End of year praise--

'Tis the end of the year and time to review the best (and worse) of everything and the ever-popular mystery books are not immune to this subjective and crowd-pleasing practice. I usually check for "the best of the year" winners for future book club suggestions and introductions to books I might miss otherwise. I have two listed here from resources I routinely use.

I stumbled across one such list last week on the National Public Radio website while looking for general news stories and it featured a modest-sized list of five titles for the "mystery and suspense novels of 2010." First on the list is Tana French's Faithful Place.

I typically look at the print version of "Booklist" as it is a professional resource for our staff but it has a useful website including the best crime novels of the year here. The list has a "top 10" with Louise Penny's The Brutal Telling (Armand Gamache strikes again in a new mystery) listed first with the books in alphabetical order by title. Included are also the "best crime novel debuts" with Bad Things Happen by Harry Dolan leading the (alphabetical) list.