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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On October 16th, NeoText is publishing The Goldtwinz, a novella billed as “psychedelic sunshine noir,” and the first collaboration between author Jardine Libaire and photographer Neil Krug. The saturated colors and seedy backdrops of Krug’s images harken back to his album covers for Lana Del Ray and Tame Impala, filling out the world of Libaire’s sultry, bleak tale. Below, find an exclusive excerpt and preview of illustrations from the forthcoming text. They hit the road. It’s not quite dusk, the Florida sky throwing rainbows. The car is coated in light. The asphalt twinkles with rain. Marc just eats it up, inhales it, flows with it. They’re less than a hundred miles …
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― “I tried to find my own edges again, tried to remember the shape of my own body, repeating the same words out loud as I tried to keep myself from disappearing―I belong to no one.” When I first set out to write a piece of fiction that explored some of the murkier depths of consent and personal agency, I knew the first treacherous step would be to untangle my own story from the one I was building in my head. I knew, though, that no matter how aware I stayed of the sixteen-year-old version of myself that still moves through the rooms of my memory, she would end up on the page. Her pain, her fear, her complete lack of understanding of what had been done to her and just how…
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My home state of Minnesota is known for three things: its 10,000 lakes, its brutal winters, and its polite, yet reserved behavior from residents. For the uninitiated, this behavior is known as “Minnesota Nice.” We love being courteous, but we also desperately crave our space. For example, one Minnesotan might help their neighbor jump-start their car in the winter (that’s polite!). Then the two of them never speak again (that’s space). A Minnesotan might describe their overly salty meal as “fine” (how polite!) and then avoid eye contact with the wait staff for the rest of the meal (that’s space!). But Minnesota Nice is most evident at our four-way stops. Each person poli…
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Patents, start-ups, intellectual property rights—skullduggery over technology innovations and cutting-edge ideas may strike most of us as a modern-day development of nerdy entrepreneurs and savvy hedge fund investors. But in reality, Regency England—where groundbreaking advances in a variety of scientific fields got the Industrial Revolution cranking into high gear—was also a hotbed of intrigue and high stakes wheeling and dealing, as inventors competed for both fortune and fame. A prime example was the steam engine, the workhorse machine on which a whole new range of modern industries were built. In 1712, Thomas Newcomen patented the first commercially successful steam-…
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The Victorian era is, for what seem like obvious reasons, defined by the life span of the British Queen Victoria, which dates from her birth in 1837 and ends with her expiration in 1901. Those early years, when she was an infant and then a toddler and then an adolescent (although it may be difficult to envision her as such) did not actually produce much in the way of what we recognize as “Victorian fiction,” which developed later in her life—and beyond. Indeed, much Edwardian fiction, if we read it without being aware of publication dates, has precisely the tone and attitude of the works produced during her long reign. Nonetheless, this volume strictly adheres to the par…
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Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Alison Gaylin, The Collective (William Morrow) “Alison Gaylin’s The Collective is an astonishing feat. In the tradition of Ira Levin’s unforgettable social thrillers (Rosemary’s Baby, Stepford Wives), it’s a nerve-shredding, emotionally harrowing ride that also speaks volumes about our current moment, the dangers of our digital world, the potency of female rage. Don’t miss it.” Megan Abbott William Boyle, Shoot the Moonlight Out (Pegasus) “Boyle emerges not just as a consummate crime writer but as a poet of the underclass, unwaveringly portraying lives gone wrong but still findin…
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Imagine you’re a mother planting blueberry bushes at home in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains when your four-year-old son approaches excitedly, saying, “Mommy, close your eyes, close your eyes!” You do, of course, expecting a live frog or a dead dragonfly, but when you’re told to look you find yourself staring into the empty eye sockets of a human skull. Motherhood. Small tear or joy. This may sound like a page out of one of my crime novels, but it’s a true story that happened in 2017 near Maple Falls, Washington, and the Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office—my employer—responded. When I got word of the unusual find I did what any good crime analyst would and started…
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In my latest book, Femlandia, a character says, “Anything a man can do, a woman can do equally as well.” But is this the case when it comes to being evil? When I decided to write this piece about women behaving badly in literature, I thought (foolishly, it turns out) I would end up with a stack of books so high that whittling the choices down would be the hard work. Instead, finding enough contemporary books with villainesses was incredibly difficult. Cruella De Vil, the Grand High Witch, and Mrs. Trunchbull might feature on the pages of children’s novels, but modern thrillers tend to be packed with bad men doing the awful deeds. Author Gillian Flynn has addressed the lac…
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What’s better than a horror movie? A horror comedy of course! And after another long and terrifying year, we all deserve a chance to spend Halloween however we choose, including doubled over with laughter. And, if your kids are still at home, each of these films easily doubles as an educational tool, as you explain each and every joke, and with it, the entire history of 20th century cinema. This article is dedicated to every child who saw Young Frankenstein before they had even heard of Frankenstein. Hocus Pocus (1993, dir. Kenny Ortega) While most of the 21st century has been a steaming pile of horseshit, the growing status of Hocus Pocus as a cult classic is one of…
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It was getting dark when I left the Boston hospital after working the day shift. My sister was coming to town to see my new apartment, and I still had to hang the last pair of curtains. If I hurried, I could get to the Mission Hill hardware store to buy the rods and brackets I needed before it closed. I felt my bag being yanked from my shoulder before I saw that the person attacking me from behind was practically a child. As soon as I realized what was happening—that I was being robbed—I let go of my purse. The kid, who couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen, and looked as scared as I felt, had full possession of my bag when he kicked me squarely in the knee. Pe…
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It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that when murder was committed in early nineteenth century England, the first men called to the scene were the famous Bow Street Runners. This intrepid squadron of proto-detectives would investigate the crime, collect evidence and uncover witnesses. At least, that’s how I thought it worked. When I started writing my Rosalind Thorne mysteries, I assumed that the “runners” were the foundation of what would become the Metropolitan Police force. But the more I read, the more I discovered how wrong I was. Law enforcement in early modern and Regency England operated as a disorienting patchwork of services and jurisdictions. It was als…
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Bangalore, officially now called Bengaluru, is the capital city of the Indian state of Karnakata in south west India. Eleven million people in what is now India’s third largest city. The country’s ‘Wild South’ and also one of India’s ‘Garden Cities’. But, of course, most people now think of Bangalore as ‘India’s Silicon Valley’, home to an estimated 7,700 millionaires and eight billionaires with a total wealth of US$320 billion. And, as we all know, where there are that many millionaires and billionaires with that much money there will be some crime too just as night follows day. If any book has made English language readers more aware of Bangalore then it’s probably Ar…
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“Poets,” wrote Percy Shelley in 1821, “are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” That is, if a vision were made real enough upon the page, it could capture readers’ imaginations—and, if compelling enough, it could persuade entire societies to change. Examples abound. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s bestselling novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which she wrote to protest the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, depicted the horrors of enslavement so vividly that it swayed millions of readers and was, according to historians, a factor that helped incite the Civil War. In nineteenth-century England, Charles Dickens’s vivid critiques of workhouses, boarding schools, and the plight of impoveri…
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Rachel Howzell Hall is the critically acclaimed author and Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist for And Now She’s Gone. A New York Times bestselling author of The Good Sister with James Patterson, Rachel is also an Anthony, International Thriller Writers and Left Award nominee. There’s more, a whole lot more to Rachel’s amazing bio and her rise to the very tip top of the crime-writing scene. Take for example, the eleven-year gap between her first published book and her second, or the birth of her daughter and a breast cancer diagnosis. Through it all, Rachel held tight to a passion for writing unlike any I’ve ever encountered before. Rachel’s process is truly inspiring…
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The days are cold, the nights are long, and the Scandinavian noir flows freely in this month’s edition of our regular international thriller column. With few releases coming up in December, we’ve included one title from next month in the list as well. Stay tuned next month for our annual quixotic attempt to define the best international thrillers of the year! Eva Bjorg Ægisdóttir, Girls Who Lie Translated by Victoria Cribb Orenda Icelandic newcomer Eva Bjorg Ægisdóttir’s new novel, in the capable hands of experienced translator Victoria Cribb, is a twisty and thrilling ride that promises to leave readers stunned—and wanting more immediately. However, the strangest …
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Prior to the founding of the Metropolitan Police of London in 1829, policing in England was a fairly haphazard business. In the provinces, most law enforcement fell to part-time, unpaid (often resentful) parish constables and to poorly paid watchmen (“Charlies”), who patrolled the streets. Then there were “thief-takers,” who pursued lawbreakers—although they were known to collude with criminals, resorting to blackmail and intimidation to frame innocent people. There were also private services (akin to private investigators) and “voluntary associations” that people could subscribe to, for protection from burglary. In 1748, under London’s Chief Magistrate and novelist Henry…
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I’ve been doing a lot of interviews around the publication of my novel Five Decembers, and one question I keep encountering is what I plan to write next. The true answer is, I’m not sure yet. But in all the research I did for my novel, I learned things that filled out the details of a tale I’d been aware of for a long time. It’s a war story and an international crime saga with connections to the Philippines, Japan and Hawaii. It stretches across eight decades, involves war crimes, torture, treasure, and courtroom drama. I’m talking about the Yamashita Treasure, the Golden Buddha, and the everlasting Hawaii legal saga of Roxas v. Marcos. It’s a story so wild that if someo…
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My new novel, Shoot the Moonlight Out, opens with two epigraphs. One comes from the great Garland Jeffreys song that gives the book its name, a New York City ramble that feels partly like a Tunnel of Love carnival ride and partly like following a map to an uncertain destination, providing a jolt of tone and atmospheric energy right out of the gate. Everything I wanted in my book was right there under the surface of that title. The other epigraph comes from a favorite poem of mine, “Riding the D Train” by Enid Dame. In the poem, Dame’s narrator is on the subway, noticing the passing rooftops and people in the windows of buildings and other riders in the car, scarred and sc…
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I love a mystery set in an exotic location. The Orient Express. A renovated sanatorium in the Alps. Bangkok, Egypt, Paris, Mumbai. Sometimes there’s nothing more exciting than hopping on a literary red-eye and reading about murder in the Australian Outback. Still, as much as I love to imagine the scent of eucalyptus in the air as I read, there’s something uniquely gripping about a mystery set a bit closer to home. With a setting as familiar as stepping out my own front door, books grounded in the heart of America have an almost visceral appeal. It’s easy to imagine devilish deeds unfolding in far-flung locales where snow batters the windows and harsh mountain peaks stab …
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It’s good to have work you’re respected for. Women have worked forever, no matter what memes fetishizing the 1950s try to tell you. It’s just that, with rare exceptions, like Queens, their jobs were often confined to the home, toiling as maids, as cooks, or as governesses. It was less common that a woman might find a job outside the home that could elevate her financially and socially. You should not become a professional poisoner. But it did seem to work for Locusta of Gaul, Rome’s most famous poisoner, often described as history’s first serial killer. (Although, as far as I can tell, her motives were entirely mercenary, and, unlike most serial killers, she derived no…
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Under an Outlaw Moon follows the true story of Bennie and Stella Mae Dickson. He’s reckless and she’s an outsider longing to fit in. When they pull off a bank robbery to celebrate her sixteenth birthday, their lives take a turn that they never could have imagined. In late August, 1938, Bennie and his new wife, Stella, walked into the Corn Exchange Bank in Elkton, South Dakota. With guns drawn, they were faced with having to wait thirty minutes for the vault’s time lock to release. Keeping their cool, they assembled employees and customers against a wall, and without a shot being fired, they robbed the bank of just over twenty-one hundred dollars. Driving to his family’s …
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Family is messy, and let’s face it: literature thrives on mess. Fiction, it seems, is chockfull of unpleasant and even twisted family relationships. As both a reader and writer, I don’t mind mess, of course. But, when it comes to father-daughter relationships, I prefer complex and tender over destructive and perverse, and I must confess: I’ve always been a sucker for the books that capture that particular relationship with just the right tenor. My newest book, These Silent Woods, has themes of love, sacrifice, and redemption at its core, and I hope readers will fall in love with the father and daughter who inhabit the pages. Cooper, a flawed but dedicated dad, and Finch,…
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Mothers are like the Roman god Janus, one face looking to the past and one to the future. They exist in a duality because motherhood is temporal, themselves transitioning from maiden to crone while ferrying their charge from infancy to adulthood. That duality and journey make them delightfully complex characters for authors. And dare I say the perfect amateur sleuth. In Nursery Crimes, the first of Ayelet Waldman’s Mommy Track mysteries, the reader meets Juliet Applebaum, a public defender with a preschool-aged daughter and another on the way. Waldman illustrates Juliet’s Janus status in this passage from chapter two. “Awash in ambivalence, alternately bored and entrance…
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I rush out of Broadcasting House and turn north toward the police station. If I were to run in the opposite direction, toward her flat, Marian might answer the door. She might stand there, under the yellow paper lantern in her front hall, and say, Tessa, what are you doing here? I sway on my feet, trying to make a decision. Her house isn’t far. Marian lives in south Belfast, on Adelaide Avenue, a quiet row of terraced houses between the railway line and the Lisburn Road. I could be there in twenty minutes. The pedestrian light flashes and I force myself to cross the road. Her flat will be empty, she’s meant to be on the north coast through Friday. She isn’t answering he…
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“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; truth isn’t.” (Mark Twain) I call this Red-Lining Reality, because these are things editors put a red line through; readers won’t find them believable. My family travelled to Italy a few years back. We were going anyway, but this conveniently provided me with information for the story I had in mind for my fourth book, Cecilian Vespers, about the murder of a renowned theologian. Some of the clues related to the lives of long-dead saints, including Saint Philomena. I’d never heard of her till I began my research, So. My husband and daughter and I were in Italy, in Treviso,…
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