The Best Books of 2001

Editor’s Note: This year, the Los Angeles Times considered more than 1,200 books. As we revisited those reviews, we concluded that our contributors reserved their highest praise for 82 novels and short story collections, 23 children’s books, 25 mysteries and thrillers, 10 poetry titles, 13 books on the West and 85 works of nonfiction. Their original reviews have been edited and condensed. In addition, we have selected some of the year’s best art books to illustrate the issue.

THE COLD SIX THOUSAND

A Novel

By James Ellroy

Alfred A. Knopf: 678 pp., $25.95

*

“American Tabloid,” published in 1996, was James Ellroy’s foray into the big American historical picture. “American Tabloid” was historical montage--from high to low, public to private--wrapped in a pastiche of literary styles and artistic mediums: It was Mickey Spillane meets Georges Braque meets Dizzy Gillespie meets Hemingway meets Abraham Zapruder. It flew. It jived. It rocked. It verged on the unreadable. Hard to believe, but “The Cold Six Thousand,” “American Tabloid’s” sequel, has a style that is even more syncopated and pared-down. For with his simple declarative sentences, Ellroy has taken a primal American literary expression and transformed it into a vision of cultural and social destiny. He has located the unthinking brutality of the irrepressible American libido in an elemental innocence, the simple declarative innocence.

Lee Siegel

THE COMPANY OF STRANGERS

By Robert Wilson

Harcourt: 480 pp., $25

*

Robert Wilson lives in Portugal, where his previous taut thriller, “A Small Death in Lisbon,” mostly unfolded and where his latest spy story, “The Company of Strangers,” also takes Lisbon as its epicenter. And once again Wilson demonstrates, as Graham Greene did long ago, that thrillers are the liveliest, most gripping, most thought-provoking literary enterprises going today. The most readable too, when penned by a master spinner like Wilson. It is about history. The history of lovers, one German, one English, a couple that a hot war tears asunder and a cold war reunites; and the history of the West in the half century that begins with the London Blitz and peters out with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Within that span, history is laid out for us to sample: air raids in London, German resistance to Hitler, Salazar’s Portugal and its politics, British intelligence and its intricacies, Communist intelligence and its treacheries, mathematics at Cambridge, the topography of Lisbon, the cat’s cradle of minutiae, dedication, banality and betrayal that makes up a spy’s life and, sometimes, his death. Seemingly authentic in its sinuosities, intricate but convoluted, absorbing and brilliantly written, this is caviar for the cognoscenti. And for the general reader too.

Eugen Weber

*

THE CONSTANT GARDENER

A Novel

By John le Carre

Scribner: 496 pp., $28

*

Beautiful, young, wealthy, well-educated, Tessa Quayle is a crusader, the selflessly dedicated defender of those who cannot defend themselves, “that rarest thing: a lawyer who believes in justice.” She is also an infuriating zealot, a royal nuisance, a pain in the neck of the vested interests that she assails in her heedless campaigns against iniquity, insensitivity and malfeasance. Tessa is horribly murdered in the opening pages of John le Carre’s latest [im]morality tale. But her voluble ghost hovers, to inspire the actions and reactions of a long, moving, understated tribute to conscientious dissent that unfolds to present a fine patchwork quilt. As in other Le Carre disquisitions, the good are flummoxed, the flawed survive, the powers that be ride out their problems. Le Carre has delivered his message about global capitalists with politicians, diplomats, scientists, cops and the media in their pockets; a message easier to swallow because the fabulist writes so well.

Eugen Weber

*

A DARKNESS MORE THAN NIGHT

By Michael Connelly

Little, Brown: 400 pp., $25.95

*

The darkness more than night of Michael Connelly’s title dwells in the unsettling paintings of Hieronymus Bosch, a 15th century connoisseur of demons. Unsurprisingly, demonic devilries crowd the pages of this effervescent book. Former FBI agent Terence McCaleb has had a change of heart, quite literally, and now lives on Catalina with wife and adorable tiny daughter. He swallows 54 pills a day and organizes fishing charters. No wonder that when a sheriff’s detective, with whom he worked before, appeals to his profiling skills, McCaleb welcomes the chance to get back to doing what he does best in sunny, sinister Los Angeles. The murder investigation turns into a can of vicious worms, darker than even professionals, used to dark tortured minds, can comfortably handle. It then turns out that the murder suspect picked by McCaleb’s profiling is an L.A. police detective and an old acquaintance, Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch. Coincidence or clue? The more you read, the more maze-like become Connelly’s coils of complication, the more shadowy the mysteries that lurk around McCaleb and Bosch.

Eugen Weber

*

DASHIELL HAMMETT

Crime Stories and Other Writings

Edited by Steven Marcus

Library of America: 936 pp., $35

*

Ahandsome, compact companion volume to the Library’s “Hammett: Complete Novels,” “Crime Stories and Other Writings” includes an early draft of “The Thin Man” that bears almost no resemblance to the famous final version, plus two articles, an author chronology and notes. The bulk of the book consists of 24 of Hammett’s best short stories, many of them featuring the author’s popular the Continental Op. They’ve been available in other collections. The longer work, “Woman in the Dark,” was published a few years ago as a complete book. Marcus previously collected seven of the stories in his “The Continental Op” (Random House, 1974). But this is the largest number of the author’s gems to be found in one setting, making the book almost as valuable as “The Maltese Falcon.”

Dick Lochte

*

THE DEADHOUSE

By Linda Fairstein

Scribner: 416 pp., $25

*

Linda Fairstein, who has been head prosecutor for the sex-crimes unit of the district attorney’s office in Manhattan for 25 years, has used that considerable experience to create a bestselling series featuring the similarly employed Alexandra Cooper. The newest addition, “The Deadhouse,” offers, along with the author’s usual beguiling mix of murder, romance and suspense, an intriguing history lesson involving the titular building, an ominous structure on Roosevelt Island in the middle of the East River that two centuries ago served as a smallpox sanitarium for quarantined patients. “Deadhouse” delivers an extraordinarily well-knit mystery that the author wraps tightly in suspense before unfolding it with a flourish in the grim confines of the abandoned hospice. In the series’ debut novel, “Final Jeopardy,” Fairstein made good use of Alex and Mike’s fondness for the Alex Trebek-hosted TV show. Even if she hadn’t been clever enough to figure out another inventive way to incorporate that penchant for “Jeopardy” into the conclusion of “Deadhouse,” the crime novel would easily make my list as one of the best of the year.

Dick Lochte

*

DEATH BENEFITS

By Thomas Perry

Random House: 384 pp., $24.95

*

Thomas Perry’s “Death Benefits” is a galvanizing thriller. It makes room for several killings too, quite a few at the hands of good guys, which is preferable if one is forced to choose. But “Death Benefits” is only secondarily about murder and, mostly, about pursuit of rogues engaged in insurance fraud--with homicide on the side. Insurance fraud provides a novel approach to criminal enterprise, and the insurance industry is an intriguing venue for dirty deeds. Perry demonstrates the possibilities of the genre and does it brilliantly by way of investigations concerning certain fraudulent claims that carry his two heroes and one heroine from San Francisco through a Florida hurricane (lots of claims there!), to bucolic New Hampshire, which turns out to be more deadly than most imaginable storms. And though the end proves more predictable than the errantry, the characters grow ever more engaging and the book more trenchant as you move along. Highly recommended.

Eugen Weber

*

DEATH IN HOLY ORDERS

By P.D. James

Alfred A. Knopf: 415 pp., $25

*

In P.D. James’ “Death in Holy Orders,” an accident, or suicide, or murder, is followed by a death that may be murder too; then, in short order, by a gruesome killing. Part of a church that’s being left behind by its indifferent audience, St. Anselm’s is threatened with closing; and every death brings its demise nearer. Was an archdeacon battered down because he wanted to close the college, or did he fall victim to a personal grudge? “Death in Holy Orders” is a rueful meditation on the waning of a venerable institution increasingly inconsequential to the world around it, like the condemned college on its desolate coast. Perhaps it is a farewell too, although I hope not, from a precise, elegant and subtle writer who has conveyed so much that’s fine-spun for almost two score years.

Eugen Weber

*

EDGE OF DANGER

By Jack Higgins

Putnam: 304 pp., $25.95

*

No one shows much compunction about shooting, knifing, drowning or breaking body parts in Jack Higgins’ “Edge of Danger,” his 32nd triumphant exercise in keeping readers hugely entertained. The publisher’s blurb describes the book as a powerful thriller, and for once the blurb doesn’t lie. Generating much of the danger in the title are the Rashids, an Anglo-Arab dynasty, noble and vastly wealthy, integrated both in English and Bedouin society: three brothers who went to Sandhurst, a sister who is an Oxford M.A. and also executive chairman of Rashid Investments, which owns about half of posh central London. Russian and American interests covet the oil beneath the sands of Hazar on the Persian Gulf, home of the Rashid Bedouin and happy stamping ground of Rashid chieftains; a deadly accident propels the family into a vendetta against American and Russian oligarchs. As one Rashid explains to the head of a secret White House security detail: “The business interests in your country think they can walk in anywhere in the world, take over, corrupt, trample on people’s rights. The Russians are just the same. Well, you won’t get away with it in Rashid territory....” So it is war: just one more among the savage wars of peace, but fierce and relentless.

Eugen Weber

*

FEARLESS JONES

A Novel

By Walter Mosley

Little, Brown: 320 pp., $24.95

*

“Iwas driving in a white neighborhood in the middle of the night with an open bottle of peach schnapps in the glove compartment, a married white woman hiding in the backseat, and a stolen .38-caliber pistol next to the gear-shift on the floor.” It’s the autumn of 1954 in Los Angeles, and we’re in the middle of a thrilling and terrifically entertaining new Walter Mosley mystery, “Fearless Jones”--not one featuring his popular hero Easy Rawlins, but a new series narrator: the far-from-fearless Paris Minton. As the reader might expect of this accomplished author, Mosley tells a compelling tale, at once swift and subtle, thoughtful and full of action. His brisk descriptions and aphorisms are as vivid as ever. “The sergeant was a blocky-looking specimen,” Paris observes of a policeman. “He was like the first draft of a drawing in one of the art lesson books I sold in my store.” Bail bondsman Milo Sweet is sketched in quick strokes: “He sat in a haze of mentholated cigarette smoke, smiling like a king bug in a child’s nightmare.”

Tom Nolan

*

FLINT

A Novel

By Paul Eddy

Putnam: 340 pp., $24.95

*

“Flint” is a compulsive, edge-of-the-chair, nail-biting, fast-paced, crisply written thriller. The action moves from shady banks in the Caribbean (complex and authentic financial manipulation) to Paris (operations involving the bomb squad), Zurich (more high finance), the Netherlands and, finally, Nicosia in Cyprus, on the DMZ “green line” between Greeks and Turks. Nasty characters of both sexes come to nasty ends. Coffins turn out to have headless occupants who don’t match their accompanying identity papers. Official Lear jets get bombed out of the sky. I won’t give away the denouement; suffice it to say that for five pages I almost stopped breathing.

Peter Green

*

THE FORGOTTEN

By Faye Kellerman

William Morrow: 374 pp., $26

*

One of the more difficult feats in writing a mystery series is balancing the needs of new readers for a good story on the one hand while providing die-hard fans with fresh insights into beloved characters on the other. When the trick fails, one or the other suffers, resulting in a book that is either too much talk or and not enough action, or just the opposite. Faye Kellerman has certainly faced these challenges before, having written 12 previous mysteries featuring Baptist-raised LAPD detective Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus, his Jewish Orthodox wife. “The Forgotten” takes Kellerman’s stock elements and weaves them into one of her strongest novels, a story that is both complicated and unsettling. “The Forgotten” is one of the best entries in the Decker-Lazarus series, managing to deliver its message while offering up a complex puzzle, a pointed study of overbearing parents and disaffected teens and a genuinely absorbing family drama.

Paula L. Woods

*

FORTY WORDS FOR SORROW

By Giles Blunt

Putnam: 352 pp., $24.95

*

Giles Blunt’s “Forty Words for Sorrow” is the most horrifying horror story since “The Silence of the Lambs,” the more so because so many of its characters are fully dimensional, credible and ordinary even in their anomalousness. There’s a good cop and there’s a bent cop; there are villains who range from average to exorbitant; there are police officers who do their job and civilians trying to get on with their lives. The author is Canadian, and the riveting tale he tells takes place in the bitterly cold winter of remote northern Ontario. The plot is satanic, the tension relentless and so are the monstrous killers. Some cultures believe that hell is cold. Blunt’s marriage of fire and ice opens new abysses into the here and now.

Eugen Weber

*

THE GOOD GERMAN

A Novel

By Joseph Kanon

Henry Holt: 482 pp., $26

*

Berlin in the 20th century was a gift to writers. The more desperate, wild and debauched the city was, the more sinister and full of intrigue, the greater the raw material for those who used it as the setting for their fiction. In “The Berlin Stories,” Christopher Isherwood immortalized the city of the late 1920s and early 1930s, reveling in its decadence and producing amoral, likable characters like Sally Bowles, who would later reappear in the stage musical and film “Cabaret.” John le Carre masterfully captured the atmosphere of Cold War Berlin in “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold,” and, of course, there were Alexander Doblin, Bertolt Brecht, Vladimir Nabokov and countless others of lesser renown. It was a city that experienced freedom veering into anarchy, followed by both brands of totalitarianism: fascism and communism. What more could a writer ask for? Joseph Kanon, a former publishing executive and author of the wartime thrillers “Los Alamos” and “The Prodigal Spy,” now joins this list with “The Good German,” a novel set in Berlin in the summer of 1945. Kanon serves up a potent mix of intrigue, cynicism and an occasional flash of idealism, which adds up to a riveting yarn.

Andrew Nagorski

*

HOME KILLINGS

A Romilia Chacon Mystery

By Marcos McPeek Villatoro

Arte Publico Press:

248 pages, $12.95

*

“Home Killings” marks the debut of Romilia Chacon, a homicide detective of Salvadoran descent. Recently transplanted from Atlanta to Nashville, the rookie detective finds herself an outsider looking in on several levels--as the only Latina and woman on a good ol’ boys’ police force and as a Latina working for the law. A poet and author of a previous novel, “The Holy Spirit of My Uncle’s Cojones,” Marcos McPeek Villatoro has immersed himself in the police procedural form and has delivered a story, while conventional on some levels, that is enlivened by an enigmatic protagonist one hopes to see again as well as a richness of setting and characterizations that makes “Home Killings” one of the best novels--mystery or otherwise--you’ll read this year.

Paula L. Woods

*

KINGDOM OF SHADOWS

By Alan Furst

Random House: 240 pp., $24.95

*

Alan Furst’s “Kingdom of Shadows” is an intricate, elegiac spy story that Furst describes as historical espionage set in the shadow of impending war. Nicholas Morath, a former Hungarian cavalry officer in his 40s lives and loves in the Paris of the late 1930s--a limp, lackluster time that slides nervously toward slaughter. The best spy novels are also historical novels. Furst’s novel echoes down the alleys of time recently past that yet seems long ago. The style is subtly spun, sensitive to nuances, generous with contemporary detail and information discreetly conveyed, while cigarettes are lighted, puffed, discarded as part of the dialogue. It’s hard to overestimate “Kingdom of Shadows”: the etching of an era that’s best compared to “Casablanca.”

Eugen Weber

*

LONDON BRIDGES

By Jane Stevenson

Houghton Mifflin: 294 pp., $24

*

“London Bridges” might have been written by Agatha Christie or A.S. Byatt or Evelyn Waugh: It has real suspense, old-fashioned, vaguely academic literary ambition and a devilish way of dealing with those time-worn English preoccupations of manners and class. It also has a cast as outre as anything out of Shakespeare. The tenuous bridges that connect these characters are what nudge along this story of forgotten treasures buried in safety deposit boxes or hidden in plain sight along the Thames. These bridges also tell an affectionate tale of London itself, how the city fosters unlikely couplings and equally unlikely conspiracies.

Mark Rozzo

*

MONEY, MONEY, MONEY

By Ed McBain

Simon & Schuster: 272 pp., $25

*

“Money, Money, Money,” Ed McBain’s new novel about the cops of the 87th Precinct of Isola, a fictional East Coast city not unlike New York, takes place during the Christmas season. Appropriately, the book is an early gift for readers, a mordant but oddly cheery package that reaffirms the author’s status as a leader in the mystery field. Though it is entry 51 in the acclaimed police procedural series, it is as crisp and fresh as if it were marking a debut. One of the ways McBain (the pen name Evan Hunter uses for his crime fiction) has kept the continuing cop saga from bogging down is by shifting moods and approaches. The books consist of character studies, puzzling crimes, humor and suspense, but the weight of each element varies from novel to novel. Here, while following the convoluted trail of $1.9 million in drug cash and the woe it brings to a variety of involved participants, the author seems in an unusually playful mood.

Dick Lochte

*

THE ORANGE CURTAIN

By John Shannon

Carroll & Graf: 230 pp., $24

*

“Ray [Chandler] and me had a deal,” a 93-year-old Philip Marlowe confides to private detective Jack Liffey in John Shannon’s “The Orange Curtain.” “I’d tell him about my cases, and he’d write ‘em up, but he got most of it pretty far wrong.” It takes a certain amount of chutzpah to evoke the name of Chandler and/or his famous creation within the context of a private-eye novel. But in this case, Shannon’s self-confidence is justified. In describing his sleuth Liffey’s search for the daughter of a Vietnamese bookstore owner, he matches the master in several key areas, notably location, characterization and dialogue. As you might guess from the book’s title, much of it takes place in Orange County, a rather mystical territory for Angeleno Liffey that proves to be as perilous for him as Bay City was for Marlowe. Shannon departs from the Chandler format in one major way. He eschews first-person narration in favor of an objective rendition of the tale. This has its benefits--he’s not trapped inside Liffey’s head--but it also undercuts some of the subjective descriptive passages that would make more sense coming directly from his protagonist. Regardless, Shannon has done a remarkable update on the Chandler knight-errant, moving him to crisply described streets mean and alien.

Dick Lochte

*

SILENT JOE

By T. Jefferson Parker

Hyperion: 384 pp. $23.95

*

Apro, that’s what T. Jefferson Parker is. His plots are intricate, keenly crafted, clearly mapped; his characters complicated, yet consistent; their dialogue subordinate to fast-moving action. Clues and misdirections are fairly sown about, puzzles are plausibly unraveled, the narrative world is eventually restored to order even when, as in “Silent Joe,” its prelapsarian state is habitual disorder. Disfigured as a little boy, silent Joe’s true father is the man who adopted him and whose name he bears. Now an Orange County supervisor involved in tricky and obscure transactions, Will Trona is gunned down at the outset. Seized by a cold passion for revenge, Joe, a sheriff’s deputy, sets out to find not just who did it, but who had it done. The worldly-wise Candide’s quest for vindication exposes the blemished Orange jungle, its smeared legal and social systems, its scarred denizens, himself included.

Eugen Weber

*

STORMY WEATHER

A Charlotte Justice Novel

By Paula L. Woods

W.W. Norton: 300 pp., $24.95

*

It’s the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and Paula Woods’ detective, Charlotte Justice, is looking for justice and dealing it out. Not many shopping days are left till Christmas, but Charlotte has no time for shopping. The only black woman in the LAPD’s elite Robbery Homicide Division, she is part of a task force pursuing robbers responsible for a long string of home invasions. “Stormy Weather” is about other crimes too, but their solutions don’t come so easily. It is about black history in L.A., about black sociology in L.A., about color gradations and color camouflage, about interracial marriages and homosexual entanglements; and about Latino problems too. Woods, who writes an enticing story, sneaks in such issues more discreetly than she reels off movies, but they document the time and place. For the better.

Eugen Weber

*

STRANGERS IN TOWN

By Ross Macdonald

Crippen & Landru:

196 pages, $15 paper

*

When Tom Nolan was researching his prize-winning biography of Ross Macdonald (the pen name employed by Kenneth Millar), he uncovered three unpublished stories by the late master of the mystery novel. It was an important literary discovery, particularly for fans of crime fiction. The stories are now available in the collection “Strangers in Town.” Written over a decade, they not only stand on their own as solid crime fiction, but also demonstrate the changes in Macdonald’s style as he moved from under Raymond Chandler’s shadow to find his own place in the sun. Nolan’s remarkably researched introduction and prefaces to each story are filled with fascinating information not included in the biography. One caveat, however: They contain spoilers. Easy enough to handle: Read the stories first.

Dick Lochte

*

UNDER THE COLOR OF LAW

By Michael McGarrity

Dutton: 274 pp., $23.95

*

Each new Michael McGarrity novel about New Mexico lawman Kevin Kerney is better than the last. The latest, “Under the Color of Law,” is an amazing accomplishment that combines two usually disparate crime genres: the police procedural (non-urban variety) and the government-conspiracy thriller. He does it with intelligence and heart-pumping suspense, without skimping on either characterization or local color. In five previous books, the author has put his thoughtful, honorable hero through enough professional and personal crises to give Job pause. Here, he ups the ante by returning Kerney to his hometown, Santa Fe, as the new chief of police at the precise time that an FBI anti-terrorism team arrives to cover up a local homicide using any means necessary. The ensuing battle to the death, and the events leading up to it, form one of the most chilling and satisfying thrillers of the year.

Dick Lochte

*

UNFINISHED BUSINESS

By Barbara Seranella

Scribner: 272 pp., $24

*

West Los Angeles is a major star in Barbara Seranella’s latest police procedural, “Unfinished Business.” The heroine works in a Brentwood garage-repair shop and rents a house in West L.A.; the main cop lives in Venice; the low life squats near the airport, the high life in Pacific Palisades. Adroit, resourceful, smart, “Munch” (Munchkin) Mancini, up from a colorful past not unlike the author’s, earns her living as an auto mechanic when she’s not helping solve criminal conundrums. She’s effective at both, and she’s effective at taking care of herself, which is good, because this time she’s tangled in a doozy. One of her female clients is murdered. The writing is crisp, the action fast and furious, the thrills never sag, the book is easy to read and hard to put down.

Eugen Weber

*

YOU ONLY DIE TWICE

By Edna Buchanan

William Morrow: 202 pp., $24

*

“You Only Die Twice” begins with a body washed up on a Miami beach and ends the American way, with a lawsuit filed on behalf of the little boy who spied it, seeking damages for post-traumatic stress disorder, mental anguish, psychiatric trauma and emotional distress because deceptive advertising had lured him and his family to Miami Beach for a vacation reeking of coconut-scented suntan oil. Altogether a twisty, flurried yarn jam-packed with hot neon, torrid stories, much delving, digging and groping for news and for clues and plenty of vivid red herrings.

Eugen Weber