Booklist Online - The Year’s Best Crime Novels: 2008, by Bill Ott (FEATURE)
In addition to being the title of one of this year’s 10 best crime novels, Down into Darkness also captures the mood of much of our list. Before all you cozy fans start writing letters of protest, let’s face this issue squarely. As crime fiction continues to attract more and more writers of a distinctly literary bent who want to use the genre to build multifaceted characters and to explore sensitive social issues and address questions of profound moral ambiguity, it is almost inevitable that darker worldviews and less formulaic plots will come to dominate “best” lists. Our annual top 10 list is not a roundup of subgenres; it’s one magazine’s opinion as to the richest crime fiction of the year, and given who’s writing crime novels today and what they’re writing about, it’s a simple fact that the dice are loaded, for the moment at least, in the direction of darker, more complex fare. But don’t get us wrong: sometimes a good cozy hits the spot just perfectly. Just not this year on this list.
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