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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A horse is a horse is a horse is a horse, except in a Western, in which a horse is a horse while also often embodying something deeply metaphorical. Wildness. Freedom. Beauty. Livelihood. Domestication. Friendship. Innocence. Anyway, I watch Westerns worried for the horses. The job of the horse in a Western is to be both ordinary and special—ubiquitous vehicles as much as they are close companions. Sometimes they are a simple ride out of town. Sometimes they are the cowboy’s only friend in the world. In the Western, no figure is more vulnerable than the horse, particularly because eliminating the horse both incapacitates and exposes the cowboy, who is usually the real ta…
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The Boston public school system is a mystery to me. I grew up in a small community. One elementary school, one middle school, one regional high school. You stood at a corner, the bus came and took you where you needed to go with the rest of the neighborhood kids. Boston, on the other hand . . . Public schools, charter schools, international schools. Forget local geography, such as Mattapan. From what I read, a high schooler could attend any public school in the city of Boston, using some crazy application process that probably made engaged parents want to shoot themselves and disengaged parents . . . well, that much more disengaged. Given such madness, high schoolers di…
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Novels are a very macro endeavor packed with micro details. They’re the literary version of those slightly spooky yet somehow charming matryoshka nesting dolls. Plot, setting, and characters: they’re equally crucial elements that must all be individually successful, then join in a perfect confluence in order to tell a compelling story. The sum is always greater than its parts. I call this notion many things: the Holy Trinity, the Golden Triangle, the Magic of Three. A Sisyphian task? Sure, but what isn’t in life? And the longer you’ve been doing anything, the more instinctively things come together in just the right way. Part of the fun is pushing that boulder up the hil…
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During the late-1960s, with Los Angeles’ skies still blotted by poisonous smog, an angry mother fastened a sign in her station wagon that you never would’ve imagined in the planet’s car capital. “This GM,” her placard read, “is a killing machine.” Intended as an activist war cry, her words by the end of the next decade carried a more diabolical meaning. Predators were no longer only skulking neighborhood back alleys or through unlatched windows to snatch up their quarry. They were adopting their own vehicles as murder accomplices, exploiting Southern California’s go-anywhere roadways to create distance between themselves and the corpses they left behind. For these dark…
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Time travel is a genre unto itself, one that spans sci-fi, mystery, fantasy, history and more. But there are distinct categories of time travel narratives, each with its own set of rules—and each with a different baked-in outlook. Getting to a taxonomy of time travel stories, the first question is—who or what is actually time-traveling? Because while the first stories we think of involve spaceships and Deloreans, the oldest time travel stories are stories about… 1. SEEING THE FUTURE In these stories, it is actually INFORMATION that travels through time. And this might be the most scientifically plausible form of time travel, one that is already happening all the time …
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It’s hard to overstate the anticipation that greeted the impending release of the novel Hannibal in 1999. Fans of its prequel, The Silence of the Lambs, had waited 11 years to find out what would happen next to FBI Special Agent Clarice Starling and cannibalistic psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal Lecter. The publisher ordered a first print run of more than a million copies; the manuscript was kept under tight security, lest anyone leak the fate of one of literature’s most infamous villains. But when the book finally hit stores, and those legions of The Silence of the Lambs fans finally had a chance to see how Harris played out the entwined fates of Lecter and Starling, the coll…
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I’ve always loved, and been comforted by, television, but I have found myself turning to it more and more, as I’m sure many of you have, during the past year. Nothing can make the stresses, exhaustions, or sadnesses of the pandemic go away for good, but television *can* make the days move faster, which is all that we can ask for. Escapism. That’s what I want. Well, actually, what I really want is for my brilliant mother and her amazing close friend (love you, Aunt Chris!) to write and star in a show about two super clever, beautiful, sixty-ish-year-old women who run a PI business together. But if that can’t happen, I want to watch something similar. See, lately, I’ve fou…
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Some people are great at movie trivia. Some know all the U.S. state capitals. Me? I’m a walking encyclopedia of famous authors who have committed crimes. (Yes, I’m as much fun at parties as I sound. Invite me, post-COVID.) This niche interest started when I began reading about the sixteenth-century English poet Christopher “Kit” Marlowe for a college literature class. Usually, the bios of classic British authors are pretty easy to skim: went to Oxford and/or Cambridge, moved to London, published some writing, racked up debts, died eventually. Now, to be fair, all of these facts are also true for Marlowe. But that’s leaving out the good parts. There’s the 1589 arrest for…
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My first encounter with the Russian mob occurred two-and-a-half years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, in Istanbul. My new husband and I had traveled to Turkey and spent a week in a gloriously historic neighborhood, the Blue Mosque visible from our hotel windows. On our second night, we wandered across Galata Bridge, descended the steps to the waterfront, and chose a restaurant with a perfect view of the Golden Horn. Docked directly in front of this restaurant and sporting the tricolor Russian Federation flag floated a gigantic but peeling cruise ship, the name “Odessa” painted under a red star on its side. A single Russian family occupied nearly every table ins…
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When Taryn Cornick’s sister was killed, she was carrying a book. People don’t usually take books when out on a run, but Beatrice must have planned to stop, perhaps at the Pale Lady, where she was often seen tucked in a corner, reading, a pencil behind her ear. The book in the bag still strapped to Beatrice’s body when Timothy Webber bundled her into the boot of his car was the blockbuster of that year, 2003, a novel about tantalising, epoch‑spanning conspiracies. Beatrice enjoyed those books, perhaps because they were often set in libraries. The Cornick girls loved libraries, most of all the one at Princes Gate, which belonged to their grandfather, James Northover. Beat…
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In the time since I last wrote this column Squid Game became the world’s favorite show and with good reason, it’s an incredibly exciting ride, but I’m going to just go ahead and assume that by now, the start of November, you’ve already filled up on Squid Game and all the explainers and message board theories that followed, and you’re in search of something new. You’ve come to the right place. Perhaps you’d like another twisty, stylish Korean thriller? Or how about some German grad students solving the mysteries of the human body? November streaming has all that, plus the tried and true British mysteries your parents are going to want to talk about at the holidays. If you…
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One morning, not long after my first novel, Finding Jake, was published, I walked my kids to the bus stop. As I stood just outside a pod of my neighbors, watching our kids roll away, one of the dads stepped up to me. Understand, the exchange was nothing but friendly. Conversational, even. But it was the beginning. “We really enjoyed your book,” he said. “Thanks,” I said, my eyes lowering, a little embarrassed by the attention. “Yeah,” he said, staring at me. “It was really cool to read a story with so many familiar details.” I didn’t get it at first. Social interactions have always confused me to some degree. The nuances lost until I have time to think about it. W…
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Your phone vibrates in your pocket. You dig it out, distracted from whatever you were doing before. It’s a text from a number you don’t recognize, or a friend request from someone you don’t know—but they seem to know you. How does it feel? It’s a perfectly innocuous situation, after all. Messages go astray all the time, wires not quite literally crossed, but close. And who among us hasn’t had to reply “sorry—who’s this?” to a friend’s change of number—themselves, perhaps, on the run from a person they’d rather not hear from again? Still—it’s a distinct sensation, receiving a message like this: a strange admixture of curiosity and anxiety. A tug in the chest: a longing…
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“…because the past was always around her and might return at any time. It prowled the world searching for her, and she knew it was growing angrier at every passing day.” ― Nicholas Sparks What if…? The two most provocative words in the English language and the inspiration for countless novels. What if… you needed to leave your life—flee, disappear, run faster than something or someone that was chasing you? My first novel, Hush Little Baby, and my latest novel, Hadley & Grace, explore this familiar trope. The first was inspired by a friend who fled an abusive marriage. The second was inspired by one of the greatest women-on-the-run stories ever, Thelma and Louise. Bel…
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There was a moment during the 2012 Utøya terror trial when I realized I had caused pain to a man who did not deserve it. He was speaking in the Oslo courthouse; he had lost a loved one in the attacks a year before. I was there as a British journalist, trying, as we all were, to understand how one man could murder 77 people one summer’s afternoon in the safest country in the world. As the witness testified about his loneliness and grief in the aftermath of the attacks, the man who had murdered his wife stared at him, unblinking and unrepentant. The witness reached the end of his testimony. He turned and looked out towards the public. “There’s been a lot of talk recently a…
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There is no one to whom a blue dress has meant more to his career than author Walter Mosley, with the possible exception of his biggest fan, President Bill Clinton. Mosley’s Devil in a Blue Dress had been critically acclaimed prior to Clinton telling the world Mosley was one of his favorite writers. But after Clinton’s endorsement, Mosley’s books traveled from bookstore mystery shelves in the back of the store, to storefront windows and entryway co-op tables in less time than it takes to complete a book signing. Not since President John Kennedy sang the praises of Ian Fleming, the father of James Bond, has an author’s work been jumpstarted so successfully. And Mosley …
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In December of 1927, Al Capone treated his family to a Christmas vacation in Los Angeles. Some years earlier, Capone had sent one of his minions, “Handsome Johnny” Rosselli, to Hollywood to form relationships with movie industry movers and shakers, and develop “business opportunities” for the Chicago mob. Rosselli found plenty of opportunity, so Capone decided it was worth a personal visit to check it out for himself. Shortly after he arrived, he was paid a visit at his hotel by the Los Angeles chief of police, who told him he had twelve hours to get out of town. Al packed up and left. The powers-that-were in Southern California didn’t want the Chicago Outfit sticking it…
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In the summer of 2014, two teenage girls, Padma and Lalli, became the subject of rumors in their small village. Then they went missing. And hours later, they were found dead. ___________________________________ To the Shakyas, the threshold of a police station could feel as insurmountable as a fortress wall. The Indian police were known for their dismissive attitude towards the poor. They were meant to serve and protect, but they were just as likely to kill. The roughly shaven, khaki-clad men of the local force had the most terrifying reputation of all. ‘UP police ka koi bharosa nahin,’ it was said. You never know with the UP police. There was plenty of truth to this n…
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In my new novel, A History of What Comes Next, ninety-nine generations of mothers and daughters insert themselves into history to nudge us towards the stars. They’re quite strong, incredibly smart, and, when cornered, very deadly. I knew from the start I wanted them to be ruthless at times, but they’re still, undeniably, the heroes of the book, which begged the question: How far can I take this? Can they wipe out a village? Is there such a thing as too bad? One of the first books to really, really knock my socks off was Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Choderlos de Laclos. These people are bad bad. They don’t murder anyone but they lie, they cheat, they destroy each other’s l…
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The fifth-floor hallway was darker than reported, and there was an awkward dogleg near the stairwell that their local recon hadn’t bothered to map; it smelled of garlic, mold, and dry rot even though the hotel was billed as a Byzantine five-star. A milky Mediterranean twilight bled faint from hidden recesses along the ceiling, enough to cast a glow but not overly expose the shadow gliding through the shadows toward its target. A woman, unremarkable, if a little boxy, hip to shoulder. Here on business, you might think, not worth a second look. Black slacks, T-shirt and unstructured blazer, wireless earpiece, and Zero Halliburton briefcase. She approached a doorway with a…
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Greetings from the Great White North, where days are Hobbesian: nasty, brutish and short. The tides have turned as isolation continues and instead of seeing a bunch of writers complaining on social media about not being able to read, I’ve seen anecdotal evidence that people are reading more than they did in the before times. This does make your local book critic smile on the inside. I’m here to help you on your quest for escape and/or entertainment that doesn’t involve bingeing (a word I am coming to loathe) or a YouTube tutorial—actually, tutorials, since who stops at just one? I am hooked on bullet journal videos, which are fascinating glimpses into how people think ab…
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Outside the small village where we live stands a white chapel. It’s a strange building, not typical of the area. Square and plain. No spire or stained-glass windows. More fitted perhaps to a dusty Midwest town in the US (perhaps with an old couple standing outside, holding a pitchfork!) Rows of crooked and ancient graves tip and tilt in the overgrown graveyard and at the top of the steep slope is a tall stone memorial. The inscription on it reads: “Protestant Martyrs Memorial. Erected to the memory of Richard Woodman and George Stevens of Warbleton, Margery Thomas and James Morris her son of Cade Street, Heathfield who with six others, were burned to death at Lewes…
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Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Mick Herron, Slough House (Soho) “Herron has certainly devised the most completely realised espionage universe since that peopled by George Smiley.” –The Times (UK) Ben McPherson, Love and Other Lies (William Morrow) “McPherson dramatically highlights the tensions between Norway’s native and immigrant populations as the plot builds to a devastating conclusion. This powerful, thought-provoking novel deserves a wide readership.” –Publishers Weekly Alex Tresniowski, The Rope: A True Story of Murder, Heroism, and the Dawn of the NAACP (Simon & Schuster) “This suspenseful, we…
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Though often described as an island Malta actually comprises three inhabited islands, Malta, Gozo and Comino. Few archipelagos can have been fought over as much—invaded, occupied, bombed and put under siege—than Malta. Phoenicians and Carthaginians, Romans, Greeks, Arabs, the Knights of St John, Normans, Aragonese, French, the British and the Nazis. As so often geography is destiny for Malta, sitting at a crossroads in the Mediterranean equidistant between southern Europe and north Africa. The Maltese language reveals its cosmopolitan history—Maltese borrows from Sicilian, Arabic, a little French influence, and a bit of English thrown in too. Now part of the European Unio…
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As we enter the second year of the pandemic, we’re launching a new monthly column to bring awareness to the great titles you might have missed the first time around. These new-in-paperback titles are some of the most exciting mysteries and crime novels around—plus, they won’t break the bank! Gytha Lodge, Watching from the Dark, Random House Trade (1/5) “Readers will enjoy the fast pace, red herrings, and intriguing characters in this British police procedural–slash-psychological thriller.”—Booklist Hank Phillippi Ryan, The First To Lie, Forge (1/5) “A taut, propulsive plot with twists that will take your breath away…book clubs will gobble up The First to Lie.” —Sa…
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