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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It’s no accident that Los Angeles is the ultimate home for unmoored detectives—even on a good day, the Big Orange is a noir maze of jungle U-turns, glamor facades, and keen disconnection. The place also just happens to be the unofficial hurricane eye of the record biz, and it played a central role in the development of 20th century pop every step of the way…from the crackling exuberance of the studio musicals to the bop sweat of Central Ave, Hermosa’s cool jazz scene, the hot wax AM radio revolution of Capitol Records and Gold Star Studios, the teenybopper invasion of the Sunset Strip, and beyond. That’s why it’s no surprise that some captivating novels have been written…
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Two impeachments and one insurrection ago, comedian John Oliver described a then-fresh scandal–the Trump campaign’s potential collusion with Russian interference in the 2016 election–as “Stupid Watergate.” This use of Watergate–a shorthand for the series of crimes, dirty dealings, and subsequent cover-ups that led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974–reveals a lot about how we tried to understand the firehose of scandal and corruption that was the Trump Administration. On the one hand, Watergate was a hopeful precedent. It promised that political misdeeds could be brought to light, thoroughly investigated, and could bring down an unfit president. On the other,…
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I know the trades keep telling us the strike situation isn’t going to be truly felt by viewers for several months still, but if June is any indication of what the streamers have in their stockpiles, the future is bleak. Most months, we’re looking at at least five or six crime shows worth your time. This month, honestly, it just isn’t going to happen. Maybe we’re entering into the post-Succession, post-Barry, early summer lull. Anyway, the news isn’t all bad, at least for those Kelly Cuoco / Chris Messina / true crime culture fans out there. (And a note: I strongly support the WGA strike and hope a fair contract is delivered soon.) Based on a True Story (Peacock – Pr…
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I’ve got a novel called The Siberia Job coming out June 6th; it’s a based-on-real-events recounting of the insane world of Russia in the 90s and how adventuring American investors briefly controlled Russia’s most powerful energy company, before they were forced to sell by some very credible death threats. While doing research for the book, I interviewed a lot of fascinating people with a lot of fascinating anecdotes of the wild west-atmosphere of post-Soviet Russia. I stuffed The Siberia Job with as many of these as I could, but inevitably some of my favorites had to be left on the cutting room floor. Happily CrimeReads has given me a chance to tell a few fantastic storie…
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If you consume any kind of media these days, it’s almost guaranteed that you’ll find some level of meta contained within it. Movies about movies? Just ask Steven Spielberg and his newest release The Fablemans how it’s done. TV shows about TV shows? My recent favorite Reboot proves that there’s plenty of entertainment to be found when the writers poke fun at their own industry. Books about books are no different. Because we’re all readers to begin with, we tend to be drawn to stories that revolve around libraries, bookmobiles, book stores, and book clubs. After all, these are the spaces where we collectively thrive. Who among us hasn’t dreamed of uncovering a dead body in…
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Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Megan Abbott, Beware the Woman (Putnam) “A real treat for the author’s many fans and for everyone who treasures that sense of Gothic-tinged trouble both within and without. Think Rebecca in the UP. Abbott was once a cult favorite, but those times are long gone. She’s a crime-fiction A-lister now.” –Booklist I.S. Berry, The Peacock and the Sparrow (Atria) “Outstanding…The plot’s many twists will captivate readers, and Berry’s gorgeous prose is its own reward with echoes of le Carré and Graham Greene.” –Publishers Weekly Alison Goodman, The Benevolent Society of Ill Mannered La…
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Graham Greene famously called Patricia Highsmith “a poet of apprehension,” a phrase that kept returning to mind as I read Megan Abbott’s newest book, Beware the Woman, a brilliant fever dream of a novel in which time and sensation are bent out of order and each turn of the page brings a quiet breath of dread. Abbott, known for her hothouse, atmospheric thrillers, is at her most visceral here, with the story of a woman, Jacy, in early pregnancy accompanying her new husband on a trip to his father’s remote house in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Immediately, the physical reality of Jacy’s new world— the smells, the pains, the appetites—overwhelms us, and we’re thrown headlong …
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Whether or not General Sheridan knew of the concept of Manifest Destiny or had heard the term, he was a believer. Newspaper editor John O’Sullivan popularized the idea in 1839 when he made the case for America’s expansion westward. He wrote an article called “The Great Nation of Futurity,” which eloquently explained the political, economic, and moral reasons why Americans should go forth and spread across the North American continent. The words destiny and progress are prevalent in the piece, and a central tenet of progress was to civilize the Native American tribes, who were seen as archaic and savage. The idea of civilizing the tribes seemed noble at the time, but it wa…
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“I’m not involved… It had been an article of my creed,” Thomas Fowler boasts in The Quiet American, Graham Greene’s magnificent novel of Western embroilment in 1950s Vietnam. Not involved, Fowler insists, in the Indochina conflict; not involved in the murder of young CIA officer Alden Pyle, his romantic rival and sometime friend; not even particularly involved in his own two primary relationships—with wife and mistress. Fowler, a seasoned British journalist stationed in Saigon, takes pride in his neutrality, the only sensible position in a world of imperfect options: the Vietminh, French colonists, Americans, communists, Caodaists, Hoa-Haos. “The human condition being wha…
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Road Runner & Coyote Law #3: “The Coyote could stop anytime—if he were not a fanatic.” Open on a southwest desert vista, desolate but for a harmless Road Runner. (Beep, beep.) We zoom out, revealing a suspiciously ticking package behind the unsuspecting creature. Another zoom out, this time introducing a Coyote (Wile E.) frantically pressing a button on his phone marked “Detonate.” The package ticks on undisturbed, and an increasingly distressed Coyote calls Bomb Customer Service. Such a thing exists in this cartoon world, and as the call goes through, the package finally serves its purpose, leaving the Road Runner unharmed but covering our Coyote in ash and soot. T…
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Master Gardener is the third in Paul Schrader’s “God’s Lonely Men” trilogy, in each film of which a weary middle-aged man who has previously experienced alienation from mainstream society contends with his haunted past and hazy future, reflecting on these things, and his rote daily existence, via diary-keeping—a technique that suffices until his world is challenged by knowledge of something greater, and tested by a newfound bond with a distressed young person. Via these characters, the films in this trilogy tend to pair and interrogate the relationship between two normally unrelated topics: religion and climate change (First Reformed, 2017), gambling and the War on Terror…
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In the US it’s Memorial Day weekend, which could well mean you’re planning to spend some time outdoors, maybe at a cookout or in a park, but let’s be realistic, what it probably means is that you’re in the market for a good movie. And I would propose that there’s no better accompaniment to an early summer weekend than an Elmore Leonard romp. Now, you could read the always wonderful books, and I suggest that you do, but you could also check out one of the many, many Leonard adaptations. For your weekend planning, we’re going to help you narrow down which Leonard movie is the right fit for your needs. (Where possible, I’ll make an effort to indicate where you might stream …
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Punk and crime go together like boots and broken glass, 53rd and 3rd, Sid and Nancy. Since the first squall of feedback ripped through an amplifier, punk rock has been associated with criminal activity. Punk emerged as an art movement—yes an art movement—that manifested as a disorganized, reactionary, uncouth urge to pick up musical instruments and make some noise. Bands played in shitty clubs and shittier practice spaces in cities hit hard by unemployment, inflation, and the white flight to the suburbs across America and the UK. Kids drawn to this spectacle wore leather jackets, extravagant make-up, spiked-up hair, and homemade outfits that served as a form of self-exp…
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1967 saw the release of such recognized classics as Bonnie & Clyde, The Graduate, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?, Cool Hand Luke, and In The Heat of the Night. However, the biggest box office success of the year was The Dirty Dozen. The premise of the two-and-a-half- hour film takes place during WWII when renegade Major John Reisman (Lee Marvin) is assigned to train 12 military prisoners convicted of violent crimes for a suicide mission behind enemy lines. The film is structured in three parts; the recruitment of prisoners, their training, and the climatic mission. The result is an influential classic that resonates more than fifty years later and remains one of the b…
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A Remarkable Case of Plagiarism Fictitious plagiarism figures more than occasionally in Golden Age detective novels, but only a tiny number of Golden Age detective novels are known actually to have been plagiarized. While Raymond Chandler hurled plagiarism accusations at prolific British crime writer James Hadley Chase and it has been suggested by some (me, for example) that Agatha Christie might have drawn inspiration for her classic mystery novel And Then There Were None (1939) from Bruce Manning’s and Gwen Bristow’s The Invisible Host (1930), by far the most egregious known example of plagiarism from the Golden Age of the detective novel is Englishman Don Basil’s mys…
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I was born in 1972 into a family of women. We lived in the city and could walk anywhere: to school, to the store, to the huge park across the street, our bare feet burning on soft black asphalt or bruised from graveled alleyways. There were rumbling buses and singing ice cream trucks, crowded corner stores and constant foot traffic. The city was a paradise and it was a gauntlet, because my father left before I was born and we were alone, a mother and four daughters. I don’t remember the first peeping Tom or obscene phone call, because I was still in the cradle, thrust into a world where my older sisters were already hunted. I remember a man calling me to his car to show …
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While it is Northern malarkey that summer begins in June (it’s been hot in Texas, where this editor lives, for months now), it is appropriate for a summer preview list to begin in the first official month of summer, so we are starting with June this year. The list is also a bit shorter than usual. That is because there were too many good books and we got overwhelmed and then sleepy and then didn’t read as many of them as we would have liked to…But there are still 60+ thrilling, compelling, thoughtful, and intricate crime novels on the list below! (It really is a stressful year for us in terms of reading…Why are there so many good books?!?!) There are also quite a few YA a…
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As a native New Yorker, I can recall the first time I walked down the wild streets of Times Square with my mom in 1972. I was a nine year old nerd and the spectacles of “Da Deuce” (meaning the Times Square area, not the HBO series) scared me to death. There were numerous sex shops, strip clubs, hookers and porn theaters as well as crews of drug dealers, pimps and sidewalk crazies. However, a decade later, I couldn’t get enough of the peep palaces (it was all about Show World), dive bars and massive movie theaters that showed double features of kung-fu, Blaxploitation and a few strange ones like Faces of Death. In my newest noir short story “Escape-ism,” recently publishe…
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A look at the most notable nonfiction crime books from the spring. * Mark Bowden, Life Sentence (Atlantic) “A scorching true-crime narrative. . . Bowden pulls no punches in his indictment of the ways in which the richest country in the world has allowed Black children for decades to be born into blighted urban neighborhoods, and saddled them with burdens that they must struggle to surmount to lead meaningful lives. This account of ‘young men growing up in a place where murderous violence has become a way of life’ will haunt readers long after they finish it.”—Publishers Weekly David Grann, The Wager (Doubleday) “’The Wager’ is a soaring literary accomplishment…
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I was born in the Bronx, N.Y. to a Cuban father and a Puerto Rican mother. We lived in a Spanish–speaking neighborhood, but just before I turned four, we moved to a small town in New Jersey. That was in the early 1950s, and, as far as I know, we were the only Latin family for miles around. I was raised mostly among Irish and Italians and spoke only English. I became a newspaper journalist, and in the early 1990s I moved to Florida to work as a reporter for The Miami Herald. At that point, I had lived for years in Mexico and in Central America—where I was a foreign correspondent—and had relearned Spanish. Along the way, I published three stand-alone crime novels but wante…
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A house whose sordid history plays into a storyline is catnip to my reader’s soul. I will invariably pounce on any cover featuring an old house—especially one whose size foreshadows infinite nooks and crannies in which secrets galore are hidden. Gothic house on a tidal island, posh Paris apartment building, glamorous Manhattan one, a Brooklyn neighborhood with homes clustered tight, an old-money family retreat in upstate New York, and an English country manor—I don’t discriminate; give me all the sprawling, sinister abodes. Perhaps the origin point for this proclivity is having spent my childhood poring over glorious Nancy Drews, many of which center around grand country …
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Norman Schwarzkopf, the late hero of Desert Storm, is credited with saying, “The more we sweat in peace the less we bleed in war.” Though Stormin’ Norman’s contributions to that war will certainly go down in the history books, one could argue that this famous quote could be his greater legacy. During my military service—post Desert Storm and into the war on terror—I heard it repeated countless times as justifications for military exercises, i.e., sweat. Small wonder. It is hardly debatable that a well-drilled, well-exercised military would be more prepared for the horrific, dreadful challenge of a real war. And that’s what the US military does during peacetime—sweats. T…
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Imagine being in your own locked room scenario, surrounded by thriller authors. Considering the search histories on their computers, all these people know not only how to kill, but also how to get away with it, hide the body, and set someone else up to take the fall. So, how bad would it be if someone around you—a peer, no less—ended up dead? In I Didn’t Do It, that’s exactly what happens. Murderpalooza, the annual thriller conference, is taking place in New York City when the darling of the industry, Kristin Bailey, is found by housekeeping stabbed to death in her hotel room. Then, four authors of varying successes—a midlister, an egomaniac, a has-been, and a newbie—are…
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What is a thriller or mystery without a sprinkling of red herrings? The dictionary defines a red herring in two ways: a dried smoked herring, which is turned red by the smoke. a clue or piece of information that is, or is intended to be, misleading or distracting. Interestingly, there is no actual species of fish named “red herring.” A red herring is actually a type of herring that’s smoked heavily, or brine cured, giving it a red color and a strongly pungent smell. They were used in hunting to train dogs to follow that fishy scent and not get distracted by other smells. The redness and powerful odor are designed to both distract and lure attention—exactly the purpo…
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“It is strange how a girl can disappear without leaving a ripple upon the waters of the Port of Missing Girls.” In 1943 Chicago Tribune journalist Marcia Winn traveled to Hollywood to report on the stories rarely covered by their local papers. She brought back tales of scandal, corruption, cover-ups, and crime, but none of her articles had as big an impact as the second in her series: “Hollywood Vice Swallows Up 300 Girls a Month.” In the article, Winn interviewed an anonymous law enforcement official who laid out in brutal terms what often happened to girls who arrived in Hollywood looking for fame and stardom: finding movies hard to break into, the girl would meet a “s…
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