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 Reaper Follows arrives out in the world this week, and I’m certainly hoping that it’s a suspenseful novel readers will enjoy! It’s the last in my ‘Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse’ series—which, naturally, includes four books. Each book stands on its own, of course, a case that must be investigated, that brings danger and mystery, a beginning, a middle, and an end!” But working on this has been intriguing for me! I have always been fascinated by ancient texts of any kind, words that can be—and are—interrupted differently by different people through time. And the Four Horsemen . . . We’ve recently lived through a period in which all signs of the ‘horsemen’ might b…
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My initial exposure to Juanita Sheridan was harrowing: I’d just sent my publisher my first Hawaiʻi murder mystery when a friend asked, “Have you read the Hawaiʻi mysteries of Juanita Sheridan?” Unsettled, I scrambled to find Sheridan’s books – all out of print, so it wasn’t easy. When they finally arrived, I opened The Kahuna Killer at random and found to my consternation that Sheridan had ended a chapter this way: “Pilikia. That word means trouble.” I’d ended a chapter of my book nearly identically: “Pilikia. Trouble.” Yikes! I snapped her book shut and resolved not to read another word until I’d completed at least my second Hawaiʻi murder mystery. I didn’t want m…
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McKenna Jordan is the owner of Murder By The Book in Houston, Texas, and a consultant for Minotaur Books at Macmillan Publishers. ___________________________________ Bookselling is this weird world where it’s kind of like rainbows and unicorns and magic, but it’s also a business. My job is to discover new authors. To find amazing new voices and to put those books into as many hands as I can. Customers know about the number one New York Times bestsellers. What they don’t know about is the brand-new historical mystery set in India that they’re going to absolutely love because of the charming characters. So those are the books that I seek out as the proprietor of Murde…
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Whether it’s whispered around a campfire, or passed down across generations, folk tales have often been the spark that ignited much of our love for stories. They give us brief glimpses into different times and different cultures, and it’s always a treat for me to find these threads woven into works of fiction today. It has even inspired me to reimagine my favourite Sri Lankan folktale in my latest book, Island Witch. In my new novel, set in 1880s Ceylon, Amara, the daughter of the local demon priest, is caught in the cross currents of her traditional beliefs and the new colonial ideas that have been brought into her coastal town, while being bullied and called a “witch” …
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Nothing keeps me flipping pages late into the night like a twisty who-done-it mystery or a fast-paced thriller, but my absolute favorite genre mash up is when those elements are mixed with a little bit of magic. There’s something about the addition of magical elements that adds a new layer of tension, intrigue and excitement to the pages. Perhaps that’s why I not only read, but write, speculative thrillers. The Darkness Rises, my latest speculative thriller releasing April 9, follows Whitney, a high school student who sees dark clouds hovering over people when they are in danger. She’s always tried to save people when she sees the warnings ghosting over their heads. But …
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What could be more destabilizing—or trail more fascinating narrative threads—than a person vanishing without a trace? It’s no mystery why countless authors kick off their books with people gone missing. Marry this trope with speculative fiction, and you’ve got stories whose possibilities are literally limitless. In my new book, The Bad Ones, four people vanish from around a wintry suburb in a single night. The best friend of one of the lost learns that a slumber party game centered around a figure of local lore is key in unlocking the mystery. Here are six more supernatural and horror-inflected stories in which vanishings drive the plot. Knock Knock, Open Wide, by Nei…
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Summer is coming. I promise. It’s right around the corner. If you’re anything like me, summer means the beach. And the beach means getting in some uninterrupted reading. That’s a luxury for most of us. One year, I took a beach vacation with just a girlfriend and myself, with no children and husbands—it was complete heaven. We ate when we wanted, slept when we wanted, and read uninterrupted. At one point I turned to my friend and said, “The only thing that would make this beach better is a bookstore.” Voila! My Beach Reads series was born. The third book in my series A Killer Romance, takes place during the off-season. Have you ever wondered what becomes of those little…
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By the 1950s, Wheaties had gained massive popularity as the “Breakfast of Champions.” Packaged in a bright orange box with famous sports figures on the cover, the iconic breakfast cereal was marketed to consumers as a healthy way to nourish a fit and active lifestyle. According to a tip to Confidential from one of Frank Sinatra’s lovers, the megastar always ate a bowl of Wheaties before sex, then con-sumed three more between encore performances. That tidbit inspired the magazine’s May 1956 story headlined “Here’s Why Frank Sinatra Is the Tarzan of the Boudoir.” Otash joked that Sinatra’s face should grace every box. Still pissed-off at Confidential for the 1955 “Wrong Do…
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Anthony Horowitz is missing. Not the real Anthony Horowitz, of course. He’s exactly where you’d expect him to be—hunkered down at his desk, toiling away at the next novel even as his newest is hitting bookshelves around the world. But more than sixty pages into Close to Death (April 16, 2024; Harper) and the author’s literary alter ego—the Watson to ex-Detective Danielle Hawthorne’s Holmes—has yet to make an appearance. It’s a strange case indeed. “I think all my life I’ve had a fear of formula,” Horowitz—whose prolific output includes the Alex Rider saga for young adults, Magpie Murders, and original works featuring James Bond and Sherlock Holmes—confesses. “I just do…
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Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Lisa Gardner, Still See You Everywhere (Grand Central) “Gardner skillfully weaves threats into this pitch-perfect variation of the locked-room mystery, pitting ‘missing person finder’ Frankie Elkin against an untamed tropical environment, a raging serial killer, a diabolical saboteur, and her own misleading tunnel vision… Gardner’s Frankie Elkin series gets more magnetizing with each installment.” –Booklist Deanna Raybourn, A Grave Robbery (Berkley) “The ninth Veronica Speedwell book, following A Sinister Revenge, spins off Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. It’s possibly the best in t…
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Allan Pinkerton is a storied figure in the American imagination. Most know his agency for its violent anti-union mercenary work, but few realize that Pinkerton was an Abolitionist, as well, who ran a stop on the Underground Railroad and headed Abraham Lincoln’s secret service during the Civil War. He also wrote true crime books. In them, Pinkerton recounts his detective agency’s exploits, including several about the first woman detective in the United States, Kate Warne. Pinkerton was highly unconventional for hiring her. While more and more women were entering the work force in the 19th century, which jobs were considered “suitable” for women was a major point of conte…
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Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Sarah Langan, A Better World (Atria) “An apocalyptic thriller that becomes more terrifying with every turn of the page.” –Booklist Megan Miranda, Daughter of Mine (S&S/MarySue Ricci) “Miranda, a consummate professional when it comes to exposing the small community tensions that naturally arise when people live in close proximity for generations, exposes revelation after twisty revelation… Small-town claustrophobia and intimacies alike propel this twist-filled psychological thriller.” –Kirkus Reviews CJ Tudor, The Gathering (Ballantine) “Vampires, or ‘vampyrs,’ roam the…
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I grew up in the former USSR surrounded by books on shelves built by my grandfather. The books came in multiple numbered tomes – grey, brick red, pale green – and bore the names of the authors in gold lettering that glistened under the light of the lamp. Chekhov. Pushkin. Akhmatova. One collection – Tolstoy – numbered in 14 emerald-colored volumes. There were foreign ones too: the Brontës, Hemingway, London. It would be a while until I learned that such collections were a status symbol for the Soviet middle class and that they were very hard to come by. Back then, long before I became a debut author in the U.S., they were simply a backdrop – weighty and venerated. Before…
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Cozy mysteries are having a moment. The sub-genre is expanding and has resulted in a surge of popularity. Modern cozies maintain the core elements including a light-hearted tone, an amateur sleuth, and no graphic sex or violence. Yet they’ve become more inclusive and expanded their boundaries to embrace current technology as well as the use of contemporary verbiage. The shift has infused a new energy into the category, bringing with it themes and humor that resonate with a broader readership. When writing my new cozy, Peril in Pink, I was inspired by the modern mysteries I’d been reading. Without a doubt, I knew I wanted my book to be in that lane, too, particularly whe…
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Over the past few years, there’s been quite a few novels popping up featuring translators solving crimes. Some of the books are by authors who themselves have experience in translation, and reward readers with their turns of phrase and tricks of prose lifted from the cadences of other languages. I try to keep abreast of trends in the genre, especially ones difficult to google (if you search for crime fiction about translators, you’re likely to find works of fiction in translation instead), and I’ve found the mother-lode with this one (or perhaps, the mother tongue?). In particular, I put together this list because two books this year demanded it: Jennifer Croft, the awar…
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The prisoner hauled before a Brooklyn judge in 1928 did not look the part of one of the most notorious criminals in history. He squinted at the world through round-framed spectacles. When he removed his broad-brimmed hat, the sudden exposure of the baldness beneath added years to his appearance. “A pudgy little man, with only a vague collar of chestnut hair,” was the assessment of James Kilgalen of the International News Service, one of the journalists in the courtroom that day. “He seemed old and tired.” Other newsmen were more charitable in their descriptions. One called him “a meek lamb.” Another thought he could pass for a retired stockbroker. Yet another found him “…
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Last Seen in Havana, a suspenseful addition to Teresa Dovalpage’s Havana Mystery series, was released by Soho Press in February 2024. The novel, which takes place in Havana poignantly captures the perspectives and experiences of Sarah Lee Nelson, a young woman from San Diego who remains in Cuba in 1986, after falling in love with a Cuban man, and Mercedes Spivey, a Cuban-born professional baker, who returns to Havana from the U.S. in 2019 to help the ailing grandmother who raised her. In alternating chapters, Last Seen in Havana leaps from the mid-1980s to a time that just precedes the pandemic in unspooling a powerfully moving mystery, one that will stay with readers lon…
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The beetles could help her disappear, but not in the same way the others had. She would do it for a better life. This was why, even though someone had trashed her van, even though her cell phone was now one big useless glitch and even though her mother was probably sick with worry, Chenoa Cloud had hiked for days to reach this ravine in the dark. If the beetles were nocturnal, so was she. The November wind whirred into the chasm and up the sleeves of her jacket like a threat, carrying with it loamy soil laced with the scent of decay. Chenoa tried to clear her head, to think instead of the waist-high switchgrass that had been gentle company as she walked across Oklahoma…
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The world is terrifying. It seems like such an obvious thing to say, right? Of course, the world is terrifying! Turn on the news! Look around! The world’s always been terrifying! Still, when I think about what that means in practice, not in theory, the terror becomes sharper, more realized around its edges. I’m bombarded with tragedies at the mere click of a button, a news app that pops into my notifications every fifteen minutes. Whenever I see a college campus trending, I feel something sink inside of me, heavy and tired. And whenever I see a news story with a Black person’s photo front and center, I hold my breath. I’ve wondered if there’s a name for the feeling I’m…
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Here is a short list of things that are easy: –Brunch. –Turning on the television for your children instead of reading to them. –Looking at your phone and checking some vacuous app some deem crucial. –Sleeping in. –Eating too much. –Making love. And so on and so on. The “easy” list is extensive and if done in excess becomes boring. As the saying goes: everything in moderation. Here is a slightly longer list of things that are not easy: –Going to brunch and pretending to enjoy yourself. –Turning off the television and convincing your children that reading is better. –Not looking at your phone for an hour (try it, prove me wrong). –Awaking early to be productive…
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Leo Tolstoy, author of my favorite novel, War and Peace, said that the purpose of art is to teach us to love life, an observation that has pleased me since I first read it. But on reflection, I think it fair to say there are other things that art can do in relation to life; it can change the way we see life; it can teach us to endure or perhaps enable us to escape life. For a time, anyway. In a world beset by unprecedented horrors, where the survival of the planet itself seems to hang by a fraying thread, art can sometimes grant us respite—time, as it were, to catch our breath. Art can take us out of ourselves, plunging us, however briefly, into alternative worlds, world…
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Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived. That’s the easy way to remember what happened to Henry VIII’s six wives, and even though four of them died natural deaths, he’s most known for executing two of them—both for treason and adultery, although only one was guilty. By the time he was searching for a fourth wife, eligible royal women throughout Europe were making excuses as to why marriage to the king was out of the question. Christina of Denmark allegedly made the comment that she would need two heads, one for disposal by the king of England. It was this minefield I stepped into when deciding to write a modern retelling, with sixth wife Kate Parker (Cath…
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During my career as an investigative reporter – and as the wife of an expert in the field of computer-assisted investigative reporting – I have experienced situations that could be distressing if you didn’t realize this is all great material for writing mysteries! The first occurred early in my career when I was assigned to write a feature on a man who was a “shoo-in” as a candidate for the U.S. Senate. We will call him Mr. M. He was a familiar figure in the city and state – a young, handsome multi-millionaire respected not only for his business acumen but because he was ballyhooed as “the most eligible bachelor” in town. I was tickled to be covering such a neat guy. …
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Would the real Australia please stand up? Are you a tropical paradise of blue skies and golden beaches, the Great Barrier Reef, koalas and kangaroos? Or are you the perilous continent of venomous snakes and enormous spiders, dense bushland and parched desert where travellers venture and never return? It’s clear which scenario thriller and crime writers are drawn to. Australia has long been mythologised as a dangerous exotic land, the landscape presenting the ideal setting for an eerie thriller not unlike that of Nordic noir. In reality, how frightening is it to live here? On TikTok there’s an avalanche of clips showing gigantic Australian spiders; there’s a frisson of e…
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