My favorite reads from the fourth quarter of 2025.
Notice I don’t say the “best” books I read over the past
three months; these are my favorites. My ego is not such that I am willing to pronounce
anything as “best,” which is a consensus thing.
At best.
The
Black Echo, Michael Connelly. The first Bosch novel and not as fluidly
written as later books would be, The Black Echo still has all the
elements Connelly’s loyal readers came to love. If you’re a Harry Bosch fan and
wonder how things got started, look this one up.
Wolf Tickets, Ray
Banks. A re-read I enjoyed just as much as the first time. Banks is one of
those writers who makes you forget you’re reading; the book flows as if these
two guys are telling you their stories. Using multiple first-person POVs can
seem gimmicky, but Banks makes it seem like you’re coming across each of them
in a bar on alternate nights. This is the book that set the Ray Banks hook in
me.
True
Target, Austin Camacho. I don’t typically care for hit man protagonists but
I’m a devotee of Camacho’s Hannibal Jones series, so I gave this one a try. I
think I still prefer Jones – after all, he’s a PI and I’m a PI guy – but Skye
is a protagonist who can carry a series. The story is never predictable but
always makes sense, and Skye has aspects to her character – including her
pronoun – that makes this not just another hit man novel.
Winter’s
Bone, Daniel Woodrell. I re-read this a couple of weeks before we lost
Woodrell, so how great was out loss was fresh in my mind. A beautifully written
book where the writing never draws attention to itself to interfere with the
story or characterization, by which I mean Woodrell never succumbed to striving
for the ‘sentence beautiful;’ telling stories in a gripping and evocative
manner was how he naturally wrote. I think I’ve read all his novels now and
I’ll continue to come back every year or so to remind me of his extraordinary
talent.
Not
Born of Woman, Teel James Glenn. Frankenstein’s creature returns from the
Arctic to work as a private investigator in pre-World War Two New York. Glenn’s
writing evokes Mary Shelley’s voice while still giving Adam Paradise license to
tell the story in his own way. Paradise has both gifts and limitations mere
humans lack but none strain credulity once you accept the initial premise. This
book deserves all the acclaim it has received.
The
Blooding, Joseph Wambaugh. Speaking of extraordinary talents, this non-fiction
effort by another giant we lost this year shows his off on multiple levels.
Though he was the greatest writer of police procedurals ever – rivaled only by
Ed McBain – Wambaugh’s non-fiction is even better. Here he examines in detail
two gruesome murders in an English village in the mid-1980s that led to the
first instance of identifying a killer through genetic fingerprinting.
Alternately funny and painful to read, The Blooding left me sitting quietly
for several minutes after I finished it; I took a couple of days off from
reading when I was done.
