The Best Crime and Thriller Books of 2022

Cosby is one of the best crime writers and this is a reissue of his debut novel. Bonus: the audiobook has an excellent narrator, Adam Lazarre-White, who also narrated Blacktop Wasteland.

Nathan Waymaker works at a funeral home but also takes on side jobs when people can’t find other help. He’s at war with the sheriff’s department — he’s a former deputy and still seeking revenge after his parent’s death. When the pastor of the local church dies, some parishioners think the Sheriff won’t properly investigate and hire Waymaker to get the real answers. This will only add to the list of enemies…

I love that Cosby writes dark crime novels with dark humor and vividly places you inside every scene. He also has a knack for making me like and root for complicated characters.

(TW mentions past suicide with detail/ stories of past addiction, overdose/ recounts child sexual assault)

This is a really funny series that should work well for fans of Stephanie Plum. You won’t be lost starting with this book, but there is a personal mystery that is threaded throughout the books that was mostly solved in the second book, so you may want to start at the beginning with A Bad Day for Sunshine.

Sheriff Sunshine Vicram is only Sheriff in Del Sol, New Mexico because her parents entered her in the election without her knowledge and she won. Now she’s trying to raise her teenage daughter, deal with all the zany characters in the town, run a station, and solve crimes, plus wrangle a raccoon who is her partner’s antagonist. Fun times! Her current case: missing women. Determined to also help out, her 15-year-old daughter. Bonus: Lorelei King narrates the audiobook, and is also the narrator for Janet Evanovich’s Plum books.