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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Virginia recently passed a bill that bans the use of gay and trans “panic” defenses in criminal proceedings. The panic defense argues that violence is justifiable when the victim is perceived to be gay or trans. The most egregious version of this defense happens in cases where defendants will claim that a sexual advance from the victim triggered an uncontrollable, violent response in the defendant. In cases such as these, defendants are not making a claim about their own gender or sexual identity. The assumption rests solely on the idea that minorities are the cause of their own victimization. In 1998, the two men who beat Matthew Shepherd to death employed a version of t…
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I’ve got a secret, one I’ve never been willing to reveal in my twenty plus years as a librarian. I hate to burst the readers’ collective bubble, but here is the plain unvarnished truth, and you can trust a librarian to give you the correct answer, even if it’s painful. Here it is. Librarians are not allowed to read in the library. I’ve never pulled a book off a shelf and curled up in a chair even if there is a blizzard outside and no chance of a customer snowmobiling up to the front door. Sure, I can dip into a book to answer a customer’s question, but otherwise, no reading. It would be considered unprofessional. However, there is no rule against plotting murder. That I c…
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CrimeReads editors select the month’s best new nonfiction crime books. * The Twelve Lives of Alfred Hitchcock: An Anatomy of the Master of Suspense By Edward White (W.W. Norton & Co.) White’s study of Hitchcock is an endlessly engaging and insightful read, breaking down the Master of Suspense’s life into twelve aspects, each illuminated with clever analysis of the director’s work. From Hitchcock “the dandy” to Hitchcock “the voyeur” and Hitchcock “the man of God,” White offers up incisive commentary on the multitudes contained within the man’s larger-than-life persona, and the live mind behind some of the greatest movies ever made. For fans of classic movies a…
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Back when I was a football coach, I used to call other coaches and “talk shop.” I wanted to know how they ran their practices, which plays they called on third and long. I wanted to know everything. Now that I’m a writer, not much has changed. Anytime I get a chance to meet up with other authors, I always want to talk shop. “Shop Talk” is a column where I’ll chat with some of today’s leading crime writers about how they put the black on the white. We’ll cover everything from office setup to what a regular workday looks like, and all stops in between. For the first installment of “Shop Talk,” I sat down with William Boyle, author of the novels Gravesend, The Lonely Witne…
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Many a mystery novel featuring an amateur sleuth places a librarian in that role. With good reason—outside of law enforcement, no profession lends itself to the role of detective more readily. Librarianship requires a combination of temperament and education that produces a professional with a powerful curiosity and the skill set to satisfy it, no matter how obscure the fact we seek. Though often written off as unassuming, cardigan-wearing bookworms, our jobs require traits more often associated with our hard-boiled colleagues in the investigation business. We do good research. Go ahead—try us. But be warned: strolling up to the reference desk and prefacing your question…
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Chester Himes is one of the most prolific and underrated Black writers of the 20th century. Himes, who lived from 1909-1984, was the author of 17 novels and numerous short stories. But for crime fiction lovers, he is best known for his Harlem detective series featuring the African American detective team of Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones. I was first introduced to the duo through the 1970 movie Cotton Comes To Harlem, which was based on the sixth novel in his series. While Himes published his first novel in 1945, he didn’t enter the hardboiled genre until he was recruited by a French publisher to write crime novels while living in France in the 1950s. The expat…
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We all know the power of fiction to do some good. It’s cover for forbidden facts. It can shine a spotlight on corruption. Ars gratia artis has it’s place, but not for me, not today. We’re living in a world of teenagers too young to drink or drive, sporting AR-15s. Of Putin and Xi assembling an all-star team of autocrats to take on the world. Fiction has a job to do. And one genre in particular is up to the task. “Fiction in any form has always intended to be realistic,” Raymond Chandler begins his iconic essay on the crime writer’s craft, “The Simple Art of Murder.” The father of American noir goes on to rip apart the British cozy and most detective fiction as too improb…
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Young Man, It Starts Here Almost all the people I called my peers were second-generation township dwellers. When my father said he was going home, he embarked on an exhausting, bumpy drive to the rural south coast, past Umzumbe and beyond, to dusty villages where youths still greeted elders. I went there too from time to time. There was nothing lavish about the place. When I said I was going home, I meant Umlazi—a township. Both my maternal and paternal grandparents were of the last generation that lived in the same place for their whole lives. Times changed fast. Even I, bush mechanic that I was, vowed not to die in a township, let alone in my father’s house. My father …
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Even Sherlock Holmes, wrote the Monster, couldn’t beat us. In March of 1984 a kidnapping rocked Osaka. Masked men with guns dragged 42-year-old Katsuhisa Ezaki, president of the multimillion-dollar Ezaki Glico confectionery company, out of his bathtub. Here was a man whose name was a fixture in stores and vending machines across Japan (Glico candies are iconic; Pocky is just one of them)—the leader of a company that in the ruins of postwar Japan had been an engine of revitalization, selling everything from dairy products to meat curries, coming to represent health and vitality to so many millions of Japanese. Now his wife and daughter, and even his mother in the house ne…
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If a thrilling movie filmed in a foreign locale helps you escape for an hour or two from limitations on travel imposed by the pandemic, imagine what watching 25 episodes of an international thriller series might do to uplift your psyche and energize your creativity! I thought I’d test that theory, and over the last month have streamed 27 international thriller TV series in a variety of subgenres—espionage, political, romantic, and more—from continents across the globe. I do feel considerably less home-bound, and have drawn from what I learned about the wider world as I write my next book. Based on that experience, I’m delighted to share with you my Top 10 Streaming Inter…
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America’s Gilded Age was always rotten at the core. Glittering estates and palaces of commerce for the Vanderbilts and the Carnegies, the squalid tenement and factory floor for the masses. Two entire generations of workers had been sacrificed to that grinder to make the Rockefellers rich. But when the gleaming veneer cracked, the whole system fell apart, and the country lapsed into a stupor like it had never known. The Panic of 1893 was the worst depression the United States had yet endured. The railroads—the revolutionary technology of the age, and engine of overnight trade and communication—had been overvalued and overbuilt, growth fueled through acquisitions that hi…
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As the mother of daughters, I am well aware that sisters can be twisted. Sure, they can be loving, but there is often a darker side to this relationship … and what makes it so frightening is the speed with which the pendulum swings. One moment it’s all rainbows and unicorns, the next it’s hairpulling and eye-gouging (or is this just at my place?). As someone with brothers, this relationship has always been fascinating to me. How is it that two people can be so close, and yet so treacherous? This is something I wanted to explore in my new novel, The Good Sister, but clearly I’m not the only one who is interested in this subject. Here are a few of my favorite novels about…
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In conversation with Andy Warhol, another artist who spent a great deal of his career silently staring at bodies in intimate situations, Alfred Hitchcock claimed he had glimpsed pornographic films only once in his life, and that was after the age of sixty, and by way of happenstance. It occurred after a steak dinner during a publicity trip to Tokyo, he said, when he was led blithely “into this upper room and there they had a screen that showed these awful films,” the specifics of which he didn’t divulge. However, he daydreamed about including acts of sexual voyeurism in his films. The story of Adelaide and Edwin Bartlett, which Hitchcock frequently cited as his favorite t…
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I’ve heard musty advice about including the internet in books again and again: don’t do it. It’s always from a certain kind of writer and age has nothing to do with it; the kind of writer that imagines a purity of craft that I don’t believe exists, combined with a personality that romanticizes being a luddite because they have better, more elevated, things to accomplish. These folks have a lot to say to me because I write a ton about computers, games, and digital community. They warn that it will date my book (all books are dated). They exclaim, also, that it will create too many plot holes—how will the characters still have problems that they cannot solve if they have Yo…
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There are few places in the world that inspire awe and terror like the Alps. With peaks that top 4000 meters and immense crevasses cracking through granite, the Alps give a god-like vantage above the world one minute only to plunge one to its depths the next. This dizzying sensation was best expressed by the French essayist Chateaubriand when he wrote: High mountains suffocate me, and while the lack of oxygen is certainly a factor, it is just one of the elements that make the Alps the perfect setting for chilling crime, suspense, and horror fiction. One of my favorite novels set in the Alps is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, published in 1818. Shelley perfectly captured th…
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Winter’s chill is thawing, and you know what that means: a fresh crop of true-crime podcasts. Tune into these nine new pods this spring. TW: Sexual assault Anatomy of Murder (audiochuck) What sets Anatomy of Murder apart from other true crime podcasts? It’s the real insider’s perspective offered by the show’s co-hosts—one that considers every single layer of a murder investigation. Anna-Sigga Nicolazzi and Scott Weinberger are the definition of true true crime insiders. Nicolazzi spent 21 years working as a New York City homicide prosecutor and currently hosts Investigation Discovery’s True Conviction. Scott Weinberger, an Emmy Award-winning investigative journalis…
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I’d forgotten how beautiful this drive is,” Marine said to her best friend, Sylvie. They were heading south on the highway between Aix and the coast, and Marine was craning her head so that she could better see the hills to her right. They were covered in garigue that was brighter than usual because it had rained so much that spring. “Oui, c’est vrai,” Sylvie mumbled in agreement, signaling to pass a slow-moving truck. “How are you feeling today?” “Oh, I’m fine,” Marine said, smiling. “It was really just those first three months, you know. I was constantly tired.” Sylvie shifted gears as they climbed the mountain. “Get ready for the view,” she said. Marine did as she …
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Professor Dr Dr (honoris causa) (mult.) Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld came from a distinguished family about whom little is known, other than they had existed, as von Igelfelds, for a very long time. The obscurity of their early history in no way detracted from the family’s distinction; in fact, if anything, it added to it. Anybody can find their way into the history books by doing something egregiously unpleasant: starting a local war, stealing the land and property of others, being particularly vindictive towards neighbours: all of these are well-understood routes to fame and can lead to immense distinction, titles and honorifics. Most people who today are dukes or earls ar…
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Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Bryan Christy, In The Company of Killers (Putnam) “Christy makes his fiction debut with an exceptional adventure thriller… A riveting plot, complex characters, deep backstory, and an engrossing setting enhance this finely written novel about justice, personal responsibility, and saving the environment.” –Publishers Weekly Edward White, The Twelve Lives of Alfred Hitchcock (W.W. Norton & Co.) “White distinguishes his work with an inspired approach…. An absorbing, thoughtful, and balanced look at a master of his medium.” –Library Journal Mariah Fredericks, Death of a Showma…
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At the National Museum of American History, there is a small piece white fabric, roughly the shape of a trapezoid. It has three pearl buttons, decorative stitching along the edge, and a small faded brown spot. The spot is the blood of Abraham Lincoln. The piece of cloth a dress cuff worn by actress Laura Keene who was performing Our American Cousin the night he was assassinated. Written by British playwright Tom Taylor, the play was a satirical look at oafish, jingoistic Americans abroad. The play’s broad humor suited the President’s taste and he was an admirer of Keene. When the shot was fired, Keene, still in costume, shouted to panicked theater goers, “For God’s sake,…
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Each member of the gang had a job. Margaret Whittemore, soon to be known all over America as “Tiger Girl,” knew exactly what to do. And she played her role to the hilt. Early on the morning of January 11, 1926, Margaret Whittemore, not quite twenty-two years old, rose just before dawn. Daylight would reveal a sky as dull as a mollusk and gray as concrete on this early winter day, but at this hour, as the sky slowly brightened, the lights of the streets of Manhattan still twinkled outside the window. Most days Margaret and her husband, Richard Whittemore, rarely opened the curtains before noon, if at all. They stayed out late and awoke even later, often stumbling home at …
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My wife and I completed our family through adoption, so perhaps it was inevitable that my debut novel, Other People’s Children, tells the story of an adoption gone awry. Our son and our daughter both came home without much drama, but we weren’t spared the endless waiting, the razor’s-edge uncertainty, and the flood of love when we first met our children. Adoption is such an emotional and sometimes fraught experience for everyone involved—the birth parents, the adoptive parents, and as they grow up, the children. When things go well, when everyone cooperates in good faith, it just changes everyone’s life forever. When things go wrong, when circumstances slide toward the gr…
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Alan Parks didn’t set out to be a crime writer. But his beyond gritty depictions of 1970s Glasgow, seen through the eyes of rather bent copper, Harry McCoy, are at once searing and humane. The former music executive—a stint as creative director with London Records is only part of his previous background in the business, after many years in the capitol—returned home to Glasgow, (he actually grew up nearby, in Paisley) where he began a new career at 54. In the just released Bobby March Will Live Forever, Bobby, a by now past his shelf date rock star, has been found overdosed in a nondescript Glasgow hotel room…with a needle still stuck in his arm. Harry is called by the h…
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Hello, readers, and hello, April. We are starting to see glimmers of the big psychological thrillers of the summer, from such fan favorites as Megan Abbott, Paula Hawkins, and Robyn Harding. In the meantime, April has plenty to offer us. Let’s take a book into the nascent sun and try and get some vitamin D and some sense of normalcy. It’s going to happen, right? We’re going to be normal again, aren’t we? Caroline Kepnes, You Love Me (Random House) Long before Kepnes’s brilliantly sick series of books, she worked at Entertainment Weekly (also the former workplace of crime writer Julia Dahl, regular CrimeReads contributor Daneet Steffens, and me). Reading Kepnes is l…
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My fascination with the women of the Office of Strategic Services, the organization that was the precursor to the CIA in WWII, began with a Washington Post article I came across from June 2011, about two best friends in a retirement community in Virginia. Elizabeth McIntosh and Doris Bohrer lived on the same street in the Westminster at Lake Ridge Seniors Village in Prince William County. Upon meeting, they bonded over a highly unusual connection—both women had been spies overseas in WWII in the OSS, and later had long careers with the CIA. McIntosh had served in Asia, and, even at ninety-six, still struggled with the guilt over unwittingly handing off an explosive disgui…
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