It’s New Year’s Eve, the final day of a most, er, dramatic year, and this is my 79^th and final post of 2024. It’s also the time when some of my fellow bloggers review their accomplishments, perhaps name a “Book of the Year,” and make prognostications about what’s coming up in 2025 that are hopefully vague enough so that readers won’t be terribly disappointed if some promises aren’t kept!

Well, I never said I would be original . . . 

Let’s get the reading stuff out of the way first. As someone who writes a great deal about books, I never seem to read very many of them. I tackled a paltry thirty-five novels this year, which is what my friend Kate Jackson eats for February. (The Puzzle Doctor bemoaned that he “only” read 120!!) Of those titles, four of them were re-reads, all Christies, all but one of them part of the ongoing Poirot Project.

PROGNOSTICATION #1: There are twelve more Christies that I need to re-read and review in order to make sure that every Poirot title is fully represented here. Thus, you can expect that The Poirot Project will remain a regular feature throughout the year, with a review appearing on the 21st of each month. Which Poirots will they be? I ain’t tellin’ . . . although you can figure it out easily by going to my Christie Index and seeing which titles haven’t been reviewed yet. 

But why spoil the surprise?

Of the thirty-one titles remaining, eleven of them are what I would describe as “modern” books in that they are not from the Golden Age of Detection – although many of them are certainly inspired by that illustrious period. These included the latest by Anthony Horowitz, Janice Hallett, and Benjamin Stevenson (the latest novel, at least; I have yet to read Stevenson’s Christmas “bonus.”) They also included the first mysteries from two friends of mine: Kemper Donovan’s The Busy Body and Troy Hunter’s Gus and the Missing Boy. Exciting news for both is that their second mysteries will be coming out next year. Troy’s Gus and the Burning Stones drops in July, and . . . well, as long as we’re going there – 

PROGNOSTICATION #2: My first book post this year was of The Busy Body, and I’m pleased to announce that 2025 will begin similarly with a review of Loose Lips, Kemper’s follow-up in the Ghostwriter series, which you can all pick up in the States on January 21.  

There were lots of interesting reads amongst this group of modern titles from some of my favorite authors. I won’t name a book of the year, but if you asked me to give you three favorite titles, they would be: 

Agatha Christie’s Marple: Expert on Wickedness by Mark Aldridge. I’m ashamed to admit that this is the only non-fiction work about mysteries that I read all year, but at least I picked one of the best. Here, Mark does for Jane Marple what he previously accomplished with Hercule Poirot. It’s a long read that moves quickly, and, as it is Mark’s specialty, it is packed with juicy details about the various film adaptations. 

Moonflower Murders by Anthony Horowitz. It took me an embarrassingly long time to sit down with Horowitz’ follow-up to Magpie Murders, and while I’m not sure this sequel has the overall literary impact that the first book did, it’s possibly a better mystery overall, and it delves more deeply into Susan Ryeland’s character. I’m excitedly awaiting the third and final installment, Marble Hall Murders, which drops on May 13 in the States. 

Three Times Lucky by Sheila Turnage. This is a wonderful young adult mystery with an extraordinary narrator who reminds me of a savvier Scout Finch. Turnage wrote three more books about Miss Mo LeBeau and the town of Tupelo Landing, which I snapped up and am looking forward to reading soon. 

The twenty remaining titles all hail from Golden Age authors, eleven of them to be precise. By far, the most – nine titles, in fact – came from Erle Stanley Gardner. I am slooooowly progressing through the D.A. series and enjoyed Book #3, The D.A. Draws a Circle. But my heart belongs to Perry Mason, and the eight titles centered around the theme of marriage spanned the lawyer’s career and included many highlights (and, in the end I’ll admit, a couple of groaners.) Which leads me to . . . 

PROGNOSTICATION #3: There will be more Perry Mason on the horizon next year. Much more, in fact, because I have found a new theme that gives me a round baker’s dozen of titles to share with you. More about that theme next week, but I will say that reading Mason novels this way allows me to span the canon over and over, and not be stuck with a bunch of lemon cases from the admittedly weaker final stages of Gardner’s career. Expect a new Mason review on the 17th of each month. (Only twelve months, so the 13th title will pop up . . . somewhere!)

I also managed to read three Nero Wolfe books and enjoyed myself so much that I intend to fit a few more in next year. The same goes for Leo Bruce, whose Case for Three Detectives was so delightful that I went out and bought a bunch more of the Sergeant Beef cases. I also loved Nine- and Death Makes Ten, the latest in my ponderously long first-read reviews of the Carter Dickson canon. I’m only halfway done with a series I began in 2018; at this rate, I’ll be celebrating our nation’s Semiquincentennial long before I get to 1956’s Fear Is the Same! 

Two other authors I really enjoyed this year were Ed McBain, whose gripping kidnap thriller King’s Ransom led to the brilliant Kurosawa film High and Low; and Herbert Brean, whose The Darker the Night was an exciting New York mystery. I snapped up a bunch of McBains which I’m sure I’ll dip into, but Brean is a bit harder to find. Fortunately, I do have a copy of Wilders Walk Away teetering on my TBR pile. And expect more honkaku, – well, definitely more shin honkaku, as the modern variety seems to be more to my taste. I’ve still got The Labyrinth House Murders on my TBR, and the next in Yukito Ayatsuji’s Mansion Murders series, The Clock House Murders, is due out in 2025!

Finally, there’s one non-fiction title to which I am truly looking forward, and that is John Curran’s newest book, The Murder Game: Play, Puzzles, and Detective Fiction. When John told me about it at the Agatha Christie Festival, I knew exactly what my summer reading for 2025 would be! (The book drops on July 3.)

So many books, so little time – for movies! And yet I always make time for movies, especially since I’ve been watching so many of them in conjunction with my buds Sergio Angelini and Nick Cardillo. In February . . . well, it’s too early to spring the news, but have we got a draft for you! More about this in January, which happens to be a certain very famous detective’s very special anniversary. A celebration of his career is in the cards for PROGNOSTICATION #4. We also have a second draft in the planning stages, and since Sergio’s encyclopedia of film noir should be appearing any month now (and his fabulous podcast, Tipping My Fedora, has a very special guest coming up one of these days to discuss the noir films of Alfred Hitchcock), I’m hoping to convince the guys to schedule another noir draft in our future.

Of course, I will review any mystery films arriving in ’25, although the number of possibilities appears disappointingly slim. At least we can look forward to the upcoming adaptation of Christie’s Toward Zero and Rian Johnson’s third Knives Out movie, Wake Up Dead Man. 

I think I’ve made enough promises for now. It always pays to leave wiggle room for new stuff that pops up on the mystery scene. And while this world has become a crazier place, at least the mystery publishing world is thriving, and that is a calming influence for us all. For now, I want to thank all of you who have followed along with me on this journey through the past, present and future of our favorite genre. This is my tenth year of blogging, and while we lack the bells and whistles of TikTok and other more flashy content providers, I truly enjoy writing these posts and the interaction it generates. Feel free to drop a comment below or send me an e-mail (ahsweetmysteryblog@gmail.com) if there’s anything you would like to see coming up. 

Have a safe and Happy New Year and a fabulous 2025!