prove enough to soothe a former private investigator's boredom when an opportunity to return to his profession beacons. It's tragic to lose a writer as good as Crumley as we did last year. The Final Country stands as a proud farewell.
• Statute of Limitations by Steven F. Havill (2006)
  The bodies and violence don't stop for Undersheriff Reyes-Guzman even when it's Christmas, the sheriff is recovering from serious injuries, and the local police chief has just suffered a heart attack. Steven Havill continues his superb regional mystery series set along New Mexico's remote southern border.
• Preaching to the Corpse by Roberta Isleib (2007)
  I don't usually read cozy New England church-politics mysteries, but I'm glad I read Isleib's. It's funny, insightful, and a perfect escape from too much blood and gore.