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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Over the past century of American culture, the motorcycle has proven troublesomely iconic. A two-wheeled symbol of the open road and independence? Of course. But the image of the motorcycle is also tightly bound with criminality and mayhem—it’s the vehicle of vagabonds, gangs, and others intent on undermining the nation’s moral order. This seedy reputation isn’t wholly undeserved. The Justice Department has spent the past several decades pursuing motorcycle gangs such as the Hells Angels, which they consider organized crime syndicates involved in everything from drug trafficking to prostitution. (The lawlessness hasn’t curbed the widespread fascination with motorcycle ou…
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James Ellroy, now 74, is known for his sprawling, densely plotted and highly-stylized novels about America in the mid-twentieth century and the desperate and corrupt men, real and fictional, who populated it. He’s the type of literary iconoclast that was discontinued long ago. A street-fighting, loud mouthed prose practitioner who bucks polite discourse. He possesses an almost mythic origin story for a crime writer: when he was ten years old his mother was murdered in an infamous unsolved homicide case in his native Los Angeles. From the furnace of this grief sprung an obsession with crime and the invisible, corrupt forces that drive politics and the underworld. If you we…
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It’s the end of summer, and normally I would try bringing you a few recommendations of international thrillers that have only recently become available to stream in the US, but to be honest, the pickings are just too slim. Maybe it’s the dragons, swords, and sandals boxing out other productions, or it’s sheer bad luck, but there just aren’t enough new international series to recommend in good conscience, so what I’ll do instead is go back to a few old favorites—some overlooked, some canceled too soon, and others you surely know and quite likely saw, but now is as good a time as any to revisit. The Bridge (FX on Hulu) No, I’m not proposing you go re-watch the Danish/S…
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When it comes to my new book, DIE AROUND SUNDOWN, which is set in Paris in 1940, I’ve encountered the same question a couple of times: why did you want to write a second world war book? I quickly realized that there are actually three parts to that question—why set it in Paris, why in 1940, and why you? Let me try to explain, and with the easiest part: Paris. As a child, we would drive across France at least once a year on vacation. My parents retired to the Pyrenees mountains, and so a visit to them always involved a stop in Paris. It’s a beautiful, walkable city, and one of its greatest features, ironically, is a remnant of World War Two. You see, in England some peop…
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Jasper said, “Your father is up for parole again in six months.” Something about his tone twisted Andrea’s stomach into a knot. The only reason she was able to sleep at night was because she knew that Nick was behind bars. “He’s had parole hearings before. He always gets turned down. Why do you think this time will be any different?” “One could say that the general attitude toward domestic terrorism has taken a recent turn, especially among historically more conservative parole boards.” Jasper shook his head as if a United States senator had little control over the world. “In past years, I’ve been able to prevent his parole from being granted but, this time, he might ac…
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A decayed and graying landscape. Oppressive, miserable weather. Women who are in constant peril, and the men who put them there. This could easily be the back cover writeup for a classic Brontë novel. It could also describe the summer of 2022 after the fall of Roe v. Wade. In America, our lives have become a horror story. We watched it happen slowly until it happened overnight. Now, like a character lost in a haunted house, we find ourselves trapped—and unless we can reckon with what brought us to this moment, we might never escape. * These existential dangers, however, are not new. The threat of powerful men is a theme that runs through the heart of gothic literature.…
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A deadly airborne virus ripping through the population. Government mandated quarantines and mask requirements. Overwhelmed hospitals. State maps with daily death tolls. The Covid-19 pandemic thrust Americans—and much of the world—into the plot of a dystopian novel. Suddenly, gatherings of any kind were dangerous. Gone was the ability to pop into a local grocery store, take the kids to school, or work in an office—liberties once so central to existence that they seemed less liberties than chores. In those early days, the government urged everyone to stay indoors. Other people could kill you. Perhaps worse, you could kill them. As a writer, the mandate to remain at home (…
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Every fledgling writer has heard the story many times: butt in the chair and never give up. Unfortunately, almost all writers do give up. The words to remember are “almost all.” It is the tiny minority who are determined to stick with it who find success. They are the tip of the literary iceberg, not necessarily because they are more talented than the rest, but because they persevere. Talent and hard work—they’re what every writer needs. Sometimes one outweighs the other, but neither outweighs persistence. Give up—like most wannabe writers do—and you have nothing. Persist, and maybe your efforts will be recognized by the right editor at the right time and your career exp…
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There’s something so satisfying about meeting a person and thinking, “She really does look like a Jenny!” Most people receive their names as a newborn baby, so it seems like the probability of the name and the person being a good match would be very small. Yet I feel like I meet a lot of Kevins who just really seem like Kevins. Is it that people take on personalities to fit their names? Or do we change our idea of a name to suit the person? For that reason, I believe one of the most important decisions you can make in creating a character is their name. For example, would Ebenezer Scrooge have been as intimidating if his name were, say, Jimmy Pop? Would Mary Shelley’…
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Style, depth, wit and plot—a four-letter word for storyline—make for a good crime novel. The plot is the trail of breadcrumbs the reader follows with the main character; a crime novel is a puzzle formed out of prose. The puzzle is the novel, and the novel is a puzzle—they go hand in hand. What is a mystery without a puzzle? What is a puzzle if not a mystery in and of itself? The puzzle and riddles within a crime novel are the mystery that must be pieced together to reveal the truth. Together they provide the recipe for a story that draws the reader in. The reader becomes the metaphorical fly on the wall as he or she and the protagonist try and figure out the who, why and…
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Sometimes you need a break. After writing the fifth Sam Capra novel—a series about a young single father and espionage operative who had his share of personal life crises over the course of the books—I was ready for a break. My next four novels were all standalone psychological thrillers, centered on suburban families dealing with dark, deep secrets that upended their perfect, Facebook-curated lives. And those novels didn’t touch on spies or intel or the high-octane action that marked the Sam Capra books. I kept wanting to go back to writing the next Sam but no idea seemed right for his world. And my publisher liked me writing standalones to help pull in new readers. So…
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Traditional wisdom says that horror and comedy are two sides of the same coin because they rely on surprise and subversion to evoke a visceral reaction—whether that reaction is the hyena-like laugh of a man witnessing an old woman fall down the stairs or his hyena-like screams as her zombified corpse rises to chase him through the streets. But surprise is nowhere near as crucial to both genres as the marriage of outrage and realism. A good comedy or horror must take an outrageous premise and follow it through to its logical endpoint in a way that feels uncomfortably truthful to the reader (or viewer.) To be truly satisfying, comedy and horror must jettison all the devi…
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When I was a kid in the 1960s and 1970s, on days I was out of school and during summer vacation, I’d sometimes be around the house and I’d check out some of the soap operas – daytime dramas, as they were also known – my mom watched. She was partial to the shows on NBC, like “Days of Our Lives” and “Another World.” Two soaps quickly became favorites of mine: “Dark Shadows,” the Dan Curtis-produced supernatural soap that ran on ABC from 1966 to 1971 and introduced vampire Barnabas Collins to the world, and “The Edge of Night,” a long-running soap that did what few other soaps ever did. While most soaps dabbled in murder and sensational courtroom trials, “The Edge of Night”…
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I grew up reading murder mysteries with ingenious plots, books by Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, John Dickson Carr, Dorothy Sayers, Ellery Queen. There was always a raft of characters, any of whom could conceivably have Done It, It being the deliberate taking of human life. Often they managed to do it in locked rooms or despite ironclad alibis, and they were almost always the least likely to have committed such a grotesque act, given their seeming harmlessness, fragility, affability, or evident motive. These books focused, often ingeniously, on the who and what and how of murder. Eventually I came across mystery writers concerned instead with why. Ruth Rendell. The openi…
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I always start writing (and reading) with the following premise: a work of thriller fiction that is believable, or at least plausible, is something readers appreciate. How do authors of this genre incorporate “alternative facts” into their stories in ways that strengthen, rather than diminish, credibility? If readers are presented with some information they know to be true, along with fictional information, they will tend to also believe the fictional elements. For instance, suppose that I am developing a novel with a plot element that includes the discovery of one of Sir Isaac Newton’s hidden journals. I write the following: “Sir Isaac Newton, in addition to discovering…
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Austin Sam Capra watched the assassin enter the middle school gym. Screams and cheers erupted as Sam’s son Daniel sank a basket. An excited dad next to Sam slapped his shoulder but Sam kept his gaze on the assassin. He watched the man scan the crowd—both teams’ supporters were on one set of risers on one side of the gym—and the man was careful not to look directly at Sam. He’s here for me. There was no other explanation for this man to be in the Austin suburb of Lakehaven. Sam was the only reason. Sam watched the man wait until the action had moved toward the opposite basket, and then move quickly to take a seat on the third row. Sam was certain the assassin had seen …
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To tell our stories is to attempt to make sense of the seemingly unsensible. Singular events, fractured relationships, times when our actions didn’t align with our ethics, our bodies never fail to hold onto these shame-ridden narratives until, whether we’re ready or not, we sit down and stare directly back at them. Enter Complicit by Winnie M. Li and The Last Housewife by Ashley Winstead, two new thrillers centering on women weighed down by their unspoken stories, each in ways knowingly or unknowingly struggling to connect with the present in the aftermath of traumas experienced. Sarah Lai is the star of Li’s slow burning sophomore novel. A once-aspiring film producer tu…
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The rules of fair play mysteries are clear: the reader must be just as able to solve the crime as the central sleuth. All the clues must be on the page, the how and who must be logical and rational, and the final explanation can’t involve any supernatural sleight of hand. But even fair play mystery writers like to play around. And sometimes that takes a particular, fun form: the locked room mystery. Part of a category known as impossible crimes or sometimes miracle problems, these mysteries usually feature a dead body, clearly murdered, in a room or space that has been sealed from the inside. There’s no apparent way that a murderer could have gotten in or out, perhaps …
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In the mid-1970s, the CIA and KGB were both watching Karel Koecher closely–and they were both convinced he was working for the enemy. They were both right. ___________________________________ In September 1944, the first units of the Red Army crossed into Eastern Slovakia. On May 5, 1945, with the Red Army on the outskirts of the city, the Prague uprising began. The next day, sixty miles west, US general George Patton’s Third Army liberated the city of Plzeň and its famed Pilsner Urquell brewery. After quaffing a celebratory pivo or two, Patton and company halted their advance eighteen miles short of Prague before retreating back across the German border. The victorious…
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Jews are the canaries in the mineshaft of resurgent fascism. And we’re here to tell you that something is wrong. In many disturbing ways, the U.S. in 2022 feels eerily like Germany in the early 1930s: Polls indicate that at least half of one of the two major political parties believes, with zero supporting evidence, that leftist and Jewish elites are scheming to eradicate the white European-descended population of the US. (Other polls say the number is closer to 70 percent.) And some of that party’s leaders are openly goading their followers to commit violence in support of that lie. So, you’ve got a bunch of angry, well-armed white supremacists who are being constantl…
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A look at the week’s best new releases. * Catherine McKenzie, Please Join Us (Atria) “I devoured this book in one sitting! The First Wives Club meets The Firm in a chilling, serpentine ride that will leave you breathless. Please Join Us belongs at the very top of your TBR stack.” –Liv Constantine William Kent Krueger, Fox Creek (Atria) “Fox Creek is the best book in the series yet.” –Minneapolis Star Tribune Cate Holahan, The Darkness of Others (Grand Central) “The Darkness of Others is a deftly plotted, smartly observed page-turner that manages to thrill at the same time as capture the emotional chaos of the early pandemic years.” –Attica Locke E…
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The email arrived on a cold, rainy, November day in Montreal. I was sitting at my desk at the law firm where I was working, watching the rain pelt against the windows, in the moments I used to take between files. My back was turned to my computer, but I could see its outline glowing against the glass—a rainy day in November in Montreal is like winter in one of those places where the sun disappears from months at a time. The clock says that it’s daytime, but it doesn’t feel like it. I turned slowly toward my screen. Was it a weary turn? I like to think so. I often felt weary in November—the lack of light, the wet damp days, the work pilling on, the Christmas break too fa…
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Everyone from scientists to adventure seekers and everything in between could talk about the Florida Everglades for hours. There is so much to unpack—all 1.5 million acres of unique, subtropical ecosystem which homes over thirty-six endangered species. Surprisingly, this marshy swampland is primarily made up of freshwater, and it’s the only place on earth where both alligators and crocodiles coexist. And we can’t forget the caimans. They live there, too. While the Everglades is truly a beautiful, awe-inspiring place, it also holds its share of secrets as well. The environmental facts are intriguing, but the folklore is sinister. The Florida Everglades is prime real estat…
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The places and characters in this story are imaginary. The first are not found on any map, the others are not alive, nor have ever lived, in any part of the world. I am sorry to say this having loved them as though they were real. Natalia Ginzburg, Author’s Note, Voices in the Evening, translated by D.M. Low When, in my mind’s eye, I clearly saw five women friends hugging and parting from each other after their habitual weekly gathering, going off in five different directions, I understood that they would not meet again. I immediately understood their relationship with each other and that their lives would be taking different trajectories. I had a sense of their landsc…
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Hey, guess what? It’s my birthday! And what better way to celebrate than to recommend some stirring new international crime fiction to y’all. This month’s picks include Nazis on the run in South America, a new Swedish-style Sherlock story, an action-packed Japanese thriller, a brooding Lebanese detective story, and a Kafkaesque take on the mid-century Japanese legal system, all beautifully translated and most from small presses. Olivier Guez, The Disappearance of Joseph Mengele Translated by Georgia de Chamberet (Verso) As Olivier Guez’s brilliant historical novel begins, the despicable doctor Mengele is living in Argentina, where he’s been welcomed by Peròn, who …
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