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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In the US it’s Memorial Day weekend, which could well mean you’re planning to spend some time outdoors, maybe at a cookout or in a park, but let’s be realistic, what it probably means is that you’re in the market for a good movie. And I would propose that there’s no better accompaniment to an early summer weekend than an Elmore Leonard romp. Now, you could read the always wonderful books, and I suggest that you do, but you could also check out one of the many, many Leonard adaptations. For your weekend planning, we’re going to help you narrow down which Leonard movie is the right fit for your needs. (Where possible, I’ll make an effort to indicate where you might stream …
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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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There’s another long weekend coming up in the U.S. With a large portion of the country currently under snow, lockdown, or both, and what with the President’s Day mattress sales not what they used to be, how’s a body supposed to spend its time? I’d recommend traveling vicariously to Paris to hang out with a master of disguise and gentleman thief. Or going to Brazil, if you like folkloric mystery. Or possibly Barcelona, circa 1960. What I’m saying is don’t despair, you have options, and most of them are on Netflix. Here are a few recommendations for your long weekend international thriller binge. If you’ve always want to visit Paris with a gentleman thief… Lupin Seasons…
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You don’t need a long weekend in April to enjoy a good international thriller binge, but it helps. In some corners of the world, there’s an Easter break right about now, which if memory serves was the traditional weekend to watch Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments, not an activity people indulge in too often these day, though that’s not going to stop me from doing my Yul Brynner imitation all weekend. The point is, some of us are already programmed for a good long binge this weekend, preferably one that spans continents and involves some interesting clothes, so let’s dive in and see what the new offerings are for all your international thriller needs. If you watched…
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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 crime show, after all, filmed on location in northern Oklahoma and following the…
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We’ve got a few big spring weekends coming up and while maybe you want to watch The Little Drummer Girl for the third or fourth time, hoping that this go around it might actually be good, that Michael Shannon won’t undermine the whole thing with his bizarre choices, that in this viewing it’s just going to be Pugh and Skarsgard on a cross-European iridescent spy romp, but no, it won’t be, it can’t be. So we need some new shows. Here we go. (Or if you don’t want new shows, you want the old, the good, and the le Carré, opt for The Night Manager instead; that one really holds up.) The Informant Streaming on: HBO Max Seasons: 1 Here’s a worthwhile new series about 1980s…
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It’s time for a summer weekend of international thriller binge watching, which means get ready for some picturesque location shoots where the characters get to wear interesting sun hats while solving mysteries. That’s what summer shows are all about. Below you’ll find a few suggestions for the hours ahead, or if you haven’t seen Slow Horses yet, do yourself a favor and ignore these suggestions and go watch Gary Oldman chew it up for a few hours, then if you have time leftover you could try these. Murder in Provence Seasons: 1 Streaming on: BritBox Roger Allam and Nancy Carroll are having themselves a hell of a good time in this mystery series, the first from Britbox…
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It’s the end of summer, and normally I would try bringing you a few recommendations of international thrillers that have only recently become available to stream in the US, but to be honest, the pickings are just too slim. Maybe it’s the dragons, swords, and sandals boxing out other productions, or it’s sheer bad luck, but there just aren’t enough new international series to recommend in good conscience, so what I’ll do instead is go back to a few old favorites—some overlooked, some canceled too soon, and others you surely know and quite likely saw, but now is as good a time as any to revisit. The Bridge (FX on Hulu) No, I’m not proposing you go re-watch the Danish/S…
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Here at CrimeReads we operate on the premise that every few weekends, no matter the weather, the mood, or the reading options, you need to spend a couple days inside watching an international thriller series from start to finish. In pursuit of that ideal, we bring you an occasional roundup of what’s available for your viewing pleasure. If you’re interested in England, organized labor, and noir… Sherwood Seasons: 1 Streaming on: Britbox Are you ready for some English mining town internecine tension? Do you like atmospheric television packed full of interesting accent work and extreme moral ambiguity? Then get ready for Sherwood, an intensely noir series about the min…
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Sure, you could celebrate Independence Day by looking inward and bingeing some homegrown series (if that’s your inclination, let me recommend the criminally under-seen and sadly no longer in production Briarpatch, an excellent Ross Thomas adaptation), or you could follow the revolutionary spirit in a more internationalist direction and look abroad for your extra day’s worth of entertainment. What’s better at the midsummer mark than a border-crossing thriller, after all? Here are a few recommendations for you. If you’re in the mood for a family (fugitive) road trip… The Mosquito Coast Streaming on: AppleTV Seasons: 1 If you’re really looking for some wild, internatio…
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In the time since I last wrote this column Squid Game became the world’s favorite show and with good reason, it’s an incredibly exciting ride, but I’m going to just go ahead and assume that by now, the start of November, you’ve already filled up on Squid Game and all the explainers and message board theories that followed, and you’re in search of something new. You’ve come to the right place. Perhaps you’d like another twisty, stylish Korean thriller? Or how about some German grad students solving the mysteries of the human body? November streaming has all that, plus the tried and true British mysteries your parents are going to want to talk about at the holidays. If you…
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My debut novel is a tribute to my hero, Jane Austen, in the format of a murder mystery. It is fitting because Austen’s classic works are essentially mysteries where the heroine must uncover the true characters of those around her, especially the hero. In a world where a women’s entire future depends upon who she marries, it pays to investigates one’s love interest thoroughly. With that in mind, here are all six of Jane Austen’s heroines, ranked from worst to best for their detection skills. There is one young woman who combines all these qualities in abundance and whose prowess at sleuthing outshines even her greatest protagonist, and that’s Austen herself. Throughout he…
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This is normally the column where I recommend some international thrillers to get you through the weekend, but since we have an extra long holiday weekend coming up in the States, I thought I’d do something special, focusing on adaptations of le Carré novels, something of a passion of mine. In particular I want to hone in on a few of the lesser heralded selections. Really, this was just an excuse to recommend The Russia House: “Spying is waiting. Spying is worrying. Spying is being yourself but more so.” If you love peace…and Sean Connery’s dissolute charms… The Russia House (1990, dir. Fred Schepisi) I’ve been somewhat insistently telling people this is the most und…
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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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I love a good psychological thriller. Something engaging to play on my psyche and keep me on the edge of my seat. Throw in a little sex and you’ve got a recipe for one salacious read! Being able to balance equal parts thrill and romance is a fine line. The genre is fairly niche, and authors have to perfect that delicacy of equal parts thrill and equal parts romance. But it’s these types of books that, I feel, make for a more immersive narrative because the story is able to play on a wide range of emotions. One minute, I’m haunted by the mind games of a psychopath. The next minute, I’m soothed by the intimacy with his first kiss. The best of both worlds. If you’re in the m…
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Two impeachments and one insurrection ago, comedian John Oliver described a then-fresh scandal–the Trump campaign’s potential collusion with Russian interference in the 2016 election–as “Stupid Watergate.” This use of Watergate–a shorthand for the series of crimes, dirty dealings, and subsequent cover-ups that led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974–reveals a lot about how we tried to understand the firehose of scandal and corruption that was the Trump Administration. On the one hand, Watergate was a hopeful precedent. It promised that political misdeeds could be brought to light, thoroughly investigated, and could bring down an unfit president. On the other,…
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“I once received a lovely letter from a lady who told me how she had got this book [of mine], made herself a cup of tea and drawn the curtains because it was a dismal cold day. Then she’d set a fire in the fireplace and sat down and read my book. Isn’t that a nice goal for a writer to think about? It certainly keeps me at my typewriter.” —Mystery author Charlotte MacLeod in “Murder, She Writes,” Interview with Peter Gorner of the Chicago Tribune, 11 February 1988 His attack was lightning fast. Whitey seized [Debbie Davis] by the throat with his hands and began to shake her like a rag doll. Debbie, gasping for breath, was dying…. Whitey was still not done with th…
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The notion of “Identity” can be regarded in multiple ways: Identity (noun): the condition or fact of being a specific person or thing; the ways that people’s self-concepts are based on their membership in social groups; the characteristics and qualities of a person, considered collectively and regarded as essential to that person’s self-awareness. This discussion explores ways in which each of these concepts can be central to crime fiction and how, as an author, I have explored each of them. * In mysteries and thrillers, it’s often customary to follow a plot to find out “Whodunnit?”, that is to uncover the identity of the perpetrator of an illegal act. Some crimes s…
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It is a truth universally known that if there’s a dead body found with a knife in their back in the middle of library, the police must be called. Or must they? If there is a list of stock characters you must have in a mystery, the police is on that list. From classic mysteries to modern procedurals, police are generally called in when murder is afoot. The roles police play shrink and grow depending on who’s the main character, but they always come in the end. They are the voice of reason that clears confusion after a locked room mystery at a dinner party gone wrong. They are there to capture a murderer who outsmarted the amateur detective. They might be the anonymous gr…
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One of my favorite movie scenes ever is at the beginning of Hitchcock’s “Marnie”. It’s a montage of a young woman, shot from behind or from the neck down, lingering on everything except the face as she makes her way along the platform of a train station, down a hotel corridor, and into her room. We follow her as she repacks her suitcase, discarding anything worn or frumpy, choosing only the new and perfect. Using a nail file, she pries open a compact, revealing a stash of hidden Social Security cards. She flips through them all, choosing one to put into her wallet before tucking the rest securely away. Then she goes into the bathroom for a shampoo, rinsing out the dark, n…
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Christopher Marlowe was Shakespeare’s collaborator, exact contemporary and, until his violent death in 1593, aged 29, the better-known playwright and poet. But since then both his life and death have fertilized conspiracy theories and mysteries. Who killed him, why, how, was it deliberate murder or was it self-defense? Or did he live on in secret to write Shakespeare’s later plays, as some conspiracists claimed? He was killed during the reign of Queen Elizabeth 1, whose position was precarious. If she died the throne might pass to Mary Queen of Scots, her cousin. Mary had been brought up a Catholic in France and if she inherited the throne Spain would forcibly reverse th…
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The following is excerpted from the first chapter of Sarah Weinman’s new book Scoundrel: How a Convicted Murderer Persuaded the Women Who Loved Him, the Conservative Establishment, and the Courts to Set Him Free, published by Ecco on February 22, 2022. ___________________________________ First, Vickie. She was the Zielinskis’ second child. Mary Faye was the eldest, given the same first name as her mother and grandmother. Victoria Ann arrived three years after her sister, born on September 6, 1941. Then came Myrna, two years later, and finally, a couple of years after that, Anthony, Jr. The Zielinskis met, married, and started their family in Honesdale, Pennsylvania, an…
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Note: This article contains hints and occasional mild spoilers for the solutions in Agatha Christie’s A Murder Is Announced, The Mousetrap, The Moving Finger, Hallowe’en Party, The Pale Horse, and Murder Is Easy. It does not, though, reveal the ending of The Mousetrap! Agatha Christie’s detectives often don’t fit into the rigid gender roles that many modern readers associate with the first half of the twentieth century. Hercule Poirot, arguably her most famous character, is intellectual, somewhat hedonistic, and effeminate rather than particularly masculine. Miss Marple, her spinster sleuth, is an independent, older woman who has never had a husband or children. Even her…
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As a mystery writer, it’s no surprise that whodunnits are my favourite genre to read—especially if I’m caught off guard by a shocking twist. But when considering these sharp suspense novels, the question arises: to twist or not to twist? It’s often agreed that a murder mystery feels most satisfying when the clues were there all along, but the reader simply didn’t piece them together in time. Although, when there are twists involved, it’s all too easy to feel cheated. For me, though, the deception makes the read even more rewarding. It’s that complete 180 flip that turns everything on its head and makes you pause, think back over the clues and subtle nudges, and then kick…
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The Knapp Commission into corruption in the New York City Police Department started public hearings on October 19th, 1971. Established by then mayor John Lindsay, the proceedings were televised live on public television across the five boroughs of New York and covered in the print media. The Commission’s final report, handed down in December 1972, was damning. Months of testimony from low level pimps and narcotics dealers who paid regular bribes to the police in return for protection, to police whistleblowers, and the flamboyant escort and madam Xaviera Hollander, revealed that the city had a sixth organized crime family in addition to the Gambino, Lucchese, Genovese, Bon…
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