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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It’s a full slate of authors from across genres. Crime writer David Swinson and his new coming-of-age tale, City on the Edge. Best selling horror writer Josh Malerman (BIrdbox) with his new novel, Goblin. Joani Elliott and her humorous novel, The Audacity of Sara Grayson. Eli Cranor and his upcoming novel, Don’t Know Tough. And Stephen Mack Jones with his latest August Snow novel, Dead of Winter. From the episode: JOSH MALERMAN: Goblin is the book that back when I had written 9 or so books, and I wasn’t looking for an agent or a publishing house or anything, I was just writing. A friend of mine from high school called and told me that he knew a lawyer that represents…
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Welcome to June! I will tell you more than once that this summer is incredibly rich, a function of pandemic printing shutdowns that work in the reader’s favor. I have a very respectable list of runners-up, like Christine Mangan’s follow-up to Tangerine, Palace of the Drowned, Nekesa Afia‘s buzzy Dead Dead Girls, and Riley Sager’s Survive the Night. The books below are my picks in a month where someone else could easily have selected five different high-quality books: I can’t recall another month when I could have made that declaration. But enough about runners-up: let’s look at the medalists. Lisa Taddeo, Animal (Avid Reader/S&S) I am a huge fan of Taddeo’s Thr…
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Kellye Garrett is the acclaimed author of Hollywood Homicide, which won the Agatha, Anthony, Lefty and Independent Publisher “IPPY” awards for best first novel and was named one of BookBub’s Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time, as well as Hollywood Ending, which was featured on the Today show’s Best Summer Reads of 2019 and was nominated for both Anthony and Lefty awards. Prior to writing novels, Kellye spent eight years working in Hollywood, including a stint writing for Cold Case. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for Sisters in Crime and is a co-founder of Crime Writers of Color. Her new novel, Like a Sister, will be released by Mulholland Books early next y…
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Let me just get this out of the way up front. The Truth About Charlie, the 2002 remake of Charade that you probably don’t remember, isn’t a great movie, per se. Mark Wahlberg is in the Cary Grant role, so that’s your first tip-off, but then again Wahlberg was just coming off Boogie Nights when he was offered the part (based on Paul Thomas Anderson’s strong recommendation), so let’s give everyone involved a bit more credit and accept that the casting wasn’t quite so lunatic as it now sounds. (Plus, let’s be honest, Wahlberg has stolen his fair share of movies over the years, hasn’t he?) A few of the movie’s faults include: mixed-up plotting, overwrought directing, a libera…
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Like a lot of people (or a lot of writers, anyway) I’ve been fascinated by serial killers since I was a child. Whether pilfering my cousin’s true crime magazines or trying to sneak out of the library those non-fiction books with a section of grisly black and white photos in the centre, I was compelled to find out more about them. Despite being what my family charitably termed “a sensitive kid,” I was very much drawn towards horror and dark things, and I’ve never grown out of that. I loved horror movies too, even though half the time I was much too scared to actually watch them, and I would especially crave those that seemed to have one foot in the real world. Freddy Krueg…
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Many of my fans seem surprised to learn that before I was a published author I was a solicitor for the Legal Aid Commission. For the benefit of my not-quite-so-learned friends, perhaps I should explain that it is nothing like anything you see on TV or in films. I see lawyers onscreen and they only seem to have one, or at most two, cases. And we all ask ourselves the obvious question. What on earth do these people DO all day? Perhaps you may have seen a chess master giving a simultaneous display. There is an entire room filled with people sitting at chess-boards. In the middle, the master walks around from board to board; their opponent makes a move; the master stares at …
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A subtle, single theme emerges across almost all genres, including crime fiction—an exploration of the meaning of life. As authors, we take on the “meaning of life” question by not just telling the reader something happened, but digging into the reasons behind what happened. We then enfold those reasons into a much larger story. Asked whether crime fiction is an appropriate vehicle for imparting life lessons and profound truths, I’ll admit the question gave me pause. I believe it does but does it, and why? Here is my opinion. As authors, in colorful detail, we describe our version of the world. Created out of our childhood upbringing, our morals of either right or wrong …
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On Christmas Eve, 1800, Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of the Republic of France, boarded his coach bound for the Paris Opera. His coachman, César, was drunk, and sped recklessly past a cart piled with hay partially blocking the street. Seconds later, the cart exploded. A hundred yards behind, a second coach carrying Bonaparte’s wife, Josephine—delayed by her decision to change scarves—felt the force of the blast, which shattered her window and sent a shard of glass slicing across the hand of her daughter, a fellow passenger. Josephine’s sister-in-law was hurled against the side of the coach, seriously injuring her unborn child. The cask was packed tight with gunpowd…
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When you think ‘Boston Noir,’ you probably think of The Departed or The Town or, David Ortiz help us, Boondock Saints. The best of Boston noir is a different shade of darkness than the more traditional film noir. (And that’s pretty damn dark.) Add on extra layers of guilt and a strong religious presence, and you’ve got something unique. While filming in Massachusetts has become more prevalent in recent years, for decades there wasn’t much of film production in the state. All the films listed below were made in these darker days, when seeing the streets of Boston on screen was a rarer occurrence. These roots of film noir run deep and include some early examples of on-loc…
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We’re a year into the pandemic. Hundreds of thousands of city dwellers have fled their urban apartments for suburban spaces. It is, if you live outside the city limits, a seller’s market. New York City, where I live, is in the middle of an all-time low-rent bonanza. It is a crazy time for real estate, that’s no doubt. If you’re like me, the pandemic has increased your habit of casually browsing Zillow and Realtor.com listings (well, I look at StreetEasy, a site for NY real estate only, but you get the picture), wondering what it would feel like to leave my apartment and swap it for a bigger space. I have dogs who would love a backyard. I would love a bigger closet, or, i…
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At the risk of sounding like an imposter myself, I have to ask: What is crime fiction? This is not, perhaps, a question that someone who has just published a crime novel ought to be asking. But the more I think about it, the more trouble I have answering it. The genre’s borders are decidedly blurry. Is a crime novel simply a novel whose plot involves a criminal act? Perhaps we ought to throw in a measure of suspense too. But in that case, Ian McEwan’s Atonement (winner of the 2003 National Book Critics Circle Award) should be found on the “mystery and thrillers” shelf along with Gillian Flynn and Jane Harper. Graham Greene famously drew a distinction between his thrille…
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The historical roles of women in combat during the Second World War have always interested me. When I started my research into the women who served their countries for my upcoming novel, The Paris Apartment, I was introduced early to the biographies and memoirs of women in combat on the Eastern European front, where the war had come to the cities and towns with unspeakable savagery and a shocking number of casualties for both civilians and soldiers. From this horror emerged lethal snipers such as Klavdiya Kalugina, Lyudmila Pavlichenko, and Roza Shanina. Sergeant Mariya Oktyabrskaya was awarded the Soviet Union’s highest award for bravery during combat at the helm of her…
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I’ve always loved my science fiction/fantasy and romance with a touch of suspense—and lots of action. Those are the types of stories I gravitate towards in the books I read and the movies I watch, and they’re the stories I have the most fun writing. When I first thought about the GhostWalker series, I knew I wanted it to revolve around a group of soldiers who have super-human abilities as the result of a secret experiment. From telekinesis to DNA modifications, the GhostWalkers have seen a lot of paranormal activity, and most of the science fiction is based on real science somewhere along the way—including the seventeenth installment in the series, out this March, Lightni…
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Like many readers, I love a good historical mystery. A mystery that unlocks secrets of the past, reveals a forgotten story, or sheds light on tensions still plaguing the modern world. While most of my work is contemporary, I’ve discovered that the skillful use of history can deepen the traditional mystery, including the cozy. In my Spice Shop mysteries, set in Seattle’s Pike Place Market, history is in the air—along with the smells of fish, produce, and flowers, the sounds of buskers, and the hubbub of ten million visitors a year. Founded in 1907 and saved from the wrecking ball by voters in 1971, Pike Place is the country’s oldest continuously-operating farmers’ market.…
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Everyone loves an odd couple. “The Odd Couple” proves this—the premise is right there in the title—and for mystery lovers, there’s the brilliant Sherlock Holmes and slow-to-the-solution Dr. John Watson. (Although the movies starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce went way too far in making Watson a dunderhead.) But while Rathbone and Bruce was arguably the most notable on-screen pairing in mystery films, starring in 14 (!) movies between 1939 and 1946, they had competition as “most unlikely thriller partners” from Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet. Lorre and Greenstreet were, of course, memorably teamed in “The Maltese Falcon” in 1941 and “Casablanca” in 1943. They wer…
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A look at the month’s best reviewed crime novels, mysteries, and thrillers. Jeff VanderMeer, Hummingbird Salamander (MCD) “[VanderMeer] uses spy fiction to show how spy fiction can’t help us when the sky falls in. Or heats up … Like your favorite Hollywood blockbuster, Hummingbird Salamander features ecoterrorists, evil corporations, a race to defuse doomsday weapons, gunfire, fisticuffs, action sequences and hair-raising escapes … like Ling Ma and Holroyde, VanderMeer introduces all this genre fun mostly to subvert it … part of what the novel is doing is showing how humans are connected to the rest of nature even when we’d rather not think about it. The planet on w…
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Nearly a decade ago, Sisters in Crime created the Eleanor Taylor Bland Award, a $2,000 grant that “is intended to help an emerging BIPOC writer with a novel-in-progress or early-career work of crime fiction. It also supports developmental opportunities, including workshops, online courses and research.” Submissions for the award remain open for submissions until May 15. Previously, we’ve interviewed the winners of the award, but this year, we did something different, asking the judges to reflect on Bland herself, and how crime writers and readers can continue to show her work the respect and love it deserves. Thanks so much to David Heska Wanbli Weiden, Mia P. Manansala, …
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“In fact,” my sister murmured without looking my way, “it made me think of someone. I had an…encounter, years ago, didn’t I ever tell you? Something happened to me.” An encounter! The word sounded bizarre, what with all the shadows. I stopped singing at once. I remembered Mama’s frequent command: “Go see what your sister’s up to.” Actually, in some respects, Claire Marie reminds me of the ducks you sometimes see, ducks that look as though they’re gliding on the water without making any movement at all themselves, but under the surface, their feet are paddling like mad. There’s something trompe-l’oeil about those ducks. “A very curious story, it’s true,” my sister wen…
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April brings a host of epic new international crime fiction, and as always, we’re here to recommend the best new works from around the globe. This month’s offerings include a stone-cold Balkan noir, an epic crime saga out of Japan, a bloody German historical, and a rather terrible French vacation. Ivana Bodrožić, We Trade Our Nights for Someone Else’s Day Translated by Ellen Elias-Bursac (Seven Stories Press) Ivana Bodrožić’s newly translated novel of trauma, vengeance, and despair is as noir as they come. A journalist’s arrival in an unnamed city where neighborhoods are long on memory and short on justice is the catalyst for new explosions of ethnic hatred. The jou…
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Heaven’s a Lie is the latest novel from Wallace Stroby, author of the acclaimed Crissa Stone series. Reminiscent of 1950s noir paperbacks, Heaven’s a Lie is a lean, chiseled thriller dripping with melancholy and wintry Jersey shore atmosphere. Not only among his darkest works, it’s also his most poignant. At the heart of the story is Joette, a widow and former bank teller who was laid-off and now works at a decaying, roadside motel to help support her dying mother. Her life changes when a car crashes in front of the motel, and she finds a bag full of cash in the trunk. Desperate, she takes the money, unaware that its true owner—a drug-dealer named Travis—wants it back. Ba…
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I wake you at seven thirty. The kids I roused earlier with the rise and shine tone. Don’t worry. I sent an alert when their bedroom camera caught them stirring. Check your phone. There, charging on the nightstand. Go to live view. “Hey Google, broadcast: brush your teeth.” Message delivered. It echoes through the neighboring wall. You want another five-minute snooze? Okay. I’ll get you up. And you’re awake. I know because you’ve silenced the alarm and the shower’s going. I hear the shushing of water as I scan the airwaves for those two words signaling my attention: “Hey, Google.” My downstairs partners wait for “Alexa” or “Siri.” We three, always listening. The be…
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Spring is here! Which means it’s time to pick up a paperback and cautiously attempt to read out of doors (if the weather cooperates). Check out our latest monthly round-up for picnic-friendly titles, as many of last year’s biggest titles get their paperback release. Anne Perry, One Fatal Flaw, Ballantine (4/6) “One Fatal Flaw is like a set of Russian dolls. . . . Anne Perry is a masterful writer and this series just gets better and better.”–Criminal Element Janelle Brown, Pretty Things, Random House Trade (4/6) “It’s Dynasty meets Patricia Highsmith.”–The Washington Post Timothy Hallinan, Street Music, Soho (4/6) “Heart-rending.” –Kirkus Reviews Danielle Tr…
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The more you look, the more you see. Take the paintings of the Belgian Surrealist artist René Magritte. They draw you in, distort your perception of reality, make you question what you are perceiving. In 1963 Magritte painted The Son of Man. His take on the self-portrait features a lone man wearing a red tie and a bowler hat (a frequent motif in Magritte’s work), while a green apple partially obstructs the subject’s face. We glimpse the corner of his left eye. Even with the knowledge that this is the artist himself, we still see him as faceless and without identity. Of his painting, Magritte said: “At least it hides the face partly. Well, so you have the apparent fac…
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There are some movies that promise a great time and satisfying trip in the first shot. “Out of Time,” the 2003 potboiler starring Denzel Washington is such a film. When the camera pans onto the quiet, neon-lit, and palm tree lined main street of Banyan Key—a fictional Florida Keys town—it is impossible not to feel an overwhelming urge to crawl inside the screen, light a cigarette in the doorway of the “Scuttlebutt,” Banyan Key’s neighborhood haunt, and step inside for the first buzz in a new life. You might make a big drug bust. You might have an affair with a beautiful, but married woman, or you might find yourself deceiving and misdirecting all of your colleagues in loc…
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We all think of Sherlock Holmes as a rational thinker, a scientist, a man who uses remarkable powers of inference, deduction and observation to extract the truth from a tangled mass of facts. Holmes brings the rigor of scientific thinking to crime solving—a new idea in the nineteenth century, but now standard practice. Of course Holmes is every bit as much as artist as he is a scientist. But artists create. What, exactly does Holmes create? You won’t find daubs of cerulean blue paint on his frock coat. “Data, data, data! I cannot make bricks without clay!” says he. His art material is this data, this clay—the details, the facts of the case which he has observed or ferr…
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