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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Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Kristin Chen, Counterfeit (William Morrow) “Chen’s third novel is sly and subversive, an examination of motherhood and an incisive look at culture and class . . . A readalike for Amelia Morris’s Wildcat, with a touch of crime.” –Booklist, starred review Katie Gutierrez, More Than You’ll Ever Know (William Morrow) “A fantastic debut . . . This is a sweeping novel, unflinching and evocative in its engrossing study of love, motherhood, sex, Mexico, journalism and more.” –Washington Post Katharine Schellman, Last Call at the Nightingale (Minotaur) “The well-developed supportin…
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Five hours and twenty-five minutes. That’s how much time the novel you are holding in your hands will take. Not how long it takes to read—that will vary, depending on the reader, and whether you have opened this book while browsing in a bookshop, on a short ride home after buying it, or tucked up in bed with a cup of tea. Rather, it is the story itself that unfolds over exactly five hours and twenty-five minutes. And we know this because the author not only alerts us to the time, he makes each chapter heading another click of the hands, (1:39…2:52…) so that we are precisely, at times excruciatingly, aware of those precious minutes running out. “A ticking clock” indee…
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Kathmandu, capital of Nepal with just 846,000 people and, in the old days, before Covid, a Mecca for backpackers and those on their gap year, the city’s population boosted by so many young folk again with rucksacks, walking boots and high hopes for having their minds blown at 4,600 feet – narcotically or spiritually (or both). The legendary heyday of Kathmandu was probably the 60s and 70s – the serial killer who targeted backpackers on the “Hippie Trail”, Charles Sobhraj, roamed the city and now remains in prison for life in Kathmandu. The recent BBC TV series The Serpent told his story. But Kathmandu has always remained popular, even after the devastating and tragic 2015…
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I suspect that every author has some novel in their memory banks that initially called them to the pen. For me, that book is James Michener’s Pulitzer Prize winning Tales of the South Pacific. Set against the American naval campaign of World War II, its sequentially plotted short stories bring all of humanity’s grace, failings, and foibles to life in a way that only literature can. The book’s narrator, a naval intelligence officer on an admiral’s staff sent to fix one problem after another, illustrates the way personality quirks of minor actors can have an outsize influence on major events. From tough-talking Marines laid low by heartache to nonagenarian Norfolk Islander…
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Reading romance novels made me a better mystery writer. And I don’t just mean by enhancing the bits of sexy times I wove into my debut, Her Dying Day. Romances and mysteries are mirrors of each other. Sound crazy? Hear me out. Romances give us the roadmap of how a relationship blossomed. Mysteries are essentially about a relationship rotting. Once you can visualize how your characters initially connected, you can write about their destruction with more nuance. Motives become more believable and complex. But how did I, a lover of gritty true crime and eschewer of fluff, come to believe mysteries and romances are two sides of the same coin? COVID. During the height o…
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My first New York literary party taught me that, like a lot of secret societies, the inner world of literary people was borderline crazy and completely overrated. That first lit party was at the home of Jay Acton, the editor who had helped me with but then rejected The Thomas Berryman Number. Jay and I had stayed friends and I liked him tremendously. (Years later, the weirdest thing happened to Jay. He’d switched over to being a literary agent, and one of his clients was bestselling romance writer Helen Van Slyke. She was a friend and also a big moneymaker for Jay. Then Jay got the terrible news that Helen had died, suddenly and apparently without much warning. Next, …
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I recently left the house and someone asked what kind of writer I was. I told them I was the kind that preferred to stay home. I didn’t tell them why—to avoid questions such as that. The person followed up by saying, “Are you a pantser or a plotter?” Not only did I fail to understand the question, I also misheard the second option as “plodder.” Yes, I said, that was my approach. I just plodded along, writing my average of one page per day. Later I went home and googled the question. It turns out that “pantser” refers to someone who writes by the seat of their pants, meaning they don’t plan ahead with detailed outlines. The origin of the term “fly by the seat of y…
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The passing of comic book maestro Neal Adams is a real fist-to-the-gut for his many fans—and if you bought a super-hero comic anytime between 1967 and 2021, you were a fan. Since Michael Barson and Hector DeJean were among the throngs who consider Adams to be as talented as he was prolific, they thought they’d share some of our favorite career highlights of his. HD: I’ll go first: I’ve gushed about Deadman in the past, but it’s a jaw-dropping achievement, and more of a series of pulpy crime short stories than a typical superhero comic. The story is the now-familiar tale of a murdered man whose ghost is trying to track down his killer–and the ghost has the super power of …
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Note: This article contains hints and occasional mild spoilers for the solutions in Agatha Christie’s A Murder Is Announced, The Mousetrap, The Moving Finger, Hallowe’en Party, The Pale Horse, and Murder Is Easy. It does not, though, reveal the ending of The Mousetrap! Agatha Christie’s detectives often don’t fit into the rigid gender roles that many modern readers associate with the first half of the twentieth century. Hercule Poirot, arguably her most famous character, is intellectual, somewhat hedonistic, and effeminate rather than particularly masculine. Miss Marple, her spinster sleuth, is an independent, older woman who has never had a husband or children. Even her…
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Sexual betrayal, violence, theft, family rivalries: they’re all fertile ground for plots of psychological thrillers: what I hadn’t realized until it happened to me was that there’s another crime that can inspire the kind of rage and hatred that leads to murder. Friendnapping. Having your best friend stolen from you right before your eyes. It seemed like such a good idea. I was going away for a long weekend to a beachside hotel. I’d be working a lot of the time, but I’d have parts of the day and evenings free. I invited my best friend, Ruth, to come with me, knowing she loved the beach and would be fine spending time on her own while I was working. A few days before we w…
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“Can’t say I’ve ever been too fond of beginnings, myself. Messy little things. Give me a good ending anytime. You know where you are with an ending.” ― Neil Gaiman, The Kindly Ones A great deal of consideration, deliberation and attention is afforded to the opening lines of a novel. The killer hook which lures the passing reader into the story, ensnares the casual book browser and makes the sale. Sales are after all desirable, and generally secured by that part of a book a reader can consume for free without annoying the bookseller. We can all quote our favorite opening lines: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” (The Tale of Two Cities: Dickens). “It …
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Richard O’Rawe debuted last year with the breakneck noir Northern Heist, based on an infamous and still-unsolved bank robbery, and informed by the author’s own experiences as a former operative in the IRA. Now he’s back with a second novel to feature James ‘Ructions’ O’Hare, the Provo-turned-independent-operative who graced the pages of Northern Heist with foul-mouthed eloquence. In Goering’s Gold, Richard O’Rawe took on a different unsolved mystery: the disappearance of a vast Nazi hoard of pilfered treasures. O’Rawe was kind enough to answer a few questions about craft, genre, dialogue, and Irish history. Molly Odintz: Your last book was inspired partially by your own …
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Cara Black and Tara Moss have some of the best-dressed characters in crime fiction around, so we thought it would be fun to set them up in conversation together to discuss the art of dressing for a life in crime. Their conversation was just as wonderful as we expected, and below you’ll find a wide-ranging discussion on everything from the Little Black Dress to what to wear while in hot pursuit. Cara Black’s latest Aimee Leduc mystery, Murder at the Porte de Versailles, was released by Soho Press on March 15th; Tara Moss’ latest, The Ghosts of Paris, releases today from Dutton Books. Thanks to Cara Black and Tara Moss for participating in this conversation and providing us…
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When I fell in love with crime fiction, one of the first things I noticed was how crime writers love to evoke an exceptionally rich sense of place. Raymond Chandler’s mean-streeted LA. John D. MacDonald’s cynically despoiled Florida. James Lee Burke’s lush, lyrical, fallen Louisiana. The heroes’ worldviews in these books were so tightly wrapped up in their environments, it was impossible to imagine them being transplanted anywhere else. What really got my attention, though, were certain stories in which very specific environments became something more—not simply expressions of their hero’s persona, but full-throated characters in their own right. Du Maurier’s malevolent…
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I dedicated my latest novel To Jack, and for good reason. In for a Dime is book two in the three part Tildon Chronicles and I’m almost certain that neither it nor book one, No Quarter, would have been written, much less published, if it hadn’t been for Jack David at ECW Press. In the spring of 2013 I’d just completed Cipher, my first attempt at writing a mystery novel, and prior to sending it to Jack I’d done the ubiquitous Google search trying to unearth a bit of background I could use to my advantage in a query letter. When I found an interview during which he’d stated that his reason for founding the press was “shit-disturbing” it seemed an encouraging sign given that…
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Brussels, October 1978 Two deaths— each purportedly a suicide, each with its roots deep in the secret world, each with its own perplexing mysteries—wrenched Pete Bagley, retired and somewhat besmirched spy, from the complacency of his pleasant exile and set him on the twisting path back to the shadowy battlefields of his previous life. It would be, he fully recognized, his final mission, his last chance to set straight the betrayals, both personal and professional, that had scarred not just the agency, but also his own family of spies. And like every old man who at last musters the courage to confront unfinished business, he could only hope that it was not too late. …
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Did you ever want to murder someone? (I’m talking fiction here. I’m an author, not a marriage counselor.) I think about killing people all the time — who, where, how. If you’ve ever uttered the words “Colonel Mustard in the billiard room with the wrench,” you know what I’m talking about. I’ve planned hundreds of murders, and never once have I thought, “how do I mine comedy gold out of this guy’s brutal demise?” And yet, James Patterson (my partner in crime in the NYPD RED series) has said, “Marshall Karp is the only author I know who can get big laughs out of murdering someone.” With all due respect to James, that’s not 100 percent accurate. When I whack someone, I do…
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It’s time for a summer weekend of international thriller binge watching, which means get ready for some picturesque location shoots where the characters get to wear interesting sun hats while solving mysteries. That’s what summer shows are all about. Below you’ll find a few suggestions for the hours ahead, or if you haven’t seen Slow Horses yet, do yourself a favor and ignore these suggestions and go watch Gary Oldman chew it up for a few hours, then if you have time leftover you could try these. Murder in Provence Seasons: 1 Streaming on: BritBox Roger Allam and Nancy Carroll are having themselves a hell of a good time in this mystery series, the first from Britbox…
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It is a truth universally acknowledged that January babies love the summer and absolutely despise the winter months. Okay, while I can’t speak for Amanda Peet (a.k.a. Betty Broderick in Dirty John: The Betty Broderick Story – Jan. 11), Regina King (whose crime-related star turns include The Harder They Fall and American Crime – Jan. 15), or Patricia Highsmith (if you’re reading this publication, I take it you’re already familiar with the ur-queen of the psychological thriller – Jan. 19), I can speak for myself (also Jan. 11), when I say that this particular Januarian is not about the cold. You know who—or, rather, what—else is a January baby? Roe v. Wade, the landmark…
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In the fall of 1961, the Agency moved from its shabby scattered offices in Foggy Bottom to a gleaming seven-story office block tucked in the woods of suburban Langley, Virginia, five miles northwest of the White House. It was one of the largest office buildings in the country, a keystone of America’s imperial ambitions as memories of World War II faded and the president proclaimed a New Frontier. The new headquarters signaled the Agency’s ascendancy in the structure of national power. Yet the modernist gleaming architecture could not erase the existential humiliation of the Bay of Pigs defeat. After a decent interval of seven months, Kennedy eased Dulles and Bissell ou…
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Despite billionaires’ obsession with space tourism, I think I would pay even more to time-travel back to one of George Plimpton’s legendary parties. I’d shell out at least a grand to be a fly on the wall on a Friday night in the fifties or sixties, preferably one of the nights Truman Capote or Jackie Kennedy were parked on the sofa, or the time Doc Humes wrestled Norman Mailer on the balcony, or that evening when Terry Southern propositioned William Styron’s wife, Rose. Plimpton—blue-blooded Yale man, co-founder of The Paris Review and inventor of what he termed “participatory journalism”—had the money, the connections, and the charm to host a damn good party. The cockt…
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What is a “monster”? What is monstrosity? The definition depends upon who is doing the defining. The etymology of the word “monster” is complicated. “Monēre” is the root of “monstrum” and means to warn and instruct. Saint Augustine proposed the following interpretation, considering monsters part of the natural design of the world, deliberately created by God for His own reasons: spreading “abroad a multitude of those marvels which are called monsters, portents, prodigies, phenomena . . . They say that they are called ‘monsters,’ because they demonstrate or signify something; ‘portents’ because they portend something; and so forth . . . ought to demonstrate, portend, pre…
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A couple of years ago I started keeping track of the movies I watched and the books I read in a little notebook, adding a sentence or two of analysis to each one. The decision was spurned, I hate to admit it, by seeing someone else do it on social media. I liked the idea of being a little more thoughtful about the art I consumed, a little more active in my reading/viewing. I also was, somewhat ironically, starting to wean myself off of social media, and no longer being reliant on Goodreads to track my reading (and therefore no longer having the temptation to hate-read one star reviews of my books) felt like a bonus. Little did I know that a pandemic was going to send us…
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On New Year’s Eve in 1942, Hitler acknowledged to the German armed forces that it had been a challenging year and that challenges remained ahead of them. “Hitler looks tired,” Galeazzo noted. “The winter months in Russia have borne heavily upon him. I see for the first time that he has many gray hairs.” Hitler was tired, but he was also “strong, determined, and talkative.” “The year 1943 will perhaps be hard but certainly not harder than the one just behind us,” Hitler admitted to the troops, as he confidently predicted a decisive Axis victory on the near horizon. One step in that renewed surge toward victory was a shake-up in the German security service at the end of …
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The just-released books that you’re reading now were likely written during Covid lockdown, a period that was weird for authors—this author at least—in the sense that, it wasn’t that weird at all. In those early lockdown days, my social media feed was, in the most part, a narration of other people’s strange new routines: working from home, staying in pajamas, eating leftovers for lunch, seeing no one. It seemed churlish to hit all caps and respond, YOU DO KNOW THIS IS HOW WRITER’S EXIST ALL THE TIME, RIGHT? Especially churlish when, for one beautiful moment, social media was a nice place to be. The news was dire, yet this window on the world was rose-tinted. Parents wer…
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