The Fourteenth Annual Westies - review of the year 2022

Well, this really has been a year of extremes for me (losing my Dad and seeing the thrillers take off) but now it's Christmas and even though I'm not in the mindset for celebrating it's time to indulge in the annual blog custom and remember the good books of 2022.

It's been an odd reading year - I've had a couple of DNF (did not finish), which is unusual and  I've struggled on occasion to find material that chimed with me - but I've read the second most amount (87 books) since I began my reading spreadsheet in 2002. There's been a decent mix of brand new novels, a few books that have languished on my TBR pile for too long, some good second-hand finds (which jumped straight to the top of the pile) along with some welcome re-reads and a target to read past Book 30 in the Three Investigators series.
As always, the top 20 places were hard fought and, I think, show a nice variety in genre and tone - if I've blogged about a book before, I've linked to it on the list.
Without further ado, I present the Fourteenth Annual Westies Award - “My Best Fiction Reads Of The Year” - and the top 20 looks like this:
1:    The Tooth Fairy, by Graham Joyce2:    A White Christmas On Winter Street, by Sue Moorcroft3:    The Judas Goat, by Robert B. Parker4:    B Is For Burglar, by Sue Grafton5:    An Italian Island Summer, by Sue Moorcroft *6:    God Save The Child, by Robert B. Parker7:    Han Solo's Revenge, by Brian Daley8:    Mortal Stakes, by Robert B. Parker9:    A Is For Alibi, by Sue Grafton10:  Chasing Spirits, by John Llewellyn Probert11:  What They Don't Know, by Susan Furlong12:  Dressed To Kill, by Brian DePalma and Campbell Black13:  The Mistake I Made, by Paula Daly14:  Insomnia, by Sarah Pinborough15:  One Eye Open, by Paul Finch16:  It's Alive, by Julian David Stone17:  Billingsgate Shoal, by Rick Boyer18:  The Lizard's Tail, by Marc Brandel19:  Step Inside My Soul, by N K Curran (Steven Savile) *20:  Tron, by Brian Daley
* This will be published in the summer of 2023, I read it to critique


The Top 10 in non-fiction are:
1: The Making Of Star Wars: The Definitive Story, by J. W. Rinzler2: The Python Years: 1969-1979, by Michael Palin3: The Definitive Biography Of Billy Joel, by Fred Schruers4: Up Till Now, by William Shatner5: Howard Kazanjian: A Producers Life, by J. W. Rinzler/Howard Kazanjian6: Cinefex 30, by Jody Shay7: Day Of The Living Me, by Jeff Lieberman8: Cinefex 29, by Jody Shay9: Teenage Wasteland: The Slasher Movie Uncut, by J. A. Kerswell10: The Incredibly Strange Film Book, by Jonathan Ross
Stats wise, I've read 88 books - 45 fiction, 11 non-fiction, 16 comics/nostalgia/kids and 16 Three Investigator mysteries.
Of the 72 books, the breakdown is thus:
4 biography
11 horror
7 film-related
6 drama (includes romance)
26 crime/mystery
8 sci-fi
0 nostalgia
10 humour

All of my reviews are posted up at Goodreads here
In case you’re interested, the previous awards are linked to from here:

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