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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Between the advent of streaming as a basic service and the slightly more recent establishment of niche platforms like Sundance Now and Acorn TV (both subsidiaries of AMC Networks), the opportunity to watch all kinds of TV from all over the globe has grown exponentially in a relatively short span of time. Gone are the days of having to hope your local indie video store might carry an ancient copy of Poirot or Midsomer Murders; today you can just navigate over to the Search bar of your streaming dock of choice and queue up pretty much any international title you can think of. And what’s more, with streaming making it possible for, say, a random Australian crime drama to rea…
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On January 6, 2002, Christa Worthington was found raped, beaten, and stabbed to death in her Cape Cod home. Her two-year-old daughter, Ava, who was physically unharmed, clung to Worthington’s body; the toddler’s mother had been dead for up to 36 hours. The details found in the most basic description of the crime are horrifying on their own and needed no sensationalization, but that didn’t stop the media—and it didn’t take long for Worthington to become the antagonist in her own murder. In the months leading up to September 11, headlines were dominated by another high profile case with some parallels to Worthington’s: the disappearance of Chandra Levy, a 24-year-old inter…
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During my high school years, when I was at my most rebellious, my eyes glazed over and rolled with impatience whenever our beloved English teacher, the indomitable Mrs. McFadden would talk about the role of the forest in the Last of the Mohicans. Who cared about such trivia when there were more important things to be concerned with—like that cute boy in my fifth period math class or the next Saturday night’s dance. Undeterred by our lack of interest, she would continue unabated, telling us about the literary devices authors often employ to bring a simple story up to the level of art. She would describe the metaphors and similes that enrich the narrative and give the char…
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Summer is coming, and mystery and thriller lovers are looking for that perfect beachy read to savor with an umbrella drink in hand. How about a story set in paradise? Suspense novelists have long been attracted to idyllic settings. What is it about the concept of paradise that inspires dark fiction? Is it the vicarious joy of writing about white sand beaches and shimmering blue water? Is it the irresistible lure of an escape from reality? Or maybe we writers like the diabolical appeal of inflicting mayhem on a cast of unsuspecting tourists. To me, the most appealing aspect of a writing a suspense novel set in paradise is the challenge of creating a story world where not…
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The CrimeReads editors select their favorite new fiction this month. * Katie Gutierrez, More Than You’ll Ever Know (William Morrow) In Katie Gutierrez’s powerhouse debut, a woman with two husbands loses one to the violence of the other, and a true crime writer uncovers shocking secrets decades after. I love this book more than Delores “Lore” Rivera loves both her families and now you have to read this book to understand what I mean. –Molly Odintz, CrimeReads Senior Editor Chris Offutt, Shifty’s Boys (Grove) Offutt’s powerful follow-up to The Killing Hills is just as rich in atmospherics and a master-class in the craft of crime fiction. Mick Hardin is back in th…
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When I started writing my novel, How to Be Eaten, I wasn’t really thinking about true crime. In it, I reimagine classic fairy tale characters as modern women trying to make sense of their lives in the aftermath of their traumatic stories. Yet as I considered how the women would be viewed in the public eye today, I realized that their strange and horrific stories were ripe for sensational true-crime treatment. They would be dissected in lurid detail yet oversimplified with tidy narratives telegraphed in enticing headlines. Thus, in How to Be Eaten, Little Red Riding Hood’s fateful encounter with a wolf is picked apart on true crime podcasts, details of Gretel’s mysterious …
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When I moved from central New England to the barrier islands off the coast of North Carolina, I left behind many things, including family, friends, and ice scrapers. One thing I retained: my love of mystery novels. Especially cozies which, as the name implies, reassure the reader that all will, indeed, be well. At least until the next dead body turns up. My favorite cozies depict the beach-strolling appeal of the southeastern U.S. But for the amateur sleuths who populate the pages, life is not a permanent vacation. Not only are these plucky women puzzling out perplexing crimes, they’re also juggling the contradictory demands of family and career. And they’re drawing stre…
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While June isn’t quite so packed with urgent new series as, say, April and May, there are still some very choice selections coming your way soon, led by a Tony Hillerman adaptation and closing out with your goodbye to the Shelby clan of Birmingham. Dark Winds AMC – Premieres June 12th The long-awaited adaptation of Tony Hillerman’s Leaphorn and Chee series is finally here, brought to the screen by Graham Roland, with a starry executive producer corps that includes Chris Eyre, Robert Redford, and George RR Martin. Zahn McClarnon and Kiowa Gordon take on the iconic leading roles, which keeps its original 1970s Southwest setting and navigates a web of corruption and c…
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I first heard the term “feminist thriller” a year or so ago. Oh! I thought, because it was, to me, at that time, a novel and intriguing descriptor. I thought how much I would love to write a feminist thriller myself. Then, I began to consider what “feminist thriller” truly meant, and I very much hoped that I had already done so with my debut novel, The Favor, which was described by Kirkus Reviews as “an unnerving feminist retake on Strangers on a Train.” My goal with the book was to explore the endemic nature of intimate partner violence, to demonstrate that intimate partner violence can reach women with any level of education or affluence. Specifically, The Favor focuse…
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It was night, and darker than I had ever experienced. I was alone and outside, awake at 4am while everyone else slept, the Milky Way a dusty cloud above me and the moon yet to rise. The air was warm that close to the equator, even in the quiet black hours, and I was comfortable in just shorts and a T-shirt. Below the soles of my feet, the deck of the yacht tilted and rolled as kindly winds pushed us on towards our destination; behind me the ocean rushed, churned by the rudders into a creamy, frothy wake. A surfacing dolphin, puffing up a fishy sigh into the night air, was the only sign of life. We—myself and the five near-strangers who made up the crew of this sailboat—w…
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By European standards the Noyes-Parris House isn’t amazingly old but it is one of the oldest houses in America. It was built in 1669 by Peter Noyes who was a leading Puritan in Massachusetts and the founder of the Sudbury Plantation, a large tract of land to the west of Boston. The house began its existence as two one-room farm houses only a few meters apart which were later combined around a central chimney stack. It is unclear whether Peter Noyes ever lived there; it enters the historical record as belonging to his daughter, Dorothy about whom little is known. Yet it is Dorothy Noyes’s husband who is the really interesting character in the saga of this house. Samuel P…
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I look for a strong sense of place in what I read and I make sure it’s part of what I write. In my Nils Shapiro books, I’ve set stories in Minnesota and Los Angeles. In Carolina Moonset, the story takes place in Beaufort, South Carolina. Each of those places has a direct impact on the story, so much so that the story couldn’t take place anywhere else. I could extend this preamble but don’t want this post to be like one of those recipes where you have to read all about the author’s life when all you really want to know is how much butter to buy. So let’s get to it. Here’s a list of some of the books I admire for their sense of place. I wish I could include them all. …
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Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Matt Goldman, Carolina Moonset (Forge Books) “First-class…The often amusing dialogue flows naturally, the emotional undercurrents ring true, and the mystery itself offers a full complement of suspects and motives. This novel about love, loss, and family ties isn’t to be missed.” –Publishers Weekly, starred review Emma Bamford, Deep Water (Gallery/Scout Press) “Strap on your life-vests and prepare for a tense maritime nightmare. Paradise never felt so sinister.” –Ruth Ware Dana Mele, Summer’s Edge (Simon and Schuster Books For Young Readers) “With an exquisitely tense haunt…
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A look at the month’s best reviewed crime novels, mysteries, and thrillers. Deon Meyer, The Dark Flood (Atlantic Monthly Press) “… a compelling, rip-roaring crime story peppered with dry South African humour … Meyer’s depiction of Stellenbosch is spot on, from the persistent traffic and parking issues to income disparities … includes a wonderfully vivid depiction of the Stellenbosch setting and the multiple references to its neighbourhoods and restaurants warmed this reader’s Stellenbosch heart … It’s clear why his books have been translated into 127 languages. He knows how to craft an engaging and clever plot through multiple threads without losing the attention …
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Sarai Walker first came to my attention with her brilliant satire, Dietland, and her new book is completely different yet just as stunning. The Cherry Robbers follows a family of sisters cursed to die soon after marrying, and the one spinster who may have escaped the curse (but can never fully escape a reckoning). I interviewed Sarai Walker over email about the book, its inspirations, and her work as a whole. Molly Odintz: The Cherry Robbers has been described as a gothic ghost story, and it seems to me there’s a revival of the gothic novel going on at the moment. What got you interested in exploring the gothic? Sarai Walker: To be honest I just stumbled into it. I had…
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I’ve always had a weakness for stories that defy categorization, especially if they happen to include fantasy and romance. Sarah Gailey’s Magic for Liars is an excellent example; Tamsyn Muir’s captivating and beautifully strange Gideon the Ninth is another; Naomi Novik’s fabulous Scholomance series is a third. When I began writing Payback’s a Witch, I originally intended it to read as a more traditional rom-com, primarily a romance that just happened to revolve around two bisexual witches falling in love in a magical, Salem-inspired Halloweentown. The magic was initially intended to be a background element rather than a focal point of the plot. Something to add a little s…
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As the title of our new historical thriller The Lawless Land suggests, plenty of crimes are committed in the story. Since our book takes place in 1351—not long after the worst of the Black Plague and during the Hundred Years’ War between France and England—lawlessness reigned over wide swaths of Europe where civilization had been pushed to the brink, so the title is well-earned. It’s fascinating (and rather appalling in some cases) that human nature never really changes. Even though our book takes place more than 670 years ago, many of the crimes we featured in the plot are just as relevant today: murder, kidnapping, embezzlement, bribery, price-gouging, and theft by cut…
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Screenwriters are taught: “Do not write what you cannot see.” And this is why, after a career of writing screenplays and directing films, I wrote a crime novel. A screenplay is a blue print, drawn with action and dialogue, something that exists in a slippery space, to inspire a director to film, to suggest actors fulfill characters, for a production designer to envision set dressings and costumes and hair designs that likely were not even on the page. You can’t write about what’s inside someone’s head because, well, you can’t see that. You learn to write only what people say, and what they do. Don’t direct the movie by suggesting how someone is sipping tea while loading…
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This month’s international titles are sultry, atmospheric, and thrilling. From sex workers in Brazil, to language students in Beijing, from the working class districts of Casablanca to the vineyards of South Africa, let May’s best international crime novels show you a different version of the world than the ones in travel brochures. Camila Sosa Villada, Bad Girls Translated by Kit Maude (Other Press) Like Fiona Mosley’s Hot Stew, Bad Girls is more of a book about found family and societal othering than a book about sex workers (because sex workers are people and have all the complexities of ordinary lives, ok). Camila Sosa Villada has written a beautiful, queer, mag…
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I know this veers perilously close to ‘what are you wearing?’ territory, but please, bear with me—What do you wear to sleep at night? Flannel pjs? Pyjama shorts set? Night gown? Adult onesie? Growing up in Canada within a lower-class immigrant family, the only pyjama sets I ever got were gifts. I mean, I knew what they were, of course I did. I watched TV. I’d even worn at least one set, when I was maybe two years old. I’ve seen the photo. The before times, when I lived in Hong Kong. Maybe, if my family had stayed, I’d have grown up with sets upon sets of coordinated tops and bottoms, all properly matched together for the sole innocuous purpose of being slept in. As it …
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Christopher Nolan is one of those writer-directors who critics like to accuse of being too “cerebral,” even “chilly.” Nearly all of his films are puzzle-boxes, playing with time and space and memory, and these commentators argue a good deal of human warmth is lost in the plots’ coolly whirring components. Such were the criticisms leveled against his most recent film, “Tenet,” which proved especially challenging for audiences to embrace—but if you give its complexities a chance (and a second viewing), you might find it one of his better works. “Tenet” has the foundation of a globe-trotting espionage movie, but the relatively standard-issue spy-vs.-oligarch plotline is …
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Zarqa Nawaz is as smart as she’s funny, and that’s saying something, since she’s very funny. Nawaz first became known for her hilarious and heartwarming sitcom, Little Mosque on the Prairie, and now she’s embraced fiction writing with her new novel, Jameela Green Ruins Everything, in which a woman prays for a book deal, accepts a mission from an imam to perform a good deed, and somehow finds herself in conflict with the CIA. Zarqa Nawaz was kind enough to answer a few questions over email. Molly Odintz: The premise for this novel is wildly inventive. What was your inspiration? Zarqa Nawaz: When my memoir, Laughing All the Way to the Mosque, didn’t make it to the New Yo…
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Frank McGonigle was 26 when he left his midwestern home on June 7, 1982. His family never heard from him again. They spent nine years searching and hoping for his safe return. Seven days after he disappeared, an unidentified body was found in some woods 1,200 miles away on the coast of South Carolina. The small-town sheriff and coroner had only a few circumstantial leads to go on. They spent nine years trying to identify this body they referred to as “The boy in the woods.” An unlikely series of events eventually brought Frank’s family some answers and some semblance of peace. When I set out to write Ripple: A Long Strange Search for a Killer, I didn’t intend to work mys…
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Like a good mystery, the alley was both hidden and obvious. You could walk right by it and never see it. A gap by design. My secret smoking lounge. And, that day, my front-row seat to the crime that would change everything, the first rip of the unraveling. I had no money for cigarettes, of course, but smoking what I confiscated from my students was fair game. Students aren’t allowed to smoke at Saint Sebastian’s—it was my duty to step in. And Sister Honor says waste is a sin. So, there I was on my stoop in the alley on Sunday night, minding my own business, roasting in the delirious heat that never ceased, not even at dusk. Django Reinhardt guitar spilled from a car some…
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I was named after a crime novel. My parents chose my nickname, Polly, after Dorothy Sayers’s Lady Mary Wimsey, a rebellious aristocrat who defies her upper-class family and sometimes assists her brother, Lord Peter, in solving crimes. When I was growing up, my mom relaxed each night after dinner with a glass of Chardonnay, a pack of Virginia Slims, and a paperback mystery by Ngaio Marsh or Colin Dexter. I remember thinking how great it would be to write a book that someone could disappear into like that. What was it about crime fiction that she loved so much? How did these writers keep her attention, and how could I do the same thing? When I became a novelist, I formulat…
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