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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A look at the month’s best reviewed crime novels, mysteries, and thrillers. Lawrence Osborne, On Java Road (Hogarth) “No one else writes ‘thrillers’ as languid as Lawrence Osborne’s. His novels tend to be leisurely, slow-burn mysteries that could be mistaken for impeccably observed travel memoirs … The tale begins to move more quickly … Human nature and atmosphere will always interest Osborne more than the traditional pyrotechnics of a thriller. The palpable sense of dread that hovers over Hong Kong and Osborne’s exploration of Adrian’s own moral conundrum is what kept me turning the pages … Osborne skillfully — and with exquisite prose — probes the nexus of commun…
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Karen Cleveland, a former CIA analyst turned thriller author, has written some of the most propulsive, tight-knit suspense and espionage fiction of the past decade, and her new one is just as much of a nailbiter as her previous novels. In The New Neighbor, a suburban cul-de-sac in which most of the families have ties to the CIA becomes the setting for a deadly cat-and-mouse game between a spy being forced to retire and her long-elusive prey. Karen Cleveland was kind enough to answer a few questions about the book and her career. The New Neighbor is now available from Ballantine. Molly Odintz: You’re a former CIA analyst—how does that influence your writing? Do you need t…
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Over the years the idea of “tropes” has gotten a bit of a bad reputation. However, if there’s one hill that I’d die on, it’s that tropes are beloved and used for a reason. The right trope will even have me picking up a book I otherwise know almost nothing about. I love forced proximity, enemies-to-lovers, forbidden romance . . . But there’s one trope in particular that takes the cake for me: non-human love interests. If you’re anything like me, I hope that you’ll enjoy this list of a few books with this trope that I’ve read and recently enjoyed! With Fire In Their Blood by Kat Delacorte Witches, mafia wars, and steamy love squares oh my! With Fire in Their Blood is a …
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It was certainly ironic, when I was writing the last chapters of Widowland, a dystopia set in 1953, to find a real-life dystopia engulfing the world. Yet Covid and lockdown and all that followed are perfect examples of how everyday life can be transformed in the blink of an eye. And indeed, how ordinary people can adapt to changes that they previously would have found insupportable. I’ve always been fascinated by dystopias and alternative histories. I’m tantalised by how a mere reshuffling of historical cards—a small, imaginative twitch on the tiller—can have catastrophic results. In Widowland Britain and Germany have not gone to war but instead formed an Alliance that h…
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It was the worst possible timing—or maybe the best. A major hurricane churning its way up the East Coast, unleashing chaos: traffic jams, stripped store shelves, canceled flights, subways and trains shut down. Overloaded 911. Distracted cops. Prime opportunity for crime—if Fiona could dodge floods and flying debris. Boz offering her a new life for two hours’ work made it worth the risk. Raindrops pattered the windshield of the junky Toyota SUV. The rainbands arriving faster now, only twenty minutes apart, as the hurricane’s fingers scratched New Jersey and the southern edge of New York. On the radio, a breathless announcer warned the storm was the biggest in decades, al…
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“Brynn!” someone calls, and I turn to see Mason Rafferty standing in the second row of the auditorium seating with his hand in the air. Mason is a head taller than most of our classmates—unreasonably tall, he used to say—with longish dark curls and a gap-toothed smile. He cups his hands around his mouth to amplify his voice above the buzzing crowd and adds, “We saved you a spot.” I catch sight of Nadia beside him and push my way toward them, happy to feel included. “Is there space for Ellie too?” I ask when we reach the row. “Of course,” Mason says, plucking a coat off a couple of empty chairs. “Hello, Eleanor. Nice to see you again. Still tearing up the flute?” “Hello…
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It was a regular day in September. Which is to say it was a regular day within the first few months of the pandemic. I’d been going through a particularly long stretch of no’s. Part of being a TV creator and screenwriter is hearing no. You suffer through hundreds of no’s and you make a living from the occasional yes. At this particular moment in 2020, the no’s were abundant, and not limited to the rejection of screenplays. No, you shouldn’t leave your apartment. No, we don’t know when there will be a vaccine. No, we don’t know where Covid came from. But on this September morning, instead of the usual no’s, I started getting emails with people interested in making a TV sho…
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To be entirely honest and upfront, I’m not sure there’s a single crime show premiering in September that’s really worth getting too excited about. The slate is just too crowded with the new fantasy juggernauts (House of Dragons and Lord of the Rings) and the perennial onslaught of network procedurals back on the air after summer breaks (Law & Order, FBI, Chicago, CSI, etc, ad infinitum…). That said, there are some lower-profile projects coming up, and one of them may just turn out to be a new favorite, who knows? Fakes (Netflix / Premieres September 2) It’s hard to pin down the exact tone on Fakes—is it more Superbad, Claws, Brick? what are we talking here?—but t…
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Books are a bit like children for authors, we’re not really allowed to have favourites, but Daisy Darker is mine. It is a dark and twisty tale set on a tiny tidal island just off the Cornish coast. The Darker family haven’t all been in the same place at the same time for years, but they have come together one last time to celebrate Nana’s 80th birthday. When the tide comes in, they’ll be cut off from the rest of the world for eight hours. When the tide goes back out things will never be the same again, because one of them is a killer. I often think of Daisy Darker as my Agatha Christie book. It’s my own little tribute to one of my favourite authors, and my take on the l…
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I’ve been writing all my life but for most of it, it was a secret indulgence, like swimming naked in the sea at night or eating chocolate belonging to my children. Most people who knew me didn’t realise that I wrote, and wouldn’t have been interested if they had. I wrote snippets here and there, short stories and even shorter things that didn’t even warrant the title ‘story’. Observations, notes for characters, there was no pattern to it and no discipline. I had five children and when they were little they slept in a crib on wheels. I could rock the crib with my foot while I lay on the bed propped on my elbow, scribbling in an exercise book. Guess what, those children gr…
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A look at the week’s best new releases. * Alice Feeney, Daisy Darker (Flatiron) “A dark, twisty tale about a dysfunctional family…Feeney’s nod to Agatha Christie’s classic mystery And Then There Were None adds a delightful twist to this quirky thriller. Aficionados of locked-room stories and family dramas (plus Feeney’s large fan base) will enjoy this highly recommended title.” –Library Journal Meg Elison, Number One Fan (MIRA) “A tense, creepy, and deeply spooky thriller that locks you down and wrings you out in the best way possible. I had other things to do today, but I couldn’t put this down—so those things didn’t get done.” –Cherie Priest Jason Mosb…
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Many of us honing the craft of mystery, crime, and thriller writing sat initially, and still do, at the alter of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. His Sherlock Holmes short stories and novellas are indelibly etched on our minds. How joyous when the two-volume annotated Sherlock Holmes reappeared after being out of print for years; for a time it was available only in rare and used book stores, when one was lucky enough to find it. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s best-known novella, The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902), sets the stage for mystery, crime, and thriller writers wanting to pose the following question in our efforts: Man or Beast? Placed in the gloom of the English moor, The H…
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When one of my writing pals sent me a link to a vintage Key West Woman’s Club cookbook published in the 1940’s, the plot for my 12th Key West mystery, A DISH TO DIE FOR, finally took off. First, a little background. Food critic Hayley Snow and her dog find a body on the beach about ten miles north of Key West. It’s a shock of course, and she’s still reeling from the emotional fallout of her discovery when she remembers she’s agreed to help sort donated cookbooks for the Friends of the Key West Library. When I reached this point in the novel, I’d been talking with my writing friends about struggling with the plot. I loved the opening scenes, but how did this man’s body e…
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They say you never forget your first true love. Mystery, specifically cozy mysteries, were my first love. I remember reading my first Agatha Christie, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. It blew my mind. When I read, And Then There Were None, I was a goner. Over the years, I wasn’t always faithful to my chosen genre. I went through phases where I strayed and read romance, fantasy, and science fiction, but even the Queen of Crime herself wrote romance novels under the name, Mary Westmacott. Regardless of what other genres I read, I always returned to mysteries. When I decided I wanted to toss my hat into the ring and write books, I knew it would have to be a mystery. But the worl…
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The Misfit sprang back as if a snake had bitten him and shot her three times through the chest. Then he put his gun down on the ground and took off his glasses and began to clean them. The above quote comes near the end of Flannery O’Connor’s shockingly brutal short story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” That story, from the early 1950s, defines the modern Southern Gothic sensibility in American fiction. A normal, everyday family (a father, a mother, three children and a grandmother) becomes involved in blood-drenched horror when they encounter a stone-cold killer on a vacation trip. Inspired by Poe’s equal bloodthirstiness, O’Connor (who attended Catholic mass regularly)…
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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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