What on earth is the Grand Puzzly, I hear you cry? You clearly haven’t been paying close enough attention to the (checks) 2322 posts on this blog (not including this one), including 1748 reviews. On top of those, I award the Puzzly at the end of each month and at the end of the year, my book of the year is awarded the Grand Puzzly.

Why bring this up now? Well, this year the Bodies From The Library conference (which, alas, I can’t go to) features Victoria Dowd as a speaker, and her speaker bio mentions (quite prominently) the fact that my blog awarded her the Grand Puzzly twice! So I thought, is she the only person to have this double accolade? And why not use this excuse to share some recommendations of my various books of the year?

I started blogging in late December 2010, but didn’t do a review post for 2011. So let’s start with 2012…

2012

A book that I definitely need to re-read. It’s a huge bonus that one of my favourite authors has been a strong supporter of the blog and my foray into reprinting Brian Flynn, so I’m delighted to re-discover that my first ever Grand Puzzly went to All The Lonely People by Martin Edwards. Anyone who has been enjoying the Rachel Savernake books should really go back and check out his Harry Devlin series. This is the first one – Martin’s first book in fact – and if ever there was a case of hitting the ground running, this is it. A fabulous modern book with the classic mystery vibe running through its pages…

2013

Wow, I’d forgotten all about this one. Thirteenth Night by Alan Gordon is a fascinating mixture of murder mystery and Twelfth Night. It’s basically a story of Feste (or Brother Theophilus of the Fools’ Guild) returning to Illyria to investigate Orsino’s death. It would appear that Malvolio is back for revenge, but after fifteen years, he could be anyone. This was a really original idea, and I can’t believe that I never revisited this series of eight books – I’ve got a copy of the second, Jester Leaps In, on my shelf upstairs. Going to have to correct this.

2014

This one got the Grand Puzzly for a beautiful example of a clue hidden in plain sight. Oh, it’s a great book with a strong plot and good characters, but the central idea of Like This, For Ever by Sharon Bolton was a great one that completely passed me by. I’ve read more from Sharon over the years, but not since the ever-so-slightly disappointing The Split in 2020. Again, this is a smack on the wrist for me – let’s see if I can correct that omission. On the plus side, there should be a fair few books that I’ve missed.

2015

A joint winner this year, one of whom we’ll be meeting again later in this post. The Killing Of Polly Carter by Robert Thorogood (high on the list of authors who I’ve still not actually met) was the second Death In Paradise mystery written by the series creator featuring the original sleuth Richard Poole, the story of an impossible murder halfway down a staircase carved into a cliff-face. All the DIP books are great, as is… well, we’ll come to that soon.

The other winner is from a short-lived series that you probably haven’t heard of, namely Chef Maurice and the Bunny-Boiler Bake Off. It’s a series of three books and after they were published, I’ve not found any trace of the author J A Lang. I owe her quite a lot to be honest, as she gave me a bundle of her first title to give to the speakers at the first Bodies From The Library conference, which gave me the courage to introduce myself to a number of authors who I now consider friends. I wish I had the opportunity to thank her for that. I do hope she reads this.

2016

Another entry on the list of top mystery writers who I’ve yet to meet is Nev Fountain. As mentioned elsewhere, his Mervyn Stone mysteries helped inspire this blog way back when, and his recent return to that universe with The Fan Who Knew Too Much was simply marvellous. But in between, he wrote one of the few unreliable-narrator thrillers that has clicked with me – and I mean really clicked. I can’t recommend Painkiller, published under the “pseudonym” N J Fountain, highly enough. Another book that I need to read again – I’ve forgotten all the twists and turns, so it’s definitely time for another go.

2017

What else? What else would get the Grand Puzzly in the year when I rediscovered Brian Flynn, the long-lost Golden Age author who I’ve been instrumental in getting thirty-five of his books reprinted to date. The Mystery Of The Peacock’s Eye – the book that (slightly) changed my life… Once upon a time, it was just a tatty book I received for Christmas from my sister-in-law who’d raided a second hand bookshop – now it’s available as a shiny new reprint only slightly marred by some idiot waffling on in the introduction…

2018

One message that I often get is why don’t I review the last of the Bryant and May books by the late Christopher Fowler. It’s a good question – it might well be because I don’t want to have nothing in the series to look forward to. I’ve enjoyed the series a lot, even shedding a tear at one of finales (Fowler, it seems to me, kept trying to finish the stories and then kept going back to them). This one, Bryant & May – Hall Of Mirrors, was set in their earlier days and for whatever reason, just stood out a little more than the others. But they’re all well worth your time.

2019

Oh, that’s embarrassing. It looks like I didn’t do a Grand Puzzly that year and just did a book of the year – and it was The Mystery Of The Peacock’s Eye again, this time for the aforementioned reprint. Well, that’s embarrassing – it did have the additional introduction to it, but as I wrote that, I’m pretty sure I can’t consider that. Let’s take a look at the options. Be right back…

Okay, that was easy. I’m retroactively awarding the Grand Puzzly to M W Craven’s Black Summer, easily the best of the Puzzly winners for 2019. Do enjoy the bit with the bird…

2020

Ah, I see why the Bodies blurb for Victoria refers once to Book of the Year and once to the Grand Puzzly. It looks like I didn’t do a Grand Puzzly for the second year running. Oops. Luckily both joint winners of the Book Of The Year were also Puzzly winners, so Victoria, I hereby rename this award as The Grand Puzzly and have done so on the blog post. So it was shared by Victoria Dowd (who we’ll see again later) for The Smart Woman’s Guide To Murder and Robert Thorogood (told you he’d be back) for The Marlow Murder Club. Both the opening books to great series of classic mysteries and well worth your time.

2021

I’ve cheated again and gone back and re-worded the old blog post as once again, I forgotten that the Book of the Year was the Grand Puzzly. Consistency is not exactly the watchword of the blog, but hindsight is a wonderful, as is the EDIT button. So the Grand Puzzly for 2021 went to the bastard love-child of a John Dickson Carr book and a Jack Reacher novel, namely Anthrax Island by D L Marshall. John Tyler, a man with a particular set of skills is sent to a research base on an island contaminated with anthrax, only for one of the team to be shot dead while alone inside a locked room. A fantastic marriage of the two genres, and there are two sequels as well!

2022

Getting close to the present day, and you’d think I’d remember who won it this year, wouldn’t you? Well, no, not if you’ve met me, but let’s see… Oh, yes, one glance at the Grand Puzzly – and I did remember to call it that this time – went to Dolores Gordon-Smith for The Chapel In The Woods. Dolores’ books are homages to the Golden Age, with writer Jack Haldean as the sleuth. This is a wonderfully plotted and written mystery with the possibility that the murder weapon might be a jaguar! A great mystery novel, the best in a very strong series.

2023

This is the one that Victoria Dowd won outright. Murder Most Cold, the last Smart Women mystery to date, has our leads head to Finland only for one of their party to be found dead under a frozen lake that has been frozen solid for weeks… A unique “locked room” problem and well worth your time. If you’re an ebook reader, by the way, you can get a bundle of the entire series for a pittance. Just saying…

2024

And let’s bring things up to date with last year’s Book of the Year. Martin Edwards won it this year with the fantastic Hemlock Bay, making it two outright wins. Hemlock Bay, by the way, is a demonstration of how to write stories set in the Golden Age but do something new while still channelling the spirit of the time. A wonderful book, and let’s hop for more in the Rachel Savernake series. This is the fifth and they keep getting better and better.

So back to the point of this summary (apart from giving you a load of recommendations). Victoria, I’m sorry, you’re not the only double winner. We’ve already had Robert Thorogood with two joint wins, but I suppose your one joint and one outright win put you ahead. However, as Martin has two outright wins… no, let’s just say there are three authors who’ve won it three times each. Let’s see what 2025 brings…