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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Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Megan Miranda, Such a Quiet Place (Simon and Schuster) “Miranda, who makes the setting, where everyone knows one another and ends up fearing one another, all the more chilling for its seeming normality, is a master of misdirection and sudden plot twists, leading up to a wallop of an ending. A powerful, paranoid thriller.” –Booklist Ace Atkins, The Heathens (Putnam) “Exceptional. . . Atkins artfully alternates between that pursuit and Colson’s search for the people he believes slaughtered Byrd. The diverse cast of characters and their intricate relationships elevate this above mos…
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He would remember that day, always. He was with his mother. They were outside the New York Institute for Special Education, or as the people in the Bronx neighborhood called it——The School for the Blind. There was a small building on the property at the corner of Williamsbridge and Astor where the Institute sold brooms and mops that the blind made there. His mother always bought extras and gave them to friends and neighbors in the apartment building. She was that kind of person. They were standing in the shade of the Institute trees waiting for the streetlight to change when out of the clear blue the boy’s mother said, “Dean…I want you to remember…God is always working …
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The sight of a human head floating in my local lake—the top few inches of the brown-haired skull, the body submerged vertically beneath—was the moment when my career as a writer of fly-fishing-related crime novels began. It made perfect sense that a dead body would be in the weedy shallows of a busy urban lake where I was fly-rodding from my canoe for spawning bluegill. Why not? People drown in Lake Monona all the time, and the nearest properties were ominous-looking, high-security trophy houses perhaps acquired through obscene business practices, inhabited by mistresses, and on the disputed-asset lists in ugly divorces. It made perfect sense that I would find the bod…
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Thirty years ago, July “Come on, Erik!” Josh’s sneakers disappeared over a mussel-encrusted rock ridge left exposed by the low tide. His voice echoed behind him. “We have to get there and back again before the tide turns!” Like Erik didn’t know that. He pulled himself up the ridge, puffing, and saw Josh’s tracks in the dark sand, the strides long, the toes dug in. He was running. Bastard. Erik savored the forbidden word in his mind and even thought about saying it out loud. No one was around to hear, or wash out his mouth with soap, or spank him, or send him to bed without his supper. Which his mother lost no opportunity to do because she thought he was too fat. Inste…
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I love the show Moonlighting, but everyone loves Moonlighting. To see Moonlighting is, in fact, to love it, though if you didn’t watch it when it aired, from 1985 to 1989 on ABC, there’s a chance you may never have seen it. None of its five seasons are available in digital versions, for purchase or subscription streaming. The handful of DVD editions produced in the early 2000s are out of print. The only way to watch it now is via a mélange of YouTube clips, or to get your hands on those rare physical copies (which is what I did, via many stressful eBay auctions, tortured soul that I am). The eventual obscurity of this show is, as far as I’m concerned, a crisis. Moonlighti…
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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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As we all know, the worst thing to happen to mainstream American cinema in the 21st century was the near-total abandonment of that most compelling and enigmatic of subgenres: the erotic thriller. While there have been a few notable additions to the canon over the past two decades (In the Cut, Unfaithful, Gone Girl, When the Bough Breaks…em… The Boy Next Door) the sweaty heyday of the erotic thriller has been over for some time now. Its Golden Age was actually quite a lengthy period, beginning (I would argue) in earnest in 1981 with Bob Rafelson’s remake of The Postman Always Rings Twice and ending in 1996 with the Wachowskis’ Bound. (I will also accept 1998’s Wild Things…
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These are dark days for romance. Even if you are the type who usually buys into the schmaltzy hullaballoo of Valentine’s Day, you’re probably not feeling too lovey-dovey this year (and if you are, what the hell is wrong with you?) With the pandemic still raging and date-night hotspots shuttered, many of you will no doubt settle in to watch a movie at home, probably one all about love and romance, through which you can pine and swoon and live vicariously. But all that’s likely to do is make the current day reality more bitter. So, instead of watching some cheap, over-lit Hallmark movie or Vaseline-lensed classic, why not embrace the darkness by indulging in something mea…
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They landed about forty-five minutes later at a remote section of Hunter Army Airfield. No sooner had Coldmoon angrily yanked his backpack out of the rear of the helicopter’s cabin than he heard the sound of a second chopper, approaching quickly. A minute later, it appeared in the sky. It was a Bell 429, government issue by the look of its tail markings, and it in fact appeared identical to the one their superior, ADC Pickett, had arrived at their private island in earlier in the day. Coldmoon scoffed. Why should he be surprised? At almost the same time, as if choreographed, an Escalade with windows tinted almost as black as its body pulled up nearby, stopped, an…
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I think we all can agree that the twin peaks—so to speak—of film noir came in the 1940s and 1980s. What’s that? How can I ignore the 1950s, which gave us gritty crime classics like “The Phenix City Story” and others? How can I pass over the classic noir of the 1970s? “Chinatown,” after all? Well, if you’re already outraged, I’ll outrage you further. When I began to research this article, I preferred the noir of the 1980s to the films of the then-new genre in the 1940s. Maybe—just maybe—I still do. If you haven’t already thrown your phone out the window or tipped your laptop off your lap, come along for my argument. After all: “Blood Simple.” “Body Heat.” “Thief.” “Bla…
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The Indian Runner is a movie of profound ambition. It seeks to dramatize nothing less than the history of violence within the United States, and how that violence infects spirit after spirit, like a powerful and contagious disease. It is also the screenwriting and directorial debut of one of the world’s greatest actors, Sean Penn. The two-time Academy Award winning actor would go on to direct four more films, and at one point openly discuss the possibility of retiring from acting to become a full-time filmmaker. The Indian Runner demonstrates why Penn’s cinematic style is important and under-appreciated. In 1982, Sean Penn began dating photographer Pamela Springsteen, le…
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A look at the month’s best reviewed crime novels, mysteries, and thrillers. S.A. Cosby, Razorblade Tears (Flatiron) Cosby’s drive to expand the chorus of voices representing the South is on full display in his follow-up, Razorblade Tears … The novel’s DNA may seem familiar to readers of Blacktop Wasteland or Joe R. Lansdale’s Hap and Leonard series, but its composition feels utterly unique, as if the elements of one’s waking life were scrambled in a dream … Cosby has an unnerving ability to describe what fists, knives, guns and assorted garden implements can do to the human body, which may make the violence more vivid than some readers can abide. Riding shotgun wit…
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The CrimeReads editors pick the month’s best new books out in paperback. * John Fram, The Bright Lands (Hanover Square Press) “John Fram delivers with his mix of Southern Texas humidity, mystery and dread — along with police corruption and toxic masculinity…[The Bright Lands] gives us the queer thriller in the age of Grindr we’ve been waiting for.” —Rolling Stone Lisa Lutz, The Swallows (Ballantine Books) “With a memorable cast of characters and more than a few secrets, Lutz’s latest is a turbocharged tale for our times.”—Newsweek Stuart Turton, The Devil and the Dark Water (Sourcebooks Landmark) “The locked room murder meets a Michael Bay movie, by way o…
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Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Christina McDonald, Do No Harm (Gallery Books) “McDonald offers a painful look at two hot-button topics: the desperate opioid crisis, and a system that allows the cost of cancer pharmaceuticals to extend far beyond the reach of so many. Is what Emma does an unforgivable betrayal of her medical oath, her husband, and herself? It will be up to the reader to decide if the ends justify the means.” –Booklist Charles Finch, An Extravagant Death (Minotaur) “Lenox’s latest adventure has humanity, heart, and humor; it offers a captivating glimpse of America’s richest citizens in the late …
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It’s February 6, 1960, about five in the afternoon. Darkness is falling. The Chevy Bel Airs and Ford Thunderbirds maneuvering their wide bodies off of Walnut Street onto Main are snapping on their headlights, making a sheen against the wet pavement. Saturday night is coming. Pippy diFalco is limping across Main Street. The weather is sleety, temperature in the high thirties. Pippy is a small man wearing a big overcoat. He has an open face, puppyish eyes, shows lots of teeth when he smiles—kind of a goofy expression, which gives an impression of innocence. But that’s misleading. People say there was always something else going on. “Nice guy,” his onetime partner told me…
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When you think of the 19th Century English novelist and poet Thomas Hardy, you don’t necessarily think of suspense. Rather, he brings to mind the agricultural world of the southwestern counties of England, where most of his novels are set, and the harsh social circumstances (to put it mildly) of his characters. He’s renowned for his lyrical writing style, the romantic and pastoral elements of his books, and his commentary on the moral, social, philosophical and religious values of his time. But when I re-read one of my favourites, his 1891 novel Tess of the D’Urbervilles, it struck me that Hardy is also a master of suspense. And I felt compelled to start taking notes. Pe…
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When Putnam and the Ludlum Estates asked me to write The Treadstone Resurrection, all I knew was that it was a spinoff series that drilled deeper into the shadowy world of Operation Treadstone. For those unfamiliar with the Ludlum Universe, Operation Treadstone was the covert CIA program that took Jason Bourne and turned him into a genetically modified assassin. A man capable of killing without hesitation or remorse. My contribution was to create a new hero. A protagonist who’d give readers a Bourne-like experience, but not a Bourne rip-off. At first glance, it seemed pretty straightforward. In fact, as I began developing my protagonist, a former Treadstone operative …
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The Man Who Didn’t Fly, first published in 1955, is a highly successful novel by an author of distinction whose crime writing career came to a sudden and rather mysterious end when she was at the peak of her powers. The central puzzle in the story is unorthodox. A plane is engulfed in fire and crashes in the Irish Sea. The wreckage can’t be found. A pilot and three men were on board and their bodies are missing. But four passengers had arranged to go on the flight and none of them can be found. So who was the man who didn’t fly, and what has happened to him? This is such an original mystery that I don’t want to say much more about the plot, for fear of spoiling readers’ …
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Quite a few eyebrows were raised when I told people that my next novel, Rovers, would be a vampire revenge thriller set in the American Southwest in 1976. My first three novels (This Wicked World, Angel Baby, and The Smack) fell fairly comfortably into the “crime” category and were marketed that way, and I’m sure my agent and publisher were expecting (hoping for?) something similar for my fourth effort, but I was ready to try something different. My swerve into the supernatural shouldn’t have been such a surprise. My first book, Dead Boys, was a collection of “literary” short stories, and I returned to that form for my fourth book, Sweet Nothing, after writing two crime…
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In a genre that has historically been dominated by heterosexual white men, spy fiction is finally becoming home to a range of new intersectional feminist voices. I was in my 20s when I began working on my latest book, A Spy in the Struggle, and at the time, there were no politically charged spy novels by women, let alone women of color. Prior to my book coming out in 2020, Jamie Canavés of BookRiot said the following about it: “Add this to the list of fantastic mold-breaking spy novels like American Spy and the Vera Kelly series.” A Spy in the Struggle is about a young Black woman attorney working for the FBI who develops divided loyalty when she is unexpectedly sent to…
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Buying the first issue of Heavy Metal magazine in the winter of 1977 was a life changing event for thirteen year old me. An anthology graphic arts magazine that launched in April, 1977, Heavy Metal was published by the same folks who brought us National Lampoon. An American version of the French comic Metal Hurlant, the magazine mostly reprinted European artists who were new to most Americans, but soon became internationalist graphic art heroes: Angus McKie, Philippe Druillet, Enki Bilal and Mobius. In the beginning, there were only a few Americans being published in Heavy Metal including Vaughn Bode and Richard Corben. Both began their careers in underground comics and…
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Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Dea Poirier, After You Died (Agora Books) “Nicely written…The engrossing narrative switches between Asher’s reality and the fantasy world of his increasingly disturbing dreams, until the two realms seem to merge.” –Publishers Weekly Glen Erik Hamilton, Island of Thieves (William Morrow) “The island of thieves is poised for a reenactment of Lord of the Flies. As ever, Van proves to be a wry, reliable guide through the relentless action of Hamilton’s always thrilling series.” –BookPage Miranda Beverly-Whitmore, Fierce Little Thing (Flatiron) “Written in beautiful prose…Captiva…
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This summer is going to be tough. Travel is totally out, or at least highly restricted. And so many of us will be able only to reminisce or dream of the Greek Islands. So for this column Crime and the City is going full service—we’re travelling to the Greek Islands through crime literature and throwing in some ideas for hors d’oeuvres and a decent tipple to accompany the good food and good reading. There are over 160 islands in total but not all are inhabited and many are very small. You know the main ones—Crete, Lesbos, Rhodes, Corfu, Kos, Kefalonia. My apologies if I missed out your favourite. Unfortunately, as the humble writer of a crime novels column I can’t do muc…
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No one, with the possible exception of John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich, is so identified with a culinary tradition as Anna, Duchess of Bedford. In the year 1840, Anna, who was a friend and lady-in-waiting to Queen Victoria, felt a mite peckish late in the afternoon. Her dinner, the main meal of the day, would usually have been served around eight o’clock, and she needed something to see her through. I think we all can relate to that. The hungry Anna instructed her butler to bring tea and some bread and butter, perhaps a slice of cake or pastry, to her around four o’clock. Hardly an earth-shaking act, you would think. But it was. Anna decided she enjoyed this …
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Toxic masculinity is a staple of modern psychological suspense. This concept has been embodied in the villains of bestsellers like Big Little Lies, The Last Mrs. Parrish, and You Should Have Known (adapted for television in HBO’s The Undoing), all of which include the surprise reveal that an apparently dreamy husband is wickedly abusive, both emotionally and physically. Toxic masculinity, though, is more than men committing domestic violence, sexual assault, or murder. According to Oxford Languages it’s “a set of attitudes and ways of behaving stereotypically associated with or expected of men, regarded as having a negative impact on men and on society as a whole.” Boys …
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