Reading Recommendations from 2022
I’m going to take a couple of months to give you some quick recommendations for books I really enjoyed over the last six months or so. Today I’m going to start with mysteries.
Do you read mystery fiction? I read a lot of it, which is good because there’s a bit of a renaissance in the genre going on right now. All three of the books I’m about to recommend have been major bestsellers and all three of them would find a welcome place on your list of Christmas reading.
I’m going to start with Exiles by Aussie Jane Harper, who burst onto the international scene with her debut novel The Dry. This new one features Aaron Falk, the detective who was the central character in The Dry. He also appears in Force of Nature, the second book in the series.
Falk is a charismatic, tortured man with an immovable moral compass that often leads him into trouble with the people he loves. He works in forensic accounting for the Australian Federal Police in Melbourne, which is a demanding, lonely life, and his painful past often drags him back into difficult situations that involve weighing how much he can trust the people in his life.
In Exiles, Falk travels to a wine-making valley in South Australia where his closest friends live and where a well-loved local woman disappeared a year ago, leaving behind a baby daughter in her pram at the local food and wine festival. As Falk becomes more and more involved with the inhabitants of Marralee Valley, it becomes clear that someone in this close-knit group knows more than they’re saying. Could one of them be a murderer?
This is an intriguing, fast-moving story with some great characters and a really strong puzzle at the center of the plot. One of the things I’ve absolutely loved about every Jane Harper story is how brilliantly she does landscape. You’ll really feel like you’re in the middle of the South Australian countryside when you read this. Australia comes alive on the page.
My second book on this list is a doorstopper! Over 1,000 pages and not one a dud!
If you’re a regular reader of this column, you’ll know that I’ve really enjoyed all the Cormoran Strike/Robin Ellacott Mysteries by Robert Galbraith, which is a pseudonym for J.K. Rowling. I talk about the first three books in the series here: https://annacampbell.com/my-favorite-things/2017-2/march-2017/
The sixth book in the series, The Ink Black Heart, came out this year to great acclaim and I notice it’s featuring on a lot of Best of 2022 lists. I’m not surprised. It’s a doozy!
If you’ve read any of the books in this series, you’ll know that they inhabit a complex world with many complicated characters, most of whom make perfectly satisfactory suspects in the central murder/murders. This one is no different. It delves into the often frightening world of internet trolls and fan fiction, and explores how easily obsessive followers can become dangerous.
When Edie Ledwell, creator of cult internet sensation The Ink Black Heart, is found murdered in Highgate Cemetery, Strike and Ellacott find themselves at sea in a virtual world that bears very little resemblance to mundane everyday life. Except that the bodies left behind from this malicious online war are all too real.
A good one to read over Christmas when you’ve got time to dive into this fiendishly clever book and stay there until you get to the denouement! And the tortuous sexual tension between Strike and Ellacott is very much in evidence as well!
My last recommendation is another mega bestseller from Britain, The Bullet that Missed by Richard Osman. Again, regulars will know I really enjoyed both of the earlier books in the Thursday Murder Club series. I talk about the first book in the series, The Thursday Murder Club, here: https://annacampbell.com/my-favorite-things/2021-2/february-2021/
This third installment is jam-packed with the charming characters, ingenious plotting, and laugh-out-loud humor that endeared the first two books to me. For those who haven’t yet read these wonderful stories, they’re based around a group of elderly people at a very swish retirement home in England who get together every Thursday to solve a cold case murder.
This time round, the murder took place ten years ago. The victim was an up-and-coming young TV journalist who was about to expose a major tax fraud.
In between the club’s cold case investigations, the mysterious Elizabeth, who was once a spy, becomes embroiled in dangerous games with old Cold War adversaries and new cyber criminals. It’s a delight to see how these two plots intertwine over the course of the book. Very clever!
This book makes for the perfect Christmas read and will leave you with a smile before you open your presents!
See you next month for three recommendations from the general fiction basket! And happy Holidays to all!