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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One time, in high school, I went to my friend’s birthday party at a buffet restaurant. The tables were lined with displays of every prepared food I could imagine. I put a little bit of most everything on my plate, and when I was done eating, even though a lot of the individual bites tasted good on their own, I felt sick and unhappy. If I were really pressed for time, these three sentences could function as my entire review of Anthony and Joe Russo’s The Gray Man, an exhausting, disorganized smorgasbord of an action movie which samples everything from John Wick to The Bourne Identity to Man on Fire and thus overwhelms itself to near unintelligibility. Which is a shame, bec…
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Bless the small press! We talk a lot about how to make the big publishers accountable and more diverse, but let’s not forget there is another level of publishing where people have the freedom to follow their taste rather than having to justify each book’s profitability. I think most people in the publishing business feel like they could put together a damned good imprint given world enough and time. I do. So I gathered the founders and publishers of some of crime and crime fiction’s best small presses: Paul Oliver of Syndicate Books, an imprint devoted to bringing forgotten authors back into print; Charles Ardai of noir publisher Hard Case Crime; Sara Gran, whose brand-ne…
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If I mention a tearoom, I bet that puts you in mind of a small restaurant located in a grand hotel or a charming village. It will be decorated in either a flower pattern or pastel shades (or both), with comfortable chairs arranged around a low table, and fresh flowers on the table. Well-dressed guests—women mostly, but some men—pour loose leaf tea from fine China teapots into matching cups and nibble on crustless sandwiches, delicate pastries, and freshly baked scones served with jam and clotted cream. The conversation is light, friendly, and always polite. Your image would be correct, in most cases, in modern times. But the history of the tearoom is more complex and mea…
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Who doesn’t love Candy Crush? Well, me, as I’ve never played it—but I was a fan of Bejeweled back in its day, I used to spend an hour every night playing Mah Jong Tiles and currently, escape room puzzle games. My sister posts her Wordle scores. My brother spends hours in SimCity 2000. Oh, time suck extraordinaires, why do we love thee so? Because their makers want us to. In my new book Red Flags, a kidnapping is set against the backdrop of a controversial Senate vote on video game regulation. I picked this topic, more or less, on a whim. Note to self: next time use a subject that isn’t sprawling, amorphous and ever-changing. But learning how those games keep you playin…
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Megan Miranda is known for her twisty psychological thrillers, atmospheric settings, and deep insight into the psychology of her characters. I’ve been a fan ever since I picked up her second book, The Perfect Stranger, and Megan Miranda’s latest continues to cement her reputation as a writer at the top of her field. In Miranda’s latest slow-burn suspense, The Last to Vanish, a small town is the setting for a series of disappearances against a dramatic mountain backdrop. Megan Miranda was kind enough to answer a few questions about craft, setting, and the art of building suspense. Molly Odintz: One of the themes of the novel is that small towns change their residents; new…
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The domestic blowback of the Vietnam War. The sleaze and corruption of Watergate. The incipient rollback of the counterculture and many gains of the 1960s. Economic recession. The upheaval and uncertainty in the 1970s may have been tough on America’s collective psyche, but it resulted in some incredibly good crime cinema, particularly prior to Jaws in 1975, which helped to usher in the culture of the cinematic blockbuster. And while I will happily admit to being a due paying member of the First-half-of-the-1970s-was-a-great-period-of-American-crime-cinema-fan-club, it does strike me that we tend to focus on the same handful of films from this period over and over. Yes, Th…
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I have a fairly large crime fiction library at home and had access to a vastly larger one still for several years while I was working days at the Center for Fiction, in the old building on Forty-Seventh Street, just shy of the diamond district, which you crossed through on your way to and from the subway and where, in the afternoons, when the diamond hawkers were settled in and feeling good, they would give you a look up and down and decide whether you were a better prospect to buy or to sell. It was a really impressive collection, the Center for Fiction’s. They still have it, only it’s in Brooklyn now, moved by the greater forces of New York City real estate, itself the …
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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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George Dawes Green is the founder of the Moth Radio Hour and the author of several thrillers. His latest novel, The Kingdoms of Savannah, is a dark and humorous portrayal of Savannah, its denizens, and a complex family led by a singular matriarch who also happens to be the head of a private detective agency. Green was kind enough to answer a few questions about genre, character, and the city of Savannah. Molly Odintz: Do you consider this a Southern Gothic novel? What did you want to explore about romanticization versus the realities of the South? George Dawes Green: The nature of any Southern novelist is to resist all labels. But this one I can’t fight. Thomas Bjerre…
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In the early hours of October 17, 1953 in Fairbanks, Alaska, businessman Cecil Wells, 50, was shot by a .380 caliber pistol while he slept. His wife Diane, 31, was badly beaten during what she told police was a two-man home invasion turned deadly. A few days later, police got a tip-off that Diane was having an affair with Black musician Johnny Warren, and the investigation went in a different direction. During research for The Alaskan Blonde: Sex, Secrets, and the Hollywood Story that Shocked America, my book reexamining the case, I expected to be quizzed about what I thought had happened that chilly morning. Instead, the question I was repeatedly and incredulous…
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For better or worse, I’ve lived in small towns nearly all my life. Taking the old “write what you know” to heart, I set my domestic suspense novel, The Perfect Neighborhood, in a leafy suburb that closely resembles the town where I grew up as well as the community where I currently live. One thing you’re all but guaranteed to find in these quaint hamlets is gossip. From back decks to church basements, loose lips are as commonplace as sidewalks and schoolyards. Sometimes the chatter is lighthearted. (Think: Did you hear Bob was twerking at the neighborhood block party?) But on other occasions talk can be more malicious and even downright slanderous. (As in: Meg told me …
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It took Anthony Bourdain forever to get around to featuring Taiwan in one of his food shows, even though he’d been to the country a few times already. He finally made an episode about the capital, Taipei, for his series “The Layover.” I was psyched to see it but after the show aired in January 2013, a few things bugged me. First of all, Bourdain lands at Taoyuan International Airport and then takes an hour-and-a-half cab ride to the W Taipei. He has a few drinks in the hotel bar that hit him “like a cement mixer.” Then he hops on an eastbound commuter train for half an hour to go to Keelung Night Market? Assuming that the jet lag and alcohol intake don’t knock him out (…
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When I decided to set my Gilded Age novel Hot Time during the real-life heat wave that ravaged New York City during August 1896, I imagined that the hellish weather would intensify the drama. But as the book took shape, I found the oppressive heat elbowing its way to center stage alongside the other principal characters—even such imposing figures as Theodore Roosevelt and J.P. Morgan–until the weather permeated every page, amplifying the characters’ misery and even helping to drive the plot. Hot Time unfolds in a roiling city where luxurious wealth exists side by side with abject poverty. The story centers on the (fictional) murder of the real-life publisher William d’Al…
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Prologue “Do you hear that?” her uncle whispered. “Hear what?” she said, refraining from taking a big bite of the caramel apple she’d made. “The rustling. Over there. In the bushes.” Her ears strained. The fire burning in the pit between their lawn chairs popped, sending up orange embers that failed to alleviate the encompassing darkness. She shook her head and lifted the apple to the corner of her mouth where she still had teeth capable of piercing the hard flesh; adult incisors had yet to fill the holes in her smile. “Listen,” he hissed, once more stopping her from taking a bite. “I don’t hear any—” The rustle of leaves sounded from far off in the yard, back where…
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Dwyer Murphy is a man of letters. Before becoming the editor of CrimeReads, Murphy was a lawyer, a litigator, and an Emerging Writing Fellow at the Center for Fiction in New York City. He also plays a mean game of pickup basketball, or so I hear. What I do know for certain is that Dwyer has written one hell of a debut. An Honest Living sings like a classic from the first page. Every line is packed in tight but still manages to dance all the way up until the novel’s brilliant conclusion. Murphy isn’t just a writer to watch, he’s a writer we’ll all be talking about for a long time to come. Which is just my way of saying, I was more than excited to get to sit down and …
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So who would be nuts enough to write a novel with six viewpoint characters who have nothing in common except for their connection to an old self-storage facility? Apparently, me. My previous three novels, The Art Forger, The Muralist and The Collector’s Apprentice, were all historical art-themed stories told in multiple voices across multiple times in multiple locations with multiple plotlines. When I sat down to write my next novel, I decided to do something different. And easier. My plan was to create a present-day story that takes place in Boston—where I live—rather than Paris or Philadelphia or NYC, where I don’t. It wouldn’t have anything to do with art, and it woul…
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When I was eighteen, my best friend and I ditched our afternoon classes, hopped in a truck with a guy we’d met that morning, and drove from Connecticut to Vermont to see the Halle-Bopp comet streak across the sky. In the days and weeks that followed, our televisions hummed with the news of a group called Heaven’s Gate—thirty-nine people who died en masse by suicide in an effort to board the spaceship they believed followed in the comet’s wake. I shared this story with my sixteen-year-old daughter recently. She was horrified. “You drove all the way to Vermont with a guy you didn’t even know?” She managed to be completely jaded and utterly shocked, all in one sentence. T…
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It always seems to be quiet when it happens, when no one else is around. It’s often late at night when the blackness that surrounds can’t possibly get any more oppressive. But then it does. The stillness pulsing in my ears grows louder, as if there is no such thing as complete silence. At least, not in my head. I grew up fully aware of the spooky stories associated with my grandmother’s creaky old house in Maine. We visited every summer on family vacations, and I absolutely adored being there with her. She was the inspiration for Amelia, the sweet grandmother in my Coastal Maine Precipice Series. Over the years my parents regaled me with their experiences of seeing the …
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As I’ve been watching an eclectic bunch of classic films lately, it occurred to me that I was unintentionally watching a series of what I came to call stealth, or unexpected, crime films. Especially in the sense of the films not being known as stories about murder and mayhem. But they were just that. Moviegoers in 1960 could almost – almost, I say – count “Psycho” among such films, just for the audacious fake-out that takes place more than a half hour into director Alfred Hitchcock’s classic. Sure, it was a Hitchcock movie, so you knew there would be violent death. But that plot twist. In Hollywood history to that time, had there ever been a more unpredictable murder? S…
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To be perfectly frank with you, August is not a banner month for crime series on TV (except for one very bright spot, the first selection below, which isn’t really a crime series). Why? It’s hard to say. Traditionally it was a dead time on the TV calendar but that’s not really the case anymore. Maybe there’s a drought in productions, but then why did the streaming services all run their best stuff in the same three week period in April? If I had to guess, the current gap is down to the juggernaut series coming at the end of the month: the Game of Thrones spinoff on HBO and the Lord of the Rings project on Amazon. So, a good month for fantasy fans. Let’s try to be happy fo…
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It’s summer and thoughts turn (after the last couple of stay-at-home years) to travel, venturing abroad, places foreign. CrimeReads’ Lizzy Steiner has recently recommended US-based podcasts so let’s look a little further afield. Here’s a summer round up of the best international podcasts you might want to download before taking off… ___________________________________ England ___________________________________ Scotland Yard Confidential (Noiser Podcasts) Bristol-based Noiser Podcasts have had great success with their Real Dictators, Real Outlaws, Real Pirates, and Real Narcos series’. Their latest is Scotland Yard Confidential, ranging from the early nineteenth ce…
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This month is chock full of it—whatever you want, it’s here. There are elaborate, several day long weddings. There are tense family reunions in gloomy mansions where the tide cuts off access to the estate for hours. There’s a Groundhog Day–Memento-time twister. There’s a taut thriller by a real up-and-comer named Joyce Carol Oates. And finally, there’s Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth, fictionalized. Amanda Jayatissa, You’re Invited (Berkley) My Sweet Girl was a smart debut, and Jayatissa has raised the stakes with her second novel. Amaya is surprised to be invited to her former best friend’s wedding in Sri Lanka, and even more surprised to find out the groom is her …
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A Killing in Costumes, my debut cozy mystery, is set in the world of Hollywood memorabilia collecting, so I decided to interview a top dealer—because I didn’t want the research for the book to consist exclusively of a debut novelist browsing Wikipedia to procrastinate. I asked a few people in the antiques world who I should talk to, and everyone mentioned the same name: Joseph Maddalena, founder of Profiles in History, where he spent thirty-five years building the largest Hollywood memorabilia auction house in the world before becoming executive vice president at Heritage Auctions. When we spoke, the first thing he told me was that he had thoughts about the plot. “It’…
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If I can pinpoint the moment when I knew that writing a novel with Michael Mann was different than working on one solo, it’s the day I got on the phone with a bank robber. Michael and I were doing research for our thriller Heat 2. Heat 2 is Michael’s first novel, my first time collaborating on a book, and this was my first experience asking a retired robber how to pull off a bank tunnel job. I’ve written more than a dozen thrillers. I’ve done extensive research for every one. But nowhere close to this. I was diving into the Michael Mann world, exploring this story, these characters, and his way of working, alongside him. Daunting? Michael is my favorite filmmaker, …
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‘Five people are dead, Sharon. They were murdered, up on Wonderland.’ Twelve years after the gruesome and tragic Tate-LaBianca Murders at 10050 Cielo Drive and 3311 Waverly, another brutal slaying occurred in Los Angeles. In the small hours of July 1st 1981, four people were murdered at a house located at 8763 Wonderland Avenue. Situated in Laurel Canyon, a Hollywood Hills neighbourhood where, a coterie of musicians and creatives had called home during the 1960s, the area was not exactly the rough part of town. However, by the late 1970s, counterculture had given way to criminal activity, largely due to the residents of one particular house. In this den of crime and narc…
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