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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Each month the CrimeReads editors make their selections for the best upcoming fiction in crime, mystery, and thrillers. * S.A. Cosby, Razorblade Tears (Flatiron) S.A. Cosby blew us away with last year’s searing heist thriller/rural noir Blacktop Wasteland, and with Razorblade Tears he’s done it again. In a heartbreaking tale of love, murder, vengeance, and acceptance, two ex-cons, one Black and one white, team up to find those responsible for the death of their sons, who were married to each other. Both fathers are grieving not only for their lost loved ones, but for their inability to overcome their own homophobia while their sons were still alive. And as they seek…
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Five Great Movies Based on Patricia Highsmith Books (That Aren’t the Ripley Adaptations)
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Filmmakers have been attracted to Patricia Highsmith’s stories ever since the publication of her first novel in 1950, Strangers on a Train, in which two men meet on the proverbial train and plan to murder someone that the other knows. Even now, there are several projects underway: set for a 2022 release, a Ben Affleck-lead and Adrian Lyne-helmed adaptation of Dark Water, Highsmith’s tale of a cheerless marriage between a disturbed husband and a bored wife; Highsmith’s enduring creation, the slippery sociopath Tom Ripley, will be the star of a series dedicated to his escapades in Ripley. Highsmith’s work is a well that directors draw from time and time again. Her narrati…
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There’s more than a little blurring of lines between movies and TV (including streaming) these days. But in the 1960s and 1970s, the division between what we watched on TV and what we paid to see in theaters was as solid as the Berlin wall. Despite the division, network TV executives really, really wanted you to think that what you watched on TV was as good as theatrical movies, with big-name casts … or at least a couple of big names. And plenty of thrills. So the networks poured some money and effort and a boatload of marketing into made-for-TV movies, and in the 1970s, many of the best of them were mysteries and thrillers with a touch—or sometimes more than a touch—…
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When I sit down to watch a movie, it’s almost always going to be something in the horror genre. It’s my most binged and my go-to. There’s something addictive about being scared—the type of scared where you’re tucked up in bed with your fluffy pajamas and a bowl of popcorn, I mean. Within the genre, there’s one trope that I can’t get enough of—summer camps! Isolating people, sometimes strangers, in a camp, miles from the safety of home, and making something or someone come after them is such a brilliant idea. There’s no escape, because the trucks or the boats are always broken, and all you can do is try to survive. I’ve watched many camp movies, and nothing produced in t…
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As I near the airport, I see the police presence that tells me another demonstration is under way. Development for the new runway started three months ago, and periodically a cluster of protesters forms near Arrivals to make their feelings known. They’re no trouble, in the main, and—although I’d never go on record with this—I sympathize with them. I just think they’re going after the wrong target. We’ve created a world in which we need to fly—that can’t change now. Better, surely, to tackle the factory emissions, the landfill? I think guiltily of the daily wet wipes I use and resolve to dig out my Clarins again. A banner’s been stretched across the road. plains not plane…
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While every reader is a book lover, there’s a special subspecies of bibliophile whose passion for rare books goes beyond preordering the latest bestseller. Often, we care as much about the book itself as about the story. The binding, the paper, the illustrations. Books are tangible relics of human history, and showcases of human creativity. And sometimes it is the story we care about—or rather, the way the story moved us the first time we read it. We crave a connection through time with the author who made us feel so deeply, and one way to achieve that is by owning a signed first edition that the author touched with his or her very own hand. Over time, those first editio…
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Stella leaned on the railing and stared out over the lake. Bailey, the treacherous dog, was with Sam, which didn’t really surprise her. She should be happy that Sam walked the property so much, making certain drunken partygoers didn’t fall into the lake and drown. He didn’t let them take out guns and shoot at the sky in some bizarre celebration. Sam didn’t like dealing with the guests but he could repair anything. He would never see to the taxes or business end of the resort, but he would make certain security was tight and everything was running in top condition. If the roads needed plowing, Sam would get it done. She had come to rely on him in a short time without even…
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It has been suggested that Voltaire’s interest in the legend of the Man in the Iron Mask had been stimulated as early as 1714, when he began attending the salon of Louis-Urbain Lefebvre de Caumartin. He first conceived the idea of writing a history of the age of Louis XIV in 1732, although he anticipated that the work would take a long time to accomplish. Six years later, in October 1738, Voltaire wrote to a friend, the abbé Jean-Baptiste Du Bos, noting that he had been well informed about the prisoner he called l’homme au masque de fer, who had died at the Bastille, claiming that he had spoken to men who had served this person. In fact, Voltaire had himself been impri…
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In July 1992, Guido Brunetti arrived as a new protagonist on the mystery scene in Donna Leon’s first novel, Death at La Fenice, which combined her love of opera with her gift for character and her deep appreciation of Venice. Kirkus Reviews called it “deftly plotted and smoothly written,” and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch proclaimed it was “a challenging mystery, a sophisticated drama.” Each year since, a new Brunetti story has appeared, redolent of family and food, exploring the ambiguities of guilt and justice, each at the same high standard Leon established at the start. Transient Desires, published today, March 9, 2021, is her 30th book in the series in 30 years—a rem…
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I am obsessed with Italy. I am obsessed with France. I am obsessed with anything Mediterranean. My screensavers are of Greek islands, Italian cypress trees, French vineyards. I gobble down books set in the area and visit as often as I can. As a young girl, I dreamed of a honeymoon on the isle of Crete—simply because I’d read a story set there as a child. And the Mediterranean is in my blood. My family is Italian and live in the Piedmont region, and I find any excuse to visit. So it’s not a surprise that my latest novel is set off the coast of Italy. It’s the story of a destination wedding gone badly awry, a tale of murder, and obsession, and twisted love, set on a fictio…
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After Duso left, Brunetti began to consider how best to go about questioning Vio’s uncle. He could present himself unexpectedly at the office of the transport company and ask to speak to Signor Borgato, or he could arrive with the full panoply of the law: visit not announced, police launch with an armed officer as well as the pilot, demands in place of suggestions. And certainly more trouble for Marcello. Brunetti had always loathed, above all, bullies: he despised their arrogance, their contempt for people weaker than they, and their calm assurance that they were to have more of everything for the asking or taking. To oppose them was to provoke them, and to provoke them…
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I’m just going to write from the heart here. I had a plan for this piece, which has been simmering inside me for quite a while. It was going to be a feel-good story with a happy outcome, or at least a few answers, but here’s the thing, I don’t have any answers. It’s Day 362 of my lockdown and French Kiss still isn’t available to stream anywhere. As in nowhere, not on any major streaming services, not as an individual title available for purchase on Amazon, not On Demand, nowhere, gone. And it’s eating me up. Okay I’ll take a step back. Why are you reading about this on a site dedicated to crime fiction? Well, glad you asked. French Kiss is a crime film. It may be a pictu…
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Way back in the semi-mythical mists of Roman time, for the first three hundred years of Rome’s existence, there was no written law. What was and wasn’t legal was up to the king, and then, when kings were booted to the kerb, to the priests. In 451 BCE, however, it was decided, for whatever reason, that this situation was not a sustainable or useful way forward for Rome. Romans being Romans, a fundamentally pragmatic people, they decided to set up a committee to deal with the situation. This committee, of ten men with consular imperium, put together ten tablets of laws and then bolted on another two tablets the following year. These were known as the Twelve Tables and they …
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My favorite thrillers revolve around the complexities of female relationships, twisted family dynamics, and unreliable, often unlikeable female characters. There is nothing more satisfying than a thriller layered with juicy secrets. But these characters are also notoriously difficult to craft. Readers are naturally drawn to sympathetic protagonists. And from a larger societal standpoint, there is more pressure for women to handle the weight of the world with grace than men. For example, the alcoholic male detective is a very common trope in crime fiction, and the detective is generally portrayed and received as sympathetic—he’s got a difficult job, after all. We understan…
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“Give me a decent bottle of poison,” Agatha Christie reportedly said, “and I’ll construct the perfect crime.” As it turns out, she did it countless times: nearly half of Christie’s 85 mystery novels involve poison. And these are not fictional poisons, nor passing references; on the contrary, her toxins are well-known to science and often placed at the very heart of her stories. Christie’s ingenious ability to build complex narratives around poison—including their administration and macabre effects—was due, in part, to her time as a war nurse during WWI. In 1917, she passed the examinations required to qualify her an apothecary’s assistant. During this time in the hospita…
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Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Laurie Flynn, The Girls Are All So Nice Here (Simon and Schuster) “A sharp, pitch-black thriller that takes the mean-girls trope to another level.” –Kirkus Donna Leon, Transient Desires (Atlantic Monthly Press) “Atmospheric . . . The action builds to a thrilling denouement involving coast guard boats and navy commandos.” –Publishers Weekly J.T. Ellison, Her Dark Lies (MIRA) “Mesmerizing…Fans of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca will want to check out this compulsively readable tale.” –Publishers Weekly Kate Quinn, The Rose Code (William Morrow) “Quinn (The Huntress) retu…
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“After the Bentley murder, Rose Hill stood empty two years.” I read the first line of the great Irish writer Elizabeth Bowen’s 1934 short story The Cat Jumps late one January night almost exactly sixty years after it was written, lying on my stomach on the floor of the University College Dublin library. I was working as a live-in au pair for a family who lived nearby—an American raised on Long Island, I had moved to Dublin somewhat impulsively the previous summer—and many evenings, after I was off duty, I’d walk to the library and pull books at random off the shelves, flopping in a corner to inhale as many words as I could before I had to walk home. I’d just graduated fr…
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The people of Jones County had defied the confederacy during the Civil War, but by 1965, the KKK flourished, drawing its membership from both die-hard racists and those who saw the KKK as merely necessary for success in politics or business. The FBI needed someone ready to infiltrate the Klan, someone who would be accepted by them, but who had enough strength and integrity to resist them. What follows is the story of how Jones County everyman Tom Landrum came to join the FBI’s efforts to take down the Klan. Excerpted from Curtis Wilkie’s new book, When Evil Lived in Laurel (Norton). ___________________________________ Leonard Caves, the Circuit Clerk of Jones County, pr…
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CrimeReads editors select the month’s best debuts in crime, mystery, and thrillers. * Noel A. Obiora, A Past That Breathes (Rare Bird Books) A Past That Breathes is an urgent and timely addition to the new pantheon of the courtroom novel. Set in 1995, Noel Obiora’s debut begins with the murder of a prominent Los Angeles musician. Her Black ex-boyfriend is quickly arrested and looks to be soon railroaded for the crime, unless two young attorneys can show he’s being framed. Obiora’s decision to set the novel in 1990s LA allows for a nuanced and deeply resonant exploration of racism in the American justice system. –MO Fabian Nicieza, Suburban Dicks (Putnam) Fabien…
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We don’t want to admit it but many of us benefit from a social hierarchy. Look at the people you casually cross paths with day to day. I bet you’ve assigned a story to them based on their level of education, where they were educated, how they dress, their age, their occupation, and if you’re really uptight you might snub your nose at the food choice in their hand as you wait to pay for your lunch. The ego likes labels just as much as it likes stroking. This makes for easy story telling if you’re a storyteller. Your characters can be easily defined and placed based on where they fall in the hierarchy. That one is good and that one is bad. Don’t get me wrong. When I say l…
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In the early 1930s, James Joyce’s Ulysses was the most notorious banned book in the United States. Using a stream-of-consciousness style to describe twenty-four hours in the life of a lower-middle class Dubliner named Leopold Bloom, Joyce’s classic, published in 1922, was brilliant, dense, convoluted, complex, and legally obscene. Ulysses was the “only volume of literary importance still under a ban” in the country, Morris Ernst declared. He set out to “liberate” it, and the celebrated case, resolved by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in 1934, was not only a landmark in the law of literary censorship but also a turning point in Ernst’s career. (Featured image: Ernst …
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Writing Romantic Suspense is a delicate dance of balancing the thrills and chills of suspense with the heightened backdrop of blossoming love. It’s like being a juggler keeping the various balls in the air. Some writers of romantic suspense do this best when using a formula where certain events have to happen at certain times in the manuscript. For me it’s more of an intuitive thing, probably absorbed by osmosis from having read romantic suspense for decades before attempting to write my own. Every now and then, I confess, I will occasionally glance at the charts or graphs to make sure I’m on track, but mostly it’s a gut feeling that guides me as to when to raise the tens…
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The following is excerpted from the introduction to Palm Springs Noir. * Ten years ago, when my first noir short story, “Crazy for You,” was published in Orange County Noir, my mother-in-law asked me to define the genre. She read mystery fiction and cozies but wasn’t familiar with noir. “In noir, the main characters might want their lives to improve and may have high aspirations and goals,” I said, “but they keep making bad choices, and things go from bad to worse.” Her response was immediate: “Like real life.” We burst into laughter, but it was tinged with the bittersweet pain of knowing. All of us, at one time or another, have found ourselves in sticky situations w…
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In 1952 a 29-year old Somalian man was hanged at Her Majesty’s Prison Cardiff in Wales by Britain’s best known public executioner Albert Pierrepoint. After a long drawn-out detention, a highly questionable police investigation, and a speedy trial at the Glamorgan Assizes in Swansea, Mahmood Mattan had been found guilty of murdering shopkeeper Lily Volpert in the then notorious Tiger Bay area of the Welsh capital. Despite arguments from his lawyers Mattan was refused leave to appeal by the Home Secretary. Forty-six years after Mattan’s execution, and 34 years after the death penalty was finally due to increasing public outcries and distaste, the Court of Appeal (the highe…
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I have discovered the secret to making a great roundtable: Alex Segura. If Alex is involved, or I get interested in a book by someone Alex has introduced me to, it’s a breeze to fill our imaginary table. This time I wanted to focus on the positives and negatives LGBTQ+ writers face. I’ve been thinking about it ever since we did the sex roundtable: if we rarely see any vanilla sex, then all of the other flavors are probably not being served either. Anyway, this came about because of PJ Vernon’s excellent new thriller, Bath Haus, and his enthusiastic participation at the aforementioned sex roundtable where he was suggested to me by…Alex Segura! The rest of our distinguish…
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