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 man with a gun is God…” –Howard Street by Nathan Heard, 1968 The debate over gun control happens whenever there’s another mass shooting or the murder rate rises with the summertime temperatures in Baltimore, Chicago, Philadelphia, Newark and other cities where lethal shootings are out of control. Whenever these issues arise there is an opposite outcry by N.R.A. members, gun enthusiasts and the politicians who get their financial support screaming about their 2nd amendment right to bear arms as though muskets and pistols were still the weapons of choice. While it’s obvious “that something needs to be done,” no one can agree what that “something” should be, which t…
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The sun is shining, the flowers are blooming, and the historical fiction is proliferating! Here are a whole bunch of very good historical crime novels coming out over the summer months (with a few titles from spring and fall thrown in there), each one a richly detailed historical imagining that channels history for a modern audience while remaining true to the ideas and mores of its time period. While every day is a good day to read crime fiction set in the past, I personally feel this summer of setbacks to be a perfect time to remember the ways that ordinary people fought against powerful repressive forces in the past, and even managed to find some joy while doing so. Th…
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As a writer of speculative fiction, by definition, I make things up. I imagine things into existence, at least on the page. It’s an act of creating something from nothing, and it’s limited only by one’s imagination. There’s a kind of beautiful of freedom in that. Andy Weir has never been to Mars, but that didn’t stop him from writing The Martian. Tom Clancy was never in the military, but that didn’t stop him from becoming one of the most prolific military thriller writers to ever work in the genre. Octavia E. Butler never had to trek across countless miles of lawless wasteland fighting for her life in the apocalypse, but that didn’t stop her from writing Parable of the So…
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See if you agree: Genre fiction guarantees a beginning, a middle, and an end. The word “genre” is a kind of shorthand for the reader: expect closure. Literary fiction? Not so much. “Literary” suggests shiny prose and real life on the page. And part of the bargain is that the ending could be inconclusive. Thought-provoking. Not always, of course, but that’s a distinct possibility. But fans of genre fiction know there is as much powerful commentary on the human condition in a good mystery as there is in any novel up for the Booker or Pulitzer. “Genre” fiction can be every bit as inventive and arty and revelatory as something dubbed literature. Of course. It’s a know…
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My debut novel, A Flaw in the Design, has at its center a character who was a terrible, violent child, who grows into an arrogant, possibly dangerous, possibly even murderous teenager. My Matthew is part of a long literary tradition of what are known as bad seeds, children who seem not just troublesome in the normal, run-of-the-mill sort of way, but who are, possibly, truly evil. There’s something irresistible about this for me as a reader, and as a writer: What if evil were innate, a person’s truest self? How would that person fit into the world, or fail to fit in? How would the people around them, especially family, who love this problematic, possibly-evil child, respon…
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Dostoevsky was fascinated by the ways people found freedom in Siberia. He took a special interest in Grandpa, the old Raskolnik in his barracks, and listened. “At the end of the world the river of fire shall flow, to the doom of sinners, to the cleansing of saints. All cliffs and mountains shall become flat. For mountains are made by the demons.” Dostoevsky thought of Raskolniks as dogmatic, but he admired Grandpa’s honesty and fervor. Suffering is what kindled it, Dostoevsky realized. Suffering was a strength-giving virtue. A hard-labor prison was a blessing. Most prisoners pursued another kind of liberation. “Money is minted freedom,” Dostoevsky said of life in a Siber…
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What happens when a person calls into question the very thing closest to their heart—self? I’d recently overheard a conversation at Rose Elementary School in Escondido, California, where one of the older kids—he must have been a sixth-grader—thumped himself on the chest and proclaimed, “I can hardly wait until I’m twenty-one.” Sitting on the fire hydrant by our driveway hours later, I looked up at an outrageously blue sky and wondered what it would be like to be all of twenty-one—ancient. At seven, it seemed too vast, too long, too big of a chasm for that much time to span. It’d be like waiting for Christmas. Waiting for one was hard enough. Waiting for fourteen? Imposs…
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In the summer of 2021, a tweet made the rounds claiming that anyone who comfort-watched Criminal Minds needed help. We were in the midst of a pandemic that still hasn’t gone away and I was in the midst of a binge of that very show. I laughed, sent it to fellow fans, and forgot about it. Sort of. Because here’s the thing: for many of us, that show is the comfort we need, especially when the world is ending. Now, for the sake of the argument, any fiction-based crime show can be subbed in for Criminal Minds here, but true crime is a different beast and I do not claim any parallels between it and the fictional worlds I’m going to discuss. It also must be noted that my …
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I’m not a historian, just a novelist who happens to be a history fanatic. So when I write a spy novel set during World War II, fake history is unacceptable. Even though my protagonist Alexsi and the situations he finds himself in may be fictional, the story has to be set within the context of real locations, real historical characters portrayed accurately, and an actual historical timeline. As a history fanatic I feel obligated to offer my readers history that they may not necessarily be familiar with. My previous novel, A Single Spy, was set among the German exile colonies of Azerbaijan, Stalin’s Russia, Nazi Germany, Iran, and a German plot to assassinate Roosevelt, Ch…
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In The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, the new Apple TV+ series based on the pseudo-detective novel by Walter Mosley, there is no greater mystery than the human mind. Our hero is Ptolemy Grey (a grizzled Samuel L. Jackson), an affable nonagenarian suffering from dementia, unable to function without assistance from his great-nephew Reggie (Omar Benson Miller). Reggie takes him to the bank and the doctor and out to lunch on his frequent visits, but mostly Ptolemy is alone all day, sitting in a rusty lawn chair in an Atlanta apartment clogged with random paraphernalia and dusty furniture, with plumbing that doesn’t work, countertops that are covered in garbage, and cabinets that …
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Across the world of fiction, it’s hard to argue that there are few settings more iconic or emblematic than the American West. Rich in history and mythology alike, the West has long remained a fixture of our collective awareness, and for good reason. There are heroes and sagas, adventures and heartbreak aplenty west of the mighty Mississippi. But what about horror? Well, to mangle an old saw: there’s scares in them thar hills. You just have to know how to find them. Stories about the American West have always been rife with scares and horrors sure to delight and repulse even the most hardened of horror fans, from pulpy matinee fare like Billy the Kid Vs. Dracula to lite…
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The day after spring break my son was sent home early from kindergarten. His school has been rigorous about enforcing stringent health guidelines during the pandemic. Any sign of a symptom means a parent is called for early pick-up. Since September, I’ve been called to retrieve him over a dozen times. When I arrived, my son bounced out of the building in a state of barely restrained joy. “HI MOM” he cried. “Hi,” I said. “What’s going on, buddy? You not feeling good?” My tone made his smile fade which is a terrible and tremendous parenting power. “Ummmmmm. My stomach kind of hurts,” he said without meeting my eyes. “Like you’re going to throw up?” He paused. “Yeah…
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Lisa Unger is the Queen of psychological suspense. She’s hit every bestseller list, been published in thirty-one languages, and sold millions of copies worldwide, all while maintaining her own, distinctive style, a concoction of literary writing and page-turning action that simply screams “Unger.” If it comes as a surprise to hear words like “literary” and “style” used to describe a bestselling author, then you don’t know Lisa. I didn’t know her until just a few weeks ago when I got the chance to peek behind the curtain and see how this master works. My grandma used to say, “The proof’s in the pudding, Eli.” And that adage holds especially true for Lisa. Her proce…
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Bios can be tricky. As a writer of literary thrillers, I wrestle with whether or not to mention my decade of standup and sketch comedy, those ten years I abandoned writing longform (anything) for the fun, heartbreak, and terror of standing on stage and telling jokes. Publicists tell me this part of my past makes me interesting; my instincts tell me it makes me confusing. It certainly makes me ponder, What does comedy have to do with writing heart-pounding thrillers? To bring the reader a deep sense of place—the smells, sounds, sights, feels of where a novel is set—I’ve had to deal with a lot of fear. For The River at Night, I ventured—mace handy—deep into the remote for…
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I’m an apocalypse junkie. Not because I love seeing the world all jacked up (except, okay, I do) but because of how powerful and versatile the apocalypse is as a narrative device. Apocalypses can be fun! They’re a chance to sweep away all the annoying quotidian bullshit and live life pared down to just your favorite tools and your wits, a camping trip that never ends. Or they can be a handy crucible, a way to boil off everything until only the hardiest emotional truths remain. At their most wretched, the apocalypse gives authors and readers a place to see how dark the human soul can get and why. I set my own forthcoming novel, City of Orange, in a post-apocalypse. That’s …
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A look at the month’s best reviewed crime novels, mysteries, and thrillers. Riley Sager, The House Across the Lake (Dutton) “Sager balances the novel’s short timeline and limited setting with rich characterization for all, especially Katherine, whom the reader meets as she nearly drowns in the dark, freezing lake, and Casey, whose never-ending supply of snarky one-liners and wisecracks never quite camouflages the deep emotional turmoil that ended her once-successful acting career…The House Across the Lake is a psychological thriller that’s thoroughly personality-driven, following women whose motives, means and opportunities are as murkily fascinating as the titular …
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I don’t know about you, but I am grateful for everything that makes me laugh these days. I am also seeking and finding humor wherever I can: my dog’s inability to understand the rules of fetch; reruns of The Good Place; reader reviews of Chelsea G. Summers’ A Certain Hunger. I’m also wondering why there aren’t more funny crime writers. Some of the greats were very funny: Elmore Leonard immediately comes to mind, and there is humor in classic noir of the mordant wit variety. Lisa Lutz’s Spellman books, Timothy Halloran’s Junior Bender series, Amy Gentry’s Last Woman Standing, Caroline Kepnes’s You books all have laughs along with the scary. Crime writers hear my plea: mor…
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Featured Image: Painting of Haymarket Riot-1886 (Harper’s Weekly, in the public domain) At the Toronto Parliament of World Religions in 2019, I learned that the first Parliament was held during the 1893 Chicago’s World’s Fair. This caught my interest, because in Murder in Old Bombay, my characters Captain Jim and Diana travel to the States in 1892. When I read that Indian sage, Swami Vivekananda attended the fair, I knew this would be part of my next novel. A towering figure in India, Swami Vivekananda introduced the western world to Vedanta philosophy, Hinduism and Yoga. He must have seen a bustling Chicago. Twenty-seven million people (almost half the US population) c…
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The CrimeReads editors select the month’s best new fiction in crime, mystery, and thrillers. * Winnie M. Li, Complicit (Emily Bestler Books) Winnie Li stunned the crime and literary worlds with her intense debut, Dark Chapter, based around a traumatic incident in the author’s own life and nominee for the Edgar Award for Best First Novel. Now she’s back with another story that mines her own experiences, this time centered on the toxicity of the film industry. Complicit is both a # thriller and a complex literary achievement that sheds an important light on Hollywood’s darkest secrets and brings an essential and underrepresented perspective—that of an Asian-American fi…
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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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When Elzabeth Fenwick’s psychological crime thriller The Make-Believe Man was published in 1963, one of the novel’s many laudatory reviewers, a young North Carolina newspaper columnist named James Alexander Dunn, in the Chapel Hill News perceptively placed his finger on the signal quality of the author’s crime fiction. “Elizabeth Fenwick has successfully combined a believable situation with people who matter—not that they are important people,” he observed. “On the contrary, there is not an entity in the lot. But they are familiar people whom you would not like to be in the situation Miss Fenwick places them in.” In reviewing the same novel that year, Robert R. Kirsch…
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Most crime writers in the English language—plenty outside it, too—will, if asked, promptly cite Sherlock Holmes and the varied works of Agatha Christie as foundational literature, the stock in their soup. (This novelist is no exception.) But I find myself reliably interested in those other ingredients, those unexpected seasonings: which authors, and which books, have nourished today’s storytellers? I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again (indeed I’ve said that before—and I’ll say it again): were it not for David Handler, the Edgar-winning author of more than two dozen delectably clever, smoothly written, surprisingly poignant, altogether sparkling mysteries, I wouldn…
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In 1996, a young couple – Julie Williams and Lollie Winans – were brutally murdered while backpacking in Shenandoah National Park. The case quickly became front page news nationwide; that media attention only intensified five years later, when Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that not only had an individual been indicted in the case, but that that person would be the first to be tried under new federal hate crime legislation. A few years later, the case against that man, Darrell David Rice, was quietly dismissed. In her new book, Trailed: One Woman’s Quest to Solve the Shenandoah Murders, investigative journalist Kathryn Miles details both the crime itself and h…
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At the cross streets of Sixth Avenue, West 10th Street, and Christopher Street in New York’s Greenwich Village sits a small oasis of a garden. Bordered by a fence on three sides, the garden is adjacent to an impressively ornate 19th century brick building that is the Jefferson Market Public Library. Few who pass by the library’s distinctive, stocky clock tower know that it was originally a courthouse, or that the fenced in garden was once the site of a massive, art-deco designed women’s prison, known as the Women’s House of Detention. In his new book The Women’s House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison, Hugh Ryan recovers the complex history of the build…
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Earlier this year, I rounded up 16 horror novels coming out this year, and now I’m back, this time with more intestines, more fungi, and most importantly, more books. Here are 23 new and upcoming nightmarish reads that will keep you awake long into the night, even as they dissect and reinvent the very elements of fear itself. Whether you’re looking for eerie folk horror, atmospheric gothics, gruesome thrillers, twisted noirs, or mind-blowing metafiction, there’s sure to be a title below to please. Or terrify. Andrew Joseph White, Hell Followed With Us (Peachtree Teen, June 7) Body horror meets apocalypse noir meets queer love story in Andrew Joseph White’s viscera-fi…
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