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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As the leaves fall from the trees and the days grow colder, the thought of curling up with a good book becomes more enticing than ever. Although I love reading (and writing) cozy mysteries at any time of the year, there’s something about the cooler weather that makes the genre even more appealing, and I love to have a stack of fall-themed cozies ready to read when autumn arrives. In my mind, there’s nothing better than being pulled right into the fall atmosphere of a cozy mystery so I can almost smell the hint of wood smoke in the chilly air and hear the crunch of leaves underfoot. As a writer, I hope to provide that same experience for my readers. The fifth installment …
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Mysteries and weddings are a match made in storytelling heaven. Seriously, think of all the juicy conflict that can arise with all the abounding love, high stakes, societal expectations, and melding—and sometimes meddling—families. Not to mention the setting potential with backdrops from hilariously tacky to enviably elegant to refreshingly exotic. It’s enough to make any writer salivate. And that’s before taking the cake into account! It makes sense given the rather colorful history of wedding traditions. The smooshing of the cake that started with the groom crushing barley bread over his bride’s head, the throwing of the bouquet that originated as a free-for-all to sna…
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Ever since Aesop wrote his fable about the city mouse and country mouse in the 6th century B.C., there has been an urge to divide the world into two kinds of people – those who prefer the country where it’s safe and comfortable, and those who long for the city, where there is more variety but also the perception of greater danger. In the world of mysteries, you can see a similar sort of dividing line. Cozy mysteries are typically set in a small town or country village, where the murders are less gruesome and a true villain should be easy to spot in a tight-knit community where no one can stay a stranger for long. Thrillers, noirs and more hard-edged mysteries are more o…
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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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Cozy mystery is a subgenre of crime fiction. When readers ask what are cozy mysteries, I explain they’re mysteries without on-the-page violence, physical intimacy or naughty words. That’s the quick-and-simple answer. Then I watch as their faces light up with understanding. I love that moment. Of course, people who read cozy mystery novels—also called cozies—know there’s a lot more to this subgenre than stories without gore, sex or obscenities. It’s not just about what they don’t have. What I love most about cozies—in addition to the mysteries—are the elements they do have. I love the humor, the quirky secondary characters, the closeknit communities, and especially the in…
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Like any genre, cozy mysteries have a set of story qualities that make them what they are. For cozies, five primary qualities define the genre: amateur sleuth, light-hearted tone, no bloody violence, no graphic sex, and no hard profanity. But where does one draw the line? Can a story touch on real-life issues that might seem heavy to the reader? Is a dramatic slap violence? Is alluding to a steamy romp too much? And what about well-placed “Oh, hell!” or “damn?” Might the strict adherence to cozy conventions sell short some readers’ curiosity and appetite for something a little different? The main character in my “Hayden & Friends [Quozy] Mystery” series is a twenty-…
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From the beginning of my writing journey in 2000, I have always written sleuths with moxie and plenty of spunk. As Misty Simon I started with Ivy Morris, who was working hard to not be a door mat. Then I moved on to Mel Hargrove, who was corralling a junkyard full of ghosts while making sense of her life. Next came my big break at Kensington with Tallie Graver, who was looking for a second chance while making amends for her past. Moving back into paranormal, I wrote The Magically Suspicious Mysteries, where we ride along with Verla Faeth and her friends at a Renn Faire. Now, as Gabby Allan, I’m writing Whitney Dagner, who is finally where she belongs, solving nautically t…
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So there you are, sitting in a cozy café in Odense, the hometown of the great fairytale writer Hans Christian Andersen, enjoying a flaky Danish pastry and a strong coffee. As you gaze out the window at the old, charming city streets, an unsettling thought pops into your head: What sinister secrets might lurk behind the storybook scenery of rural Denmark? You’ve heard the rumors of creepy country manors, isolated islands shrouded in fog, and bone-chilling Scandinavian folklore. Suddenly that sweet Danish sausage you had for lunch is sitting like a rock in your stomach. The idyllic countryside transforms in your imagination into a haunting landscape filled with mystery, men…
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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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I started my writing career in romantic suspense — twelve books where readers knew that the two main characters would fall in love and be together by the end of the book, even with all the danger and violence in their lives. I love the genre because bad things happen … and we all want to believe that even when your life falls apart, there is a happily ever after at the end. The mystery and the romance are entwined, and the resolution of each storyline provides readers with satisfaction. Romantic entanglements also work well in all genres, because readers like characters who are human. D.D. Warren from Lisa Gardner’s series is better with her husband Alex to bounce ideas …
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In the newest novel in Craig Johnson’s Longmire series, Sheriff Walt Longmire is called out to assist Tribal Police in an investigation. A local basketball phenom, Jaya One Moon Long, is receiving death threats. Her sister was one of the many Native women to go missing without a trace, and the fear is she will be the next. Daughter of the Morning Star is one of the most unsettling and deeply moving installments in the long-running series. In the lead-up to the novel’s release, Johnson answered a few questions about the people and events that inspired this story. What inspired you to write Daughter of the Morning Star? I was doing a library event up in Hardin on the Crow…
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Chances are, your favorite suspense novels are stories filled with unexpected twists and turns; pulse-pounding, page-turning action; and gritty, dark discoveries. But even the darkest thriller is balanced with a sliver of light. And what better to bring in that light than love—a compelling love interest who stands by the main character amidst all the chaos. Many readers have commented on the creep factor of my new novel, Iris in the Dark, when the main character hears a chilling voice in the night while staying at a remote hunting lodge on the South Dakota prairie. But just as many readers have raved about the love interest, the swoony lodge caretaker, Sawyer. To me, ea…
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Writing a novel with dual timelines presents opportunities—and challenges. Plotting takes precision. Put simply, a dual timeline novel tells one cohesive story through several time periods and perspectives—typically a character who is living through the events and another character in a different time who is somehow connected to those events. Done well, books of this type can offer depth and insights that their more linear counterparts may not. Regardless of genre, readers are often treated to multiple mysteries as the connection between the characters and events in each era unfolds. Techniques vary, of course. Structurally, an author may employ alternating chapters, mu…
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In the morning, I write dark, twisting murder mysteries, and during the day, I work at a church. I have no theological background. I’m in charge of facilities. I’m the one who calls the handyman when something goes wrong. Sometimes I try to fix the problem on my own, watching YouTube videos about how to change out a faucet. I muck around with a wrench, fail, call a plumber. Sometimes I write in the chapel before punching in. One day, the pastor asked if I wouldn’t mind joining her. A member was recently diagnosed with breast cancer, and the pastor wanted me to sit in on their conversation. I get this question at least twice a year. Not from the pastor, but from friends.…
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For years now, Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne have been making crime films . . . but no one seems to have noticed. This is because the writer-director duo concern themselves primarily with character interiority and psychological development—the kind of thing that wins them Palme D’Or awards—not with guns or heists, nor with cops or tough guys. Their films are typically quiet affairs, stories about people on the fringes, often at odds with larger social structures. But make no mistake, the catalog of films the brothers have helmed are full of crimes and transgressions, illegal acts that figure crucially in the narratives and in the evocation of the larger themes they explo…
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Birmingham, England – The West Midlands, once a major industrial city of the British Empire, and, crucially, not the Birmingham in Alabama. The UK’s second city, which can boast more miles of canal than Venice and more parks than Paris. If you never really thought about Birmingham much before, the Steven Knight-created Peaky Blinders phenomenon has probably put “Brum” on your radar. The long running BBC show (now in its sixth and final season) featuring the Irish-Romani Shelby family terrorising post Great War Birmingham has been, perhaps surprisingly, an international hit. And spawned plenty of books… …Because the Peaky B’s really existed. Carl Chinn’s Peaky Blinders: T…
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Cork – Ireland’s second largest city after Dublin, but also perhaps its most remote way down in the southwest of the country on the Atlantic coast. The very western edge of Europe, the jumping-off point to America for so many. Ciara Doorley, publishing director of Hachette Ireland, recently told the Irish Examiner that Cork’s size makes it the perfect setting for a crime novel. “Cork is a really interesting setting for crime because while it’s a capital city, it also has that sense of intimacy and a really unique identity that bigger cities don’t have.” Windswept and coastal, Cork was largely a town of farmers and fisherman until the 1960’s, when it was discovered by th…
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Cyprus, the third-largest and third-most populous island in the Mediterranean and historically acrimoniously divided between Greece and Turkey. The Northern portion of the island declares itself the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus; the south the largely Greek-populated Republic of Cyprus with its capital in Nicosia. An island paradise, but also a fraught geopolitical frontline. And long a popular destination for thriller and mystery writers. John Bingham’s Vulture in the Sun (1971) is a spy thriller featuring a British intelligence agent operating out of Cyprus. Bingham’s rather forgotten these days though was more popular back when his Tom Carter (the British agent…
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Welcome to Karachi – Pakistan’s most populous city with more than twenty million people living crammed together on the coast of the Arabian Sea. Karachi has gone from being known as the “City of Lights” in the 1960s and 1970s for its vibrant nightlife before ethnic and political conflict in the 1980s partly spurred by the Afghan-Soviet War in neighbouring Afghanistan. Karachi has suffered from high rates of violent crime which, when spiking, have been met by harsh police and security forces crackdowns. And they seem to work – Karachi dropped from being ranked the world’s sixth-most dangerous city for crime in 2014, to 128th by 2022. So let’s dig down into the city’s under…
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Kinshasa – capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Formerly Léopoldville under the bad days of Belgian colonialism, now one of the fastest growing megacities in the world with 16 million citizens and rising quickly – the most populous city in Africa, ahead of Lagos and Cairo. Diamonds, and rare earths all feature now as key sectors of the Congo’s economy and essential to our modern lives but susceptible to the instability of the DRC. And a long history of featuring in crime writing… Let’s start with Joseph Conrad and the classic Heart of Darkness (1899). Conrad was briefly a steamboat captain in the Belgian Congo in the 1890s and the place and the actions of t…
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Of course it’s a big claim but there may not be a more beautiful, ethereal city on earth than Kyoto. Greater Kyoto contains one and a half million people but the city’s centre is the cultural heartland of Japan. It is a city (alternatively known as the Imperial City sometimes) of ancient culture, religion and architecture – those picturesque streets of wooden houses that make Kyoto so instagramable! The capital was moved from Kyoto to Tokyo after the Meiji Restoration in 1868 and so the city avoided the worst of the firebombing in World War Two that levelled the current capital. It is a city where you can still capture a Japan before it began to interact with the West and…
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The ancient capital of Tibet, its name literally translates as “place of gods,” a religious centre as devout as the Vatican, Mecca, or Jerusalem. One of the highest cities in the world, invaded by Britain now occupied by China but still the centre of Tibetan Buddhism. Contested territory, the Dalai Lama forced to live in exile and not the imposing Potala Palace that looms over the city of monasteries, temples and palaces against a backdrop of the Himalayas. We all know that no lesser figure in crime writing than Sherlock Holmes spent time in Tibet after falling from the Reichenbach Falls. The Tibetan political activist and writer Jamyang Norbu wrote The Mandala of Sherl…
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This ‘Crime and the City’ comes to you with a free dose of seriously dry heat, the tinkling sound of sprinklers and the low hum of a thousand a/c units. Yes, we’re in Palm Springs, California. A resort for tuberculosis sufferers (including that most famous crime writing “lunger” Dashiell Hammett briefly), “Playground of the Stars” for Hollywood types, just 107 miles from LA. Raymond Chandler decided to take Philip Marlowe out of the City of Angels to Palm Springs (and into a bad marriage) in his final unfinished novel Poodle Springs. It remained uncompleted at the time of his death in 1959. Poodle Springs was very much Chandler’s version of Palm Springs – “Poodle Springs…
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Panama City, capital of the Republic of Panama. Nine hundred thousand people with rather a lot of banks and lawyers as well as being, of course, on the transcontinental canal bisecting the narrow isthmus between the Caribbean and the Pacific. The city has been sacked several times since its foundation in the early 1500s – Spaniard vs Genoese; privateer vs mercenary, General Noriega vs the US military. First railroads, and then canals, brought American and French influence, as well as migrants from the Caribbean and across Latin America, into the city, turning it into a vibrant and lively, though segregated and often socially enflamed, city. And that canal – mired in corru…
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San Diego, lolling in the sunshine down there on California’s southern Pacific coast. Just under a million and half people, it’s America’s eighth most populous city. Formerly part of the Mexican Empire, boasting a “Mediterranean climate,” and the second largest city of California after LA. A lot of beaches, Balboa Park, a world-famous zoo, a baseball team, and some of the US’s most expensive homes and resorts. Of course, there’s some crime writing too…and some strong pedigree—Raymond Chandler did pitch up in La Jolla for a time… Let’s start with San Diego’s entry into the always excellent Akashic Noir short story series – San Diego Noir (2019) — which, as the book’s blur…
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