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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Some months it’s a struggle to find three or four new crime shows worth highlighting. March is not one of those months. There’s something for just about everyone coming out. If you’re like me, the new Kim Philby limited series based on the Ben Macintyre book is the highlight—the knitwear alone might be worth the price of admission—but we’re also zeroing in on hallucinatory cross-country thrillers, mysteries set aboard ships, some new Perry Mason, the return of Yellowjackets, and much more. Wreck (Hulu / Premieres March 1) A slasher-thriller-comedy that was a hit on the BBC, now coming to America. A teenager sneaks on board a cruise ship, determined to find out what h…
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Writers Kathleen Kent and Alma Katsu are both known for their historical fiction and mysteries, but did you know that, in real life, both worked in the shadowy world of national security and intelligence? In this interview, the authors of BLACK WOLF (Mulholland Books, February 14) and RED LONDON (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, March 14) compare notes on what it’s like to write thrillers on matters close to home. ALMA: When people find out you once worked for CIA or the Defense Department, I think they’re surprised to find out you’ve written anything else, but one thing we have in common is that we’ve both written in a variety of genres. For you, it’s been historicals, crime thril…
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We all know about toxic friendships, frenemies and friend-foes, where those that have your back are the most likely to knife you there instead. Countless thrillers have been inspired by the topic, not least by me – The Lies You Told is all about what happens when a supposed friendship is masking something a lot less amicable on the inside. What I want to address now is something darker still: the friendships and relationships but for which terrible events might never occur, the meeting of two people but for which they might each have lived an entirely blameless life. The damage moves along a spectrum. Take Jane Austen’s Emma as an example (not an obvious fit in a crime …
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My daughter jokes that I know every terrible thing that has ever happened to anyone on the planet. I have a morbid fear of parking lots, white vans, crowds, movie theaters, and any place where disaster or evil has struck. I’m not alone in my fear. Fear is something that the media encourages and covers—especially when a young girl goes missing. My new novel GOING DARK explores the phenomena of how the media decides which victims to cover. The media’s obsession with certain types of victims—white, photogenic young girls—has even been given a name “missing white women syndrome”—in that while certain victims of crime are reported on to minute detail, many other victims are ig…
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Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Katie Lumsden, The Secrets of Hartwood Hall (Dutton) “[A] captivating debut. . . . Assured prose propels this well-crafted tale of family, friendship, and the cost of personal freedom. Fans of the great Victorian novels, in particular Jane Eyre, will have fun.” –Publishers Weekly Cheryl Head, Time’s Undoing (Putnam) “[Head] brings her gift for strong women protagonists and suspense to this tale about a young, Black female journalist from Detroit on a dangerous quest….Vivid and affecting….This heart-seizing tale even has a touch of the supernatural as it celebrates Black live…
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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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