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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There’s another long weekend coming up in the U.S. With a large portion of the country currently under snow, lockdown, or both, and what with the President’s Day mattress sales not what they used to be, how’s a body supposed to spend its time? I’d recommend traveling vicariously to Paris to hang out with a master of disguise and gentleman thief. Or going to Brazil, if you like folkloric mystery. Or possibly Barcelona, circa 1960. What I’m saying is don’t despair, you have options, and most of them are on Netflix. Here are a few recommendations for your long weekend international thriller binge. If you’ve always want to visit Paris with a gentleman thief… Lupin Seasons…
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What is it about trains? What is it about them that fires the imagination, that suggests to those of a certain disposition the possibility of danger lurking behind every seat and in every carriage? There is, undoubtedly, something in the collective experience of a journey that lends itself to storytelling, and then of course the tantalizing proximity to strangers of every stripe. The chance meeting, whether fleeting or prolonged, the accidental brush of hands as the train hurtles around a sharp bend, a casual conversation in the bar car taking an unexpected turn. In a letter she wrote to her friend Marc Brandel in 1985, Patricia Highsmith confessed to thrilling to the id…
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I think it’s safe to say that becoming an expert in Shakespeare’s plays presents difficulties. What would “expertise” entail? Does you need to know every consistency and inconsistency in all the versions of every play cobbled together in the First Folios (pluralized because all the extant versions are also slightly different)? What about wordplay rooted in local pronunciation of the era, which sounded a little like current English in areas of Ireland or England’s West Country? Should you know the etymology of every single word—if Shakespeare didn’t allegedly coin it—and everything that word alluded to at the historical moment in which each play was written, a date that’s …
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“More diversity? No. Enough already. Just let me write my book about a dude in a hat shooting another dude in a hat.” I can already hear the screaming, and it sounds like a painter asking to have colors removed from their palette. Fine, do charcoal if that’s what hikes your kilt, but no whining if you discover you’re writing boring books. “Roll it back, what is this ‘neurodiversity’ you want me to sign onto?” Okay, I’ll pretend you don’t have Google. In 1998, Australian sociologist Judy Singer came up with the term as a new way to look at what had once been seen as neurodevelopmental disorders. Instead of pathology, she saw diversity in the way brains work, and that it…
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For the lonely and longing, nothing is as sweet as the dream of a stranger who comes to the rescue and makes everything all right. Perhaps that is why otherwise sensible people open their heart, souls—and wallets—to perfect strangers online, hoping it will lead to a better tomorrow. Before the dawn of the internet, it was the newspapers that connected people through personal ads, a practice that started to flourish at the height of the 19th century. The result might be disappointing, however, as not all placing personal ads are honest—and some are even dangerous. For a serial killer, finding adequate victims can be challenge. Ideally, the victim is a stranger that cannot…
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The third lake felt inhabited. Or like it once was. Or maybe it was just that whoever used the service drive came here often enough to leave some energy behind. “Deliverance,” Amelia said. But that was silly. They weren’t in the backwoods of Tennessee. And besides, that’s what everybody said when they were in a canoe and felt a little weird about their surroundings. There shoreline was crowded with tall pines that rose from dark-green shrubs. The water was murky, as if the mud from the lake floor had come up to see who had cleared the tunnel. “I can’t believe my uncle never told me about this,” James said. But Amelia thought she understood. Given the grandeur and bea…
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The books below offer reality with a twist: Something about the world is not quite normal. But you may not notice at first, because they’re all about people. At heart, they’re human dramas, which want to show you fully lived-in characters confronted with situations that challenge them in personal ways. There’s not a robot in sight, and we’re still on good old Earth, usually in contemporary times. But this is science-fiction at its best, because lurking in the background is a conceit that changes everything—that permits (or forces!) the characters to expose their true natures. And while the conceit may be out of this world, the concerns and choices it reveals can feel eer…
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Like many cozy mystery authors, I love adding animals to my stories. The more the merrier. This is a trend used by many other authors, too. There’s nothing better than reading a cozy mystery and discovering there is an entire series by the same author. Wait, there is something better—when the series includes a lovable pet (or two) that assist in solving the crime! Many cozy mystery authors include pets in their stories because, let’s be honest, life is more interesting and enjoyable with our furry friends coming along for the ride. Pets are great characters, every dog I’ve owned has had his or her unique personality. Not to mention, pets are smarter than we give them cr…
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Among the many challenges facing Brigadier Hinde that spring was to purge the British sector of all remaining Nazis. Denazification was a cornerstone policy of the four occupying powers, and every German over the age of eighteen was required to fill in a Fragebogen, or “questionnaire,” answering 130 questions about his or her previous employment, income, and education. “What political party did you vote for in the November election of 1932? What did you vote for in March 1933?” Some questions were as obscure as they were bizarre. “What titles of nobility were ever held by you or your wife or by the parents or grandparents of either of you?” Hinde’s specialists assessed th…
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As a child of the ‘80s, I consumed my fair share of poltergeist pop culture. Although I wasn’t a horror fan, I took a casual interest in the movies and books about fantastically troubled adolescent girls. Years later, while doing research for a supernatural novel, I found myself once again drawn in by the poltergeist phenomenon. Only this time it wasn’t the fictionalized stories that interested me, but the confounding real life accounts. For any poltergeist case, the first question is always: What was the actual cause? Ghost or supernatural force? An adolescent’s emotional turbulence? A fake? As I spent more time with these cases, however, I became less interested in the…
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The mind is the locus around which everything revolves in a psychological thriller or mystery. These stories are often tales rife with unreliable narrators, sociopaths, narcissists, and characters with all manner of mental aberrations. Probing, examining and attempting to analyze the thoughts and motives of these protagonists and antagonists is what keeps the reader reading and the viewer viewing, for upon this knowledge rests the key to and ultimate resolution of the story. There is an element, however, that can ratchet up the mystery and unknowable to the next level, and that element is amnesia. Amnesia as a literary device has the power to make time and memory fickle,…
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“I’ve never played a hero in the cinema.” – Orson Welles in a Cahiers du Cinema interview Did anyone ever play a villain as well as Orson Welles? He was perfect as the charming black marketeer Harry Lime in The Third Man, the clock-obsessed Nazi fugitive Franz Kindler in The Stranger and the corrupt border-town detective Hank Quinlan in Touch of Evil. But have you seen his performance as the strangest villain of all, the title character in the 1955 crime film Mr. Arkadin? Most people have not, and until recently that unenlightened group included me. Then, during a one-month trial of a popular streaming service, I spotted Mr. Arkadin among their selections so I q…
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In a scene from the Apple TV+ series The Mosquito Coast, the mysterious American fugitive Allie Fox (Justin Theroux) is held at gunpoint. His assailant is a Mexican coyote named Chuy (Scotty Tovar), who in a previous episode ironically smuggled Fox and his family from the U.S. into Mexico. “You want to run away from America, but you’ll never be able to,” Chuy admonishes Fox, adding, “Because of the way you are. The way you think you can buy people; the way you think you can buy anything you want. You are America, asshole, and you’ll never get away from it.” The moment strikes at the heart of the series’ themes of American entitlement and hubris, which are also key aspect…
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“Democracy! That’s what it means, Slim! Everybody equal. Like tonight! All them big shots, listening to little shots like me, and being friendly!” —Sergeant Brooklyn Nolan, in the film Hollywood Canteen, 1944 In The Hollywood Spy, Maggie Hope travels from London to Los Angeles during the summer of 1943, with the United States at war. Maggie’s there to solve a murder, of course, staying as a guest of her friend Sarah, a ballerina starring in the Gold Brothers’ Star-Spangled Canteen—a fictionalized version of the actual Warner Bros. film, Hollywood Canteen. So what was the Hollywood Canteen? Well, the real Canteen was a social club for Allied servicemen, founded by John …
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Everyone, gather round! Sadly, this list marks the end of our Summertime Crime Movies series. But we’re ending it on a very cozy note: campfires, s’mores, looking up at the stars through a lush canopy of evergreens, being hunted by deranged hillbillies… The thing about summery crime movies set in the woods is that they’re almost always horror movies. This is fine, but it’s kind of not what this series is about. (They are often also westerns or war films, which again is fine, but not the target, here.) I’ve tried to keep them as non-horror as possible, but forgive me if some tropes worm their way in. This is why there aren’t many… if I could build a list from Straw Dogs t…
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—Heather Martin is the authorized biographer of Lee Child and the author of The Reacher Guy (Constable at Little, Brown in the UK and Pegasus Books in the US) ___________________________________ It was nicely put together. Especially from a biographer’s point of view. The biographer is (perhaps dangerously) accustomed to making sense of any given set of data. I was reading A Little Gold Book of Unconsidered Trifles (out from Borderlands Press on May 14), which as titles go, with its cheery echo of the Little Golden Books of childhood, was about as far removed from Reacher as I expected Lee Child to get. But that was alright. It made sense that it should occupy the oppo…
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On the morning of Tuesday, April 10, 2012, 63-year-old single mother Karyn Kay called 9-1-1. Her 19-year-old son, Henry Wachtel, was having a grand mal seizure. Neighbors later told police they heard sounds of struggle, Henry screaming “I’m sorry mommy!” over and over, then nothing. In the 1980s, after finding some success with her own writing (including three books about film, several episodes of America’s Most Wanted, and the screenplay for the 1988 thriller, Call Me,) Karyn Kay discovered her calling as Creative Writing teacher at New York City’s public performing arts high school, LaGuardia. A kooky, dark-lipsticked sprite of a woman, Ms. Kay danced, laughed loudly,…
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If ever a novel could evoke a simpler, gentler time, it is Mary Roberts Rinehart’s The Wall, written at the peak of her powers and success in 1938. The story takes place in a large seaside house in a New England town that is a summertime destination for the well to-do, if not the rich, who flocked to Newport, Rhode Island, in those days. The family had lived in the sprawling, ten-bedroom house for generations but the Great Depression had wiped out much of its wealth, so its only full-time occupant was the lovely, twenty-nine-year-old woman who owned half with her brother, who had moved away. The slow, easy days are devoted to swimming, reading, horseback riding, golf,…
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When it comes to thrillers, I’ve always found something particularly compelling about characters with alter egos. Nikki Griffin, the bookseller and PI who I introduced in my debut, Save Me from Dangerous Men, is a woman with a wildly different outer and inner existence. By day Nikki works at her Berkeley bookshop, where she delights in recommending the right book to the right person. But there are some problems in the world that even books cannot solve, and sometimes Nikki steps away from the shelves to dole out violent but proportionate vigilante justice on behalf of defenseless people who have been threatened or abused. Sometimes what is most carefully submerged tends …
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The sun is out, the flowers are in bloom, the vaccines are flowing freely, and this summer, we all deserve to have some much-needed (and long-delayed) fun. With that in mind, this year’s summer reading preview is dedicated to the thrilling, the riveting, and the wildly creative, as we recommend 80+ books to keep you reading long past sunset (even on the Summer Solstice). Take these books to the beach, to the pool, on vacations, and on road trips—just don’t forget to get vaccinated first! (Publication dates are subject to change. Please check bookshop.org for more info.) ___________________________________ MAY ___________________________________ Nancy Tucker, The Fi…
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I am not a person who makes friends easily but the ones I have I care about. I tell myself sometimes that that is because they’re the people I already know can stand to be around me, but in all honesty it’s because I like them. They are good people and kind, and the world without them in it would be a zoetrope of murder puppets and tax collectors. I will do pretty much anything for the people I love. I try to pretend I do not care about people I do not know, but that is a lie and kind of an authorial pose. I am a big softie and I love everyone. I guess that is the beginning of Jack Price. Jack really does not care about people he does not know. He does not hate them e…
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Hello everyone! In my travels, I’ve encountered lots of different takes on what to call good ol’ Arthur Conan Doyle, the nineteenth-century doctor, prolific writer, and the creator of Sherlock Holmes. Briefly, I’d just like to set the record straight. Many have wondered whether his surname is “Doyle” or “Conan Doyle.” Is “Conan” a middle name, or part of his last name? Good question! The answer is BOTH, which is terribly confusing. “Conan” was technically his middle-name, with “Doyle” as his surname. His baptism records at the register of St. Mary’s Cathedral in Edinburgh lists his Christian names as “Arthur Ignatius Conan.” “Doyle” is listed as his last name. However,…
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Nameless: Season Two will be available free to Prime members, as well as Kindle Unlimited subscribers on June 10, but you can read the excerpt below now. 1 Every night lacks a moon and stars. Dawn always comes without the sun. Wind never blows and rain never falls. Here, there is no robin song, no trees where birds might roost, no sky through which they might fly. These windowless rooms spare Spenser Whooton from the sight of a world he despises. He has put filters on the overhead light panels, softening their fluorescent glare. But sometimes he prefers candlelight. At the moment, the pulsing of a score of lambent flames paints the walls of his study with radiant shape…
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Each time I get ready to start writing a book, I look for new ideas. In the case of Stargazer, my newest mystery, many concepts I used started with an incident from real life and, tweaked by the imagination, found their way into the novel. Some of these thoughts came to me as I stood under the night sky. I’ll explain in a minute. Before I started, I knew the story belonged to Officer Bernadette Manuelito. My other two fictional detectives, Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn, would take supporting roles. Real life gave me an inspiration for the setting. When I began writing these mysteries, I decided to continue my father Tony Hillerman’s practice of using real places for the sto…
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In 2018 the Staunch Book Prize launched, recognizing thrillers in which no woman is beaten, stalked, sexually exploited, raped or murdered. It’s a noble cause; in domestic and psychological suspense (the cloistered, relationship-driven genres I myself write in), the victims of violence tend to be female. I understand the impulse to center books that don’t leverage gratuitous female pain as a plot point. (Picture the central dead body in the heralded Mare of Eastown: a nubile young women woman stripped naked and splayed over the rocks, orbited by a wolfpack of potential male killers.) But there’s a reason none of my thrillers qualify. In reality, women are more likely t…
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