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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June had a pretty paltry rollout of crime shows, with Based on a True Story the only real standout worth watching. July is better, though still pretty thin on offerings, which makes me think the WGA strike may actually hit home a little harder and sooner than we’ve been told. I’m eager for a fair contract to be reached so we can go back to the usual glut, but in the meantime, this month does promise some starry projects, most notably the new iteration of Justified and a Soderbergh thriller to top it off. The Lincoln Lawyer (Netflix / New season premieres July 6th) Netflix’s adaptation of the Michael Connelly series has a kind of blue-sky appeal. It’s an eminently wat…
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Birdman, the Big Tymers, Juvenile, Manny Fresh, BG, Turk, and most famously Lil Wayne—all names that jump out when New Orleans’ Cash Money Records is mentioned. Birdman (formerly “Baby”) and his brother Slim created a huge movement in the ’90s with Cash Money and, in terms of rap music, put New Orleans on the map. Founded by Jean Baptiste Le Mayne de Bienville in 1718 as La Nouvelle-Orleans and known worldwide for its French Quarter, New Orleans is a beautiful city with a rich history and a wide mix of cultures all residing and colliding in one place. As the birthplace of jazz, the city attracts millions of tourists each year for the Mardi Gras celebration and never-endi…
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CrimeReads has been accused of a bias toward noir in the past, and we’re sorry (not sorry) to report that this year’s best of the year so far list is noir AF—the world is, after all, getting darker, and cynical take-downs are often less depressing to read than fantasies of happiness (for those of us who don’t believe in happy endings, anyway). Noir is a cornerstone when it comes to fictional critiques of social mores and growing inequality, and the books below serve as either sendoffs of the corrupt and privileged, or as folk-hero tales of those who fight the system. You’ll see plenty of household names at the top of their game, plus rising new voices who will hopefully c…
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Beginning in the 1990s, when he was 19 or so, Stéphane Breitwieser stole hundreds of artworks and antiquities from dozens of small museums, churches, castles and art shows in seven European countries. It’s a résumé that makes the 51-year-old Frenchman “perhaps the most successful and prolific art thief who has ever lived,” Michael Finkel writes in The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession. With then-girlfriend Anne-Catherine Kleinklaus often serving as his “lookout”—she’d be ready to cough if a security guard approached while Breitwieser was, say, slipping a knight’s helmet into his backpack—“he averaged a theft every twelve days for seven year…
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Parents. We all have them, one way or the other. Biological, step, foster, surrogate. Estranged. Long-distance. And now—through the magic of online DNA testing—parents you never even knew about. No matter what, we can all agree that our parents shape our lives. Through what we inherit or the environment they create. Through their presence or their absence. Parents may give us a lot to live up to—or a lot to live down. We may strive to be just like them. Or do everything in our power to be different. Most of my books have dealt with families—in one way or another. And a lot of great crime and mystery fiction have families at the center. Why are families such rich subjec…
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First, a confession: I am a chicken. Not just a chicken, but the chickenest chicken that ever chickened. A constant jump scare waiting to happen. The character frozen in place in the movie, unable to save herself. Jurassic Park gave me nightmares for years. I didn’t venture anywhere near a Stephen King book until my mid-thirties. And don’t even ask me about the time I accidentally walked in on someone watching Alien. When I tell you I am the last person you’d expect to write horror novels, I mean it in the strongest possible terms. So when I finished my third novel manuscript and sent it off to my agent with the note “What genre is this?” the email I got back made me c…
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Excerpted From “Mystery Meat: A Dan Shamble, Zombie P.I. Adventure” by Kevin J. Anderson: The giant fly was frantic as she buzzed into the offices of Chambeaux & Deyer Investigations. Her long translucent wings vibrated like stained-glass windows made of Saran wrap. She clutched her top two sets of articulated arms in dismay. “My maggots are missing!” she wailed, then accepted a tissue from Sheyenne, our receptionist (and my ghost girlfriend), so she could dab away tears from her multifaceted eyes. I shambled into the front office when I heard the loud buzzing sound, and I could immediately see that this human-sized insect needed our help. As a zombie detective, I’…
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The world’s greatest living art thief is likely a 52-year-old Frenchman named Stéphane Breitwieser, who has stolen from some 200 museums, taking art worth an estimated total of $2 billion. While working on a book about him, I interviewed Breitwieser extensively, during which he discussed the details of dozens of his heists – and also expressed the brazen belief that his art crimes should be considered forgivable. But only his crimes. Breitwieser said that he didn’t even like being called an art thief, because all other art thieves seemed to be nothing more than art-hating thugs. This includes the most accomplished ones, like the two men who robbed Boston’s Isabella Ste…
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Years ago I had a discussion with another author about someone’s work she admired. What stood out to her was that the setting came alive in this third author’s books. Trees weren’t just there—they lived and breathed and grabbed onto you. The ground wasn’t something you simply walked on—it sucked you in. And the air wasn’t only something that gave life, but it might also snuff it out. The idea excited me and the conversation stuck with me. Because—what if setting could be something more than the place where your novel takes place? What if it could shape the narrative? What if it was crucial to how the story panned out? This is a common theme in gothics—those creepy old ho…
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Morally ambiguous characters wouldn’t make the best of friends, but they do make for interesting books. So—why is it that readers are often able to root for fictional killers, who violate one of the basic tenets of society: the right to life? That’s one of the questions I asked myself when I started writing Before She Finds Me, which features Ren Petrovic, a pregnant assassin who targets those she and her husband deem worthy of punishment. Ren was raised into the trade by her father, whose mantra was instilled in her as a child. Shield the innocent. Kill the guilty. Defend the family. Ren’s own mantra is simpler: Do what’s right. But her definition of what’s right differ…
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Since they first appeared in fiction, women detectives have been a force to be reckoned with. Often underestimated, they use this to their advantage, eavesdropping on important conversations and drawing confessions out of the most unlikely suspects. Whether seen as coquettish or ignored for being matronly, our favorite fictional female sleuths know how to manipulate misconceptions for their own benefit. The iconic women detectives of fiction each have their own unique methods, building on those who came before. They prove time and time again, through our favorite murder mysteries, that women have an important place in the pursuit of justice. The following changed the game…
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The teens are not all right. According to a recent report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 42 percent of U.S. high schoolers had feelings of hopelessness or sadness in 2021. But the group that experienced these emotions most acutely was teenage girls, with nearly three in five of them feeling persistent sadness throughout the year. While these rates of sadness are the highest reported in a decade, such feelings are not uncommon amongst teenage girls. They’re at the core of my debut book, The Elissas, which follows my childhood best friend, Elissa, through her time in the Troubled Teen Industry where she met two other girls uncannily named Alissa and Alys…
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Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Beatriz Williams, The Beach at Summerly (William Morrow) “Beatriz Williams’s vivid historical novel alternates with measured suspense between present and past.” –Booklist David Bell, Try Not to Breathe (Berkley) “Bell delivers a perfect beach read with compelling characters and baffling circumstances….even the savviest suspense readers will be shocked by the final pages.” –Library Journal RV Raman, Praying Mantis (Agora) “On the surface it is a classic locked-room mystery, but one executed with such grace and style that it never seems old-fashioned or forced. Athreya is a …
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Bologna, capital of northern Italy’s Emilia-Romagna region. With only about 400,000 citizens the city is still one of Italy’s most multicultural, largely due to being a university town. Widen out the region and it’s a million people. Alternatively known as the Fat City for its rich cuisine, or the Red City for its red tiled rooftops, and sometimes the Learned City as Bologna is home to the world’s oldest university (in continuous operation). It’s also a beautiful city – a massive UNESCO World Heritage site and also, of course, a city with some fine crime writing. Or should we say Gialli – Italian crime fiction books? The name comes from the covers of a popular Italian ser…
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The following is a conversation between two debut YA novelists: Amanda Linsmeier, author of Starlings, and Amy Goldsmith, author of Those We Drown, both lyrically written horror novels that test the bounds of the YA genre. Both novels are now available from Delacorte Press. Amanda Linsmeier: Hi Amy! I’m so excited to chat with you today about our books! Creating a strong and atmospheric setting is so important in stories. The town in STARLINGS became like its own character to me, and I loved your setting so much—as I was reading I was struck by the fact that it felt really fresh and at the same time, perfectly ominous. At what point did you know THOSE WE DROWN would take…
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There are few people in the history of organized labor in America who are as infamous as Jimmy Hoffa. He rose from poverty to become the president of the International Brotherhood of the Teamsters (IBT or just the Teamsters) and helped expand it into one of the most powerful unions in the world. Hoffa rubbed shoulders with gangsters, fought bitterly with Robert F. Kennedy, got convicted of jury tampering and other crimes in 1967, and promised to take back control of the Teamsters after his controversial release from prison in 1971 before he mysteriously vanished in 1975. His disappearance, as well as the fact that his body was never found, continues to fascinate people. …
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The late Cormac McCarthy, widely regarded as the literary heir to Herman Melville and William Faulkner, a traditionalist in a sea of deconstructionists, had a flair for violence. Sometimes he boiled everything down to the brutal essentials. From his novel “No Country for Old Men”: “Chigurh stepped into the doorway and shot him in the throat with a load of number ten shot. The size collectors use to take bird specimens. The man fell back through his swivel-chair knocking it over and went to the floor and lay there twitching and gurgling. Chigurh picked up the smoking shotgun shell from the carpet and put it in his pocket and walked into the room with the pale smoke still…
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As a young child, my favorite activity involved going into my make-believe laboratory (a.k.a. the bathroom) and experimenting with powerful potions (empty shampoo bottles and such filled with water and soap). My big sister and I had a game we never spoke of. She would stand outside the door I’d left ajar and spy on me. I would stage-whisper to myself, “This will kill her, and she won’t even know how I did it!” A few years later, I got hooked on comic books. One that blew my mind was a mega-sized anthology of classic horror stories. It was printed like a comic book, but definitely foreshadowed what would later be known as graphic novels. It included comic book versions of…
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What is it about being alone in the woods that’s so frightening? Is it a fear of predators, disorientation, or a sense of vulnerability? What about the inability to call for help or a fear of the unknown? Or, what if the most pulse-pounding element is simply your imagination, feeding off a lifetime of consuming thrillers set in the deep, dark woods? Growing up, I spent my summers at a lakeside cabin situated a few miles down a narrow dirt road. Once the car bounced off the pavement onto the gravel and houses gave way to a dense forest, it felt as if I entered a different world. I relished the campfire tales and late-night walks to the pitch-black cemetery situated unsett…
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Three months ago, I put together a list of the 19 scruffiest detectives in crime film and TV. I wrote in that list that “[t]he scruffy detective is one of the purest, most persistent tropes in the crime genre” and that is true. But such is also the case for the suave, polished detective! Crime fiction contains multitudes, what can I say? The gentleman sleuth character is deeply entrenched in the genre, going back to the 19th century. The archetype flourished during the Golden Age of detective fiction at the start of the 20th century, giving us countless well-heeled, refined sleuths ripe for adaptation to television and film. As I did with this list’s rumpled-focused com…
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The Savage History of Proofrock, Idaho opens looking through the two eyeholes of a mask, and of course there’s some heavy, menacing breathing. What those eyeholes are fixed on from behind the bushes is a ten-year-old kid. It’s nighttime, well after midnight, and the kid’s sitting in a barely moving swing at Founders Park. It’s where the old staging area for Terra Nova used to be, eight years ago. The kid’s head is down so his face is hidden. He could be dead, posed there, his hands wired to the swing’s galvanized chains, but then a thin breath comes up white and frosted, and he starts to look up, eyes first. Before his face comes into focus, The Savage History of Proof…
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The whole doctor-patient confidentiality except in the case of crimes committed and threatened makes mobsters going to therapy a difficult needle to thread. If the point of therapy is to open up without reservations, having to sidestep the emotional fallout of murdering someone makes the whole approach less than ideal. Yet, that very concept of mobsters seeking psychological treatment turns out to be the foundation of not one but two major releases from 1999: the pilot and first season of the television show The Sopranos and the movie Analyze This. The Sopranos aired its pilot on HBO on January 10, while Analyze This debuted in theaters later that year on March 5. Both p…
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The CrimeReads editors select the month’s best first novels in crime fiction, mystery, and thrillers. * Clémence Michallon, The Quiet Tenant (Knopf) I just got my advance copy of Clémence Michallon’s much-anticipated new novel and I *can* confirm that it’s worth the hype!! It is a beautifully and thoughtfully written book with a pitch-perfect premise, about a man named Aidan, who, after he loses his wife, must downsize. He must move to a new, smaller home with his teenage daughter… and the woman he’s secretly had captive on his property for five years. He is a serial killer, and she is the one woman he has ever spared. Narrated by the three women in his life—his dau…
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When I first learned that “Liv Constantine” was the co-writing name of two sisters, Lynne Constantine and Valerie Rees, I was immediately fascinated. How did they do it, I wondered? We tend to think of the writing process as a necessarily solitary activity, so how could you share that task with someone else? Would it be fun or frustrating, productive or tedious to collaborate with another writer, especially a family member? I couldn’t wait to talk to them about it, and when I saw that their new novel, The Senator’s Wife, was out this spring, I jumped at the chance. I read The Senator’s Wife in one sitting. I’ve always been fascinated by the private lives of D.C. power …
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