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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Someone who read an early draft of my novel The Marsh Queen wrote me to say, “Loni is like a girl-detective grown up.” She meant it as a compliment, and I took it as one. There might be more than one girl-detective, but the one I understood her to mean, of course, was Nancy Drew, the protagonist who showed girls they could be detectives and probably anything else they wanted. Nancy was a regular person—a teenager with a reasonable dad, a sometimes clueless boyfriend, and incredible curiosity. I know, I know, “Carolyn Keene” might have been a room full of writers churning out stories for an enthusiastic, if gullible, easy-reader audience base. However, the basic template …
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What Writing About the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre Taught Me About the Madness of Crowds
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I was reading a great interview on CrimeReads.com the other day—Paraic O’Donnell talking to Lee Child, genius author of the Jack Reacher novels—and they has this wonderful debate about the unreality of fiction. When I say it out loud, it sounds obvious, but it came up twice. And Lee said: ‘The only two real people in the transaction are the author and the reader.’ It’s absolutely true. Even if I put the Queen of England in the heart of my action—like in the ‘The Crown’ on TV—it isn’t actually her. It’s a fictional appearance by a ghost of a real person. If I put the 16th century Catherine de’ Medici on the page, a woman who history pretty much assures us was an embodimen…
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“Your father was working for the CIA,” said Bogdan, husband of my second cousin, a provocative person, especially after several bottles of local Slovenian wine. Nine of us were finishing a pleasant dinner in Ribić, a seafood restaurant on the Adriatic coast near Trieste in 2010. We were reminiscing about the years our American and Slovenian families had known each other, a relationship that began in 1951, when I was brought to Yugoslavia as a ten-month-old. My parents were in London for a year on a Fulbright grant when my father decided to visit the Slovenia mountain village his parents left in 1911. Bogdan’s claim stopped the conversation. “Preposterous, out-of-th…
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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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In mid-October, Kensington Books, publisher of some of the finest cozy mysteries, hosted its first Cozy Min Con in two years along with the Mechanicsburg Mystery Bookshop in Pennsylvania. I was fortunate to attend with authors such as Julia Henry, Sherry Harris, and Darci Hannah. Over one hundred attendees drove hours to meet fellow readers and their favorite authors for a few hours. Prizes were given, books were purchased. Everyone shared a passion for the whodunnits of an amateur sleuth with a set of skills to help restore justice to their town, their community, their friends, and family; often with a pet by their side and sometimes a love interest in the works. We all …
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Since the dawn of humanity, since the moment we’ve been able to think, games have been part of our interactions with others. From the imagination games of children to interactive video games of teens, and even the sudoku puzzles and crosswords of adults – as social creatures, there’s a reason why our brains delight in games. The rules give us enough structure to keep us from going off the rails but enough wiggle room to keep our attention. I would even argue that it is what make the game worth playing–especially when some rules are more flexible than others. Horror movies are their own game of survival. There is a formula, a set of rules that are meant to be followed. Y…
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In Dan Chaon’s new dystopian thriller, Sleepwalk, his narrator/protagonist draws on a roster of similar but different names, reacting to the shifting existential requirements of his ever-precarious situation. There’s Will Bear, Billy Bayer, Barry Billingsly, and Liam Bahr among his dozen-odd aliases, and each serves a (usually devious) purpose. As Chaon’s spooky tale unfurls, we learn that many in his supporting cast have aliases, too. Their own survival would seem to depend on their ability to “be” someone else when necessary. Chaon is an ingenious writer, and his latest novel reminds me of the essential properties of a name––of our own names (sometimes a pseudonym itse…
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We can thank the mistake. It’s the core reason why Claude Monet—the famed French impressionist painter—came to master his iconic depiction of shadows. For mystery writers, the “error” is especially instructive given our challenge to create the most shadowy of mystery characters: the villain. Monet was flirting with the shady side, indeed, when he and Pierre-Auguste Renoir sneaked away from the claustrophobic confines of their in-studio painting class (along with pals Alfred Sisley and Frédéric Bazille) to go outside and paint French life en plein air. It was 1862, and theirs was artistic defiance of the highest order—a blatant rejection of tradition and protocol. Studio…
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It may come as no surprise that my bookshelf is dominated by spy novels and non-fiction books about the CIA and the KGB. While I prefer novels, there are several non-fiction books I consider essential to understanding the world of espionage. But first, the novels: ___________________________________ Fiction ___________________________________ A Gentleman in Moscow (Amor Towles) While not a spy novel, per se, A Gentleman in Moscow is an exquisitely written tale about a Russian nobleman who finds himself on the wrong side of history after the 1917 Russian Revolution. When the new communist government declares Count Alexander Rostov an unrepentant aristocrat, he is sen…
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Reading has always been a great escape in my life. Books gave me joy, taught me much, but mostly, they were entertainment. I had a good upbringing, raised by my mom and grandma. We weren’t rich or poor, I had what I needed. Books, however, were a luxury, an “extra” given to me as gifts or on special occasions because they weren’t in the budget. So I spent many hundreds of hours at the library. Free books! Thousands to choose from. Tastes change, and different people like different genres, but from the beginning, I gravitated toward mysteries and thrillers. My childhood favorites are similar to many writers in my genre: Trixie Belden and Nancy Drew; Agatha Christie and L…
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I’m often a bit confused as a reader when I enter a bookstore to look for a mystery and find myself in the suspense section. Now that I’m an author, I find it can still cause me to smile when my books are labeled as suspense and in my mind, they’re definitely more of a mystery. I’m not sure that there has ever been a firm definition provided as to the difference, but I’m going to take a stab at it. (Pun intended) Suspense is high-octane, fast-paced, with a villain who has a relatively clear purpose. Mystery is riddled with questions, unclear villain, unclear motives, secrets, and a page-by-page discovery. It can also be a slow burn. I think suspense is a more universal …
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There’s a reason Clark Kent went to work for a major metropolitan newspaper. Newsrooms are where the action is. Clark knew that Superman had to be close to the heartbeat of Metropolis and that was the Daily Planet. When crime broke out, the newsroom knew it. Plus, newspaper break rooms are the best places to find day-old pizza and that last half of a donut that someone carefully cut off with a plastic knife because a whole donut was just too much. Newspapers and crime are a natural fit, as anyone who’s watched a newspaper movie will tell you. Has there ever been a newspaper movie without a crime plot? If so, I don’t want to hear about it. So here’s a look at newspaper …
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I started working at my local library two years ago. After a decade spent in the city, I knew I wasn’t happy and so left the world of finance behind in order to concentrate on writing. It wasn’t planned. I was called into my boss’s office and offered a promotion, and right there and then decided to quit. I’d recently read a book by the author John Hart, and subsequently an interview in which he talked about turning his back on a successful law career in order to spend more time writing. It was hugely inspiring. My wife was a student at the time, and pregnant, and had no idea I wanted to write a book. She was very supportive (and is slowly learning to love me again). I…
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So who would be nuts enough to write a novel with six viewpoint characters who have nothing in common except for their connection to an old self-storage facility? Apparently, me. My previous three novels, The Art Forger, The Muralist and The Collector’s Apprentice, were all historical art-themed stories told in multiple voices across multiple times in multiple locations with multiple plotlines. When I sat down to write my next novel, I decided to do something different. And easier. My plan was to create a present-day story that takes place in Boston—where I live—rather than Paris or Philadelphia or NYC, where I don’t. It wouldn’t have anything to do with art, and it woul…
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I’m not a historian, just a novelist who happens to be a history fanatic. So when I write a spy novel set during World War II, fake history is unacceptable. Even though my protagonist Alexsi and the situations he finds himself in may be fictional, the story has to be set within the context of real locations, real historical characters portrayed accurately, and an actual historical timeline. As a history fanatic I feel obligated to offer my readers history that they may not necessarily be familiar with. My previous novel, A Single Spy, was set among the German exile colonies of Azerbaijan, Stalin’s Russia, Nazi Germany, Iran, and a German plot to assassinate Roosevelt, Ch…
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For a number of years, I taught an intensive, week-long course at the University of Toronto called How To Write A Bestseller. Each year brought a dozen eager, would-be authors to my class, hoping to learn the secrets to writing a book that would make its way to the top of the New York Times Bestseller list. Everyone thinks they have a book in them. The truth is that most people don’t. The truth is that even those who do have a book lurking somewhere inside them will not write a book that more than a handful of people will want to read or pay money to buy. And the hardest truth of all is that no one—and I mean no one, not your editor, not the publisher, not the critics—ha…
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Writing suspense is all about building tension. Writing romance is also all about building tension—just a different kind. These rising tensions can be achieved in all sorts of different ways. Please note: my way may be very different than your way. Take my words as suggestions or thought provokers as you discover what works best for you. And if you write suspense without the romance or vice versa, I hope you’ll take away what you find most helpful. The Suspense: Tension in a suspense novel focuses on the ever-ratcheting-upward actions of the Bad Guy (BG). What will he/she do next? Who will get hurt (or even die) because they’re in the BG’s path? A few tips to consider …
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You’ve Got Mail is a many splendored thing: a fascinating, variegated film that braids together themes of hope and despair, friendship and heartbreak, love and hatred, preservation and destruction, resistance and surrender, technology and analogs. It is a depressed capitalist critique, a doting literary pastiche, a valentine to New York City, a paean to mom-and-pop-shops, a tortured love story, a nervous prognostication about the digital world to come. It is everything, except maybe a murder mystery. It is not a murder mystery. Except it almost was, a little bit. This undeveloped twist relates to one of (I think) the most relatable moments in You’ve Got Mail—or, really, …
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A plague on these women who, lengthily wooed, Are not to be won until one’s out of the mood. And who then discerning one’s temperateness, Accuse one of cooling because they said yes! —”Curse in the Old Manner” (Dashiell Hammett poem published in The Bookman in September 1927) “You’re going to behave. I don’t want a lot of monkey-business out of you.” She laughed suddenly, asking: “Will you beat me if I’m bad?” —Exchange between the Continental Op and Gabrielle Leggett in Dashiell Hammett’s novel The Dain Curse (1929) Tell me something, Nick. Tell me the truth: when you were wrestling with Mimi, didn’t you have an erection? —Nora Charles to her husband Nick in The…
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When I decided to write a cozy mystery, I purposely set out to read a whole bunch of them in a row in order to figure out what type of cozy I wanted to focus on. There are so many, after all—cozies set in cupcake shops and centered around crafts like knitting or quilting, even cozies featuring witches (which would seem like a natural fit, since I’ve written both fiction and nonfiction books about witchcraft). It turned out that there were two different subgenres of cozy mystery that I liked the best. Anything to do with books, like those set in bookstores or libraries, immediately goes to the top of my to-be-checked-out list. But most of all, I loved cozies with animals …
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William Randolph Hearst was among the most important American titans Churchill hoped to add to his network. His twenty-eight newspapers reached 10 percent of the American population on weekdays, 20 percent on Sundays, and dominated West Coast markets, giving him an enormous influence on American public opinion and, by extension, the nation’s politics. He owned the outlets to which most statesmen sought and needed access, and he had the money to pay them well for their literary output—in 1931 he paid Benito Mussolini $1,500 for each of twelve articles. His newspapers ran articles by Eleanor Roosevelt, Rudyard Kipling, George Bernard Shaw, and a series of pieces compiled…
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One of the favorite sports of mystery critics, historians, and scholars is trying to determine when the mystery genre began, who invented it, and what is the first story or novel in the genre. The other favorite occupation is defining what a mystery is in the first place. I am not eager to get sucked into the first controversy, in which some have claimed the Bible, specifically Cain slaying Abel, as the first murder story, though there’s not much mystery involved. Others point to Shakespeare, notably Macbeth, but murder and puzzlement turn up in other of his plays as well. The first memorable act of pure detection is often credited to Voltaire, when his character Zadi…
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My favorite thrillers are character studies with a crime hook. They’re books about people’s actions, reactions, behaviors, and emotions set to the backdrop of a suspenseful mystery. They are first about characters and second about crime. Books like Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll (featuring a Columbine-like shooting), Whisper Network by Chandler Baker (featuring #MeToo-like storyline), and The Girls by Emma Cline (featuring a Manson-like cult) are great examples. We fall under the main character or characters’ spell because their voice jumps off the page. We root for them, we hate them, we love them, we want to see them thrive, or want to see them suffer. Either way,…
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In my new novel SLEEPING GIANTS, the director of a children’s home uses a draconian new treatment method. Despite being without any scientific backing, this treatment has been heralded as the latest cure for troubled children. It’s cruel, invasive, and dangerous, and has already been implicated in the deaths of several children. Like so many who commit harm, the director is convinced she is doing the right thing. She thinks she is helping, not hindering. She believes she is on the right side. Even as her harm becomes obvious, she refuses to admit she is wrong. Instead, she doubles down, and commits even more violence to protect herself. It’s an issue that haunts me, as …
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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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