That was the year that was

Over at BOOKGASM this week, we've been all about the year-end lists and year-in-review stuff.

I think the best novel of the year was Paul Malmont's THE CHINATOWN DEATH CLOUD PERIL. In our original review this summer, we said of the book, "Though exciting and swashbuckling, this is not a banged-out, first-draft, cheap-thrills throwaway. It's a literary tale about two very successful writers who nonetheless operate in a void since their publishers force them to work under pen names. There's a bit of an ongoing struggle of self-identity when you have to hide behind pseudonyms, when the public sees you one way and you feel another entirely. Malmont's moving, lyrical depiction of that struggle just so happens to involve secret codes, curvy psychics, donut chemists, hidden treasure and barrels of toxic nerve gas. Malmont's obvious love for the pulps is equaled by his imagination in storytelling."

And a little more high-minded is our choice for 2006's best non-fiction work, James L. Swanson's MANHUNT: THE 12-DAY CHASE FOR LINCOLN'S KILLER. When we first reviewed it 11 months ago, we said that "with its wide array of colorful characters both good and bad, and (John Wilkes) Booth's every hour accounted for, MANHUNT plays out like a colonial version of 24. It is the most accessible and suspenseful true-to-life tale since Erik Larson's THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY. Beautifully designed and supplemented with period photographs and illustrations, it also certainly stands as the definitive book of its subject. I don't often read history books because I find them so dry, but MANHUNT is alive. It's one to savor."

Indeed it is. Click on over for the rest of our best (and worst) picks, plus the five best sci-fi novels, nine fake books we wish would've been written, Ed Gorman's personal 10 picks, 13 books we never found the time to read in 2006 and 10 we can't wait for 2007 to bring us.