Seven literary mysteries that embrace the gray areas

Stacey D’Erasmo is the author of five novels and one book of nonfiction. Her first novel, Tea, was selected as a New York Times Notable Book. Her second novel, A Seahorse Year, was named a Best Book of the Year by the San Francisco Chronicle and Newsday and won both a Lambda Literary Award and a Ferro-Grumley Award. Her third novel, The Sky Below, was a favorite book of the year for the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Sun Times, and the New York Times. Her fourth novel, Wonderland, was named one of the ten best books of the year by Time and the BBC, also among NPR’s best books of 2014. Her nonfiction book The Art of Intimacy: The Space Between was published in 2013.

D’Erasmo's new novel is The Complicities.

At CrimeReads she tagged seven favorite literary mysteries that embrace the gray areas. One novel on the list:

The Book of Evidence, by John Banville

You may know that Banville is also Benjamin Black, author of a successful series of terrific, conventional mysteries set in 1950s Dublin, but in The Book of Evidence from 1989, Banville as Banville turned his abundant literary imagination to one Freddie Montgomery, a murderer who is writing a confession—or is it an apologia? Montgomery has a turbulent inner life, a spectacular way with words, and troubles, terrible troubles, that really are not his fault. While he did, yes, murder someone, there were circumstances. He can explain. And he does, in prose that is as exhilarating as it is profoundly unsettling.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue