Best Crime Novels of the Decade

Thanks to mystery maven Carol Fairweather for bringing my attention to this list and the accompanying reviews and interviews. I know you'll find it very enlightening.

February 5: from the Times Online: Crime fiction experts Barry Forshaw and Laura Wilson

Select the key crime novels of the decade? A very difficult task, especially since there has been a particularly impressive stream of top-notch crime fiction in the past ten years, with — because of the new trend for crime in translation — more diversity of place and style than ever before.

We haven’t necessarily selected the most "important" novels — importance, we feel, is not, of itself, important. Good writing is, and good storytelling. We have included those books that we feel to be innovative, and individual as opposed to generic, and also books that are just bloody good examples of their type.

Here's their list, but definitely go to the article to see their runners-up and links to the authors and reviews. I was pleased and surprised to see I've read most of the titles. I think this list would be great for our next series of books in our weekly Tuesday night Mystery Bookgroup. Since we've already discussed a few of them, we can always substitute some of Laura and Barry's runners-up. Also, nice to see a link to Adrian Muller's CrimeFest in this article.

2000 Nineteen Seventy-Seven by David Peace
2001 Mystic River by Dennis Lehane
2002 Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
2003 The American Boy by Andrew Taylor
2004 The Power of the Dog by Don Winslow
2005 No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
2006 The Broken Shore by Peter Temple Peter Temple
2007 Wash This Blood Clean From My Hand by Fred Vargas
2008 Blood from Stone by Frances Fyfield
2009 Hypothermia by Arnaldur Indridason

What novels would you choose?

Barry Forshaw’s books include The Rough Guide to Crime Fiction, Italian Cinema, British Crime Writing: An Encyclopedia and a biography of Stieg Larsson, The Man Who Left Too Soon. He is vice-chairman of the Crime Writers’ Association, edits Crime Time and features on the ITV Crime Thriller profiles. Laura Wilson is the author of nine crime novels, including The Lover (winner, Prix du Polar Europeen) and Sutton’s War (winner, Ellis Peters Award); her latest novel, An Empty Death, is published in May by Orion, and her tenth book, Austerity, will be published later in the year by Quercus.