Almost finished with the Top 5 Reads of 2013 (as selected by the great and good of the writing community). Up today, it’s Chris Ewan. As well as being the author of the brilliant Good Thief’s Guide series, Ewan has now entered the world of the fast paced thriller, with bestselling books Safe House and Dead Line. Always an exciting writer and also an awesome guy, here Chris chooses his top 5 reads of 2013…

Top 5 Reads of 2013 by Chris Ewan

I’ve been fortunate enough to read a lot of terrific books this year. Here are five (secretly six …) of my favourite reads from 2013.

1. The Cry by Helen Fitzgerald (Faber)

A brave, uncompromising and innovative novel. Fitzgerald takes a heartbreaking scenario and follows it through to a devastating conclusion which is somehow also uplifting. I loved it.




2. Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway by Sara Gran (Faber)

Talking of innovative, this hypnotic second volume in Gran’s outstanding Claire DeWitt series continues to reinvent and rejuvenate the PI sub-genre with wit and style. Everyone should be reading this series and I can’t wait for book three.



3. I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes (Bantam)

If it hadn’t been for the enthusiasm of Stav Sherez (whose own atmospheric and beautifully crafted Eleven Days (Faber) I’m going to sneak into this list as selection 3A …), I never would have cracked the pages on this 700 page thriller. I’m glad I did because I raced through it in just a few days. The scope and ambition of I Am Pilgrim is simply jaw-dropping.



4. Beast in View by Margaret Millar (Phoenix)

First published in 1955, this is my first experience of Margaret Millar’s work and it won’t be the last. Lean and psychologically complex, I found it completely bewitching.



5. The Crime Fiction Handbook by Peter Messent (Wiley-Blackwell)

It’s a big personal regret that I was never able to take one of Pete Messent’s classes on detective fiction while I was a student in the American Studies department at Nottingham Uni but this is the next best thing. The Crime Fiction Handbook provides an entertaining survey of the genre but it also contains a series of fascinating essays on key works, ranging from Chandler’s The Big Sleep to James Ellroy’s The Black Dahlia and Thomas Harris’s The Silence of the Lambs, each of which revealed a host of new things to me which I felt like a complete dunce for not having spotted before.