The World's Finest Mystery... by Ed Gorman

and shy demeanor, but I reckon she is a major talent and here to stay. Another left-of-field blockbuster appeared in the Spring as a paperback original: Jake Arnott's The Long Firm , a sardonic and powerful tale inspired by the notorious Kray brothers East End empire of thuggery, with a strong gay, ironic voice that made it very much a word-of-mouth success. This was soon to be followed by J. J. Connolly's Layer Cake , another first-person tale of a career criminal whose world is collapsing around him, another literary debut sparkling with zest and originality. All three books, although undoubtedly belonging to the crime and mystery genre, were not marketed as such, which allows a pause for thought, but then neither of the authors originated within the crime community. This is a trend that is accelerating in Britain, with so many new, younger authors adopting the genre as matter of course, regardless of clichés and traditions. A healthy trend, if you ask me.
     
     
The year also began with Ian Rankin's Set in Darkness , the twelfth Inspector Rebus, and the novel that established his unchallenged domination of the best-selling lists, where most of his backlist camped throughout the year. (At one stage his novels occupied eight of the top fifteen positions on the Scottish best-seller lists!) Many other well-established writers came out with new books: Michael Gilbert, still active in his eighties, with The Mathematics of Murder , a short-story collection; Catherine Aird ( Little Knell ); Simon Brett ( The Body on the Beach ); Natasha Cooper ( Prey to All ); Ruth Dudley-Edwards (the comedic Anglo-Irish Murders ); Jonathan Gash ( Die Dancing , featuring his new heroine Dr. Clare Burtonall); Paula Gosling ( Underneath Every Stone ); Reginald Hill ( Arms and the Woman ); Sarah Caudwell (the posthumous The Sirens Sang of Murder , which sadly only appeared in the U.S.A.); Bill James ( Kill Me ); Margaret Yorke ( A Case to Answer ); June Thomson ( The Unquiet Grave ); Quintin Jardine (with two books: Screen Savers , featuring Oz Blackstone, and Thursday's Legends , featuring Skinner); Val McDermid ( Killing in the Shadows ); H. R. F. Keating (another recidivist, with The Last Detective , and his final Inspector Ghote mystery, Breaking and Entering ); Nicolas Freeling ( Some Day Tomorrow ); Martina Cole ( Broken , another of her wildly successful East End gangster moll sagas, which outsell most other better-known British authors by a mile and more); Michael Dibdin ( Thanksgiving , a haunting, elegiac noir excursion that disappointed many reviewers used to his pithy Inspector Zen chronicles, but which I adored); Roy Lewis ( Forms of Death ); Jo Bannister ( Changelings ); Robert Barnard ( Unholy Dying ); W. J. Burley ( Wycliffe and the Sign of Nine ); Gwendoline Butler ( A Cof fi n for Christmas ); Ann Granger ( Shades of Murder ); Agatha Christie… well, a novelized play by the great Christie expanded by Charles Osborne, The Spiders Web ; Janet Laurence ( The Mermaid's Feast ); Frances Fyfield ( Undercurrents ); Peter Lovesey ( The Reaper ); Minette Walters ( The Shape of Snakes ); Dick Francis ( Shattered , which might turn out to be his final book, following the death of his wife, Mary, with whom he collaborated); and Ruth Rendell twice, with a story collection, Piranha to Scurfy , as herself, and Grasshopper as "Barbara Vine."
     
     
The above list would make for an incomparable feast of mystery writing by any standards, but was restricted to well-established writers. To confirm the incomparable choice afforded to British readers, here is another necessarily abbreviated rundown of books published in 2000 by authors who have already made a distinct mark on the crime and mystery scene over the past decade; many of these will be the stars of tomorrow: John Baker ( The Chinese Girl ); Hilary Bonner ( Deep Deceit ); Russell James ( Painting in the Dark ); Carol Anne Davis ( Noise Abatement ); Janet Neel ( O Gentle Death ); Ken Bruen (