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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Listen: Los Angeles is the Great American City. It’s America with the volume turned all the way up, so the speakers blow and your ears hurt – but it’s beautiful too. It might not be the “Real America” of a reactionary’s dreams, but it’s the America of the Real – it’s all cars and real estate and illusions and lies, it’s people of every color, it’s money and poverty, it’s celebrity and pollution. It’s the place where Westward Expansion smacks up against the Pacific Ocean. It’s America with its back to the wall. Noir is one of the great American art forms, so it only follows that LA would be the epicenter of crime fiction. We all know the greats, from Chandler and Hughes t…
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When I started writing my debut novel, Liar, Dreamer, Thief, I knew two things. First, I wanted a mystery to form the novel’s core. Second, it was important to me that at least some of the main revelations—which, in a mystery, often form touchstones for the character’s internal journey—not be entirely rational. The urge for this probably came from not being able to relate to the average mystery protagonist: an intellectually brilliant, cool cucumber whose only weakness usually takes one of two forms: a chemical addiction, like House and his pain pills, or a personality too abrasive to form close relationships (save whoever the Watson stand-in is). Either way, a sleuth’s …
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Caro stared at the cables, at the mind-reading machine, at the e-fMRI. The money being expended staggered her. Her salary was only a miniscule fraction. And she still didn’t know what she was supposed to do to earn it. “Julian, if this facility is conducting clinical trials on brain function, why is it being explained to me by a physicist and a software developer? What exactly is this a research trial of, why are there no other medical personnel here, and what does all of it have to do with ‘proving’ immortality?” Even saying that last made Caro feel ridiculous. “It’s an unusual clinical trial,” Julian said. “In fact, that’s not really the right word for it. It…
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1. THE ACT OF STORY STATEMENT-- develop a simple "story statement." In other words, what's the mission of your protagonist? The goal? What must be done? Triggered by threats of losing her granddaughter and being dumped into a senior living facility, unpublished writer Shelby Garrett sinks farther into the fantasy world of her fictional characters who help her keep the past at bay. When intruders arrive to rob her and threaten her life, she is convinced the armed aggressors are her very own fictional characters, ones she can control. Unaware of the true dangers, she challenges the intruders and demands a rewrite. As the early trauma awakens, she spirals o…
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Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Michael Bennett, Better the Blood (Atlantic Monthly) “A stellar series launch set in contemporary New Zealand . . . The narrative moves at a quick pace. Immersed in modern-day technologies and with a keen sensitivity to cultural issues, this is a finely crafted page-turner. Bennett is a writer to watch.” –Publishers Weekly Jordan Harper, Everybody Knows (Mulholland) “Don’t be surprised if this utterly compelling thriller, which builds on timeless themes and brings new shading to an iconic landscape, is the noir of the year.” –Booklist Maria Dong, Liar, Dreamer, Thief (Grand…
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Everyone can agree that honesty is the best policy—especially when it comes to romantic partnerships—but what happens when that honesty completely breaks down, especially when it comes to affairs, long-buried secrets—even murder? My upcoming novel, You Should Have Told Me, follows Janie, a new mother struggling to get by—her new baby won’t sleep, she seems to be insatiably hungry, and a secret from Janie’s past threatens to tear everything apart. When her partner, Max, offers to do their baby’s feedings one night, of course she jumps at the chance. Only she wakes up hours later to her daughter screaming in her bassinet and her partner gone. When a woman is murdered and M…
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Scientist Robert Lanza and science fiction author Nancy Kress have co-written a new thriller grounded in deep scientific principles and guided by the writers’ shared passion for technology and biocentrism. Read a conversation between Lanza and Kress below. Kress: Robert, you’re a pioneer in stem cell research and in addition to writing dozens of textbooks related to the topic, you’ve written three works of nonfiction on biocentrism, the central concept in our novel, OBSERVER. Why now a novel? Lanza: I wanted to introduce the ideas of biocentrism ─ where life is the basis of the universe ─ to a broader audience through storytelling to bring to life the science behind th…
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My favorite thrillers are character studies with a crime hook. They’re books about people’s actions, reactions, behaviors, and emotions set to the backdrop of a suspenseful mystery. They are first about characters and second about crime. Books like Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll (featuring a Columbine-like shooting), Whisper Network by Chandler Baker (featuring #MeToo-like storyline), and The Girls by Emma Cline (featuring a Manson-like cult) are great examples. We fall under the main character or characters’ spell because their voice jumps off the page. We root for them, we hate them, we love them, we want to see them thrive, or want to see them suffer. Either way,…
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When Jeffrey Dahmer was arrested in 1991, I was sixteen years old and struggling with my sexuality. I grew up in a small town in southwestern Virginia and attended an all-boys prep school in central Virginia, both places isolated and unsafe to be out. Unlike now, positive examples of gay men like Pete Buttigeig, Dan Levy, or RuPaul weren’t in the media, and certainly gay historical figures weren’t taught in the classrooms. Instead, I had Dahmer, whose criminality the media clumsily and maliciously mingled with his sexuality, implying that there was a relationship between the two. When I heard that Ryan Murphy, the writer, director, and producer best known for the TV show…
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Who among us, crime movie fans, wouldn’t want to see Agnes Moorehead and her sidekick traveling around and solving murders? Who wouldn’t want more of Denzel Washington as Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins? Or follow-ups to “Gone Baby Gone” with more faithful versions of author Dennis Lehane’s complex characters, Boston private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro? That’s the frustrating, never-gonna-happen discussion I’m hoping to draw you into today. Namely, the crime movie series that cried out to exist but do not. Hollywood made four dozen Charlie Chan movies.” Six “Thin Man” movies. Six “Perry Mason” movies in the 1930s alone. And we get one lousy Hoke Moseley movi…
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Diana Gabaldon’s historical time-traveling blockbuster, Outlander, almost didn’t make history, in either the twentieth or eighteenth centuries. Her publisher couldn’t figure out what to do with a novel about a young woman at the end of WWII visiting Inverness, Scotland and accidentally traveling back two centuries in time. Was it adventure, crime, mystery, thriller, or suspense? Or something else? “They sat on it and threatened to cancel the book because they couldn’t figure out how to market it,” she says. “Eventually, they decided to sell it as romance. It wasn’t a romance, but romance made for bigger bestsellers.” Before it was ever decided her novel was going to …
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I spent a year after college teaching English in a quiet little town in Moravia. Without Internet, a television with only two channels (one German, the other Czech), and no friends, I did a lot of reading. My focus during this time was legendary. I flipped the pages through Crime and Punishment as if it were a convenience store bodice-ripper, so taken was I by the tortured young protagonist (23 years old, just like me!) who wondered, in his half-starved, desperate state, if killing someone might be justified—nay, even the ethical thing to do!—if the victim was a bad person. Crime & Punishment isn’t the only dusty old tome that moonlights as a thriller. Of course, the…
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Listen up, my children of the night! There is a new Dracula adaptation in our midst, starring Nicolas Cage. It’s called Renfield, and perhaps you have heard of it, since it has been in development for some time. But if you have not heard about it, let me tell you. The film is told from the perspective of Dracula’s insane, zoophagous slave Renfield, who longs to end things with his “boss,” the Count. Throughout the years, Renfield has been played (to varying degrees of lunacy) by Tom Waits, Peter MacNicol, Dwight Frye, Klaus Kinski, Mark Gatiss, Arte Johnson, and lots of other people. But Renfield is always a minor character in the Dracula adaptations, and maybe it’s high…
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While it still sometimes feels as if 2020 never ended, in terms of publishing years, we’re already up to 2023! Which means not only a new year, but a whole new set of books to read. There are so many wonderful books coming out this year that we weep at the thought that we’ll never be able to read them all, but here’s a place to start: 10 fantastic new books out in January that run the gamut from hardboiled noir to comical caper, haunted house horror to pure psychological thriller. Also keep an eye out for many more recommendations once we post our giant most anticipated preview! Jordan Harper, Everybody Knows (Mulholland) In this pitch-dark version of Chinatown in t…
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First there was Gulf War One. (1990, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. 1991, a US led coalition drove Iraq out.) It was a real war. Thirty-six countries, 1,600,000 troops, thousands of tanks and thousands more armored vehicles, artillery, missiles, helicopters, jets, bombers, destroyers, aircraft carriers – plus, of course, cameras, camera crews, instant satellite transmission of footage – all coordinated to produce a masterpiece of story-telling. The networks had special theme music and big title graphics for their war coverage. All of them looked like the hive mind of a half-time marching band had taken over the news departments. Watching it, on my home screen, I said…
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I first learned about crime fiction from my father Dan Riordan and his brother Paul. They were old school gents and always called crimes novels “mysteries.” I was introduced to all the greats: Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, Mickey Spillane and Agatha Christie, Ross Macdonald and John D. MacDonald. It was always one-way traffic, I would read the books they gave me, not the other way around. That traffic pattern changed in 2005 when I sent them both a copy of a new novel by Michael Connelly: The Lincoln Lawyer, the first book in what would become a long-running series starring Los Angeles criminal defense lawyer, Michael “Mickey” Haller. By 2005, both Dan and…
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“After a last great interval, a seventh sun will appear and the Earth will blaze with fire until it becomes one mass of flame. The mountains will be consumed, a spark will be carried on the wind and go as far as the worlds of God. Therefore, monks, even the monarch of mountains will be burnt and perish and exist no more—excepting those who have seen the path.” – Pāli Canon (29 BCE) As much as we may want a favorite book or television series to go on forever, there comes a time it will end. It is an inevitability. We do not resist this, nor are we shocked by it. It’s a format we learn from the first stories we hear—just as every tale begins with “Once Upon a Time,” so mus…
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Popular culture of TV, film and crime novels would have us believe the role of a sex worker is largely to be a nameless body in the background: perhaps semi-clad on someone’s lap, perhaps grinding against a pole, sooner rather than later most probably found dead in a back alley. Their deaths might precipitate action, a Detective has a case to solve (although the case will only catch attention if several sex workers are killed – one dead sex worker isn’t really all that, is it? Please note I write that with a heavy sense of irony). If the sex worker’s character is fleshed-out at all, it’s when the detective discovers that they were uneducated, unstable addicts without aspi…
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I recently chaired a panel in which several American crime writers discussed their most memorable discoveries in terms of noir television and film during the various COVID lockdowns we have all endured. As the moderator I did not get any time to discuss my own discovery, but if I had it would have been the Australian/American television production, Mr Inbetween. Premiering on the American FX Network in September 2018, Mr Inbetween has its US fans, but remains largely unknown. For that matter, it is also criminally unseen in Australia, where it was filmed. Mr Inbetween tells the story of Ray Shoesmith (played by the show’s creator and writer, Scott Ryan), a Sydney assassi…
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When I look back at who I was just a few years ago and who I am today, it always gives me a jolt. A lot changes throughout our lives, but more often those changes happen slowly and in parts. We move house or change jobs; we meet people, we lose people. At the end of 2016, twenty years of working in Essex as an NHS radiographer in cancer services had left me feeling exhausted, frustrated, and mostly just sad. I wrote when I could, which wasn’t often, and sold short stories while still harbouring my lifelong dream of one day becoming a full-time novelist. And then, shortly after I was given a life-changing medical diagnosis, a very close family member died unexpectedly. I t…
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What does fashion have in common with fiction? At first glance, probably not much. You could argue that they’re both means to express oneself, which is accurate. But these two worlds couldn’t be further apart on the glamorous spectrum, so it might seem bizarre that we ended up going from one to the other. Turns out, there is another unforeseen connection: they both made us cry and have similar barriers to entry for certain demographics. It’s an open secret—fashion is a cutthroat industry. Even if you avoid the Anna Wintours of the business, its ruthless nature can lead to you breaking down and sobbing on any given day. But whenever we cried during our attempt to break i…
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DAY ONE, 7:00 a.m. My wife and I walk our dog at dawn. We live across the street from a little lake connected by a channel to Florida’s St. Johns River, which, eighteen miles away, empties into the Atlantic Ocean. Even so far from the ocean, the lake is tidal, eventually refreshing its old brackish water with new brackish water. But in summer months when the lake is still, Day-Glo green algae scums the surface. It’s a terrible place to dump a body. Our dog Louise, a boxer mix named for Joe Lewis, runs ahead of us and sniffs at the ground beside the lake. She’s a tough old dog, dragging a hind leg years after a car hit her, the muscle above the leg carrying buckshot from…
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Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Christoffer Carlsson (transl. Rachel Willson-Broyles), Blaze Me a Sun (Hogarth) “The first great crime novel of 2023 is Blaze Me a Sun by the decorated Swedish crime writer Chrisoffer Carlsson, who twines together national and personal trauma to devastating effect.” –New York Times Book Review Sean Adams, The Thing in the Snow (William Morrow) “Who knew there was so much wit in hell? The Thing in the Snow is a mystery, an office satire, and a slow-boil study of madness. Trust nothing in this book save for its deadpan brilliance.” –Ryan Chapman Ana Reyes, The House in the Pines…
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The tall, stylish woman lingered by a rail of fur coats in a top London department store, diamond rings glinting, as her fingers brushed against the most luxurious sable. World War Two was won, but with rationing still in place, such a beautiful garment cost more than six months’ wages. This lady was clearly wealthy, so the shopgirl had no qualms about turning her back, to help another woman try on a silk nightgown. It only took a moment for fur to be snatched from its hanger, rolled into a tight bundle, and shoved, unceremoniously, into a special pair of shop-lifters bloomers, which the elegant thief was wearing under her skirt. The sable coat nestled there as she str…
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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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