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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San Francisco, San Fran! What a location, what a bridge, what a history of crime and vice. From the legendarily wild Red Light district of the Barbary Coast, born out of the California Gold Rush of 1849, to today’s Silicon Valley, born out entrepreneurship and hi-tech skills (along with a little skulduggery and corporate shenanigans of course). San Francisco has survived earthquake, fire, and epidemic. It’s been city of almost constant physical, social and political fracture. It’s a liminal city—as far as you can go on the US mainland before it becomes Asia. A country that started in the east, ends in the west, pretty much at San Francisco. For those on the run it’s all t…
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Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Samantha Downing, For Your Own Good (Berkley) Just finished reading this wonderfully dark, twisty and compelling thriller set in a prestigious private school. I raced through it, desperate to know how it would end.” –B.A. Paris Owen Matthews, Red Traitor (Doubleday) “Cold War buffs will particularly enjoy the ride, though any reader who appreciates the finer points of espionage and foreign intrigue will also be well satisfied.” –Publisher’s Weekly Daniel Silva, The Cellist (Harper) “Gabriel Allon goes after the deadliest weapon at the Russian president’s disposal—his money…
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As it’s been said lately, Netflix is all either murder or cakes. Our appetite for crime in shows, movies, or books is—and probably has always been—seemingly insatiable. Growing up, my sister was a true-crime buff, and the original Law and Order was a staple in our rotation when we got older, which I realize now is dating me a bit. Crime is everywhere and in seemingly every form: fictional, true, procedural, cerebral, violent, forensic, legal, white-collar, solved, and unsolved. But from what I’ve read and watched, one aspect is largely underrepresented: the victim’s perspective. Though many perpetrators of financial or other white-collar crimes convince themselves that t…
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Crime investigation is a daunting process. It involves numerous hours of tedious and meticulous gathering and analyzing of physical and trace (forensic) evidence, searching for and interviewing witnesses, as well as figuring out the motive, and, in some cases, the mod us operandi. After and only after the evidence is conclusively verified would the offender be tracked down and arrested. Circa 1990, before the World Wide Web (www) was made a public domain and became an integral part of our everyday life, crime was viewed as a tripartite affair. An affair confined between the victim and family, the perpetrator and accomplices and the investigator (police). Some may say, the…
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When I was in high school, a friend invited me for Sunday services at the church where her father was pastor. There was much that intrigued me (including the fact that her mother had been “saved” in this church—and could never again wear pants). It didn’t occur to me to ask what religion they belonged to—I jumped at the chance to visit a place I’d secretly come to associate with belonging and authenticity. You couldn’t really be Black in my all-Black Long Island neighborhood unless you went to church—period. My block formed the north side of a cul-de-sac loop, where the houses were green and evenly-shingled and pleasant; on the south side, the homes seemed shabby and unmo…
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In 2015, American writer Robert Stone passed away in Key West at the age of 77, and the world lost a literary lion. Stone was twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, once for the PEN/Faulkner Award and five times for the National Book Award for Fiction. He always let his books do his talking and he rarely sought the spotlight. His passing was noticed by aficionados—Bruce Weber’s obituary in the New York Times was especially good—but, in general, the event made few ripples on the world stage. As a devotee who had read, and re-read, all of Stone’s eight novels, including one that I believe is among the very best American crime novels, I wondered if the great writer’s legac…
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We are going to play it a little differently this month. There are so many big-name thrillers in July I could easily write a column which tells you what you already suspect, you sly minxes: new books by Laura Lippman (Dream Girl), Megan Abbott (The Turnout), Liv Constantine (The Stranger in the Mirror), and B.A. Paris (The Therapist) are all excellent books. These writers do not disappoint. Special nod to relative newbie Samantha Downing, whose For Your Own Good has already been snatched up by Hollywood in the form of Robert Downey, Jr. That said, I’m going to talk about titles by lesser-known writers, including a couple of debuts. But first, a controversial opinion: T…
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Serial killers are super cool. They’re in every moody Scandinavian crime show and lurking on the pages of every single grimdark mystery novel, but only a few leave a lasting impression. I read an unhealthy number of murder books when I wrote The Final Girl Support Group and I want to take a moment to introduce you to some I can’t get out of my mind. Big Gurl in Big Gurl (Thomas Metzer & Richard P. Scott, 1989) Years before Joyce Carol Oates and Bret Easton Ellis wowed readers with their big important literary novels, Zombie and American Psycho, told completely from a serial killer’s point-of-view, Metzger and Scott gave us Mary Cup, aka Big Gurl. We’re never quite…
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Cozy mysteries are a popular genre. But there are many sub-genres that capture the attention of amateur sleuth-lovers. One of those niches is the magical cozy mystery, a strange mix of murder mystery mixed with fantasy, paranormal or supernatural elements. I think my mystery series, the Enchanted Bay Mysteries, must on paper read like one of the most bizarre of the sub-genre. Mermaids. Murder. Mystery. But I think (I hope) it works because I write the series as realistically as possible. Does that seem contradictory? It might but if you create the world of your series based on reality that just happens to have magic in it… maybe not. For example, in A Hex For Danger, t…
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I’ve been a fan of Jordan Harper’s ever since I first read She Rides Shotgun, his Edgar Award Winning debut novel published back in 2017. I was so taken with that book, I even tweeted out a barrage of my favorite lines as I was reading it. Lines like: “She wore a loser’s slumped shoulders and hid her face with her hair, but the girl had gunfighter eyes.” There were more lines. Way more lines. All from Jordan Harper, this white-knuckle author who dropped double adjectives like atom bombs and wrote sentences sharp enough to cut. Needless to say, I was impressed. So much so I ended up reading She Rides Shotgun a total of four times, trying to suck as much magic as I c…
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There’s no place like a diner, nowhere at all like a diner. A separate piece, a more focused essay, would simply muse on the ontology of “the diner,” trace the history of the diner, evaluate the American-ness of the diner. This piece is not that, but I would like to write it anyway, because diners are my favorite things, but besides that, they also have a particular, elusive mystique. What is it about the diner that is so appealing, so satisfying? Is it the cheapness, the accessibility of the diner? The local-ness, the nostalgia? That so many of the diners we encounter today are actually relics of earlier times and different aesthetics: roadhouses along interstates, break…
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The dizzy spells should have been the first warning. A year after launching my debut novel, I was vaccinated, caffeinated and hard at work on my second book. By age thirty, I’d achieved almost every goal I’d set for myself in my teens: I was self-employed, lived alone, had cash in the bank. Hollywood was (literally) calling. I worked out five days a week. I ate organic. I was doing everything right. Yet every few weeks I found myself muddled with bouts of dizziness that took minutes, then hours, to clear. More troubling, they were soon joined by bouts of confusion and brain fog that made routine tasks like emptying the dishwasher or folding laundry into endless, laby…
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Before Jack the Ripper, before The Devil in the White City’s H.H. Holmes, the world’s deadliest serial killer was the Canadian Doctor Thomas Neill Cream. The graduate of McGill Medical School murdered as many as ten people in Canada, the United States, and Britain between 1877 and 1892, escaping suspicion and even a life sentence in prison to kill, again and again. In this excerpt from The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream: The Hunt for a Victorian Era Serial Killer, published by Algonquin Books, author Dean Jobb follows Cream from the gates of an American prison to the streets of England, where the ruthless poisoner is about to unleash his wrath on the women of London. Jo…
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The lull of waves lapping to shore. The scent of salty breezes, suntan lotion, and saltwater taffy. Flip-flop warm summer days with no agenda. This is the hidden promise when I find a cozy mystery with a waterfront cover. Instantly, I sense respite and escape, with a sprinkle of intrigue tucked inside. The waterfront setting. I desire it, in both reality, and fiction, and I know I’m not alone. We readers want this. Don’t we? We long for it. What is it about those cozy mysteries with the waterfront covers that lures us in? Doesn’t matter if it’s a sandy beach, a rocky cove, or a lake hidden within the pines. Doesn’t matter if it’s saltwater, fresh water, or a rambling rive…
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My writing career began with seventeen standalone crime fiction novels, including Oblivion, End of Story, A Perfect Crime, Lights Out, Hard Rain, and Nerve Damage. You’ve probably guessed already these are not cozies, in fact, are shifted to the dark end of the spectrum. Correct! Bad things happen to the good and the bad, and when justice is served the meal is on the haphazard side, messy and sometimes indiscriminate. But the plots all makes sense, I hope, since a story with a plot that doesn’t make sense is ruined for me, no matter how admirable its other qualities. Back to darkness. In End of Story, where aspiring writer Ivy lands a gig teaching writing in a men’s pris…
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I’ve taken countless writing classes and joined many groups, but for me, the best writing education comes from reading. I love it when I’m reading a book and the author makes a choice—a plot point, a character trait, a scene or line of dialogue—that takes my breath away, that provides a lesson in craft that I can’t help but try to apply to my own writing. Here are seven books that taught me how to be a better criminal (writer). Jane Harper – The Dry This is an easy one. It was the first book I read in the genre nicknamed “outback noir,” and in addition to its appealing protagonist and well-plotted mystery, it’s a fascinating example of how to use the setting of your s…
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“Crime writers are the nicest people.” I’d heard this for years, and it puzzled me. Really? How is that possible? People who spend their time dreaming up the grisliest, most ghoulish acts of human barbary. If they’re such nice people, what on earth drives them to write such ghastly things? Now suddenly I was one. And still asking the same question. Hey, I’d spent more than a decade of my life writing nice, quiet nonfiction books about agreeable things. Leadership. Motivation. Personal development. Some memoirs, mostly of business leaders overcoming hardships to carve out careers making quiet contributions to society. Hell, I’d coauthored the sequel to Who Moved My Chees…
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One of the bright spots of the past year has been the ability to travel virtually via the books that we read. So what a joy it was to travel from the comfort of my own couch to the world of diplomats (and their local associates) in Embassy Wife by Katie Crouch. I became obsessed with Katie’s focus on parenting and relationships and how they are complicated by being in a wildly new setting. How children become surly, how spouses become resentful, how new friendships are made. All of these things are happening in such hilarious relief in Embassy Wife. I was dying to catch up with Katie—we worked together many years ago—about so many things that we now have in common—being n…
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I love reading (and writing) books with small towns, and houses set in the woods, and a setting that feels like a character. I’m a huge fan of atmosphere, and I find myself repeatedly drawn to themes of the past, and hidden secrets lurking under the surface of a picturesque façade. So maybe that’s why reading gothic fiction always transports me—particularly that tone, where the setting feels alive, and the secrets and the past feel alive as well. In my latest book, Such A Quiet Place, I wanted to pull the boundaries of a small town setting even tighter, make it feel inescapable, even though there are roads leading in and out. I was thinking about all those same elements …
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As a child of the ‘80s, I consumed my fair share of poltergeist pop culture. Although I wasn’t a horror fan, I took a casual interest in the movies and books about fantastically troubled adolescent girls. Years later, while doing research for a supernatural novel, I found myself once again drawn in by the poltergeist phenomenon. Only this time it wasn’t the fictionalized stories that interested me, but the confounding real life accounts. For any poltergeist case, the first question is always: What was the actual cause? Ghost or supernatural force? An adolescent’s emotional turbulence? A fake? As I spent more time with these cases, however, I became less interested in the…
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Among the many challenges facing Brigadier Hinde that spring was to purge the British sector of all remaining Nazis. Denazification was a cornerstone policy of the four occupying powers, and every German over the age of eighteen was required to fill in a Fragebogen, or “questionnaire,” answering 130 questions about his or her previous employment, income, and education. “What political party did you vote for in the November election of 1932? What did you vote for in March 1933?” Some questions were as obscure as they were bizarre. “What titles of nobility were ever held by you or your wife or by the parents or grandparents of either of you?” Hinde’s specialists assessed th…
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The books below offer reality with a twist: Something about the world is not quite normal. But you may not notice at first, because they’re all about people. At heart, they’re human dramas, which want to show you fully lived-in characters confronted with situations that challenge them in personal ways. There’s not a robot in sight, and we’re still on good old Earth, usually in contemporary times. But this is science-fiction at its best, because lurking in the background is a conceit that changes everything—that permits (or forces!) the characters to expose their true natures. And while the conceit may be out of this world, the concerns and choices it reveals can feel eer…
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Like many cozy mystery authors, I love adding animals to my stories. The more the merrier. This is a trend used by many other authors, too. There’s nothing better than reading a cozy mystery and discovering there is an entire series by the same author. Wait, there is something better—when the series includes a lovable pet (or two) that assist in solving the crime! Many cozy mystery authors include pets in their stories because, let’s be honest, life is more interesting and enjoyable with our furry friends coming along for the ride. Pets are great characters, every dog I’ve owned has had his or her unique personality. Not to mention, pets are smarter than we give them cr…
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