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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Though the idea for my second novel came to me while I was earning my MFA in creative writing, it didn’t start in a writing workshop. At Washington University in St. Louis, we filled our schedules with the mandatory workshops, but had two other courses that were entirely our own. Some of my peers chose independent study or specialized workshops to incubate their baby novels; at the time, I had no novel, couldn’t imagine stringing together more than fifteen pages. An English major, I retreated into the familiarity of humanities courses with provocative names and required readings so dense that they brought me to weekend panic attacks. In my second year, a seminar called H…
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No one who goes on a wellness retreat thinks they are joining a cult, but they often share very similar traits. There can be a set routine involving early rising, meditation, exercise and enforced silence. The leader is often charismatic, passionate, opinionated and persuasive whilst the followers are fervent, desperate and vulnerable. They’re lured in with the promise of enlightenment, peace and healing; they buy into the jargon, the promises and the exoteric practices. There are many differences of course, including the fact that no one expects to die on a wellness retreat. But it has happened and, in a largely unregulated industry, it could well happen again. My backg…
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Having decided I wanted to write about a young female spy in London on the brink of World War Two, I knew I’d be taking a deep dive into research for the project. This ‘work’ (though, happily, it never really felt like that) took me to London, Oxford and other sites in the UK, visiting archives, museums, houses, pubs and parks. As I immersed myself in these places, conjuring character, events and the specific historical era, I read some influential novels to lend flavour to my journey and add inspiration to the writing process. William Boyd’s Restless This novel inspired me to really plumb the depths of the psyche of a female spy. Boyd’s enigmatic Eva is a Russian rec…
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Delving into any aspect of the November 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy is an ambitious and even perilous endeavor. So much has been said and studied: thousands of pages of scientific evidence, hundreds of witness accounts including some that have evolved over fifty-plus years, numerous government investigations and literally thousands of books. It has long been difficult for so many to believe that Lee Harvey Oswald, who had previously defected to Russia, killed Kennedy acting alone and that less than two days later, Jack Ruby, with his loose ties to the Dallas underworld, also acting alone, so easily killed Oswald. Dozens of conspiracy theories about who…
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Each month the CrimeReads editors make their selections for the best upcoming fiction in crime, mystery, and thrillers. * Chris Offutt, Killing Hills (Grove) Offutt is overdue for a new breakout novel, and The Killing Hills may just be it, part southern gothic, part searching, seething portrait of loss and betrayal, and part an entertaining offshoot of the world of Justified. It’s set in the Kentucky hills, and when a military CID is enlisted by his sister, the town’s new sheriff, to help out with a shadowy homicide investigation, all hell breaks loose. A story full of feuds, rivalries, and crimes hiding in plain sight, The Killing Hills is as poignant and powerful …
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The forensic anthropologist’s job is to try to read the bones of our skeleton as if they were a record, moving a professional stylus across them in search of the short, recognizable segments of body-based memory that form part of the song of a life, coaxing out fragments of the tune laid down there long ago. Usually this will be a life that has ended. We are interested in how it was lived and the person who lived it. We want to find the experiences recorded in the bones that will help to tell its story, and perhaps give the body back its name. Within our discipline of forensic anthropology—the study of the human, or the remains of the human, for medico-legal purposes— th…
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It’s Pearl’s first time. She sits in the cabinet as usual, behind its black damask curtain, but already she feels like someone else. Tonight she hasn’t got the floor-length veil over her face and there aren’t any ashes smeared on her skin. She isn’t playing a spirit guide now: she’s the Main Event. She worries about how it will feel when the ghosts take possession of her. Myrtle used to screw up her face and roll her eyes – but that was all for show. Myrtle freely admits it. ‘I’m a Sensitive,’ she told Pearl. ‘I hear the voices. But that ain’t enough for ladies and gents. They want a thrill. Tables rocking. Materialisation.’ The spirits have since whispered to Myrtle …
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One of my favorite things in the entire world is to lie in bed with the lights out, just the faint glow of my e-reader lighting up the edge of my pillow as I flip the virtual pages of a thriller that, by the end, leaves me gasping. I award bonus points if it keeps me up past my bedtime. That part doesn’t feel too great in the morning, when I’m fumbling to make that first cup of strong tea, but the rush is worth it. The books that keep me up all night must have characters who, against their better instincts, must learn to be truly and deeply brave, especially when it comes to family. It’s even better if it would be easier not to change. One of my most recent favorite read…
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The scene had the air of a ritual murder. Her body was dressed in its best clothes, and paraded around for spectators to mock. He declared himself finished with her. He beheaded her in the garden, while the party watched. He broke a bottle of red wine, splashed it across her face. Then he stumbled, drunken, away, declaring later that he had no regrets. He had been “cured completely” of his “passion.” He spoke of his her as scornfully as he had once described her with tenderness and interest. That “she” was a life-size doll, and “he” a living man, and a well-known Expressionist artist, is only part of the strangeness of this Pygmalion story. * Alma Mahler in 1910. …
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An isolated chateau, a remote health spa, an off-grid hunting lodge or private island. In a destination thriller, no-one can hear you scream—except, of course, the others who happen to be trapped there too. It’s a classic crime format reworked for the age of air miles: the current vogue in fiction for far-flung “luxe-spense” turns the trip of a lifetime into a gilded locked room. Part-Christie, part Conde Nast Traveller and a firm favorite among readers even before the pandemic put a stop to our wanderlust, destination thrillers have offered plenty of much-needed escapism over the past year too. The best ones are perfectly pitched at the point where aspiration and Schad…
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Throughout most of our evolution, from when life began, death and the possibility of an afterlife weren’t conceptions on the table for contemplation. We simply didn’t have the capacity. Death was simply the end of one’s existence. Anthropological evidence indicates that humans began to have religious beliefs and to conceive of life and death relatively recently—between forty-five thousand and two hundred thousand years ago. These conceptualizations were essential to major shifts occurring in cognition and behavior that marked an era in human development known as the “great leap forward.” These shifts, rooted in the capability for complex, abstract thought and language, ha…
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“You’re crushing my balls!” Jared whispered hoarsely into my ear as he clung to my back, my right arm between his legs, my left hand gripping his right arm, his torso draped across my neck in the classic fireman’s carry. I sensed he was gritting his teeth while trying not to let anyone else overhear. Jared was a 200-pound Navy SEAL not wanting to advertise his discomfort at having his gonads flattened against the shoulder of a female, fifty pounds lighter, who was struggling to hang onto him. “Shut the fuck up! What do you think you’re doing to me?” I spat. I was hot, I was sweaty, and I wanted to get him off my back. But I was determined to make it down the field towa…
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Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Christine Mangan, Palace of the Drowned (Ecco) “Voluptuously atmospheric and surefooted at every turn, Palace of the Drowned more than delivers on the promise of Mangan’s debut, and firmly establishes her as a writer of consequence.” – Paula McLain Dolores Hitchens, The Cat Saw Murder (American Mystery Classics) “Hitchens’s use of foreshadowing elevates this above similar whodunits. That the observant Rachel is an appealing Jessica Fletcher antecedent makes the prospect of her further exploits in the American Mystery Classics series welcome.” Publishers Weekly Sujata Ma…
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I have worked in the film industry for nearly four decades in various capacities—from pyrotechnics to location scouting to screenwriting. Several years ago, one of my friends from Hollywood had purchased three adjoining apartments in one of the oldest parts of Paris that he wanted to renovate into a single living space. Because he lived abroad and traveled constantly, he asked me to oversee the construction. I knew absolutely nothing about building permits and construction but, for some reason, I agreed. One day, the workers tore down a wall and uncovered a small room containing just a table, a chair, some shelves, a whole lot of dust, and an old bottle filled with black …
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What scares us? What really scares us? It’s not the form outside the window or the noise in the basement. It’s not the unexplained howling or the abandoned building that might or might not be populated by angry ghosts. Or it’s not just those things. What we find most terrifying is the wondering of what those things might be and the idea that whatever darkness lurks just out of sight, it’s so powerful, so sinister that we never stand a chance. The darkness—it’s coming for us. And when it gets hold, there will be no escape. That’s horror. And horror gets a bad rap—limping monsters, and shlocky movie effects, gore, and blood-curdling shrieks. But I have long been a fan of …
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Who doesn’t love a good villain who has a single-minded prize in mind and will stop at nothing to get it? From Patricia Highsmith’s infamous con man Tom Ripley, to Gillian Flynn’s deliciously duplicitous Amy Dunne, these characters, oftentimes outright anti-heroes, can have readers, despite their better judgements, rooting for them in all their glorious conniving and underhanded ways. Here are five favorite psychological thrillers that revolve around crime characters who are driven by their naked ambition: Our Kind of Cruelty, by Araminta Hall Mike Hayes is in love with Verity Metcalf and is convinced they are destined to live out their days together in harmony. No m…
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Imagine that one day your sister asks you to spit into a vial, which you do because even though she’s crazy, she’s your sister. Following her instructions, you pack up the vial and send it to a DNA-testing site that promises to reveal everything you’ve ever wanted to know about your ancestry. Six weeks later, you discover that your crazy sister is only your crazy half sister. Not only that, you learn that about a dozen people you’ve never even heard of are all related to you. So, you call your buddy, a millionaire ex-cop who does “favors” for his friends and ask him to look into it without telling anyone because A) you’re sure it’ll mess-up your family and B) there mig…
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The hearing room was sweating. Though the weather was mild—partly cloudy with a high of seventy-four degrees—the temperature inside the Senate Caucus Room kept climbing steadily. An ornate space designed for three hundred occupants, on this day it was packed with eight hundred; even congressmen were sometimes escorted out by apologetic Capitol policemen who cited fire codes. Klieg lights and television cameras cramped the chamber even further, and the heat from the bulbs pushed the temperature higher. But any discomfort felt by those in attendance was secondary to the need to broadcast the hearings to the twenty million people watching on television. The hearings becam…
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It’s a long weekend here in the States and you might be tempted to go outside and enjoy some early summer freedom. By all means, follow that instinct, but you’ve got to come home some time, and odds are you’re going to want a thriller to get you through the weekend. We’ve got you covered. Here are the latest picks. If you’re interested in money laundering or Miami or money laundering in Miami… Startup Streaming on: Netflix Seasons: 3 Like many, I’m just discovering Startup now and delighted to learn that it has three seasons to binge. The show, which originally appeared on Crackle, has only just arrived on Netflix, and it features (at various points) Otmara Marrero,…
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Have you ever thought about why you love mysteries? Do you relish the escape factor? Enjoy the challenge of the puzzle? Do you just want to be entertained? Depending on the subgenre, crime fiction can be thrilling, intriguing, or fun—often all three. Mysteries are popular for many reasons. Yet I believe there’s one reason, a deeper reason, that underlies them all. I think we’re drawn to mysteries in fiction because life itself is a mystery. And we want to get to the bottom of it. “When I sat down to write The Alchemist, all I knew is that I wanted to write about my soul. I wanted to write about my quest to find my treasure. I wanted to follow the omens, because I knew ev…
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A wind gust strikes the window beside me, rattling the rain-streaked glass. Outside, a brief flash of lighting illuminates the slope of conifers that edge the hillside road. Abandoning my desk for a much-needed break, I lift my mug and swirl the shadowy liquid it contains, lingering over the last sip. Peering into the depths, it’s hard to not notice how the bitter leaves at the bottom resemble a crow with outstretched wings. Maybe it’s the fierce weather. Maybe it’s the grim nature of the scene I’ve just finished drafting, but one cup of tea isn’t going to be enough this afternoon. I’m referring to true tea, of course: the slightly bitter leaves of the Camellia sinensis …
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A look at the month’s best reviewed crime novels, mysteries, and thrillers. Chris Power, A Lonely Man (FSG) “Chris Power’s elegant first novel is a slyly ensnaring literary thriller written in immaculate prose … an almost self-effacing commitment to unadorned clarity … Power’s restraint pays off, making for a subtly immersive read, his sentences rippling like clear water even as the story’s murkier undertow pulls you out to sea. He doesn’t skimp on themes either, raising interesting questions about whether stories draw their power from reality or imagination, who (if anyone) owns them, and what privileges narrative control confers on the teller. Contemporary socio…
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Chapter 4 tells of aperitifs, team play and whining, lotus leaves and utter fools, consistency and appreciation, Latin lovers and mommy’s boys. Poldi assembles a jigsaw puzzle and receives an answer she doesn’t like. Montana delivers an impassioned speech, Poldi’s nephew maps out a route to happiness, and Poldi herself needs a drink. After a disastrous evening she lays her cards on the table and Montana turns pale. “No!” “Yes.” “No!” “Yes, I tell you.” “Well, I’ll be buggered!” I said. Visibly gratified by my tipsy astonishment, Poldi grinned at me. My head was spinning. Lethal graffiti, Indian sitar players, laced ayurvedic smoothies, exorcisms, murder, my aunt in…
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The entire cast of Suddenly, last Summer was tense and overwrought even before cameras started rolling on the film’s final, pivotal, excruciating scene. The accounts of friction between the film’s four biggest power players—Elizabeth Taylor, Montgomery Clift, Katherine Hepburn, and director Joseph L. Mankewicz—were so rampant in Hollywood that, rather than deny them, they cooked up a scheme to make fun of the gossip and therefore make it seem ridiculous. They had the four main players of the production pose for a photo in which they mocked the rumors. In the foreground of the picture, Katharine Hepburn, with a fiendish grin, looks as if she is about to smack Elizabeth, w…
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When The Bishop’s Wife, the story of Mormon bishop’s wife Linda Wallheim investigating a woman’s disappearance in her own ward, came out, I went to a few Mormon women’s book clubs in Utah. One of those readers asked me, “Why couldn’t you have had the bad guy be a Mormon?” I was taken aback, then laughed a little, sure she wasn’t serious. But she was. “I wanted the bad guy to be a non-Mormon,” she said. And I asked, confused, “do you think Mormons are never the bad guys? Don’t you watch the news?” But she thought that I, as a Mormon, should feel an obligation to write positive depictions of Mormons, in part because that is what a lot of fiction published by local Mormon pr…
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