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,
3,445 topics in this forum
-
- 0 replies
- 115 views
We all read crime novels, and all crime novels feature guns (more or less). When I got to work on my own crime novel—my first, after cutting my teeth on Napoleonic spy thrillers—I wanted to make sure I knew my stuff. It’s a contemporary heist thriller about counterfeiting, art forgery, neo-Nazis and a horseback-Amtrak train robbery. Guns are involved. My grandfather, a second World War vet, taught me to shoot when I was a kid, but that was nearly twenty years ago. There’s a lot about the gun world you don’t know unless you’ve spent some time immersed in it. So I spent some time immersed in it. Knowing the gun world doesn’t just make writing about guns easier, it livens …
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 88 views
Much has been said about the recent film adaptation of She Said: its cultural importance and cinematic quality, but also its allegiance to the newsroom thriller sub-genre. Films like Spotlight and All the President’s Men, where the crusading newspaper reporters overcome corruption and secrecy to expose an institutional abuse of power. It’s all very American, all very pro-Fourth Estate, and all very, perhaps… twentieth-century? A throwback to an earlier vision of newspapers as the true arbiters of justice? But in 2022, as traditional newspapers compete with social media, streaming platforms, and online echo chambers for attention, are journalists the most apt heroes in …
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 116 views
A look at the year’s best new noirs (with the usual disclaimer that noir can never quite be defined, which is really part of the appeal, but let’s all agree it has something to do with a journey into the moral abyss). * Don Winslow, City on Fire (William Morrow) In Don Winslow’s magisterial ode to the Iliad and the Aeneid, two crime families battle for New England after the appearance of their own Helen of Troy is a catalyst for full-scale conflict. Winslow’s work is at the pinnacle of modern crime writing, and City on Fire continues his run of powerhouse emotional noir. –MO Kelly J. Ford, Real Bad Things (Thomas & Mercer) Ford’s 2017 novel, Cottonmouths…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 124 views
“People don’t read books to get to the middle.” –Mickey Spillane The four stories that make up The Broken Doll, from Amazon Original Stories, was written in the same way I’ve approached all my 45 novels and 90 short stories: from conception to execution, I strive to sure the reader is immersed in a nonstop tale. I do not write character studies or atmospheric stories contemplating the nature of good and evil. I write foot-to-the-floor page-turners that race from start to finish, featuring whipsawing plot twists and surprise endings. (A recent review suggested that readers should send me their chiropractic bills.) To achieve this goal I’ve come up with some rules I kee…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 135 views
Here’s how the story of America’s Great Diamond Hoax—“one of the most remarkable swindles ever perpetrated,” to quote a newspaper of the era—usually begins. In November 1870, a couple of grimy, malodorous men pounded on the San Francisco office door of George D. Roberts, a mine broker and speculator known for his kind-heartedness but also for a “shady past” well littered with abortive bonanza stratagems. Although Roberts had previously shut down for the evening, he was waiting for these two, so welcomed them in off the wooden sidewalk. Roberts was better acquainted with the younger, more handsome member of that duo: Philip Arnold, a robust, self-sufficient, and smooth-ta…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 105 views
I’m not going to say, “winter is coming,” one, because by the time this goes to print, the first season of House of the Dragon will have wrapped up, like, two months ago (aka two decades in GoT years). Totally unscientific fan theory that I’ve been thinking a lot about lately (maybe I should write an article for The Cut about it?): Dramione shippers like me grew up to be Daemon fangirls. Two, would I ever be so trite as to co-opt that most memorable of Starkisms? Copywriters of the world, please stop using the first family of Winterfell’s motto to sell your coats/sweaters/scarves/etc. In my case, winter isn’t coming. I’m headed home to Florida for the holidays, aka the…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 109 views
I upload my latest trailer to TikTok advertising my new YouTube video Killer in the Family and sit back. Within seconds the numbers under the little heart start climbing like if Jeff Bezos was to watch a live stream of his bank balance. He’s building rockets. Malcolm Wyatt, a rich dude who’s invited me to his amusement park, is building islands. Tearing open a packet of Hershey’s Kisses with my teeth, I wait. Chocolate passes the time. I get a bunch of comments telling me how awesome it is that I’ve posted but it’ll take about thirty minutes for people to head over to my YouTube channel to watch the full video then come back to TikTok to let me know what they think. My…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 127 views
For me, there are few things more enjoyable than a good, old-fashioned whodunnit. Or a good, new-fashioned whodunnit. I say it a lot on this website, but, to me, the best thing that can happen in a book or a movie is someone crying out: “someone in this house is a murderer!” Or, if that doesn’t happen literally, I’d like that to be the overall vibe of what I’m reading or watching. As such, I was thrilled and honored to get to pick the best traditional mysteries that came out in 2022. The “traditional mystery” is a story in which there is a murder (or a robbery), and an investigator (either an inspector or a plucky amateur) follows a series of clues to find the killer (or …
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 114 views
The Gothic Revival continues! And this year, Southern Gothic joins the fold in our roundup of the most haunted, atmospheric stories of 2022. Here’s a quick definition of what Gothic fiction does, courtesy of Faye Snowden’s wonderful article: “Through stories of transgression and depictions of the grotesque, [Gothic fiction] evokes anxiety in the reader, leaving them to question society’s institutions, religions, politics, familial and other relationships…” While European Gothic novels mostly featured women in distress in dilapidated houses, Snowden distinguishes two particularly American evolutions to Gothic fiction once it crosses the pond in the 19th century: “The firs…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 127 views
Good people making bad choices. Bad people making good choices. I have a love/hate relationship with fiction about characters who take that first wrong step…then the next, and then another, until they are so far away from where they were meant to go that they have almost no choices left at all, except the worst ones. I’m fascinated by how easily our lives can be upended by taking one path instead of the other. Maybe it’s because writing about people with messy lives feels comforting – no matter what’s going on in my own life, at least I’m not dealing with my best friend’s betrayal and missing memories (After All I’ve Done) or an ex-boyfriend trying to ruin my life while …
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 126 views
You are here because you love mystery stories. I understand. I am like you. I enjoy them so much that I write them, and I’ve just written one that takes place at an English country manor house. Everyone loves a manor house! And wouldn’t it be fun to go! After all, they aren’t really full of murders and dead bodies. Those are just stories. Visiting a manor house would be fun! If you hold these naïve views, you fundamentally misunderstand the manor house and its occupants. The manor is not a house or a home; it is an extension of a biological line, a symbol of dynastic power. Now it stands—barely—a shell of its former glory. The manor is too expensive to maintain in the m…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 119 views
Maple’s mother had insisted she wear riding clothes to the horse stable, even though they weren’t there to ride. They were there to feed the horses carrots. They had brought a big bag of them. The stable was only a mile away from their new house. It had been part of the promise of moving to California. “Rancho Santa Fe has horses,” Maple’s mother had told her, like there weren’t horses everywhere in Texas. “The first thing we’re going to do is find you a new place to ride.” Heather sometimes seemed to genuinely believe that Maple loved horses just as much as she did. It wasn’t that Maple didn’t like horses; she just thought they were a little scary, especially the horse…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 119 views
The CrimeReads editors select the year’s best critical nonfiction / biography books released in 2022. * John le Carré (Tim Cornwell, ed.), A Private Spy: The Letters of John le Carré (Viking) This collection of the author’s letters, assembled by his son, revels in much the same suggestive restraint as his best fiction: on nearly every page what is left unsaid begins, gradually and surely, to evoke another world. In this case, it’s not the world of spies, but that of a man of letters. Le Carré’s great concern was, it would seem, carving out the proper time and space to get down to his writing. Some of the more whimsical letters involve invitations to friends to vis…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 117 views
In America, especially when it comes to intellectual endeavors — race matters. Black folks are often thought of as being less smart than their white counterparts and, therefore, their work is labeled less important. In the world of literature, fiction by Black authors is rarely required reading in public schools. Many young people of all races don’t realize that Black writers exist until they either discover them on their own or take a higher education class that introduces them to the works of Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, Lorraine Hansberry, James Baldwin and countless others. Still, these writers are rarely “important” enough to be part of the ca…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 107 views
I’m not a risk-taker. I’m careful and safety-conscious to a fault. But as a writer, I have the freedom to take infinite risks on the page. In my stories, I can explore things I never would in real life. Often, I write about the things that scare me most. I want to understand them, to experience them in a safe and controlled way. In A MOTHER WOULD KNOW I asked myself the question: what I would I do if I suspected one of my children had done the unthinkable? How would I react? As a mom, I’m fiercely protective of my children. But what if I was faced with something I shouldn’t protect them from? Here are five other books with that same theme in mind. The Good Son by Ja…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 105 views
I think about murder a lot. No big surprise, since I write murder mysteries for a living. But I’ve been thinking about murder for a lot longer than I’ve been writing it. Since I was old enough to pull a well-thumbed paperback off my grandmother’s bookshelf. Detective fiction has been my comfort food since I was a child. And my preoccupation with murder hasn’t stopped at fictional ones. If my audiobook library can be believed, I spent a large chunk of the 2010s consuming true crime podcasts and documentaries about long-caught serial killers. Lately, I’ve been thinking about the why of it all. Why the preoccupation with murder? Why was I reading Sherlock Holmes at eight…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 102 views
I may not yet have officially reached the “old broad” stage of my life — at least, not in the sense where I might reasonably take advantage of a degree of social invisibility to try my hand at solving and/or committing crime with the same kind of impunity as the (mostly) over-sixties in the list below, but I still know how to spot a trend when I see one. And while the elderly in general — and older women, more specifically — have a long legacy as superior amateur sleuths in crime and detective fiction, there’s no denying that there has been a boom in contemporary takes on the Miss Marple model in the last few years, both on the page and on the small screen. To that end, …
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 117 views
Here they are: my top ten thrillers, and a few other outstanding crime books and TV shows. ___________________________________ Top Ten Psychological Thrillers ___________________________________ Ewan Morrison, How to Survive Everything (Harper Perennial) Ewan Morrison wins the most memorable title contest of the month, though I do fear for anyone who mistakes this thriller for a handbook. Haley and Ben Crowe live with their divorced mother, but in the face of a new, even deadlier pandemic their father wants to take the children and go into hiding NOW. Yes, it’s a prepper thriller—the first I’ve encountered since we had a real-life lockdown that must have made those…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 138 views
It was half past eight in the evening and Alicia’s feet were chafing. The pumps Stella had convinced her to buy were insanely uncomfortable and far too expensive. The semester had only just begun and blowing twelve hundred kronor on a new pair of shoes was idiotic. Alicia was sitting on a divan surveying the ballroom. The manor outside Kristinehamn had been rented for the entrepreneurial program’s annual autumn celebration. With its large windows and balcony, the room was made to be filled with people dressed to the nines. She imagined the parties that had been held here in the glory days of the titans of industry. Crystal chandeliers with real candles and silk dresses w…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 109 views
Tunisia occupies 165,000 square kilometres in north-west Africa and is home to almost 12 million people. Bordered by Algeria to the west and Libya to the south-east, the country also claims the Mediterranean as a northerly neighbour and the vast Sahara Desert to the south. With a host of conquerors and occupiers through the ages, and most recently a French colony, Tunisia only gained its independence in 1956. Often writing these columns it’s frustrating to find great works remaining untranslated. This is certainly true of Le Fou du roi (2002), a collection of twelve crime stories by the Tunisian writer and mathematician Jamel Ghanouchi. These stories hinge on a “quasi-ma…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 105 views
Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Stephen Spotswood, Secrets Typed in Blood (Doubleday) “This mystery, the third in a series, is as winning as its predecessors. Here, the famous P.I. Lillian Pentecost and her spiky junior partner, Willowjean ‘Will’ Parker, immerse themselves in the seedy milieu of pulp magazines, circa 1947. The novel reads as easy as fine whiskey goes down.” –The New York Times Book Review Amber Garza, A Mother Would Know (MIRA) “[P]ropulsive….Combining high drama with issues—aging, sibling rivalry, the shadow of past mistakes—to which most readers can relate, Garza keeps the fast-paced plot twi…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 119 views
The CrimeReads editors select the year’s best espionage novels. * Tom Bradby, Yesterday’s Spy (Atlantic Monthly Press) Bradby’s historical novel manages to be a nuanced meditation on a father and son’s relationship and a dizzying, entertaining swirl of international politics and spycraft. In 1952, an old hand from British intelligence, recently retired and widowed, travels to Tehran to search for his vanished son, a reporter who has published highly damaging information about government officials and the opium trade. The search takes him through an odyssey of backroom deals, foreign power jockeying, and political tensions that are quickly on their way to a boil. Bra…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 152 views
Yes, DNA technology is amazing. Roughly 99.9 percent of human DNA is identical from person to person; the other 0.1 percent is what distinguishes each of us, and scientists have long sought to pinpoint those differences. Advancements in DNA testing allow us to identify the source of a genetic profile with unparalleled accuracy and from ever smaller quantities of biological material like blood, semen, hair, saliva, or skin tissue. As a result, the tool has proved the innocence of 375 convicted criminal defendants and led to their exoneration. But DNA testing is a relatively new phenomenon. The first exoneration based on that technology didn’t occur until 1989. Also, biol…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 140 views
Can you imagine where we’d be had Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle decided the writing life was not for them? Two of the most revered mystery writers in history whose works are still celebrated today, to say the least, and whose legacy lives on through multiple reprints, audio adaptations, and film projects? Yeah, me neither. But if you’re like me and you’ve read all these two have to offer, probably more than once, fear not. We have numerous mysteries with something to celebrate for all kinds of tastes, and these are just a few of the complete series we can binge now. You’re welcome. Lilian Jackson Braun’s Cat Who… Series This beloved series first appeared …
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 117 views
Bleak, bone-chilling settings. Dark days and darker nights. A cheerless snow globe filled with tormented characters doomed to collide. Where brutality rings as true for the elements as it does the violence these characters do unto one another. These are the components of Nordic Noir, a subset of crime fiction that often takes place in Scandinavian countries such as Norway, Denmark, and Sweden—to name a few. But what about the Midwest? Come along with me, and we’ll explore my world of Black Harbor, writing as a social experiment, and the Midwest’s endless potential as a setting for crime fiction. Midwestern Noir: It’s a thing Quite simply, Midwestern Noir is what hap…
Last reply by Admin_99,
"King of Pantsers"?
ALGONKIAN SUCCESS STORIES
