Crime Reads - Suspense, Thrillers, Crime, Gun!
CrimeReads is a culture website for people who believe suspense is the essence of storytelling, questions are as important as answers, and nothing beats the thrill of a good book. It's a single, trusted source where readers can find the best from the world of crime, mystery, and thrillers. No joke,
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The universe has been trying to get me off this planet for years. February 2015: It’s a cold Wednesday night and my Advanced Screenwriting Class (where undergraduate students complete a feature film script in one semester) has just wrapped up a scene-by-scene deconstruction of the iconic film Die Hard, which every aspiring screenwriter needs to study line-by-line. These are good kids—dedicated, disciplined, talented. You don’t sign up for a class like this unless you’re committed. I’m in my twentieth year of teaching screenwriting at Tennessee’s first film school: The Watkins Film School, a division of the Watkins College of Art. I love teaching, but the college is dyin…
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I am not known as a young adult author, but I have published two novels about an adolescent character. Travis Hollister is, in the first book, 12 years old, and in the second, nineteen. The novels, Sweet Dream Baby and Night Letter, are really one story, or the stories of two years in Travis’s life, with a gap of six years separating them. My subject here is voice, which is distinct, I believe from style. Style is a grammarian’s notion. Voice is a writer’s concern. Voice is the sound of a human being speaking, and it’s a performance that can include, I believe, the sound of a character’s thoughts. In my teaching, I have used the term, “voicey,” to describe novels, us…
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When I first had the idea for this interview series, where I’d talk to well-known crime writers about the books that they think every fan should read, it seemed self-evident that I should start with Ace Atkins, the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of the Quinn Colson series. As every writer who has interacted with him knows, Ace is a fount of knowledge when it comes to both the craft and history of crime fiction. (He and writer Megan Abbott have a regular meet-up online where they watch noir movies together and then discuss them, an event that would surely sell out within minutes if they ever felt like opening it to the public.) Atkins is unfailingly helpf…
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“Old pirates, yes, they rob I, Sold I to the merchant ship; Minutes after they took I From the bottomless pit.” —Bob Marley,“Redemption Song” This Folio Society edition of Douglass’s remarkable work marks just another stage in its existence as an intractable work of literature and a public record of slavery and the effort to end slavery. Published in the US in 1845, the book sold well immediately, and its anticipated impact, given its quite radical and bold assertions, had Douglass take flight to the UK upon publication. Whilst there, Douglass would see an edition of the book published in Dublin, and his time there would become a fit subject in the argument for collecti…
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The CrimeReads editors make their choices for the month’s best new releases in crime fiction, mystery, and thrillers. * Rebecca Makkai, I Have Some Questions For You (Viking) I was sure the true crime podcast novel was dead by now—at least, until I picked up Rebecca Makkai’s latest, which completely revitalizes this common trope. A professional podcaster returns to the private school she once attended to teach a two week seminar on podcasting and journalism; one of her students decides to investigate a 90s-era murder that the podcaster was much closer to than she lets on to her students. Every year, I look for the novels that truly respect their victims, and think c…
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What I’m about to say will be provocative. I’m sure many will disagree. But this is a hill I’m willing to die on. It’s time we accept that Bravo’s Real Housewives has become our modern-day film noir. No, really. Just hear me out. Classic film noir was one of my favorite eras in cinematic history. It was old Hollywood glam dipped in stark light and shadowy contrasts. Stylistic romps filled with complex narratives driven by crime, jealousy, greed and explosive confrontations. Taking place in downtrodden backdrops that commonly featured alcoholic hard-boiled detectives and femme fatales – characters entangled in situations that tested their morality and changed their world…
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Natasha Lester writes lush, atmospheric, and richly detailed historical novels; her latest, The Three Lives of Alix St. Pierre, takes us into the Parisian fashion world during WWII, as the glamorous Alix St. Pierre takes a job at the fashion house of Dior and starts moonlighting as an American spy. I caught up with Natasha Lester over email to chat about the book, historical research, and the timeless allure of mid-century fashion. Women in espionage have been having a moment, in fiction and in nonfiction. What’s responsible for the rise in interest in women spies, do you think? Their stories have been left out of the history books for so long, which means it’s wonderf…
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Kody Brown is a Mormon on a mission: to demystify and destigmatize polygamy. He has cast himself as the Pied Piper, the Don Quixote, and the Martin Luther King, Jr of plural marriage, a righteous man defined by family and faith. The Browns—Kody and his wives (in order) Meri, Janelle, Christine, and Robyn—came out as polygamous in 2010 when the show premiered. Their step into the public light was a legitimate political event. Most of America only knew polygamy in its fictionalized, Big Love version and in its most abject form, where a patriarch takes many wives, builds a sprawling compound for his ever-growing family, and the movements and rights of girls and women are s…
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September 1943: German forces occupy Rome. Gestapo boss Obersturmbannführer Paul Hauptmann rules with terror. Hunger is widespread. Rumours fester. The war’s outcome is far from certain. Diplomats, refugees, and escaped Allied prisoners risk their lives fleeing for protection into Vatican City, at one fifth of a square mile the world’s smallest state, a neutral, independent country within Rome. A small band of unlikely friends led by a courageous priest is drawn into deadly danger. By Christmastime, it’s too late to turn back. Sopranos: Delia Kiernan, Marianna de Vries Alto: The Contessa Giovanna Landini Tenors: Sir D’Arcy Osborne, Enzo Angelucci, Major Sam Der…
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“Why isn’t there more sex in your books?” I get this question a lot. In my DMs. In my email. In Zoom book club meetings, bookstore signings, and festival events. This, more than any other, seems to be the question my enthusiastic (and apparently thirsty) fans are burning to ask. Written inquiries are usually punctuated with fire emojis, or more commonly, a string of bright red chili peppers. When voiced by a member of a live audience, they’re accompanied by a lot of head nods and laughter. Don’t get me wrong . . . I usually laugh, too. I always open a Q&A by inviting my readers to ask me anything about my process or my books, but as it turns out, the question of sex …
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Look, I got really into Columbo during the pandemic, too, so I get it. I’m excited for the new Rian Johnson/Natasha Lyonne series, and I really hope that every episode begins with a half hour block of a movie star murdering someone and thinking they’re going to get away with it. But that’s not going to get me through a whole month. Fortunately, there’s also our old friend Joe Goldberg and a whole new society for the writers of You to skewer with their blade-sharp satire. February’s shaping up to be pretty strong. Here’s a guide to what’s coming. Poker Face (Premieres January 26 / Peacock) This is obviously the headliner for the month: Rian Johnson and Natasha Lyonne …
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Thomas Harris could never be considered prolific, publishing just 5 novels in the 44 years since his debut (66% of those novels being Hannibal Lecter-related), but he almost became a household name anyway, when he had the fortune of publishing Red Dragon (his masterpiece) and, more specifically, the bestselling phenomenon The Silence of the Lambs at a pivotal time in pop culture history. The very successful film adaptations of his Lecter novels seem to have permanently overshadowed the source material, however, and even though some might argue that the novels are as noteworthy as they deserve to be, or even slightly overrated, I still maintain this his work is the teeny-t…
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My sister and I sit outside the convenience store that’s perched where our sleepy street meets the main road in our Southeast Detroit neighborhood. There is a massive NO LOITERING sign directly above us, but we don’t know what loitering means, even as it’s intended to dissuade us from plopping down in our dirty jean shorts and worn flip flops, asking people who go inside if they can spare some change. It has only just occurred to us that this might be a way to earn money having had a stranger pitch in the extra ten cents needed to buy us two Slurpees that have turned our lips and tongues bright hues. My sister pockets the coins with a giddy, blue grin. It’s summer and we…
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November Cambridge, Massachusetts She loved the way her professor moved. The swish of auburn hair. The grace of her gestures. The nervous energy as she paced behind the podium. Madison had admired Kathryn Conroy since she heard her speak at a high school career day years before. A thousand times, she’d imagined herself following in Conroy’s footsteps. Having a career like hers. Starting out as a crusading prosecutor, taking on the mob, the drug cartels. Holding press conferences, appearing on TV, looking amazing doing it. Then getting appointed to the bench, presiding over high-profile cases, writing opinions that were read across the land. Become so renowned that she’d…
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Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Jane Harper, Exiles (Flatiron) “Falk’s investigation is a terrific one, but what makes the book memorable is Harper’s skill at plumbing personal mysteries.” –New York Times Book Review David James Keaton, Head Cleaner (Polis) “A fun, fast, crazy sci-fi romp.” –Amber Sparks Elle Cosimano, Finlay Donovan Jumps the Gun (Minotaur) “Readers who love fast-paced, action-packed mysteries should pick this up.” –Library Journal C. J. Tudor, The Drift (Ballantine) “[A] tour de force . . . This is a masterpiece of its kind.” –Publishers Weekly Jumata Emill, The Black Queen …
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Cork – Ireland’s second largest city after Dublin, but also perhaps its most remote way down in the southwest of the country on the Atlantic coast. The very western edge of Europe, the jumping-off point to America for so many. Ciara Doorley, publishing director of Hachette Ireland, recently told the Irish Examiner that Cork’s size makes it the perfect setting for a crime novel. “Cork is a really interesting setting for crime because while it’s a capital city, it also has that sense of intimacy and a really unique identity that bigger cities don’t have.” Windswept and coastal, Cork was largely a town of farmers and fisherman until the 1960’s, when it was discovered by th…
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Mystery readers savor the hallmarks of their preferred subgenres of crime fiction. To meet their expectations, the savvy mystery author should choose their words wisely. Authors must deliver the expected violence level, the appropriate sleuth qualifications, the correct level of police involvement, a vibrant setting, a compelling whodunnit, and a satisfying resolution. Since covering every mystery genre would exceed the limits of this article, cozy mystery will illustrate this premise. Cozy readers want books featuring an amateur sleuth who solves whodunnits. They expect a story where an everyday person strings together clues in such a way that they solve the puzzle. In…
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There is something grizzled, world-weary, and wise about Charlie Cole (Natasha Lyonne), the protagonist of Poker Face, Peacock’s new ten-episode detective series developed by Lyonne and writer-director Rian Johnson. She is a compact amalgam of a whole TV guide’s worth of ultra-cool, unpretentious detective characters. Both odd and slick, kooky and badass, spacy and focused, she has the canny, street-smart aura and vaguely Brooklyn dialect of Frank Columbo, the laconic, chill sensibilities and trailer-living habits of Jim Rockford, and the outwardly-rumpled appearance and insouciant supermarket-shopping patterns of Jeffrey “the Dude” Lebowski. Like all those guys, Charlie…
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There’s a crowd at the bar when I get inside, but I hang back, alone, and watch. There’s a bucket swinging in my hand, rusted tin, filled with pinkish water, and my hands are dyed red. They match the walls of The Ruby, though it’s so packed tonight, you can barely see the diamond wallpaper through the crowd. A constant hum of people talking over each other fills the room, pierced by a loud laugh here and there, like the church organ shrieking over the choir. A few people stare at me – I don’t know if it’s the bucket or just knowing who I am, but they don’t say anything. They look away, quick, back at a friend, or the stage, where the band plays It’s No Sin, the female im…
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This year brings far too many good horror novels to list them all by name, but here are a few that I’m looking forward to, and that capture a wide variety of takes on the genre at a time when horror fiction is undergoing somewhat of a renaissance. Strongly represented in the following offerings are haunted buildings of various kinds, from houses to hotels to luxury apartment buildings, along with plenty of authors blending historical and horror. Other than that, it’s hard to spot trends, other than compelling narratives and innovative use of genre conventions. Enjoy! Juan Martinez, Extended Stay (University of Arizona Press, January 17) El Norte meets Barton Fink in …
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The CrimeReads editors select the month’s best new releases in nonfiction crime. * Ali Winston and Darwin Bondgraham, The Riders Come Out At Night (Atria) In this searing history of police violence and civil rights activism in Oakland, two longtime investigative journalists unpack the circumstances that led to Oakland’s massive amount of police shootings and other officer misconduct over the past half century. The book also goes into the many half-hearted attempts to hold officers accountable and curb their violent behaviors. Monumental and not to be missed! –MO Jeff Guinn, Waco: David Koresh, the Branch Davidians, and a Legacy of Rage (Simon & Schuster) As…
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A look at the month’s best reviewed crime novels, mysteries, and thrillers. Bret Easton Ellis, The Shards (Knopf) A genuine literary event … Others before Ellis have attempted to retool the serial narrative for the internet age. Nothing has felt quite as thrilling as Ellis’s year-long, hour-by-hour performance of The Shards … Any lingering uncertainty that its brilliance lay more in the recitation than the writing can be dispensed with. The Shards isn’t just Ellis’s strongest novel since the 90s, it’s a full-spectrum triumph, incorporating and subverting everything he’s done before and giving us, if we follow the book’s ingenious, gleefully self-aware conceit, not…
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Last year’s historical fiction was all about the 60s, baby, while this year’s features more from the 1950s, the long 19th century, and the 1970s. I have bad news for Gen-Xers and Xennials: the 1990s are now historical fiction, and there’s plenty coming out about the tail end of the 20th century and the havoc wrought there-in. As continues to be predictable during the pandemic, books set in the post-WWI era are proliferating. And historical fiction continues to meld the history of forgotten voices with highly entertaining storytelling to do the important work of educating us about the past without feeling like a textbook (I assume most of the following titles will not be w…
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Hello there. Perhaps you clicked on this link because you have heard people cite Shakespeare on the necessity of killing all the lawyers and wonder if it’s a myth. Or maybe you suspect it’s one of those misquoted aphorisms, the kind that gets written on a stand-up chalkboard outside a beer hall, like the oft-attributed-to-Ben-Franklin maxim, “beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.” Or maybe you’re here because you know a lawyer. Well, first of all, the quote is real! It goes, “The first thing we do is, let’s kill all the lawyers.” It’s said by a character called Dick the Butcher in Act IV, Scene II of William Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part II, which was …
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I’ve gotten a spark for story ideas a lot of ways. When I was writing short stories for my MFA workshops, I used to get inspiration from song lyrics—so many songs are three-minute novellas of sorts, and I tried to take my own spin on what they could mean. (I remember I transformed Nada Surf’s Blizzard of 77 into a story about someone who’d lost a love one during the 9/11 attacks and was planning to run the Greenland marathon, which I’m almost positive wasn’t what the band was going for.) For Pretty Little Liars, I took inspiration from some of my favorite books—The Secret History, I Know What You Did Last Summer—as well as the show Twin Peaks and old Hitchcock movies. For…
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