Kojima counted himself among the fanatic followers of the Kenzie &…

Kojima recommended Darkness, Take My Hand as his choice among the six Kenzie & Gennaro novels and regarded it as a work of exceptional caliber. He said that after reading it for the first time he investigated buying the rights to adapt it into a film himself, and that in his view none of the subsequent installments surpassed Darkness.

Kojima saw the Kenzie & Gennaro novels as more than a detective series: in a setting of violence, poverty, pain, and an apparent lack of a future, he cared that the characters kept struggling to live, and he considered that combination an expression of storytelling at its core.

Kojima finished reading William Hussey’s “Killing Jericho.” He said he totally agreed with Akiyuki Sengai’s recommendation for fans of classic mystery and that the book was really good. He described the story as being based on the history of Britain’s Traveller community and travelling fairs and told in the first person by a former police officer who has fallen on hard times; he said it initially feels like an old-fashioned hard-boiled detective story but balances serial-killer elements, clever mystery solving, and Deaver-like twists. He said the ending would surprise readers and that he was looking forward to reading more of the series.

Kojima finished reading the advance proof of Chris Whitaker’s novel “All the Colors of the Dark.” He said Whitaker elevates mystery into literature and described the novel as a story that made him emotionally invested in its characters, kept him turning the pages despite not wanting it to end and feeling dread in its latter half, and ultimately bathes the reader in a “color of hope” beneath human darkness. He called it the best book he had read that year.

“It's a mystery so I don't want to give too much away but when I read this I treated it as a work of literature.”