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,
3,487 topics in this forum
-
- 0 replies
- 59 views
There are innumerable ways to answer the question of “When is it time to stop writing?” It could be time to stop when the publishing contracts dry up. Or it could be when your book sales dwindle to a dribbling trickle. When the last thing you want to do is come up with one more idea. It could also be time to stop when you flat out don’t feel like writing any longer and you’re afraid that every sentence you write reveals that reluctance. I wrote my first published mystery in 2009, and I recently turned in my eighteenth. The use of mathematics tells me that I’ve written an average of 1.125 books per year for the last fifteen years. Another burst of figuring tells me that I…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 52 views
“Pull over,” Allan shouted from the passenger seat. The rain was blinding. I refused to stop. My daughter was working the late shift and needed a ride home. “She can take an Uber,” he shouted. I couldn’t trust a random driver to bring my daughter home to safety. That was my job, her mother. With my hands clutched to the wheel, I drove fifteen miles an hour on the highway, the speed limit was 55, passing the dozens of other cars that had pulled over. In 1982 Angela Cavallo lifted a Chevy Impala off of her teenage son. We may not have heard the name Angela Cavallo, but most likely we have heard the story about the mother who saved her child’s life by lifting a car. Th…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 52 views
So here we are – The Detective Up Late, the seventh book in the Sean Duffy series… and so some evil rumourmongers say, the last. But it’s the 2020s – everyone has a comeback tour now, so no reason to think Duffy’ll be any different I reckon. For Duffy it’s 1990 – a new decade, the same old grinding “Troubles” in Northern Ireland. ‘The grim, greasy, seedy seventies had bled into the violent, neon, awful 80s…’ – a decade that saw 1,200 Troubles-related murders. Nobody in Carrickfergus Police Station is overly hopeful about the new decade, least of all our man, Detective Inspector Duffy. He’s still that rarest of things – a serving Catholic officer in the Royal Ulster Con…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 68 views
It’s almost impossible to imagine. Between 2010 and 2019, one of every seven crime novels published was by a single author—James Patterson. Working with co-authors, he became a novel writing phenomenon and much more, while many literary critics argued his work became much less. Patterson is well aware of the criticism of his assembly-line style productivity. How can one author, even working with co-authors, churn out dozens of books a year and expect any semblance of quality? The native New Yorker bonds with his audience and they’re devoted to him. His readers have devoured more than 400 million copies of novels with his name plastered in large type across the cover.…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 76 views
I was brought up to believe that our country was governed by whichever party happened to be in office. That’s what my ancestors had instilled in the generations before me and the belief that I was intending to pass onto my own children. And if I hadn’t become a journalist, perhaps history would have continued repeating itself. But instead, I was astounded to discover that our rulers and politicians are merely the organ grinders monkeys, whilst the media is the conductor of the ensemble. I’ve been interviewing celebrities for twenty-five years and I’d like to say that in that time, the media has moved with the times and changed its modus operandi when it comes to the live…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 63 views
The kids are almost back in school, vacation season is pretty much over, but there’s still time to travel this summer—just pick up an international crime novel! Here are five new books in translation that will take you all over the world, and into the dark underbelly of the coziest destinations. Isabelle Autissier, Suddenly Translated by Gretchen Schmid (Penguin Books) Isabelle Autissier has sailed the world alone, becoming the first woman to do so in a competition, and this survival thriller speaks to the experience of the author. In Suddenly, a French couple sets off on an epic journey, only to find themselves stranded on a remote island in the Antarctic Ocean. T…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 72 views
My latest novel, An Honest Man, is set in Maine and was written in Maine. This might make one think it qualifies as Maine fiction – and I respect your confusion. I’ve lived part-time in Maine for eight years now, and there are two disqualifiers in there. You can’t be a Mainer if you live in the state for “part” of a year (waivers may be considered for natives) and if the word following the number eight is years rather than generations, don’t even think about it. It was in Maine that I became aware of the acronym P.F.A., which stands for “People From Away.” This is one of the great terms for outsiders I’ve ever heard. There is Maine, and there is Away. The End. My wife, …
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 80 views
A missing person is a story that doesn’t end. We grapple to make sense, to decipher, to make meaning out of something so unfathomable. Jon Billman refers to the ‘purgatorial underworld of the vanished,’ a description that makes infinite sense to me. The missing are perpetually caught in an in-between place, not here but not gone. Stories about missing persons respond to this cultural anxiety, their narratives plotting explanations or recovering and remembering the missing person, refusing their oblivion. In my novel Tell Me What I Am a woman goes missing leaving behind her four-year-old daughter and sister. They alternately narrate the story of what happened and, I like …
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 73 views
In crystalline prose, The Lookback Window opens on a sun-dappled resort, but dread seeps through. When the Child Victims Act goes into effect in New York State, a yearlong lookback window opens, allowing now adult victims to sue their abusers. Reading about these cases, Dylan’s life is thrust open. As a teenager, he was the victim of sex trafficking. Now in his twenties, confronted with the opportunity to seek justice, Dylan revisits the past and descends into the deep well of his emotions. Written with rage, sex, pain, and understated dark humor, Kyle Dillon Hertz’s The Lookback Window is a powerful examination of our culture’s response to sexual violence against men. …
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 73 views
I must admit a fondness for following influencers. They’re just like us, but curated! Personally, I follow the plus size and modesty influencers (along with all the booktokers and bookstagrammers), while most of these novels are focused on jet-setting beauties and polished mums, but anyone who’s even dipped their toe in social media understands—branding and personhood become dangerously intertwined when the product you’re selling is your own life. Beyond all the messiness that happens IRL, there’s extra potential for danger in being Extremely Online. But is that danger more about exposing yourself to stalkers? Destroying your own privacy and that of your family? Or is it …
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 66 views
Behind the scenes, high drama and intrigue often far surpass any performance audiences get to see. Colliding ambitions, rivalries, burning resentment, not to mention illicit love affairs, provide wonderful fodder for mysteries. In Missed Cue, I drew on my background as an ex-dancer to set my tale in a dance company. When detective Caitlin O’Connor investigates the suspicious onstage death of an apparently healthy ballerina, she discovers an impatient rival, jilted lover, betrayed husband, secret pregnancy, and a bitter ex-wife. At one point, her partner says, “I feel like we’ve landed in the middle of a soap opera.” No kidding. If you’re a mystery fan who loves the …
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 60 views
When I was looking for the perfect setting for the Tea by the Sea series, I didn’t have to think very hard. Cape Cod was the natural choice. In any sort of mystery novel series you need a fairly constant turnover of people. Victim, villain, numerous suspects, all popping up and being mysterious. Popular tourist locations provide that turnover, giving the author a completely different set of people, motives, red herrings and all the rest for each book in the series. To take advantage of a tourist location, it helps if the amateur sleuth is in the tourist business in some way. My protagonist’s grandmother owns a B&B on Cape Cod Bay. Good variety of guests there. My…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 53 views
Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Keith Rosson, Fever House (Random House) “[A] whirlwind mystery . . . that hurls [Rosson’s] genre-slashing ambition into the stratosphere.” –NPR Nigar Alam, Under the Tamarind Tree (Putnam) “[A] sensitive tale of reconstructed lives and reexamined choices….Alam’s vivid descriptions of Karachi, nuanced characters, and deft ability to delve into big ideas while keeping the story moving make this an emotionally engaging read.” –Booklist Isabelle Autissier (transl. Gretchen Schmid), Suddenly “There’s no question about it: Isabelle Autissier is an excellent writer. . . . When it …
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 61 views
“I dream I see blood.” When she was 20 years old, Christy Pinnick came home and found her father, Ray Pinnick, dead on the floor of the kitchen of their Muncie, Indiana home. He’d been killed that cold evening in February 1994 while Christy was working the cash register at a drug store. Nearly 30 years later, Christy is still haunted by what she saw that night. She talks about how she still has nightmares about finding her father’s body. She still wants the men who killed her father to pay for their crime. That night, Christy is certain, those men who killed her father came into the drug store where she worked. She’s been told many times over the past 30 years, by p…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 72 views
\Horror and religion might sound like opposites at first glance. Most horror fans can probably think of at least one grisly film called out by a faith-based group (usually a sect of a certain religion). But as observed by Richie Tozier in Stephen King’s It, there’s a lot of horror within religious texts, too. And there can be religion/faith in horror texts. That was my perspective when writing my recent novel Cruel Angels Past Sundown, a horror + western mash-up that also draws in Biblical horror on a cosmic scale, exploring concepts of “might makes right” and questioning the conceit of what rightness and goodness mean in a judgmental system. It’s nowhere near the first …
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 61 views
While some people might consider cozy mysteries the red-headed stepchild of the mystery genre, their appeal continues to endure nonetheless. Not everyone delights in blood and gore and that’s where cozies come in. Opinions vary, but the first cozy mysteries are generally considered to be Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple Series. Whether you agree or not, her series certainly embodies many of the charxacteristics of the modern-day cozy. Cozies are the hygge of the mystery genre. They evoke the same warm, fuzzy feelings as the song My Favorite Things from the Sound of Music—whiskers on kittens and bright copper kettles (especially if those kettles are brewing tea.) Do you re…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
The Last Voyage of the Demeter hoists sail underneath an excellent conceit. The film is an adaptation of a single chapter from the 1897 novel Dracula, Chapter VII, which is an account of a ship’s voyage chartered from Varna, Bulgaria to Whitby, England. The novel Dracula is epistolary and this account is the Captain’s Log, which records strange things happening aboard the ship. Crew members start disappearing and the sea grows tempestuous. Sailors begin reporting seeing a strange man in the shadows of the vessel. “God seems to have deserted us,” the Captain writes. By the time the ship reaches its port, everyone is dead. The sailors do not know that they are transporting…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 59 views
In what universe are Tarzan, James Bond, pulp hero Doc Savage and legendary detectives like Sherlock Holmes, Spenser and Lord Peter Wimsey related? In the Wold Newton Universe, and if those words leave you utterly befuddled, let me tell you about the wildest set of connections and extrapolations ever created by an acclaimed science fiction author. It’s a universe of colorful characters and their intertwined histories that continues to unfold after the writer’s death. This universe springs not only from the mind of author Philip José Farmer but also from a real-life incident: The crash of a meteorite to Earth near the village of Wold Newton in Yorkshire, England in Decem…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 61 views
If you wish, you can blame it on The Great Gatsby. The 1920s have always seemed to carry a sheen of glamour. Daisy Buchanan’s beauty, Jay Gatsby’s wealth, the Great Neck mansions, it all dazzled readers so intensely that they didn’t quite grasp the ugliness of a car running down a woman in the road and a man shot in his own swimming pool. From the book: “Suddenly with a strained sound Daisy bent her head into the shirts and began to cry stormily. “ ‘They’re such beautiful shirts,’ ” she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. ‘It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such — such beautiful shirts before.’ ” Yes, interestingly, Daisy cries over the gorgeous shirts, …
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 64 views
When I talk to readers—at bookstores, libraries, and even tea rooms—the one think I’m always asked is where do I get my ideas and how do I find my inspiration? Do I get zapped in the head with the proverbial thunderbolt? Do I wait patiently until a big idea sparks the neurons inside my brain? Or is my every day choc-a-block filled with unbridled creativity? Well, no. I actually spend most days trying to avoid writing. Here’s how it works: I get up at 8:00 AM and feed my dog (Lotus). Then I make breakfast for Dr. Bob (husband). I fast read the newspaper looking/hoping for ripped-from-the-headlines ideas, then watch Squawk Box on CNBC to see how lousy my investments are do…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 68 views
When I moved into the basement in fifth grade, there were certain rules that had to be followed in order to stay safe. The light always had to be on at the bottom of the stairs. No amount of parental scolding could convince me to turn that light off, or to reach back into the hallway to flip the switch once I was free. The hall had to be taken at a sprint. While the idea of not showing fear seemed like a good one, speed was always preferable over bravado. Because once I hit the stairs to go up or closed my bedroom door, I was safe. But I could never, never look behind myself as I ran. That was the biggest rule of all. The most important, the most sacred, the most vital…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 65 views
The appeal of loss-of-innocence narratives lies, I think, in the way they invite us to experience a character’s seismic changes as they unfold—and in the way they can call up in vivid detail our own pasts. I suspect it was inevitable I would write a novel like Pet, that takes as its jumping-off point a deeply charismatic, glamorous woman who taught at my Catholic school. Every girl in my class wanted to be her, and every girl wanted to be her pet. This larger-than-life figure stayed with me for decades, and my memories of the intensity of our feelings around her sparked my story of manipulation and betrayal narrated by 12-year-old Justine. Child narrators can be tricky t…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 53 views
I’m not sure what the lowest point in my “fertility journey” has been. Was it the time I bought herbal gummies from Target that the garish pink label claimed had been prayed over? Was it all the increasingly personal, desperate posts I read through in the forum of my fertility app — which is apparently being investigated by the FTC? Or was it during one of the several horror movies about motherhood I’ve recently watched in which I found myself jealously musing, “Who cares if I give birth to a demon child? I’d love it anyway!” Because there have been a lot of horror movies about having babies these days, and, for some reason, their makers think we’re all more scared of cre…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 49 views
With the benefit of hindsight, the 1920s seem like an odd reprieve from the rest of that century. After the most devastating war the world had ever known, and before a global economic cataclysm and a second world war on top of it, the U.S. and western Europe saw a brief golden age of glamorous parties, economic prosperity and flourishing arts and culture. Soundtracking it all was what has been called the first American art form, jazz, a preview of the century’s American cultural hegemony. The truth, of course, was not quite as simple. Even as the music they invented came to define the decade, Black Americans had to contend with the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan. And even b…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 80 views
It’s a sensible writer who pays close attention to the clichés of their chosen genre, however untrue or outlandish they might be. If you want to go off-piste, even for a few pages, you first need to know what on-piste looks like—you need to know the location of the flags that mark the route most commonly taken. In the case of espionage, what are those flags? That spying is a dirty game played by gentlemen. That agents roam the world dispensing a violent justice. That they operate with near-total independence from the agencies that employ them, agencies that are all-knowing and all-seeing, uncoupled from any legal framework and with access to frontier-busting technology (…
Last reply by Admin_99,