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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Man plays only when he is in the full sense of the word a human being, and he is only fully a human being when he plays. (Friedrich Schiller) *** I used to play cards for a living. For almost a decade, on the virtual tables of disreputable gambling outfits or celebrity-endorsed multinational behemoths; in glass-partitioned exclusive rooms in casinos in Las Vegas, Montecarlo, and Macau, and in mob-run back-alley joints in my hometown of Rome, Italy. The game of poker dominated my twenties with the intensity of a first love. It played out, for the most part, against the expressionistic backdrop of the late aughts Great Financial Crisis. And like all first loves, it left…
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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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The Valentine’s Day love note from a secret admirer has an evil twin—the “vinegar valentine” from a hidden hater. When mass-produced valentines replaced handmade ones in the Victorian era, satirical valentines were as available as sentimental ones. Vinegar valentines, ancestors of poison pen letters and trolls’ tweets, ridiculed their recipients and sometimes drove them to suicide or assault. Sending cards with poems of love and friendship to mark Valentine’s Day became common in the 18th century. This practice grew out of an earlier tradition of gift-exchange between lovers on that day. In pre-Victorian England, valentines were handmade and resembled today’s cards in th…
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Everyone loves a good Cold War thriller. For two seasons, the TV series “Counterpart” gave us not only a Cold War thriller but a Cold Worlds thriller. The chilly Berlin locations—not filmed with a blue filter like the London of “Sherlock” but still sufficient to make you want to put on a sweater—restrained performances and the coldly-calculated plot hold us at arms length while they draw us in. The credits of “Counterpart” set the tone for the series. They are by turn intriguing and mundane: Shots of impersonal office settings juxtaposed with tantalizing looks at an isolated figure walking through cavernous, stylized underground landscapes. The latter are meant to sug…
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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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In July 1992, Guido Brunetti arrived as a new protagonist on the mystery scene in Donna Leon’s first novel, Death at La Fenice, which combined her love of opera with her gift for character and her deep appreciation of Venice. Kirkus Reviews called it “deftly plotted and smoothly written,” and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch proclaimed it was “a challenging mystery, a sophisticated drama.” Each year since, a new Brunetti story has appeared, redolent of family and food, exploring the ambiguities of guilt and justice, each at the same high standard Leon established at the start. Transient Desires, published today, March 9, 2021, is her 30th book in the series in 30 years—a rem…
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The fifth-floor hallway was darker than reported, and there was an awkward dogleg near the stairwell that their local recon hadn’t bothered to map; it smelled of garlic, mold, and dry rot even though the hotel was billed as a Byzantine five-star. A milky Mediterranean twilight bled faint from hidden recesses along the ceiling, enough to cast a glow but not overly expose the shadow gliding through the shadows toward its target. A woman, unremarkable, if a little boxy, hip to shoulder. Here on business, you might think, not worth a second look. Black slacks, T-shirt and unstructured blazer, wireless earpiece, and Zero Halliburton briefcase. She approached a doorway with a…
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Son of a bitch! Lynch leaned back in his chair after he slipped his phone back in his jacket pocket. He should have known better than to trust Chodan. He’d been fighting for years in these mountains to lure his brother back to his village and away from Beijing’s influence. Now that he could see how close Lynch was to negotiating a settlement where he’d failed, he wasn’t about to let him leave. Chodan might not have lied, but he wouldn’t have balked at turning away and presenting a more pleasant view of Kendra’s situation if it was more comfortable for him. Which left Lynch not knowing what the hell was happening with Kendra, but realizing it wasn’t good. He’d been luck…
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There are some movies that promise a great time and satisfying trip in the first shot. “Out of Time,” the 2003 potboiler starring Denzel Washington is such a film. When the camera pans onto the quiet, neon-lit, and palm tree lined main street of Banyan Key—a fictional Florida Keys town—it is impossible not to feel an overwhelming urge to crawl inside the screen, light a cigarette in the doorway of the “Scuttlebutt,” Banyan Key’s neighborhood haunt, and step inside for the first buzz in a new life. You might make a big drug bust. You might have an affair with a beautiful, but married woman, or you might find yourself deceiving and misdirecting all of your colleagues in loc…
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CrimeReads editors select the month’s best debuts in crime, mystery, and thrillers. * Nicole Glover, The Conductors (HMH) Glover’s debut is a captivating blend of genres, tapping into strands of historical fiction, mystery, and fantasy. The Conductors tells the story of Hetty Rhodes, a former conductor on the Underground Railroad, now settled in Philadelphia, practicing magic and taking on unsolved cases the police won’t touch. A new job takes her through some mysterious corners of postwar Philadelphia and offers up startling revelations about the city’s new order and the lingering effects of community trauma. –Dwyer Murphy, CrimeReads Editor-in-Chief Alexandra An…
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On the morning of Tuesday, April 10, 2012, 63-year-old single mother Karyn Kay called 9-1-1. Her 19-year-old son, Henry Wachtel, was having a grand mal seizure. Neighbors later told police they heard sounds of struggle, Henry screaming “I’m sorry mommy!” over and over, then nothing. In the 1980s, after finding some success with her own writing (including three books about film, several episodes of America’s Most Wanted, and the screenplay for the 1988 thriller, Call Me,) Karyn Kay discovered her calling as Creative Writing teacher at New York City’s public performing arts high school, LaGuardia. A kooky, dark-lipsticked sprite of a woman, Ms. Kay danced, laughed loudly,…
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For the past ten years I have lived in Oxford, MS, which is most famous for being the hometown of William Faulkner and John Grisham, neither of whom live here anymore. When I moved to Oxford with my husband Chris Offutt, I expected the place would be steeped in their legends, and it is. What surprised me was finding ourselves embraced by a living, vibrant community of writers. All we had to do was wander into City Grocery Bar, two doors down from the beating heart of our town, Square Books, and find all the crime writers there: William Boyle, Tom Franklin, Ace Atkins, the poet Derrick Harriell, whose short story won an Edgar last year, Michael Farris Smith, Matt Bondurant…
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We can all identify the final girl early in any slasher story. She’s the bookish one. She dresses conservatively, she takes her responsibilities seriously. If it’s the eighties, she’s probably just gone camping at the wrong place, or signed on to work at an unlucky summer camp, and if it’s the nineties then she’s probably already dealing with some trauma, has some issue this confrontation with horror can make her deal with, and if it’s the 2000s or later then she’s in a time loop, she’s up against the ancient ones, or maybe she’s even the slasher herself. If it’s the seventies, though? If it’s the seventies, then she’s Laurie Strode in John Carpenter’s Halloween, w…
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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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Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Russ Thomas, Nighthawking (Putnam) “Outstanding. . . Thomas adeptly develops his diverse cast, but the novel’s real power lies in its intricate structure—the mystery surrounding the body is impressively deep, the various levels of tension are relentless, and every chapter ends with a narrative punch to the face. This police procedural is virtually unputdownable.” –Publishers Weekly Steve Berry, The Kaiser’s Web (Minotaur) “Berry keeps finding enticing alternate-history mysteries for Malone to solve . . . Keep ‘em coming.” –Booklist Joe Ide, Smoke (Little Brown) “Ide has dis…
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New York writers are used to toiling in the shadows of the greats who came before us. But when I began writing The Bouncer and its sequels, creating a crime series set in the city, I found myself both inspired and intimidated by how many authors had plumbed those depths before me. Since the days of Whitman and Melville, the Bowery Boys and the Dead Rabbits, New York City has always inspired excellence in both writing and crime. And at least since Poe, one has fed the other, giving Gotham’s underworld a rich and varied literature all its own. Here, in vaguely historical order, is a list of some my favorite books about outlaw New York. Low Life, by Luc Sante For anyone…
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I grew up near three hundred wild acres that contained woodland, marshland, rocky coves, granite ledge, and a mysterious grave. My sisters and I spent countless hours exploring when we were young—fishing for snapper blues and blue crabs, searching for owl pellets, collecting bouquets of wildflowers and marsh grass—so when the time came for me to set The Shadow Box in a wild landscape, that was the one I knew I had to write about. In the novel, Claire Beaudry Chase has been attacked and left for dead. She has to hide out and stay alive, and she uses her own instincts, her knowledge of the woods and shore, and skills taught to her by her father. Her husband is a state pro…
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Black History Month only lasts for a paltry few weeks, but you can (and should) read Black mystery authors all year long! Here is a month-by-month breakdown of upcoming works, so no one has an excuse to ever plead ignorance again when it comes to diversifying their reading lists. The following list includes a wide variety of subgenres, including cozies, crime fiction, legal thrillers, international thrillers, psychological thrillers, detective novels, historical fiction, romans noirs, urban fiction, and even some YA, because (unsurprisingly) there’s as much variety in crime fiction by Black authors as there is in the genre at large. This list is intended as both a resourc…
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In January 1936, twenty-one-year-old Ann Cooper Hewitt, the well-known San Francisco heiress, called a press conference alongside her attorney and announced that she was suing her mother, Maryon Cooper Hewitt. Ann claimed that she had been secretly sterilized at the behest of her mother, who paid two doctors to perform the procedure in order to prevent her from claiming an inheritance under her father’s estate. The allegations were explosive news and immediately caught the attention of San Francisco District Attorney, Matthew Brady. (Excerpted from The Unfit Heiress: The Tragic Life and Scandalous Sterilization of Ann Cooper Hewittby Audrey Clare Farley.) _______________…
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My first encounter with the Russian mob occurred two-and-a-half years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, in Istanbul. My new husband and I had traveled to Turkey and spent a week in a gloriously historic neighborhood, the Blue Mosque visible from our hotel windows. On our second night, we wandered across Galata Bridge, descended the steps to the waterfront, and chose a restaurant with a perfect view of the Golden Horn. Docked directly in front of this restaurant and sporting the tricolor Russian Federation flag floated a gigantic but peeling cruise ship, the name “Odessa” painted under a red star on its side. A single Russian family occupied nearly every table ins…
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Outside the small village where we live stands a white chapel. It’s a strange building, not typical of the area. Square and plain. No spire or stained-glass windows. More fitted perhaps to a dusty Midwest town in the US (perhaps with an old couple standing outside, holding a pitchfork!) Rows of crooked and ancient graves tip and tilt in the overgrown graveyard and at the top of the steep slope is a tall stone memorial. The inscription on it reads: “Protestant Martyrs Memorial. Erected to the memory of Richard Woodman and George Stevens of Warbleton, Margery Thomas and James Morris her son of Cade Street, Heathfield who with six others, were burned to death at Lewes…
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Most mystery lovers know of Wilkie Collins, beloved for his classics “The Woman in White” and “The Moonstone,” old-fashioned tales meant to be savored page-by-page by the fire late at night. Beyond that, however, one might accuse readers of what amounts to criminal neglect. The evidence? While the two classics noted above have hundreds of thousands of ratings and thousands of reader reviews at goodreads.com, and their titles can be dropped into conversations among book readers with confidence that others will have read them, or at least plan to, the same cannot be said for his many other works. “No Name” and “Armadale,” both excellent novels written during the same creat…
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The central thesis of Andreas Malm’s manifesto How to Blow Up a Pipeline: Learning to Fight in a World on Fire is that peaceful protests have proven themselves ineffective in stopping the widespread annihilation of the earth and its inhabitants by climate change. The book, published by Verso Books in 2021, explains that the only available option is to take more radical action, not against people but against the infrastructure that is the source of this danger. In a survey of the history of social, organizational and governmental change, Malm argues that every major movement has had to move past pacifistic stances in order to effect meaningful developments. Now, he write…
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The season is changing! As I write this, it’s eighty-four degrees and sunny outside. I can hear an ice cream truck out my open window, and also a cop shouting over the cruiser speaker at that ice cream truck, because I guess it’s illegally parked. My eyes are itchy from the pollen and my hair is voluminous from the humidity. On my block, the smells of grilled hot dogs wafting from the balcony barbecues above mingle with the smells of hot dog urine from the sidewalk below. This morning, I saw a pigeon fight with a seagull over a Popsicle wrapper. Rejoice, all, for it is summer in the city. I love—and I mean really love—summer in New York, the terrible place where I was bo…
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New York Times bestselling author Michael Koryta got the call from the records office at Indiana University shortly before he was scheduled to graduate. Looking back, it’s easy to understand why he overlooked a single core prerequisite. Koryta was busy writing part-time for the Bloomington Herald-Times, he worked occasionally for a private detective and in what spare time he had left, he was writing novels. He did all of this while studying for a degree in criminal justice because he never lost sight of his goal to become a crime fiction writer. Koryta was a college sophomore when he sold his first novel. While shopping his manuscript, the 19-year-old didn’t tell anyone…
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