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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Bess I lost him. I let go of his hand to retie my laces and I lost him. My foot was loose in my shoe, I wasn’t about to waste time taking it off, and I couldn’t be falling over now. Damn laces. I could have sworn I’d tied a double knot before leaving. If Benedict were here, he’d have said I wasn’t paying attention, he’d have been clear I wasn’t doing things right, meaning his way. The only way, in his eyes. Oh, sure. He can think that all he likes, but there’ll always be as many ways to do things as there’s people on earth. Never mind that: How long has it been since I let go of his hand? One minute? Two? When I stood up, he wasn’t there anymore. I swung my arms a…
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Which of us didn’t wish, as a child, that we might be invisible for the day? What fun we might have had: eavesdropping on the adults, sneaking into rooms where we weren’t usually welcome, standing behind teachers as they wrote questions for the next day’s test. I never did get to click my fingers, disappear from sight and walk unseen into Buckingham Palace but, now in my fifties, I have finally become invisible, just as my older female friends always promised I would. The sister heroines of my novel, The Excitements, are ninety-something WW2 veterans Penny and Josephine Williamson. Thanks to their age, both are well used to being overlooked (and patronized) but, rather t…
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The first time I heard the gorgeous swoon that is the song “Sea of Love” was in 1984 when former Led Zeppelin vocalist Robert Plant formed the throwback band The Honeydrippers (a one-off group that included guitarist/co-producer Nile Rogers, keyboardist Paul Shaffer, bassist Wayne Pedzwater and drummer Dave Weckl) and released their remake as a first single. Sung in a sorrowful, soulful style, “Sea of Love” was sweet and spooky in the way that only a ballad penned and recorded in the doo-wop 1950s could sound. The original version was written and performed by Louisiana native Phil Phillips, a hotel bellhop who composed the track for sweetheart crush Verdie Mae Thomas. “…
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When the initial idea for These Deadly Prophecies was born, I had no idea how to go about penning a murder mystery. This was a tad bit of a problem, since These Deadly Prophecies is, at its core, a whodunnit. A particularly bloody one, even! And here I was, its author, utterly unqualified for the position, with not a single hardboiled detective story on my writerly resume. Let me take a moment to rewind. I was—and am—first and foremost an author of young adult fantasy and science fiction novels, by trade. I was a genre writer, but not the Agatha Christie or Dorothy L. Sayers sort. I’d read a handful of whodunnits, and consumed my fair share of TV procedurals, but never …
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A look at the month’s best reviewed books in crime, mystery, and thrillers. * Lea Carpenter, Ilium (Knopf) “While Carpenter knows how to dish out the dread that a spy story needs, what makes Ilium intriguing are the characters … This is the sort of moral ambiguity that seems to fascinate Carpenter, the way living a double life and every day making your cover, that critical and deeply embedded lie, feels real to everyone around you. It’s also what makes Ilium such an unexpectedly moving novel.” –Chris Bohjalian (New York Times) Kate Brody, Rabbit Hole (Soho) “Teddy is a complicated heroine whose ill-advised decisions and self-destructive tendencies make her l…
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Patrick Winn’s Narcotopia: In Search of the Asian Drug Cartel that Survived the CIA tells an epic story that almost nobody knows. An American reporter living in Southeast Asia, Winn introduces readers to Wa State, which has spent a half-century building a thriving economy centered on heroin and methamphetamine. Wa State is in Myanmar, but with a population of 600,000 and an authoritarian regime that collects taxes, operates schools and polices its borders, it’s essentially independent. There are lots of lurid tales about the Wa, who once made a practice of beheading intruders. But the book’s bigger story involves America’s hapless war on drugs. Winn spent several year…
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Haven’t we all felt a little murderous when we’ve missed our train? Crime novelists certainly do. There’s a legacy of murder mysteries taking place on various forms of transport – from classics such as Agatha Christie’s train-set Murder on the Orient Express to new blockbusters like Falling by TJ Newman. I’m stamping my ticket to board this club of writers with my new novel, Everyone on this Train is a Suspect, which got me thinking. Why is transportation so perfect for a murder mystery? The answer: Proximity, Pressure, Punctuality, and Peril. 1. Proximity Enclosed spaces. Trapped suspects. Doomed victims. These are all essential for any good murder mystery but they are…
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The bad guys of 1970s fashion were as practiced at slaughtering reputations with a few casual sentences as any gunslinger armed with a pistol in a Main Street showdown. For instance, here are some pearls of questionable wisdom from John Fairchild, the editor-in-chief and publisher of fashion trade bible Women’s Wear Daily for almost forty years from 1960. In his opinion, “Most women look awful in pants and should never wear them unless the pants are very well cut and the ladies are very well cut.” At the risk of making any pants-wearing ladies who are reading this article even angrier, I’ll share another of Fairchild’s [un]pleasantries: “It always astounds me that women w…
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As the world gets worse, the speculative fiction gets ever better (and maybe that’s just because we’ve finally acknowledged that we’re already living in a dystopia). The novels in this list lean heavily towards the speculative future but there’s plenty of high-concept fantasy, stellar scifi, and alternative histories as well. As an aside, there’s also lots of love! Which is nice, because I’m not a big fan of romance as the center of the story, but I do love a subplot where attraction does not necessarily equal distraction. Keep an eye out for more spinoff previews, as we highlight YA, horror, and historical novels, curated as always to please any crime fiction fan. Tlo…
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Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Lorenzo Carcaterra, Nonna Maria and the Case of the Stolen Necklace (Bantam) “A streetwise Italian Miss Marple is a shrewd amateur sleuth in this atmospheric series installment.” –Library Journal Anders de la Motte, The Mountain King (Atria/Emily Bestler) “Superb…De la Motte nimbly juggles a substantial cast as his plot grows increasingly intricate, ratcheting suspense to near-unbearable heights. This crackerjack page-turner will keep readers up late. –Publishers Weekly Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone On This Train Is a Suspect (Mariner) “Stevenson’s brilliant and creative sec…
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Galveston, Texas – named after an 18th-century Spanish military leader, port of the one-time Texas Navy, an entry point for African slaves and European immigrants. Known as the “Queen City of the Gulf” until 1900 when a hurricane all but destroyed the entire place, one of the deadliest storms in US history. Galveston recovered and rebuilt. In 1910, The Galveston Daily News also reported that Galveston was known throughout the world as “The Oleander City”. It was also known for its speakeasies, illegal casinos and rum-runners during Prohibition. So, of course, there’s some good crime writing from and about Galveston and the Gulf Coast. Back to that hurricane. Matt Bondur…
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Nature can be a harsh partner for the novelist. Trying to integrate it into a passage or entire plot is a daunting effort that doesn’t always succeed. I don’t refer to snapshots of snow-capped mountains or purple sunsets tacked onto a scene for casual color, but rather the more ambitious weaving of the land and nature into a tale to drive plot, develop character or convey underlying themes. Inviting the power and beauty of nature into a novel can be a humbling task, complicated by the many ways people experience it. “Nature and books,” Emerson aptly observed, “belong to the eyes that see them.” The cry of a loon may be a haunting summons for some, but just background nois…
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After the greed of studio bosses led to what The Simpsons would call a “scary couple of hours,” crime and mystery TV is back this year in a big way, from a chilly new season of True Detective to Clive Owen as a retired Sam Spade to Sofia Vergara as legendary cocaine queenpin Griselda Blanco. Amid the embarrassment of riches, however, one of the decade’s most underrated crime yarns quietly gears up for its third and final season, the perfect time to catch up. In an era where most premium cable makes at least some stabs at awards bait, Starz has stayed solidly populist, for good and for ill, with its biggest cash cow the pulpy 50 Cent-produced “Power” universe of shows or …
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Once a place of movie-making fantasy, a decaying movie set became the starting point for vengeance on Hollywood. Known as “Spahn Ranch,” this crumbling and deserted Western soundstage was the ramshackle home and headquarters for what eventually became known as “The Family.” The moniker represented the delinquent and motley crew of outcasts who abandoned their suburban and city lives to follow the scripture according to Charles Manson. There, living away from society and hidden away in the San Bernadino Valley, Manson and his Family came to commit the unthinkable in the summer of 1969. The carnage started on August 8 when the clan brutally killed pregnant actress Sharon …
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In the world of crime fiction (and fact) Adam Plantinga is an authority figure. A twenty-two-year veteran of law enforcement, he began his career with the Milwaukee Police Department in 2001 and has spent the last fifteen years with the San Francisco PD, where he is a sergeant assigned to street patrol. Drawing on that specialized knowledge, he authored two non-fiction books on policing and procedure—400 Things Cops Know and Police Craft; the former won a 2015 Silver Falchion award, was nominated for an Agatha, and has been called a bible for crime writers. This month, Plantinga made his debut as a novelist with The Ascent (January 2, 2024; Grand Central Publishing). Wh…
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The publication date for my debut novel, The Devil’s Daughter is days away. In a sense it’s the apotheosis of my writing career. I’ve spent decades as a working Hollywood screenwriter, which turns out to be something of a mixed blessing. The money is good. The creative experience, not so much. After years of being critiqued by studio and network executives, The Devil’s Daughter was finally my chance to write exactly what I wanted to write. The noir hero, Jack Coffey, lives in 1950s New York, a city of great jazz clubs, glamorous women, big city corruption and mob violence. It’s written in a style very much my own, but influenced by the time I spent working with Michael Ma…
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You can tell me anything. When you’re in this room, and we’re sitting across from each other, and your mind is reeling with all the bad things you’ve done to people, and all the bad things they’ve done to you, you can let it all out into the air between us. All the weird sex stuff, the compulsive jerking off, the period blood staining the gym shorts when you were thirteen, the infidelities, the regret about having kids or not having kids. You can tell me about the time you did mushrooms and made out with a window for three hours, or that time with your dad’s friend, that time you felt a stranger’s boner press against you on the subway, how you wish your mother would just…
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When I was writing The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years, a novel of haunting love and loss set in an Indian community on the east coast of South Africa, it didn’t immediately occur to me that it was a gothic novel. Looking back, it seems obvious—it had all the conventional genre tropes—the haunted house on the hill, the wild landscape, odd characters, ghostly elements and the disjointed rhythm of unease. It didn’t occur to me because these were simply features from my life growing up in my South African Indian home. It was only when I started to pick at the origins of the genre that I realized how much of the gothic existed not only in my life, but also far beyond the western …
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People sometimes ask me why I write cozy mysteries. It’s not a hard question to answer. At least I didn’t think so the first time I was asked. My response was I wrote cozies because that’s what I read. Yet that’s only partially true. I also read other types of crime fiction. But in the end, I always return to cozies. In writing cozies, whether historical or contemporary, I want the reader to be able to leave the real world behind. In Deadly to the Core (January 16, 2024), I take the reader into the world of Orchardville, Pennsylvania. Apple orchards, a café, a candle shop, a tea shop, and the somewhat mysterious, handsome owner of a neighboring orchard—who wouldn’t want …
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From the beginning of my writing journey in 2000, I have always written sleuths with moxie and plenty of spunk. As Misty Simon I started with Ivy Morris, who was working hard to not be a door mat. Then I moved on to Mel Hargrove, who was corralling a junkyard full of ghosts while making sense of her life. Next came my big break at Kensington with Tallie Graver, who was looking for a second chance while making amends for her past. Moving back into paranormal, I wrote The Magically Suspicious Mysteries, where we ride along with Verla Faeth and her friends at a Renn Faire. Now, as Gabby Allan, I’m writing Whitney Dagner, who is finally where she belongs, solving nautically t…
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So, you got locked up? No wonder you look like shit,” said Paul. “I better fix that,” said Bimbo. “Don’t want folks thinking I’m related to you.” The crew was back together, and so was the banter. We were sitting under some red paper lights and an AC vent that had been collecting dust for a decade. El Paraíso Asia was Bimbo’s favorite restaurant. A Chinese joint that was somehow the best place for Chinese food and also the best place if you were in the mood for Puerto Rican fare like tostones al ajillo. The joint had been in business for generations, and everything they made was great. I was digging in to my plate of fried chicken with fried rice and a side of tostone…
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Hercule Poirot hasn’t been brought to the screen as many times as Sherlock Holmes has, but he’s certainly had his fair share of portrayals, throughout the years. He’s been everywhere, from radio to the big screen to the small screen to the stage. The rules: as usual, with these things, I can only rank performances that I can actually watch. So, no radio (VERY sorry not to include a Poirot adaptation with Orson Welles in multiple parts), no theater, no video games. But that’s okay. That leaves us with 20 performances to assess. It wasn’t an easy job. I relied on most of my little gray cells to pull it off. Now, normally, when making these lists, I have to put together th…
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A look at the month’s best debuts in crime fiction, mystery, and thriller. * Vanessa Chan, The Storm We Made (S&S/Marysue Ricci Books) In one of the best espionage novels I’ve ever come across, a bored Malaya housewife lets a Japanese spy charm her into giving up the secrets necessary for her nation to be invaded; later, as the war continues, her guilt grows monstrous as her children suffer. –MO Nishita Parekh, The Night of the Storm (Dutton) Houston during a hurricane is the setting for this thriller featuring a South Asian family trapped in a fancy suburban home with a dead body and a lot of petty resentments. Along with various other storm-set novels com…
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Most people know that Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a result of trauma, but unless you’ve lived with it, it’s hard to really understand what it’s like. Everyday experiences and objects become terrifying. Having PTSD is like living in a haunted house, but the ghosts are your trauma and they follow you everywhere. The house I grew up in was haunted. There were strange noises, like creaking and footsteps. There were occasional cold spots or feelings of being watched, especially from the woods behind my house. While I loved that forest during the day, I wouldn’t go anywhere near it once the sun went down. I just knew something bad would happen if I went there at n…
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For a character whose screen adventures always end with, “James Bond will return,” it’s interesting how much of a struggle it has been to try to make the literary character undertake a new adventure on the page. In many ways, the fact that Bond ever graced the page again after the death of creator Ian Fleming in 1964 is surprising. Fleming’s widow, Ann Fleming, was more than happy to let Bond die with his creator. But, of course, fans were loathe to do such a thing. Literary star Kingsley Amis was the first to pick up the golden pen, penning two books that were more celebration of Bond than continuation. (1965’s James Bond Dossier, under mis’s own name and The Book of Bo…
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