Or, more accurately, the best book that I read in 2009. There are a couple books published in 2009 which are still on my reading list, so it wouldn’t be fair to judge books published in 2009. Top 5, in no particular order:

• Jack London in Paradise: A Novel – A novel about the last year in Jack London’s life set in Hawaii with actor/director Hobart Bosworth was our guide. From the author of The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril, his second book is better written and executed, but not as much fun. Hobart Bosworth’s studio is in trouble and he needs a Jack London screenplay to save it. Only London is in Hawaii, dying and believes that Bosworth has stolen some money from him. Bosworth has to try to save London to save himself. Featuring many, many real-life people mixed with a wonderful take on Hawaiian history and Jack London.
• Blood’s A Rover – The final book in James Ellroy’s Underworld USA trilogy. It has his best writing since LA Confidential, with a decrease in the short staccato sentences that made me dislike The Cold Six Thousand. Ellroy starts after the assassinations of RFK and MLK and finishes up with the 60s, taking us through the Nixon re-election and death of J. Edgar Hoover.  Now that Ellroy has dispensed with the 50s in LA, the 60s in USA, it makes us wonder what he’s going to do with the 70s and 80s. And also wonder how long we’re going to need to wait to find out.
• The Domino Men by Jonathan Barnes is his second book and sequel to The Somnambulist. Well, not a direct sequel, but it features a mild mannered English clerk trying to stop a horrifying monster from taking over the world. It’s an urban horror novel that touches on British society and politics while scaring us as well.
• Sunnyside is the second book (I’m seeing a pattern here) from Glen David Gold after his extremely enjoyable Carter Beats the Devil. Sunnyside starts with a (apparently real life) mass delusion of Charlie Chaplin being seen in over 800 places simultaneously on a Sunday in 1916 and takes Chaplin through WW1 and the rise of Hollywood. A parallel story has Leland Wheeler change his name to Lee Duncan who, while in France during WW1, found a couple puppies. Only one puppy survived and he went on to save Hollywood as Rin Tin Tin.
• Asterios Polyp by comic book writer/artist David Mazzucchelli. Asterios Polyp is an architect who’s designs have won awards, but he’s never build a building. Wonderfully written and drawn.

I’ll be doing a best of the 00’s later, but I doubt any of these books will be on that list.

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