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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I don’t believe in ghosts, but I love the idea of the dead communicating with the living in a fiction. In a traditional mystery, it’s up to a brilliant detective to follow a trail of clues around a death and then deduce who the murderer is—think of Hercule Poirot bragging about his “little grey cells.” As satisfying as that construct can be, it sometimes leaves me feeling like the murder victim is the character who matters least in a novel. The reader rarely meets them and often has no insight into what made them tick. Their death is simply the engine that powers the story, ultimately showcasing a sleuth’s dazzling skills. For me, there’s always been a powerful attractio…
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The ad copy called him, “the biggest thing in the entertainment world since The Beatles.” The New York Times labeled him Ian Fleming’s successor. The Daily Mirror called the title character in his first book, “the most modern hero in years.” However, almost 50 years removed from these headlines, few people recognize the name of Adam Diment. Readers can be forgiven being in the dark about Diment; at the height of his fame, he just vanished. Diment was a sixties icon through and through. In style and in substance, his ‘about the author’ photo was the kind of thing you’d find in an encyclopedia under the heading, ‘mod.’ Diment came to prominence in 1967, when he landed a si…
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Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Riley Sager, Survive the Night (Dutton) “Sager excels at playing with reader expectations and in concocting plausible, gut-wrenching twists.” –Publishers Weekly John Galligan, Bad Moon Rising (Atria) “As the pages turn, the author prompts readers to consider a range of timely issues (climate change, homelessness, corrosive wealth) via masterfully executed and action-packed storylines that coalesce in a shockingly memorable final act sure to leave readers eager for the next Bad Axe County thriller.” –BookPage Tracy Clark, Runner (Kensington) “Exceptional…The action b…
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There comes a moment in every long-running series character’s journey to step out of time to join the pantheon of the greats and live forever. So why has author Lee Child denied Jack Reacher—the current King of Crime Fiction—immortality? Like everyone else in the free world, I’m a fan of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series. Reacher is a modern-day Conan, roaming the land without attachment or possessions, stumbling into trouble then moving on the second he’s crushed it into dust. Child injects just enough hard-boiled metaphor into his lean, mean prose to keep us aware that while the author has chops, he’s sparing with the hatchet. Before the Jack Reacher series became the j…
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The last couple of years have kept Barry Gifford as busy as ever. Since 2019, the prolific novelist, poet and screenwriter has had three new collections of his prior work come out—Sailor & Lula: The Complete Novels, an expanded edition of his most iconic series; Southern Nights, as an omnibus volume containing three early novels; and Roy’s World: Stories 1973–2020, which collects, for the first time, all of his loosely autobiographical tales of misspent youth in Chicago—as well as a newly released Western novella, Black Sun Rising / La Corazonada. Supplementing this literary bounty are two films: the new documentary Roy’s World: Barry Gifford’s Chicago, which combin…
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I love to garden. I always have. But there came a time when my shoulders wouldn’t let me do the heavy lifting. Planting planters was about as difficult as I could manage without injuring myself. But one day when I was at a Renaissance Faire, I came upon a woman who was selling fairy gardens, and my eyes lit up. Instantly, I became enamored with the art. I’m not a crafty person—I can sew and bake and color inside the lines—but until now, I had rarely used a glue gun, so designing adorable cards or making jewelry or furniture were out. However, fairy gardening was right up my alley. There were twinkling lights and pretty plants and the most adorable fairy figurines in eac…
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A look at the month’s best reviewed crime novels, mysteries, and thrillers. Laura Lippman, Dream Girl (William Morrow) “The gifted Ms. Lippman, in this tale of a talented cad who more or less gets what he deserves, shifts between passages hard-boiled and satirical. Dream Girl offers a healthy dose of suspense and wittily skewers literary life.” –Tom Nolan (Wall Street Journal) Sarah Stewart Taylor, A Distant Grave (Minotaur) “… a fast-paced, tension-filled yarn filled with twists the reader is unlikely to see coming. Taylor tells the story in a lyrical prose style that is a joy to read. She excels in vividly portraying both the rural Ireland and Long Island set…
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In the 1970s, the streets of Harlem were no joke. Although you could still hear James Brown’s funk at the Apollo, catch a flick at the Victoria, buy 45s at Bobby Robinson’s record shop, party with mack daddy players at the Shalimar and eat chicken & waffles at Wells, the community had also become saturated with grime, crime and heroin. As a child of that era as well as that area, I clearly recall the notorious living dead junkies standing in the shadows of tenement doorways, nodding on street corners and plotting on the next person they were going to rob to pay for their fix. Some of those lost souls were disillusioned people who rarely left the hood while many othe…
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The setting of South Kilburn in my autobiographical novel Who They Was, is not a typical literary setting. It is a large housing project in northwest London, made notorious by gangs and crime. I moved there in my teens and lived in an apartment in one of the blocks until my early thirties. Those years were formative, and my experiences there are an integral part of my identity. Unlike some representations I have seen of public housing, my portrayal isn’t of a fetishized location, limited to a criminal battleground, nor is it a politicized zone that cries out about social neglect and institutional marginalization. Of course, by truthfully depicting the things I saw, those…
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On a dreary April morning in 1893, John Marshall, a Portuguese immigrant and successful farmer on Sumas Prairie in British Columbia, was found lying sprawled across the veranda of his farmhouse, his body cold and lifeless, his nose smashed in a dried blood covering his forehead. An autopsy, coroner’s inquest and murder investigation followed. Two days later, a local handyman named Albert Stroebel was arrested. The community of Sumas was shocked, unable to believe that the harmless young man, physically handicapped and orphaned, was capable of killing anyone, particularly Marshall, who had treated him like family. Two lengthy trials followed——the first ending in a hung jur…
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You probably know a sociopath. Maybe he’s the neighbor you chat with at the mailboxes who always has a funny story. So what if also takes perverse pleasure in shooting squirrels with his BB gun? Or maybe it’s your ex-girlfriend, who seemed lovely at the start but then sent X-rated photos of you to your boss when you broke up with her. Estimates vary, but current research says approximately 1 in 25 people is a sociopath, meaning your average kindergarten class contains one. Why this happens and what can be done about it is a fascinating, vexing puzzle that has inspired both fact-based research and devilish fiction. The core paradox of a sociopath—someone who appears ordin…
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Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Camilla Bruce, In the Garden of Spite (Berkley) “Bruce uses a framework of fact to create fiction that horrifies…[a] grisly historical thriller.” –Booklist Eliza Jane Brazier, If I Disappear (Berkley) “Blending the true crime compulsion of Michelle McNamara’s I’ll Be Gone in the Dark with the immersive creepy-craziness of Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects, Brazier creates a heady, pitch-dark cocktail all her own.” –Publishers Weekly Joanna Shaffhausen, Every Waking Hour (Minotaur) “Tight plotting and sophisticated surprises fuel the rich storytelling. Schaffhausen layers much em…
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At first glance Poland’s major city Warsaw can seem like one of the grittier of Eastern Europe’s capitals—not with quite perhaps having the charm or romance of a Budapest or a Prague, or maybe even a Bucharest. Thanks to Hitler wanting to wipe the city off the map the old town is pretty much gone (except for a newly built ersatz ‘new/old’ town). Then in the Cold War the Stalinist architects got a go and stubbornly, but predictably, refused to build anything with a human dimension. Now there’s new money, European Union membership, and skyscrapers are popping up. But you can’t keep a good old city down—Polish hipsters are opening up all manner of cafés, restaurants and bout…
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Crime and the City has been to Morocco before. Then we talked mostly about the crime writing coming out of, or set round about, the capital Rabat and the cities of Marrakech, Fez and Casablanca. We only briefly mentioned Tangier. But Tangier is a very special place, both within Morocco and also internationally. It sits in a key location—on the Maghreb coast of North Africa, at the western end of the Straits of Gibraltar, facing Spain and just about where the Mediterranean meets the Atlantic. This unique location gave Tangier its unique history. From 1923 to the mid-1950s Tangier was an international city, controlled by foreign colonial powers, a port gateway between Europ…
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Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * James Wade, River Sing Out (Blackstone) ”Wade, whose striking debut, All Things Left Wild (2020), traveled back a century in Texas history, uses an unlikely friendship to explore an equally wild present-day landscape…A haunting fable of an impossible relationship fueled by elemental need and despair.” – Kirkus Reviews Eric Redman, Bones of Hilo (Crooked Lane Books) “[Redman’s] local color goes far beyond touristy tidbits…[the] backstory [is] fascinating and timely.” – Kirkus Reviews Laurie R. King, Castle Shade (Bantam) “A lively adventure in the very best of intell…
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I have always loved period pieces. When I set out to write Dead Dead Girls, I knew it was because I wanted to challenge myself and write something about which I was very passionate. The idea of time travel has always appealed to me, and the best way I could do that was by reading period pieces. The thing about period pieces is that the worldbuilding, or as I like to call it, the vibes, has got to be impeccable, or I’m not going to believe it. I immersed myself in the 1920s, the clothes, shoes, and dance moves, to make Louise’s world real. I’m a very finicky and detailed reader, but I like my vibes. While doing my research for Dead Dead Girls, I spent a lot of time readi…
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When I first began working on what is now my debut novel, Shutter, I set out to write the obsessive novel that I was always searching for in a bookstore. I wanted to read about a young woman who was going through a similar turmoil to my own—which, at twenty-four, was navigating life outside of my usual definitions of daughter, student, employee. I wanted to read about someone who was distinctly untethered, as I was. For three years, my safe harbor, the only thing that felt truly mine, was this novel, this protagonist, Betty Roux, whom I believed needed my help. Recently I heard Betty described as a classic millennial. At first, I was taken aback. This definition felt sim…
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Whether you’re packing a locked-room mystery for that long-delayed vacation, seeking the perfect thriller to keep you up at night, or looking for a noir so bleak and beautiful you’ll be weeping under your sunglasses, 2021 has plenty of books to choose from. Notable trends this year include a revitalization of rural noir, the continued revival of intricate espionage fiction, and increasingly blurred boundaries between the psychological thriller and the social justice thriller. In short, we’ve got a ton of great books to celebrate this year, even though it’s only halfway through. So here are our favorites, so far, in 2021. Kathy Wang, Impostor Syndrome (Custom House) W…
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A great challenge of Hawaiian detective fiction is to depict Hawai`i authentically. It takes more than ukuleles and flower leis to accomplish this. James Fallows once observed in the Atlantic that through mysteries and thrillers imbued with authenticity we can learn about exotic and distant locales, or distant times. The Soho Crime series, featuring the world’s most remote places, testifies to the first proposition, and (say) Alan Furst epitomizes the second, transporting us to chilly garrets the Gestapo may burst into at any moment. But without such authenticity, even best-selling murder mysteries become what Graham Greene called mere “entertainments.” For most Am…
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During this last period of lockdown and isolation, we’ve all searched for ways of escape. I found mine by rereading two of my favorite authors, PG Wodehouse and Jerome K Jerome. I first discovered Wodehouse and Jerome one Saturday afternoon when I was twelve or thirteen, an impressionable age, browsing through the stacks of my local library. To say the experience was an epiphany would be an understatement. No one I knew talked like that. I never knew such a world existed. (It doesn’t, but more about that later.) I’d never read anything so funny in my life. I still haven’t. So what makes British humor so funny? Is it different than American humor? British humor has a…
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When we decided at CrimeReads that our next roundtable would be with women who write espionage fiction, I really did not know what to focus on. How does espionage work in a Trump or post-Trump world? As this roundtable was back in the dark ages between the election and inauguration, I knew we’d have to address the orange man in the room but not how to put it into an espionage context. Fortunately, our excellent panel had many ideas about the political climate and the hallmarks of espionage: double-dealing, lying, manipulating, cheating, money, reputation. Once we got into our discussion it seemed inevitable that a regime like the one recently past would be chock full of …
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Ah, school days! The grassy quads, the tang of autumn in the air, the dying screams of murdered classmates. With atmosphere like that, it’s no wonder campus mysteries have been around since the Golden Age of detective fiction. All the greats took a crack at it—Dorothy Sayers in Gaudy Night, Agatha Christie in Cat Among the Pigeons, Ellery Queen in The Campus Murders—and later innovators like J. S. Borthwick, Pamela Thomas-Graham, and Lev Raphael helped diversify the subgenre. But in 1992, Donna Tartt’s The Secret History was the first to break out of the cozy mold, becoming a crossover bestseller and changing the face of the campus thriller forever. A lush, melancholy wh…
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Raymond Chandler had a complicated relationship with Hollywood. If you’re inclined to dig around there are any number of interesting and sometimes shocking anecdotes about his time working around movies, and he certainly left behind a litany of quips on the subject. (“Its idea of ‘production value’ is spending a million dollars dressing up a story that any good writer would throw away.”) My own personal favorite has a slightly lighter air than most of the matter on offer. It’s the now legendary, possibly apocryphal story about William Faulkner, hired for a script adaptation, desperately trying to work out the plot of The Big Sleep and inquiring of Chandler which of his ch…
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tk ___________________________________ The Soothsayer: Rose Marks ___________________________________ There were so many sad women in Manhattan. They were educated and successful and desperate. They had MBAs and books on the New York Times Best Seller list and jobs in international finance; they had abusive husbands and drug-addled sons and mothers who were dying. Their daughters were depressed and their boyfriends were leaving them and their bodies were riddled with cancer. What could they do? These women had grown up believing that there was something more out there, something to cling to. And now, as they dragged their aching hearts through the city, something appe…
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While working on our recent ranking of prison escape movies, I hit a wall after thinking about movies in which the villain gets himself (or herself, possibly, but it’s almost always a “him”) caught, as part of an evil plan. In these films, it is only by “getting captured” that the next phase of the villain’s plan may commence. And then, usually, he’ll escape. Often, out of some sort of large glass box. So, these films didn’t seem like they should go on my prison escape list, but felt relevant. Hence, the mini sub-list. But of course, there are also movies where the good guy wants to get caught, so he can escape and do something. I think these instances are fewer, but sti…
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WTF is Wrong With Stephen King?
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Steampunk, a Boxed Set, & More
Finding Joy Finding Joy by Adriana Herrera is 99c! What a cute illustrated cover! This was mentioned on a previous Hide Your Wallet and appears to be a stand alone and not part of any sort of series. Have you read this one? As his twenty-sixth birthday approaches, Desta Joy Walker finds himself in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the one place he’s been actively avoiding most of his life. For Desta, the East African capital encompasses some of the happiest and saddest parts of his life–his first hom -
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Desmond’s Drops: September Edition
Welcome to a new edition of Desmond’s Drops! This month, enjoy three drops about: Combining Characters Escalations Flashbacks Email subscribers, please click through directly to writerunboxed.com to view. Look for more of Desmond’s Drops in October. Have your own bit of wisdom to share? Drop it in comments. About Desmond HallDesmond Hall, author of YOUR CORNER DARK, was born in Jamaica, West Indies, and them moved to Jamaica, Queens. He’s worked as both a high school biology teacher and English teacher, counseled at-risk teens, and served as Spike Lee’s creative director a -
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How I Started Writing Cozy Mini Mysteries for Woman’s World (and Published a Book)
By Loretta Martin “Mystery is at the heart of creativity. That, and surprise.” ~ Julia Cameron I think of cozy mysteries, a subgenre of crime writing, as felonies for fun. A mini cozy, then, is like flash fiction—short yet completely satisfying. Years ago, I edited drafts for a romance author whose work appeared in Woman’s World (WW), a weekly national magazine (readership: 5.5 million). I bought issues to see the final version of her stories. Later, I bought them for the solve-it-yourself cozy mini mysteries. As a diversion from my own writing, I began submitting stories to WW. In Febru -
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Whatcha Reading? September 2021, Part Two
http://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/WP/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Fotolia_17773066_S.jpgWe are closing out September! Can you believe it? October is busy busy (for me at least), but hopefully we can all squeeze in some quality reading time. Sarah: I’m currently reading Payback’s a Witch ( A | BN | K ) and oh wow am I enjoying it so freaking much. Chasing and clever and beautiful bits of writing. Carrie: I just finished reading Praying With Jane Eyre( A | BN | K ) which I found to be transformative – truly one of those books that makes you look at everything differently. By Vanessa Zoltan. E -
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Podcast 476, Your Transcript is Ready!
http://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/WP/wp-content/themes/smartbitches/images/podcast/header_05c.jpg The transcript for Podcast 476. Behind the Scenes of Reviewing Romance with Shana and Amanda has been posted! This podcast transcript was handcrafted with meticulous skill by Garlic Knitter. Many thanks. ❤ Click here to subscribe to The Podcast → View the full article -
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DRAINING THE SWAMPS OF BABYLON--Brian C. Lockey, Upmarket Fiction
Brian C. Lockey DRAINING THE SWAMPS OF BABYLON Upmarket Fiction Comparables: The Odyssey meets ’70’s counterculture and Southern Rock in my 97,000-word upmarket novel, reminiscent of Roddy Doyle (The Commitments), Dana Spiotta (Stone Arabia), and Nick Hornby (High Fidelity; Juliet, Naked). Hook Line: A former Rock ’n’ Roll singer makes an improbable journey home to help his aging father and reconnect with the love of his life—but before he can resurrect his music career, he must revisit the Devil’s crossroads that beset his youth. Pitch: Having -
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Chefs, Dukes, & More
Someone to Care Someone to Care by Mary Balogh is $1.99 and part of today’s Kindle Daily Deals! This is book four in the Westcott series and I thought there was a review for this one, but nope. Sometimes everything just blurs together. If you’re new to Balogh or count her as one of your faves, I highly recommend this guest post. The legendary New York Times bestselling author is back with a new Westcott novel about the dispossessed countess and wife of the late Earl of Riverdale, who throw -
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literary fiction A WOMAN IN THE RIVER, Literary Fiction – Rose Eggert
Name: Rose Eggert Title: A WOMAN IN THE RIVER or RECKLESS RIVER Genre: Literary Fiction, Commercial Fiction Comps: The Stationery Shop by Marjan Kamali meets White Teeth by Zadie Smith and The Shipping News by Annie Proulx Hook line: After the accidental drowning of her youngest child, Joline Delaney refuses to speak for years, until an old flame turned homeless vet blows a hole in the hydro dam, releasing the baby’s bones and Joline’s tongue. Pitch: The story begins in 1973. It is the time of the ERA, a Women’s March on Washington, and troops are standing down f -
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SPFBO 7 – The Fifth Quarter-Final – “EXTRA TIME”
As you may remember our fifth quarter-final – the one from the “starting anew” batch – could not be settled in “normal time.” Having read both books to the 20% mark or so, our judges couldn’t decide which of The Spear of Akvaloon and Windward deserved the accolade of Fantasy Hive SPFBO7 semi-finalist, so the contest went to “extra time.” Each judge has read on in both books far enough to clarify their judgement. We’ll go through each judge in turn and out of the five of us the decision will be on a simple majority vote to decide the sixth and final Fantasy Hive SBFO 7 Semi-finalist. So w -
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Space and Shadows
Photo by Ted A small painting hangs in my hallway. Created by a friend some years ago, it is one of my very favorite things, and illustrates a poem by Sappho: People do gossip And they say about Leda, that she once found an egg hidden under wild hyacinths When I asked my friend to paint the poem for me, I had an idea of what I wanted it to look like — a girl in a white dress perhaps, discovering an oversized egg on the ground. But I kept my thoughts to myself, and I’m so glad I did, because the end result was so much better than what I’d anticipated. Brilliantly, my friend painted neit -
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Which International Thriller Should You Binge This Weekend?
It’s officially fall in the northern hemisphere and you might well be thinking this is a good weekend to stay indoors with a bottle of something earthy and the bounty that is the contemporary international streaming scene. For me, late September is a time for things that are unusual, inventive, and in that vein I’m personally going to be watching Reservation Dogs this weekend. It’s not exactly an international thriller, or else it would be the answer to the headline above, but by all means you, too, should feel free to enjoy Reservation Dogs, now streaming on FX on Hulu, since it is sort of a -
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The Heist of the Century: Who Cracked the Manhattan Savings And Loan Safe?
Thomas Byrnes was still in his Sunday best on the morning of October 27, 1878, when he heard that the Manhattan Savings Institution had been robbed. It was unimaginable that this venerable bank, located at the corner of Bleecker Street and Broadway, within Byrnes’s own Fifteenth Precinct, had been breached. Thought to be an impregnable fortress, it featured a maze of bolts, locks, and thick steel doors that opened to a steel vault with a separate safe within. In addition to holding millions in cash and securities, the bank was a repository for the money, jewelry, and other valuables of wealthy -
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8 True Crime Podcasts You Need to Listen to This Fall
When Keats described autumn as a “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,” he probably didn’t have doomsday religious cults, deathbed confessions, and Silicon Valley intrigue in mind, but that (and so much more!) is exactly what’s in store for this fall. So grab your sweater, a warm beverage of your choice (no judgment if it’s the much-pilloried PSL), and your headphones, because autumn 2021 is a veritable buffet of just-in-time-for-Halloween true-crime goodness. The Dropout: Elizabeth Holmes on Trial (ABC News) and Bad Blood: The Final Chapter (Three Uncanny Four) Okay, I know thes -
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YA Mysteries: The Prep School Edition
Whenever I’m asked about my favorite reads, my go-to recommendations are almost always YA mysteries. I have an expensive habit of auto-buying any and every new release in the genre and devouring the books the moment I get my hands on them! My own YA mystery, This Is Why We Lie, is set to be released September 21st with Inkyard Press. The story follows Jenna and Adam as they race against time to solve the murder of a local teenager. With prep school sandals and small-town secrets, someone will take the fall. In the lead up to the release of This is Why We Lie, I thought I’d take a more in-dep -
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Motive Is the Core of Mystery
In one of the best considerations of mystery writing that I’ve heard, American historian Karen Halttunen argued in a lecture that the genre has its foundations in public execution. Murderers used to be put to death on a public scaffold, and they were expected to confess their crimes to the crowd before they died. Often these confessions (or imagined versions of them) were then made into ballads that were printed and sold to the public. With the decline in these executions, there was a decline in public confessions, and the gap was filled by mysteries: people need to know what prompted a murder
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