The Best Crime Novels of the Year (So Far)

We chose the 10 best crime novels of 2023. See the complete list.

I like Scandinavian crime fiction — the darker, the better

Under the Storm, by Christoffer Carlsson

When the body of a young woman is discovered in an incinerated farmhouse, resolution was swift: It was murder, her boyfriend did it, case closed. But for the boyfriend’s nephew, Isak; the arresting officer, Vidar Jörgensson; and the entire community of Marbäck, closure is a myth about to be shattered — spectacularly.

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Give me a tense, high-stakes novel that will keep me up all night

Smoke Kings, by Jahmal Mayfield

Can there ever be restitution for the harm done to generations of Black people in America? Mayfield takes this question to a provocative extreme in this thriller, which follows four friends as they kidnap descendants of people who long ago committed racially motivated hate crimes.

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I want a historical mystery drenched in atmosphere

Rough Trade, by Katrina Carrasco

This is Carrasco’s second historical thriller to feature Alma Rosales, the gutsy, Pinkerton-trained opium smuggler who loves nothing more than a good brawl. The novel brims with the sights, smells and sounds of Tacoma, Wash., in 1888, full of docks, taverns and illicit back rooms where all manner of appetites are explored discreetly, where secrets swirl and betrayals come quickly.

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Sure, plot’s great — but I’m more interested in character-driven stories

The Hunter, by Tana French

In her follow-up to her 2020 book “The Searcher,” French continues to explore the dynamics of the Irish village where a retired Chicago detective, Cal Hooper, has moved. He is mentoring a local teen, Trey Reddy, when Trey’s long-disappeared father reappears, trailing a get-rich-quick scheme involving hidden gold and, inevitably, murder. French unspools her tale with patience, compassion and utter command.

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I’d like a speculative Jazz Age noir

Cahokia Jazz, by Francis Spufford

Speculative histories have long been the terrain of Spufford’s fiction (and occasionally nonfiction). Here, he sets out to chronicle a vanished world that never had the chance to blossom, and marries it to the rhythms of hard-boiled detective fiction. Cahokia, in Spufford’s brilliant telling, is a thriving, Indigenous-led state roiling with racial tension. Then arrives the outsider detective Joe Barrow, investigating a murder that threatens to split Cahokia for good.

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