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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The best one-two scam in American Literature comes from Mark Twain. First, Tom Sawyer tricks his peers into paying for the privilege of whitewashing a fence; then, using the proceeds, Tom buys up the tickets that his classmates have earned by memorizing bible verses, and presents them to his teacher at an opportune time, kicking off a bible-awarding ceremony which almost everyone watching understands to be a sham. The episode lays out an important principle of con artistry in American Literature: it is easier to earn money than respect. Do whatever you need to do in order to get rich, and use those riches to buy you a place in society. The purchase of esteem is the unavo…
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The first time I nestled into a comfy corner of the sofa to watch the television show, Treme, I have to admit, I didn’t get it. I didn’t connect with the show or the characters. And I’m not proud of the fact. But then all that changed one windy, still very chilly March when I visited the city of New Orleans for the first time. As authors, we invest a significant amount of time into our research and I’m no exception. Books, interviews with locals, movies – all of these resources provide invaluable information that we use to construct our fictional worlds. But I’m of the mind that says when you have an opportunity to visit a location in person, take it. Because in my case,…
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On the big screen above the bar, two teams were playing for the World Cup, and I’m sure somebody somewhere cared about it. Not me. I was drinking a cold bottle of Carta Blanca and listening to the pair next to me. Their heads were close together, but they’d had a couple and were talking the way nearly drunk people do—just a little too loud—and they were much more interesting than the TV. “Man, I still can’t believe she threw you out like that,” the guy nearest me said. “I hate to hear it.” “Yeah,” his friend said. “I mean, I guess I knew it would come sometime. She thought we was in a relationship; I thought we’s just fucking.” And now they’re neither, I thought. But …
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Has there ever been a literary heroine like Sherri Parlay of Miami, Florida? A stripper in her mid-30s with a weakness for men, dogs and peppermint schnapps, she starts her story by confessing to manslaughter in the first paragraph: “Hank was drunk and he slugged me—it wasn’t the first time—and I picked up the radio and caught him across the forehead with it. It was one of those big boom boxes with the cassette player and recorder, but I didn’t think it would kill him.” That’s it for Hank. Released from jail, Sherri announces her determination to “get myself out of the dark bars and into the daylight.” She lands a job at a dry cleaning establishment named Miami Purity…
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After I recently lamented on social media about how much I miss used bookstores, a couple of people pointed out that I could get used books here or there. They usually cited those used books superstores like Half Price Books. I replied that I’m not looking for used books – I’m looking for a used bookstore. It’s probably an odd distinction, but used bookstores had an aura – yes, probably dust and yellowing paper, but also an aura of possibility. Would you find your new favorite book among 50 copies of some bestseller from 25 years ago? I was spoiled for great used bookstores when I was younger and didn’t adequately appreciate that fact at the time. I was lucky to grow u…
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The CrimeReads editors select the month’s best debut novels in crime fiction, mystery, and thrillers. * Paz Pardo, The Shamshine Blind (Atria) Paz Pardo’s The Shamshine Blind is one of the more exciting debuts to hit in early 2023, a heady mix of high-concept speculative fiction, alternative history, and hardboiled detective fiction. In an alternate 2009, a new chemical compound that can elicit targeted human emotions has been weaponized in war and made ubiquitous for recreational purposes, upending the global and social orders. Amidst the new chaos, a small city enforcement agent gets put on the trail of a new product, a trail that points in the direction of a much…
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While many readers and writers of crime novels are female, fewer fictional murderers are. As women, we have come to see ourselves reflected most often in the victims, increasingly in the sleuths, but rarely as perpetrators. While plenty of women do kill within the pages of novels, these are often one-time acts with a single victim – a crime of passion, an act of protection or self-defense, but rarer is the woman who makes murder her life’s purpose. Until recently. When I set out to write the first Pies Before Guys book, I knew I was facing an uphill battle in making my serial killer kitchen witch someone readers wanted to spend time with – but I also knew it could be d…
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Spring is (almost) here, the dark days are soon to be over, and it’s time to pick up a book to pass the time as we wait for the official end to winter. These five works in translation, released in February, will take the armchair traveler all over the world—or, at least, to France, Argentina, Finland, Canada, and Denmark. Some are noir, some are thrillers, and all are excellent. Enjoy! Cloé Mehdi, Nothing Is Lost Translated by Howard Curtis (Europa) This pitch-dark French noir explores the aftermath of violence and the questions still unanswered in the wake of a teen’s murder by police. 11-year-old Mattia spends his days emotionally managing the adults around him, t…
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In my debut novel The Writing Retreat, a despairing writer named Alex is invited to attend a month-long retreat at the home of her favorite author, feminist horror novelist Roza Vallo. Roza hosts Alex and other four other up-and-coming female writers at her gothic mansion, Blackbriar Estate. While there, Alex finds herself solely surrounded by women—at least one of whom turns out to be a psychopath. When starting this book, I decided to use it as an exercise to explore the darker corners of my own psyche. Women and girls are often criticized when we exhibit or even feel emotions such as anger, aggression, and self-centeredness. When these perfectly normal parts of us do…
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One of the strange things about living in New York City is how half of your block could be nice, filled with decent citizens working steady jobs, while the other side of the street might be a creepy danger zone where drunks, junkies and mental defects dwell. On my old uptown block of 151st Street between Broadway and Riverside Drive there were two scary structures at the bottom of the hill that were sketchy for years. The first was 740 Riverside Drive, a once luxury six-story apartment house known as The Switzerland. Built in 1910, it was a towering building whose early advertising noted an elevator and spacious apartments; it also had a perfect view of the Hudson River a…
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Steve Berry is the author of 16 Cotton Malone books, as well as number of thrillers, and runs a historical preservation foundation along with his wife. In Berry’s latest, The Last Kingdom, Bavarian separatists are trying to establish a right to a kingdom based on the mysterious papers of a 19th century king, and it’s up to Berry’s hero Cotton Malone to travel to several fairytale castles in order to find the elusive documents. We caught up with Steve Berry over email to ask about history, research, and his dedication to preservation. How do you go about making history so exciting? It’s simple. Tell a good story. People love stories. But, traditionally, history was taugh…
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In 2004, following allegations of widespread inter-governmental spying at the United Nations headquarters in New York, then Spanish ambassador to the U.N., Inocencio F. Arias, told the Washington Post: “In my opinion everybody spies on everybody, and when there’s a crisis, big countries spy a lot.” Despite the delicious irony of Señor Arias’ first name, he was right to point out that no government is innocent of espionage; they’re all doing it, and they’re all denying it. To us regular citizens, there’s an inherent absurdity here: why go through the rigmarole of denying you’re doing something that everyone knows everyone’s doing? As I write, NORAD has spotted the third—…
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I’m an avid reader, so it was hard to decide how to choose my favorite books with characters starting over in some way. I went through my bookshelves and selected mysteries with an amateur sleuth; if you haven’t read these yet, you won’t be sorry if you add them to your TBR list. I personally enjoy stories about others rising to the challenge, whatever the situation. Scot Free by Catriona McPherson Book 1 in the Last Ditch mystery series. The author’s gift with humor makes this impossible to put down. I totally want to hang out with California transplant Lexy Campbell and her pals. Lexy Campbell fell in love and left her native Scotland for a golden life in Californ…
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We can thank the mistake. It’s the core reason why Claude Monet—the famed French impressionist painter—came to master his iconic depiction of shadows. For mystery writers, the “error” is especially instructive given our challenge to create the most shadowy of mystery characters: the villain. Monet was flirting with the shady side, indeed, when he and Pierre-Auguste Renoir sneaked away from the claustrophobic confines of their in-studio painting class (along with pals Alfred Sisley and Frédéric Bazille) to go outside and paint French life en plein air. It was 1862, and theirs was artistic defiance of the highest order—a blatant rejection of tradition and protocol. Studio…
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Colorful Colorado. The “purple mountains majesty” Katherine Lee Bates wrote about. Home of the adventurer, the brave, and the Broncos. The most beautiful playground in the U.S—maybe the world. Born and raised, so maybe I’m biased. Whatever the truth, nothing bad can happen in such a glorious space. Right? Unfortunately, heinous acts occur everywhere. Gone are the days where screen doors were once left open, ‘”in case anyone wants to pop by” – or leaving the house unlocked at night. You wouldn’t dare leave your keys in the ignition as you run in for groceries, nor let your kids roam free until dark. Big cities, small towns – it doesn’t matter where you are these days. Cr…
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There’s someone in the house. I know it as soon as I’m inside, though I couldn’t say how. Some indescribable change in the air, perhaps, or a sound I hadn’t consciously registered. A wave of adrenaline sweeps over my skin, prickling all hair follicles on end. I stand frozen, just inside the still- open front door, a layer of warm air and sunshine pressing at my back and the shadowy cool of the terraced house silently waiting for me. But it’s the wrong type of silence. I stand motionless, staring, my ears straining to catch any sound above my own racing heartbeat, which is thumping in my ears, thumping in my throat; waiting for a moving shadow or the thud of a footfall or…
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Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Margot Douaihy, Scorched Grace (Gillian Flynn Books) “Sister Holiday, the protagonist of Margot Douaihy’s showstopper of a series debut Scorched Grace isn’t what you’d imagine a nun to be like, even in laissez-faire New Orleans . . . I cannot wait to read the sister’s next investigation, of mysteries and of her own self.” –Sarah Weinman, New York Times Rupert Holmes, Murder Your Employer: The McMasters Guide to Homicide (Avid Reader Press) “Holmes is a gifted wordsmith whose latest is a top-notch read that both entertains and amuses. . . . Delightfully wicked . . . An amusing and…
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“Which is exactly why we have to keep startling the reader in a desperate attempt to keep one step ahead: The hero did it. The victim did it. Watson, did it, Holmes did it, it’s the butler, it’s all of them, it’s none of them—” –from Accomplice by Rupert Holmes Hey, let’s twist again! (Like we did last summer, remember?) I pick up every puzzler hoping to be both astounded and humbled by some stunning revelation lurking within. The classic mystery novel is the magic show of literature, and the illusionist’s audience can be divided into two camps: those who hope to guess the trick in advance (often incorrectly) and those of us who eagerly hope to be fooled, misdirected,…
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I love research. I hate writing, so “research” is the best excuse to avoid writing while still telling yourself “Hey, I’m working on the book!” And it has the extra benefit of being absolutely a true and necessary part of the process – especially when writing about a time and place you’ve never lived, if you want to get it right. My stepmother was a hidden child in WWII Hungary, a 5-y-o little Jewish girl sent to live on a farm with a Catholic family, in the guise of an orphaned niece; she was fortunate to survive the war, and eventually emigrated to the US. After my first novel, A Child out of Alcatraz, was published 25 years ago, I was casting about for my next project…
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Description is critical in good, immersive fiction. It first and foremost enables the reader to richly imagine the world that a writer has created. But good description does more than provide the sensory and physical details crucial in setting, characterization, action, and world building. The ways in which characters see and describe their worlds deepen personality, establish point of view, convey motivation, ratchet up tension, and move the plot along. Ultimately, the description is the thread that connects the who, what, when, where, and why in any narrative. Creating mood and atmosphere centers on the manner in which something is described. The sound of words matter…
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It started out as more than just a ride. In the early 1990s, Disneyland Paris (then called “Euro Disney”) had planned a whole Jules Verne area, “Discoveryland,” to be one of the main features of the new amusement park. According to researcher and documentarian Kevin Perjurer, the area’s centerpiece was going to be a giant copper and steel pavilion, and inside it would be a replica of The Mysterious Island, the home port of Captain Nemo from Verne’s 1872 novel, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Docked in a giant pool would be Nemo’s golden submarine, the Nautilus, which was to be its own walk-through attraction and feature an underwater restaurant. There was going to…
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Reality often plays a role in fiction. There are contemporary “ripped from the headlines” stories—these days often with a podcaster as the protagonist— lining the shelves are novels inspired by murders, kidnappings, bank robberies and airplane hijackings among many other bad acts. And then there are historical mysteries peopled by bold faced names of the time. (Teddy Roosevelt makes an appearance in Mariah Fredericks’ Jane Prescott series; Princess Elizabeth collaborates with Maggie Hope in an early installment of Susan Elia MacNeal’s series of World War II mysteries; famous figures from Dwight D. Eisenhower to John F. Kennedy appear in James R. Benn’s Billy Boyle mystery…
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The human urge to uncover hidden things is behind the enduring appetite for crime fiction, where we turn the pages to search for the truth. The impulse to solve clues and find buried treasure explains the success of everything from The Da Vinci Code to The Goonies, and hatched a sub-genre that sparks the kind of obsession you’d find in the pages of a psychological thriller. Literary treasure hunts, word-and-picture books containing clues to buried treasure, literal or figurative, inspired my latest suspense novel, THE SKELETON KEY. In my fictional treasure hunt, a golden skeleton is scattered across England, the clues hidden in a storybook called The Golden Bones. What s…
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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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When I was a kid in the early 1970s, my late father was a hippie turned political idealist working, quite effectively for several years, to change the system from within. As you might imagine from that thumbnail biography, pop was also a pot smoker. Being exposed to rolling papers and bongs from my earliest days, marijuana held no allure or mystique for me. I took a toke or two with friends in high school and college, once earning a quarter’s worth of ribbing for the epic coughing fit triggered by a single dorm-room inhalation, and that was the end of that. My mood-altering substance of choice is bourbon, and I still fondly recall giving my dad a requested taste of Pap…
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