Four top crime novels featuring characters' struggles

The son of two librarians, Mark Stevens was raised in Lincoln, Massachusetts, and has worked as a reporter, as a national television news producer, and in public relations. The Fireballer (2023) was named Best Baseball Novel by Twin Bill literary magazine and named a Best Baseball Book of the Year by Spitball Magazine. His novel Antler Dust was a Denver Post bestseller in 2007 and 2009. Buried by the Roan, Trapline, and Lake of Fire were all finalists for the Colorado Book Award (2012, 2015, and 2016, respectively), which Trapline won. Trapline also won the Colorado Authors League Award for Best Genre Fiction.

Stevens’s short stories have been published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Mystery Tribune, and Denver Noir. In both 2016 and 2023, Stevens was named Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers’ Writer of the Year. He hosts a regular podcast for Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers and has served as president of the Rocky Mountain chapter for Mystery Writers of America.

His new novel is No Lie Lasts Forever.

[The Page 69 Test: The Fireballer; Q&A with Mark Stevens; My Book, The Movie: The Fireballer; Writers Read: Mark Stevens (June 2025)]

At CrimeReads Stevens tagged four top crime novels featuring characters' struggles. One title on the list:

Hell is Empty by Craig Johnson

Hell is Empty is an existential journey that touches on good and evil, life and death, dedications and obligations, mountain peaks of insight, and the depths of misery. The journey is about confronting your monsters, taking on your enemies. It’s more character study than tale of suspense but the slow-motion pursuit up this snowy, rugged peak certainly has its hair-raising moments for Sheriff Walt Longmire—and for us. As Longmire chases an escaped prisoner up and up, it’s Longmire’s conversations with Virgil White Buffalo that make Hell is Empty sing. The climb continues, the peak draws closer, the end is nigh. Along the way, Longmire consults a battered paperback copy of Dante’s Inferno. Climbing higher as he probes the further depths of hell might be pushing the obvious button but not in Johnson’s capable, understated style. The cold closes in, the light plays tricks. “There were shadows ahead, indistinct and nebulous, writhing with the flying snow. I tried to concentrate on the shapes, but as soon as I looked, they would swirl away and dissolve in the dark air.” Sure, Longmire gets his guy but that’s the way I like my stories—open-ended and full of uncertainty.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Page 69 Test: Hell Is Empty.

--Marshal Zeringue