Best Mystery and Crime Novels of 2018

The last year saw the release of a variety of great Mystery and Crime reads. These are the best novels of the year that were reviewed by this blog:

The Wanted - By Robert Crais. Private eye Elvis Cole is back, along with his California cool style and his classic yellow Corvette. A worried Los Angeles mother hires Cole to investigate her teenage son's activities, fearing he's into drug use. But it turns out the kid is into things a lot more dangerous than that.

The Disappeared - By C.J. Box. Wyoming state game warden Joe Pickett returns in the popular Crime series set against a rugged Western landscape backdrop. A British tourist vanishes after her stay at an upscale local dude ranch. As Joe digs into the mystery, he comes up against a powerful wind power utility that may be involved.

Twisted Prey - By John Sandford. Another bullet-paced thriller featuring U.S. Marshal Lucas Davenport. A assassination attempt is made on a U.S. Senator on a lonely forest road. When Lucas investigates, he faces a cold blooded sociopath with political ambitions, who masterminds several murders in order to further her own Senate campaign.

The Dry - By Jane Harper. Set in the barren Outback of Australia, where a small town is suffering from an endless drought and reeling from a horrific local crime. Federal Police Agent Aaron Falk tries to unravel the mystery of why a local farmer would kill his family and then himself. Or did he?

The Witch Elm - By Tana French. An engrossing psychological mystery in which fate and coincidence play twisted roles in the course of fatal events. A young man is the victim of a brutal attack that leaves him with a serious head injury. Then he becomes a suspect in a murder case from years earlier.

Dark Sacred Night - By Michael Connelly. This police procedural teams former LAPD detective Harry Bosch with current LAPD night shift detective Renee Ballard.  Bosch and Ballard cross paths on a cold case involving the murder of a teenage girl by an unknown predator who may still be out there. The two cops agree to pool their efforts to find the killer.

THE WANTED a New Elvis Cole Crime Thriller

Private eye Elvis Cole is back, along with his California cool style, in The Wanted, a new crime thriller by Robert Crais. Cole is an unconventional, wise cracking detective who drives a vintage yellow Corvette and has a Disney wall clock in his office. Elvis is backed up as always by his taciturn, hard case partner Joe Pike.

A worried Los Angeles mother hires Cole to investigate her teenage son's activities. She thinks he may be involved in drug dealing. But Elvis learns the kid, Tyson Connor, is a part of something even worse. Tyson and other kids have been breaking into high-end homes and stealing expensive things.
They stole a laptop from one home with valuable information on it. Now someone wants that laptop back and they will do whatever necessary to get it.

Tyson Connor has disappeared and one of his fellow thieves has been murdered. A pair of cold blooded hit men working for a security agency are hot on Tyson's trail, killing wherever they go. Elvis Cole is in a race to find Tyson first before the kid ends up dead.

The Wanted has a stripped down plot line that reads like a bullet as the scenes shift between Elvis, Tyson, and the pair of hit men. It's another entertaining entry for fans of this popular crime novel series by author Robert Crais.

Private Eye Elvis Cole Returns in THE PROMISE

The Promise by Robert Crais is a latest crime novel in the popular series featuring L.A. private eye Elvis Cole. Cole is an unconventional, wise cracking detective who drives a vintage yellow Corvette and has a Disney wall clock in his office.

Cole's new client hires him to find a missing woman who embezzled some company funds. But the case immediately goes wrong. A brutal murder, missing explosives, and a cold blooded killer named Mr. Rollins all make Cole realize he has been hired under false pretenses and something much bigger is going on.

The story allows Cole to meet LAPD officer Scott James, who is part of a K-9 unit along with his police dog, Maggie. Cole and James work leads together to find the explosives, but this makes James himself a target of the sadistic Mr. Rollins.

The Promise is not one of the stronger novels in the Elvis Cole series. The pairing of Cole with Scott James and Maggie adds a new element to the plot. But the storyline feels forced and over-padded at times and the climactic scenes are a let down. For a better taste of the Elvis Cole books, try The Forgotten Man and Chasing Darkness.