What is your favorite mystery/thriller for this year, 2012?  So many good ones.....but if you were just to pick one, (ok, make it two)  which ones would it be?

My pick---- GONE GIRL by Gillian Flynn.  I found it hard to put down!  Great character development and a clever and unusual plot.

My second pick--BROKEN HARBOR by Tana French.  I have read the previous 3 Dublin Murder Squad mysteries and loved them but I think this one is the best so far!  The author has great insight into the "unraveling of a life."  I found it to be a poignant (a story for our times) and gripping mystery.

What are your favorites?

I've read a lot of really good mysteries this year but Gone Girl sucked me in like no book ever has. I've never been so...surprised...in a book probably ever. It's truly rare to find something original, that you don't even have a hint at what's coming.

My favorite mystery/thriller this year was "Backfire" by Catherine Coulter.  She just continues to put out the FBI thrillers each year.  Lots of action, and enough plot twists to make your head spin.  Great author.

Going to have to scour my lists and see...nothing springs to mind immediately. It's been kind of a crappy reading year for me, especially with regard to mysteries...so much is the same-old same-old ho hum...very few new-to-me authors or series caught my fancy in a big way. I feel like the Grinch! LOL Going to check Gone Girl out...sounds like just what I need! Most of my best reading this year has been non-mystery I think.

Cheryl

Didn't read many books this year so it was hard to figure out just one.  So I would say it would be a toss up between three.  All new to me authors.

 Variant :: Robison Wells,

Snowbound :: Blake Crouch

The Innocent :: David Baldacci. 

One that stands out in my mind is Gods of Gotham by Lyndsay Faye. Will have to think on it if there was another that really sticks with me.....

I thought Nancy Pickard's The Scent of Rain and Lightning was pretty good, also The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton.  I loved The Coroner's Lunch by Colin Cotterill but I know a number of people who were unhappy because of the supernatural element but both the settings and the characters were unique. 

I've been lucky with the number of new books and authors I've read this year.  The annual mystery challenge was a great help in pushing myself to try authors I wouldn't have considered otherwise.  The challenge discussion thread is also a great way for me to find out about new authors/books. 

Now that the year is finally over, I can give you my answer!

Sadly, I didn't read that many good mysteries or thrillers - or mystery/thrillers - this year.   But then I didn't read nearly as many books as usual at all thanks to other priorities.   Most of my reading was audio books on my daily commute.

#1 has to be The Passage by Justin Cronin, a post-apocalypic thriller which grew on me over it's 800+ pages.   

A close runner-up is the whole Faefever series my Karen Marie Moning.  This paranormal thriller series grabbed like no other series has since the Hunger Games.  I read them almost back to back, and I almost never do that.

Honorable Mentions:

• Darkness, My Old Friend by Lisa Unger (the follow up to Fragile - and Lisa promised me more in this 'Hollows" series). 
• The Lady Chapel by Candace Robb (2nd in the medieval Owen Archer series) - Intricately plotted story that took me right into medieival York, England.
• Tomb of the Golden Bird by Elizabeth Peters (18th? in the Ameilia Peabody series) - I had been waiting for soooo long for this series to get to the book where King Tut's tomb was discovered, and it did not disappoint.
• V is for Vengeance by Sue Grafton - As Grafton nears the end of the Alphabet series, she proves that she's still got it.
• Dead March by Ann McMillan - a Civil War mystery
• The Silent Girl by Tess Gerritson - the latest entry in the Rizolli and Isles series that that us to Boston's Chinatown and it's legends.

And although you didn't ask for it, here are the books that get my Razzie awards for the worst mysteries or thrillers that I read this year:

• Liver Let Die by Liz Lipperman (1st in the Clueless Cook cozy mystery series).  I'm sorry, but this was just really bad.    Near the beginning of the book the main character has to do a review of a liver dish at a restaurant for her newspaper.   She hates liver, so instead of eating it, she dumps the whole dish in her purse .... her BORROWED purse.   Who does that?   And IMO it went downhill from there. 
• From the Corner of His Eye by Dean Koontz.    Ok, it wasn't terrible, but several people (not from here I don't think) had recommended the book and it wasn't that great.     I was probably comparing it to the first few Odd Thomas books, which are among my favorites.

My favorite list for 2012 is:

Love You More by Lisa Gardner

Live to Tell by Lisa Gardner

24 Hours by Greg Iles

Sleep Tight by Anne Frazier