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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The New Yorker editor reached Randy Wayne White at his historic waterfront home high atop a historic Indian mound on Pine Island on Florida’s Gulf Coast. “We’d like you to write a story about the Everglades for us,” she told him over the phone. Randy was in a foul mood. The Outside magazine columnist was also a fishing guide working out of Tarpon Bay Marina on Sanibel Island, just across the bay and salt flats from his home, and it was the height of fishing season. “I’d been fishing something like 48 days straight,” he says. “So much has been written about the Everglades, I don’t know of anything else to write.” He told her thanks, but no thanks. He went on with his…
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(This article contains spoilers for Psycho and Les Diaboliques. And The Sixth Sense.) This year marks both the 60-year anniversary of Psycho and the 65-year anniversary of Les Diaboliques. Psycho, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, has become one of the most famous movies of all time. Its brutal murder in a shower and its jolting all-strings score by Bernard Herrmann have acquired the status of memes. Even people who haven’t seen the movie have mimed stabbing movements while emitting staccato screeches to evoke the idea of a psychopath. Les Diaboliques, made 5 years before Psycho by French director Henri-Georges Clouzot, isn’t as well-known these days, though we might not ha…
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When Valora first stepped through the door of my office, the smell of cigarettes followed, along with a palpable physical tension. He was in his thirties but looked older, with a tight, tense frame, deep creases in his face, and bags under his eyes. His thin, sinewy arm muscles twitched under his skin, and his fingers beat a rhythm against each other as he fidgeted to find a comfortable position. He spoke in a staccato voice, interrupting himself when his train of thought outpaced his speech. He had a million questions for us. Who were we? What did we want to know? Where should he start? Did we know about his pending criminal case? He didn’t care if helping us helped him …
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Draw a circle. The space inside the circle represents the positive space in the drawing. The negative space would be the shape made by the outside of the circle. It’s most noticeable in cut paper art or silhouettes or even those Nagel prints that were so popular in the 1980s. Positive and Negative Space exists within other forms of art as well: ceramics and sculpture, for example. Since writing is also an artform, the theory of Positive and Negative Space also applies to literature and, specifically in this case, world-building or setting. Often, readers and new writers assume that world-building is what the author describes in detail—whether that’s the history of the fi…
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___________________________________ The Life and Crimes of Marie Dean Arrington ___________________________________ Marie Dean Arrington had been taking matters into her own hands for her entire life. So when she found herself in a minimum security jail cell—well, what was she supposed to do? Just sit there? Marie was thirty-five, and she’d been committing crimes for over a decade. At 23, while working at a motel as a maid, making 75 cents an hour for scrubbing floors, she suddenly realized that she could make a lot more money if she just robbed the motel instead. So she robbed her boss, and then she tied herself to a chair. When the police arrived, she said that she w…
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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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“It is impossible to drive anywhere in America today without encountering a patient, droop-shouldered chap who stands by the roadside and continuously jerks his thumb across his chest. He is the hitch-hiker, one of the strangest products of the auto age, and he is getting to be a prominent part of the American landscape. He is also getting to be an intense pain in the neck. Just why it should be considered proper for a man to stand by the roadside and beg free transportation from total strangers is a mystery….But the hitch-hiker is something more than a nuisance. There are times and places when the hitch-hiker is an actual menace to public safety….[M]urders of motorists b…
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My recent novel, Blood Will Have Blood, was driven in part by my fascination with protagonists who find themselves in dire exigent circumstances, facing predicaments where recourse to conventional protocols and laws simply fails. Sometimes dialing 911 isn’t an option. One of my favorite movie examples is Cape Fear (the original, with the inimitably noble Gregory Peck). Here is an officer of the court, an upstanding man of laws, stalked by Robert Mitchum’s vengeful ex-con, whose mayhem cuts through any notion that societal restraints can keep the order of things. How starkly this reality eventually strips Peck of his norms, leading this good citizen down a decidedly dark p…
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The CrimeReads editors select the month’s best debut novels in crime, mystery, and thrillers. * Ashley Audrain, The Push (Pamela Dorman) In Ashley Audrain’s slow-burn suspense thriller about motherhood, Blythe Connor doesn’t have much of an idea about how things are supposed to go–after all, her own mother left when she was a young child. She’s determined to be the perfect mother she never had, but she can’t ignore the worries caused by her eldest’s many outbursts. Something seems…off, about the child, something that she’s never felt about her darling youngest. As her checked-out husband reassures her that everything is fine, Blythe becomes increasingly certain that…
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John le Carré Offered a Piece of Advice to a Struggling Novelist. She’ll Never Forget It.
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People say you should never meet your heroes. When, in 2011, I sat next to David Cornwell (aka John le Carré) I was more worried for my hero meeting me. As the bright-eyed 81-year old leapt, smiling, to his feet, a kink of snow-white hair kicking up over the collar of his dinner jacket I made a pact with myself: Under no circumstances should I bring up the crime novel I am struggling to plot. Crime novels (including spy novels) are best known for their plots. Almost all reviews of successful crime novels will talk about plot before they mention character. Grisham’s plots are “intricate”, Agatha Christie’s are “ingenious”, Ruth Rendell’s are “twisting”. But le Carre, this…
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One thing I’ve noticed about cozy mysteries is that—for those unfamiliar with this charming genre—they seem to have a bit of a reputation. Basically, older women snooping into crimes, possibly a knitting group, definitely a cat. But this isn’t always the case. Well, except for the cat. Although really it can be any cute animal companion. This misunderstanding makes sense. I mean, famed characters like Miss Marple and Jessica Fletcher arguably defined the genre. But it’s grown from their foundation, branching out to encompass so much more in terms of characters, themes, narration, and mystery elements. First, you might be asking, what exactly is a cozy mystery? A puzzli…
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Ever since my husband died, I had been drawn to true crime as a way to process trauma. Hearing dark, tragic stories made me feel less alone. I started with Dateline, watching episode after episode, sometimes for hours, alone in my flat in London. Then I heard about True Crime podcasts. There was something so intimate about these—smart, funny women journeying into the world’s darkest places to make order out of chaos. I became addicted, listening to every episode, attending live events where I met incredibly kind, open people. I became immersed in the True Crime fandom. In my novel, If I Disappear, my protagonist Sera is obsessed with true crime podcasts. It gives her a s…
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There is no going back now. The taxi glides away from the house, down the street towards South End Green, retreating effortlessly from my family home, away from the expensive brickwork and tended gardens I will never see again. The sound of the indicator clicks out a steady rhythm. My body quietly shaking, I turn my head so that my driver will not look at me and see what I have done, I watch my life streak past through the window, the bumping motion of the car, the low hum of conver- sation from the radio. The girls hadn’t lifted an eye as the horn beeped from the road. Why should they? To them, today is just another day. How long will it be until they learn the trut…
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Today the Mystery Writers of America announced the nominations for the 2021 Edgar Awards, one of the mystery world’s premier honors. The winners will be announced on April 29, 2021. This year marks the 75th annual presentation of the awards. For more on the nominees and special award winners, check in with the Mystery Writers of America throughout the season. ___________________________________ BEST NOVEL ___________________________________ Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara (Penguin Random House – Random House) Before She Was Helen by Caroline B. Cooney (Poisoned Pen Press) Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman (Penguin Random House – Pamela Dorman Bo…
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Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Camilla Bruce, In the Garden of Spite (Berkley) “Bruce uses a framework of fact to create fiction that horrifies…[a] grisly historical thriller.” –Booklist Eliza Jane Brazier, If I Disappear (Berkley) “Blending the true crime compulsion of Michelle McNamara’s I’ll Be Gone in the Dark with the immersive creepy-craziness of Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects, Brazier creates a heady, pitch-dark cocktail all her own.” –Publishers Weekly Joanna Shaffhausen, Every Waking Hour (Minotaur) “Tight plotting and sophisticated surprises fuel the rich storytelling. Schaffhausen layers much em…
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At first glance Poland’s major city Warsaw can seem like one of the grittier of Eastern Europe’s capitals—not with quite perhaps having the charm or romance of a Budapest or a Prague, or maybe even a Bucharest. Thanks to Hitler wanting to wipe the city off the map the old town is pretty much gone (except for a newly built ersatz ‘new/old’ town). Then in the Cold War the Stalinist architects got a go and stubbornly, but predictably, refused to build anything with a human dimension. Now there’s new money, European Union membership, and skyscrapers are popping up. But you can’t keep a good old city down—Polish hipsters are opening up all manner of cafés, restaurants and bout…
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On a dreary April morning in 1893, John Marshall, a Portuguese immigrant and successful farmer on Sumas Prairie in British Columbia, was found lying sprawled across the veranda of his farmhouse, his body cold and lifeless, his nose smashed in a dried blood covering his forehead. An autopsy, coroner’s inquest and murder investigation followed. Two days later, a local handyman named Albert Stroebel was arrested. The community of Sumas was shocked, unable to believe that the harmless young man, physically handicapped and orphaned, was capable of killing anyone, particularly Marshall, who had treated him like family. Two lengthy trials followed——the first ending in a hung jur…
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You probably know a sociopath. Maybe he’s the neighbor you chat with at the mailboxes who always has a funny story. So what if also takes perverse pleasure in shooting squirrels with his BB gun? Or maybe it’s your ex-girlfriend, who seemed lovely at the start but then sent X-rated photos of you to your boss when you broke up with her. Estimates vary, but current research says approximately 1 in 25 people is a sociopath, meaning your average kindergarten class contains one. Why this happens and what can be done about it is a fascinating, vexing puzzle that has inspired both fact-based research and devilish fiction. The core paradox of a sociopath—someone who appears ordin…
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The beloved character Arsène Lupin, a gentleman thief who moonlights as a detective, was created as a direct result of the popularity of Sherlock Holmes, which surged throughout Europe and America towards the end of the nineteenth century. As scholar David Drake notes in a 2009 article on Lupin, though Holmes had been introduced in the 1887 novella A Study in Scarlet, he did not become a sensation until author Arthur Conan Doyle published six Holmes short stories in The Strand Magazine from July to December 1891. With queues of excited readers forming at newsstands on release dates, the stunned Conan Doyle agreed to write another six. But quickly bored of his character, …
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What do the following have in common: rituals shrouded in mystery; a closed circle of suspects; backstabbing intelligentsia; built-in power structures; and beautiful settings, from the gothic to the bucolic. They could be features of many crime novels, no matter the genre, but they’re also some of the reasons why academia has proven such a rich source for crime fiction. Here are six standouts (five novels and one true crime). Gaudy Night, Dorothy L. Sayers (1935) I teach a course called Women Crime Writers as part of the Emerson College MFA program. Sayers’ novel was the first book I added to the syllabus (paired with her fantastic essay, “Are Women Human?”). Set in O…
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“One of the most authentic, gripping, and profound collection of police procedurals ever accomplished.” – Michael Connelly Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö were pioneers. First of all, they virtually created Scandinavian noir, and all the giants who followed them happily admit it. Second, with Ed McBain, they revolutionized the police procedural, emphasizing the squad as a whole, people who sometimes argued and fought and failed again and again, but who ultimately complemented one another as a team: “normal people with normal lots, normal thoughts, problems, and pleasures, people who are not larger than life, though not any smaller either,” in the words of Jo Nesbø Third, and…
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A look at the month’s best new true crime books and critical studies. * Murder in Canaryville: The Triue Story Behind a Cold Case and a Chicago Cover-Up, by Jeff Coen (Chicago Review) James Sherlock, a consummate detective and appropriately named, came from a family of Chicago police. After his own long career with the department, he was headed toward retirement when he came across a cold case, the murder of seventeen year old John Hughes on the Southwest Side of the city. The case, with its flickers of a broader story of corruption, came to consume him, and as he chased down leads and connected the dots, he began to see a bigger picture, one that implicated figure…
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The gentleman thief Arsène Lupin, who is both expert cat-burglar and brilliant detective (as well as a master of disguise), made his debut in the short story “The Arrest of Arsène Lupin” in July of 1905. A year later, author Maurice Leblanc thought, why not feature his genius protagonist facing off with the most famous sleuth of the day, Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes? As a character, Lupin does not have much in common with Holmes, despite their enormous intellects and penchants for showmanship; if he resembles anyone in British literature, it’s the popular gentleman thief character A. J. Raffles, created by E. W. Hornung (who was, incidentally, Conan Doyle’s broth…
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“You know what I mean? You haven’t seen him, but the hairs on your neck tickle against your collar. It makes you shiver. Everything looks normal but it ain’t. It’s like you got a belly-dancer sucking Turkish delight while she blows hot breath down the back of your neck. You don’t mistake that. Maybe it’s an echo to your footsteps. Maybe your subconscious starts to recognize the same pattern of walking: the same guy, in the same shoes, still the same distance behind. But he’s on a loser, because he can’t follow you on the underground. Not if you’ve guessed. Even if you’re six foot two, like me, and you stand out in the crowd. You can lose him.” These are the opening lin…
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___________________________________ Jessie Levy and the Dillinger Gang ___________________________________ During the Great Depression, there were big banks, and desperately poor people, and in between the two, a great vacuum—a vacuum that was quickly filled by the glamorous, devil-may-care exploits of 1930s gangsters like Pretty Boy Floyd, Bonnie and Clyde, and John Dillinger and his men. (Even if the exploits themselves were not actually all that glamorous, it didn’t really matter—once they hit the papers, everyone swooned.) But being a ‘30s gangster wasn’t all fun and games. Dillinger’s men ended up in jail almost as often as they robbed banks, and frequently needed …
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