My Favorite Books of 2024
My New Year's resolution in 2024 was to read an hour a day, and for the first time I took Goodread’s Reading Challenge, pledging to read 36 books.
In the end, I read 89 books. I admit that 58 of them were audiobooks, but that means I still read 31 books, and they included such tomes as The Lincoln Highway and The Old Curiosity Shop. I didn’t keep a record but I think it was the first time ever that I kept a New Year’s resolution.
My reading included a lot of books published in 2024, and I’ve listed my five favorites here. Note I’m not saying they were “the best books of 2024”. I haven’t read enough books to make such a statement. And I’ve developed a deep suspicion of lists of “best books” having discovered some real lemons in them. So don’t use this as a reading guide.
Anyway, here are my favorite books from 2024 and a few thoughts on a wonderful year of reading.
By Kevin Barry
The best literary book and crime novel I read all year. What a delight it is to read this book, for the story and the mastery of the language. Set in Montana in the 1890s, The Heart in Winter follows two star-crossed lovers as they flee from a spurned husband. It’s gripping and funny and written with pure panache. Forget what I said about not using this as a reading guide. Buy this book. You’ll love it.
By James Lee Bourke
The creator of Jack Reacher calls this his best novel. I haven’t read enough Bourke novels to agree or disagree. But I’ll take his word for it because this is one fantastic read. Winner of the Edgar Award for Best Novel of the Year, the book follows a number of electrifying characters as they struggle to get by in 1863, when Union forces controlled much of the American South. I read several Civil War era books this year and Flags on the Bayou was by far the best.
By Elka Ray
Probing the limits of friendship, Ray asks how far you you’ll go to help a friend. Down-on-her-luck single mom Jo Dykstra gets a panicky call in the middle of the night from her childhood friend Dana McFarlane asking for help. Dykstra dashes to her friend’s oceanside mansion to find McFarlane’s husband dead on the floor. With great characters and well-placed plot twists, Ray keeps the pages turning to the deeply satisfying conclusion.
By Tana French
Much like William Kent Krueger, Tana French has the uncanny ability to write a thriller that unfolds at a leisurely pace. Her secret sauce: dynamic, superbly defined characters and a glorious helping of Irish colloquialism. This sequel to The Searcher again focuses on Cal Hooper, a retired Chicago cop living in a west Irish village, and his laconic teenage sidekick, Trey Reddy. Their world is turned on end when Trey’s no-good father returns to the village with a flamboyant friend.
By Adam Plantinga
What I love about Plantinga’s writing is he brings the perspective of patrolman to crime fiction (a genre in which most protagonist cops are detectives). A sergeant with the San Francisco Police Department, Plantinga devised a wonderfully original premise for his first novel. (His non-fiction book 400 Things Cops Know is also worth a read.) Retired Detroit cop Kurt Argento lands in a high-security prison in Missouri when its systems fail. All the doors are locked and the only exit is up, through floor after floor of increasingly dangerous criminals. I was delighted to learn Plantinga will release the second Kurt Argento book Hard Town in April.
Here are random thoughts and observations on my year in reading:
I reread all of the Harry Bosch novels in preparation for launching a blogging project on Michael Connelly. (It’s now up and running.) The big take-away is how consistent Connelly is, especially in his research. Books 3 through 13 in the Bosch Series are almost flawless detective stories. (I’m a diehard Connelly fan but The Waiting just wasn’t good enough to make my list of favorite books of 2024.)
I also completed all Raymond Chandler’s novels and most of Jo Nesbø’s Harry Hole series. I’m not as impressed with Chandler as I expected to be. Nesbø is pure gold.
I’m overwhelmed by a) how much great crime fiction is being produced these days, b) how much dreadful crime fiction is being produced these days, and c) the pervading mediocrity of today’s literary fiction. (A and B are not contradictions. There’s a lot of crime fiction being published today and it features a huge range of quality.) I’m not listing the dogs here, but you can find my ratings on my Goodreads page, where you can follow me, if you like.
I didn’t read enough non-fiction this year, but the best I read was Skies of Thunder: The Deadly World War II Mission Over the Roof of the World, by Caroline Alexander. The book is promoted as a history of the mission to supply China by flying materiel over the Himalayas, but it’s really a history of the Burmese theatre. It’s a wonderful story brilliantly researched. Alexander’s scathing portrait of General Joseph Stilwell was a surprise.
The literary novel I enjoyed the most was actually published in 2023: Absolution by Alice McDermott. I’ve been meaning to read McDermott since I saw her profiled in Esquire in the 1980s. Absolution is the story of a group of American officials’ wives in Vietnam in the early 1960s, before the troop buildup. McDermott writes beautiful sentences and strings them together into a magnificent story. Gotta read me more McDermott.
I’m going to do the Reading Challenge again this coming year and probably set the target at 80 books. It’s a lot, given that I want to read (yes, read) Hard Times by Charles Dickens and The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. I read a Dickens novel each year, aiming to read all of them eventually, and Dumas’ masterpiece is a book I always wanted to read. I really loved books by Karin Slaughter and Dennis LeHane this year and plan to read more of them. Other books I’m looking forward to are: Martyr by Kaveh Akbar; The Prince by Stephen Maher; The Plot and The Sequel, both by Jean Hanff Korelitz; Impossible Monsters by Michael Taylor, and of course Nightshade, the Michael Connelly novel coming out in May.
And my New Year’s resolution for 2025? It has to do with my weight, not my reading. I look like a guy who sat around reading 89 books last year and need to do something about it.
Happy New Year, everyone.
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Hi, I’m Peter Moreira, author of The Haight Mystery Series, and I hope you’ve enjoyed this article. If you want to receive my blogs regularly, please sign up for the mailing list at my website by clicking here. As well as regular blogs about Michael Connelly and other crime fiction writers, you’ll receive The Ashbury Hideaway, a free novella in ebook format. In this prequel to The Haight Mystery Series, Jimmy Spracklin’s teenage daughter runs away to Haight-Ashbury during the Summer of Love. Spracklin knows about the drugs, sexual predators and bikers in Haight-Ashbury, and he has to find her before she comes to harm.
The Haight Mystery Series is set in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood in the late 1960s. Each book is a whodunnit with hippies. Described as ‘Gritty and Groovy” (Tampa Bay author George L. Fleming) and “Fabulous” (Pamela Callow, author of the Kate Lange series), the Haight books chronicle the investigations of SFPD Lieutenant Jimmy Spracklin into homicides in the hippie enclave. If you’re interested in the 1960s, fond of San Francisco or just love great page-turners with strong characters, check out the series with The Ashbury Hideaway. I hope you enjoy the novella enough to move on to the five novels (so far) in the series.
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