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. * S.A. Cosby, Razorblade Tears (Flatiron) “Razorblade Tears is superb. No doubt, S. A. Cosby is not only the future of crime fiction but of any fiction where the words are strong, the characters are strong and the story has a resonance that cuts right to the heart of the most important questions of our times.” Michael Connelly T.J. Newman, Falling (Avid Reader / Simon & Schuster) “One of the year’s best thrillers . . . This novel is like the films Die Hard and Speed on steroids . . . Newman keeps up an extreme pace from the first page.” Library Journal Tess Gerritse…
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Like many people watching Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony on September 27, 2018, I found myself crying at her description of the assault she had experienced and the psychological aftermath—what she called the sequelae—of that attack. Many women reported reliving their own traumatic experiences as they listened to Dr. Ford. I am fortunate enough not to have experienced sexual assault or rape; the person I cried for as I heard Dr. Ford describe the claustrophobia, panic attacks, and anxiety that she experienced for years was my mother. My mother slept with the light on her entire life. She shook when I took her to the doctor and had such bad claustrophobia that she n…
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I’m a crime writer. And that means, like most crime writers, I frequently write about murder, and murderers. But only once (well—only once, knowingly) have I encountered a killer in real life. His name is Ian Huntley, and on the 4th of August 2002 he murdered two 10-year-old girls, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, in the English village of Soham, Cambridgeshire. At the time I was a news reporter, sent to cover the story of two missing children for the morning news show I worked on, and I interviewed Huntley, caretaker at the local secondary school, live on the programme on Friday the 16th of August. It wasn’t just me he talked to; he’d participated in numerous press inter…
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Mount Elbrus, 21 August 1942 The joint twenty-three-man team rose early, an hour before dawn. These were elite mountain troops, some from the First Mountain Division, the rest from the Fourth. Led by Hauptmann Heinz Groth and Hauptmann Max Gammerler, both veterans of countless alpine ascents, they brewed coffee, struck camp and set off for the last steep kilometres that would take them to the summit of the highest peak in Europe. With them, they carried the Reich War Flag, as well as a pair of divisional standards. Both Gammerler and Groth knew that the rest of Army Group ‘A’ were doing less well below them, moving at snail’s pace through the mountains, plodding south t…
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Sure, you could celebrate Independence Day by looking inward and bingeing some homegrown series (if that’s your inclination, let me recommend the criminally under-seen and sadly no longer in production Briarpatch, an excellent Ross Thomas adaptation), or you could follow the revolutionary spirit in a more internationalist direction and look abroad for your extra day’s worth of entertainment. What’s better at the midsummer mark than a border-crossing thriller, after all? Here are a few recommendations for you. If you’re in the mood for a family (fugitive) road trip… The Mosquito Coast Streaming on: AppleTV Seasons: 1 If you’re really looking for some wild, internatio…
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Erle Stanley Gardner was in a quandary. Even something of a snit. The year was 1936, and as crime writer/critic Dorothy B. Hughes recalls in her 1978 biography, Erle Stanley Gardner: The Case of the Real Perry Mason, Gardner was seriously entertaining the notion of phasing out Perry Mason as a protagonist. By then, he’d already published nine novels featuring that Los Angeles criminal defense attorney; his younger secretary with the “perfect” legs, Della Street; and Paul Drake, the droop-shouldered private eye whose 24-hour investigative agency never seemed to find time for clients other than Mason. The books had sold well, allowing Gardner to end his own marginally sati…
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The ad copy called him, “the biggest thing in the entertainment world since The Beatles.” The New York Times labeled him Ian Fleming’s successor. The Daily Mirror called the title character in his first book, “the most modern hero in years.” However, almost 50 years removed from these headlines, few people recognize the name of Adam Diment. Readers can be forgiven being in the dark about Diment; at the height of his fame, he just vanished. Diment was a sixties icon through and through. In style and in substance, his ‘about the author’ photo was the kind of thing you’d find in an encyclopedia under the heading, ‘mod.’ Diment came to prominence in 1967, when he landed a si…
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I don’t believe in ghosts, but I love the idea of the dead communicating with the living in a fiction. In a traditional mystery, it’s up to a brilliant detective to follow a trail of clues around a death and then deduce who the murderer is—think of Hercule Poirot bragging about his “little grey cells.” As satisfying as that construct can be, it sometimes leaves me feeling like the murder victim is the character who matters least in a novel. The reader rarely meets them and often has no insight into what made them tick. Their death is simply the engine that powers the story, ultimately showcasing a sleuth’s dazzling skills. For me, there’s always been a powerful attractio…
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In the Unlikeable Female Characters podcast, feminist thriller writers Kristen Lepionka, Layne Fargo, and Wendy Heard talk about female characters who don’t give a damn if you like them. This week, Layne interviews debut novelist (and her former Pitch Wars mentee!) Heather Levy about sex, drugs, chronic pain, and her gorgeously dark psychological thriller Walking Through Needles (out now from Polis Books). From the episode: HEATHER: I wish I could enjoy less-dark things. But I just don’t. LAYNE: Yeah, sometimes I feel like I need a break from it. I read a lot of romance novels and lighter things in my free time. But when it comes to writing, I’ll have these ideas, an…
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Each month the CrimeReads editors make their selections for the best upcoming fiction in crime, mystery, and thrillers. * S.A. Cosby, Razorblade Tears (Flatiron) S.A. Cosby blew us away with last year’s searing heist thriller/rural noir Blacktop Wasteland, and with Razorblade Tears he’s done it again. In a heartbreaking tale of love, murder, vengeance, and acceptance, two ex-cons, one Black and one white, team up to find those responsible for the death of their sons, who were married to each other. Both fathers are grieving not only for their lost loved ones, but for their inability to overcome their own homophobia while their sons were still alive. And as they seek…
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Five Great Movies Based on Patricia Highsmith Books (That Aren’t the Ripley Adaptations)
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Filmmakers have been attracted to Patricia Highsmith’s stories ever since the publication of her first novel in 1950, Strangers on a Train, in which two men meet on the proverbial train and plan to murder someone that the other knows. Even now, there are several projects underway: set for a 2022 release, a Ben Affleck-lead and Adrian Lyne-helmed adaptation of Dark Water, Highsmith’s tale of a cheerless marriage between a disturbed husband and a bored wife; Highsmith’s enduring creation, the slippery sociopath Tom Ripley, will be the star of a series dedicated to his escapades in Ripley. Highsmith’s work is a well that directors draw from time and time again. Her narrati…
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“Then he began speaking about himself, and already, to Smiley’s eye, he seemed quite visibly to be shrinking to something quite small and mean. He was touched to hear that Ionescu had recently promised us a play in which the hero kept silent and everyone round him spoke incessantly. When the psychologists and fashionable historians came to write their apologias for him, he hoped they would remember that that was how he saw himself.” —Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John Le Carré “So how did you get the idea?” asked all eight billion human beings on Earth (or what felt like it) when I let slip that I have a book coming out. Not complaining, of course, it’s nice when a sp…
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When I was growing up on Long Island in the seventies, New York City loomed in the distance as a large and dangerous place. The city teetered on the brink of bankruptcy, the subway cars were covered in graffiti, and the local papers teemed with headlines about the explosion in urban crime. Rape, robbery, murder—all were at an all-time high, and the Son of Sam stalked the streets, shooting couples in the dark. The NYPD even released a pamphlet titled “Welcome to Fear City: A Survival Guide for Visitors to the City of New York,” with a drawing of the grim reaper on the cover, complete with helpful tips like “Stay off the streets after 6 p.m.” and “Avoid public transportatio…
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I stood there dumbstruck. A sadsack clutching his parka and briefcase—empty except for a half-eaten bag of Twizzlers—and stepped backward to allow those dismissed from the jury pool to flow past as they’d just been allowed to return to their regularly scheduled lives. Had the bailiff really called my name? But I’d done everything correctly. I’d laid it on thick as syrup when the lawyers quizzed me. Though not an attorney myself, my father is one, taught real estate law for decades and had been dean at a prestigious law school. My wife, an executive at a healthcare organization, was also an attorney. And I’d spent a dozen years at a litigation-support company creating da…
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The moment Noel Moore stepped through the front door and put his bags down, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. It was a couple of hours past midnight, so the house was supposed to be quiet, but on top of that stillness was an unease that told him things were not as he’d left them. The bottom floor was a maze of interconnecting rooms full of furniture and fixtures that his wife, Mindy, had picked out with their interior designer. He stepped around overstuffed couches and wingback chairs as he wove through the formal living room, then the dining room, the family room, and the kitchen. Nothing seemed out of place in the darkness. Everything appeared as it should ha…
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A look at the month’s best reviewed crime novels, mysteries, and thrillers. Laura Lippman, Dream Girl (William Morrow) “The gifted Ms. Lippman, in this tale of a talented cad who more or less gets what he deserves, shifts between passages hard-boiled and satirical. Dream Girl offers a healthy dose of suspense and wittily skewers literary life.” –Tom Nolan (Wall Street Journal) Sarah Stewart Taylor, A Distant Grave (Minotaur) “… a fast-paced, tension-filled yarn filled with twists the reader is unlikely to see coming. Taylor tells the story in a lyrical prose style that is a joy to read. She excels in vividly portraying both the rural Ireland and Long Island set…
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In the 1970s, the streets of Harlem were no joke. Although you could still hear James Brown’s funk at the Apollo, catch a flick at the Victoria, buy 45s at Bobby Robinson’s record shop, party with mack daddy players at the Shalimar and eat chicken & waffles at Wells, the community had also become saturated with grime, crime and heroin. As a child of that era as well as that area, I clearly recall the notorious living dead junkies standing in the shadows of tenement doorways, nodding on street corners and plotting on the next person they were going to rob to pay for their fix. Some of those lost souls were disillusioned people who rarely left the hood while many othe…
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The setting of South Kilburn in my autobiographical novel Who They Was, is not a typical literary setting. It is a large housing project in northwest London, made notorious by gangs and crime. I moved there in my teens and lived in an apartment in one of the blocks until my early thirties. Those years were formative, and my experiences there are an integral part of my identity. Unlike some representations I have seen of public housing, my portrayal isn’t of a fetishized location, limited to a criminal battleground, nor is it a politicized zone that cries out about social neglect and institutional marginalization. Of course, by truthfully depicting the things I saw, those…
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While every reader is a book lover, there’s a special subspecies of bibliophile whose passion for rare books goes beyond preordering the latest bestseller. Often, we care as much about the book itself as about the story. The binding, the paper, the illustrations. Books are tangible relics of human history, and showcases of human creativity. And sometimes it is the story we care about—or rather, the way the story moved us the first time we read it. We crave a connection through time with the author who made us feel so deeply, and one way to achieve that is by owning a signed first edition that the author touched with his or her very own hand. Over time, those first editio…
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Stella leaned on the railing and stared out over the lake. Bailey, the treacherous dog, was with Sam, which didn’t really surprise her. She should be happy that Sam walked the property so much, making certain drunken partygoers didn’t fall into the lake and drown. He didn’t let them take out guns and shoot at the sky in some bizarre celebration. Sam didn’t like dealing with the guests but he could repair anything. He would never see to the taxes or business end of the resort, but he would make certain security was tight and everything was running in top condition. If the roads needed plowing, Sam would get it done. She had come to rely on him in a short time without even…
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We all know the PI. You need only rattle off the names—Spade, Hammer, Marlowe, Archer—to conjure the picture. Tough, swaggering, fast-talking, busted nose, cigs, that Webley–Fosbery revolver. They’re Bogie-like, usually, men sure of themselves and sure of their place in the world. They stand firmly at the top of society’s pecking order, even though they ply their shadowy trade by night, solo, down near the docks or in a dive bar, soaked in gin and regret. But, thankfully, the world has grown a li’l bit since Hammett set Spade off in pursuit of “the bird.” The PI has grown up, too, broadened a bit. He, or she, is not as solitary, a lot of the gumshoeing is done from the …
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When I asked suspense author Chris Pavone recently if there were any mysteries or thrillers he’d ever felt compelled to read a second time, his response was blunt: “Zero. Once the puzzle is solved, I have no interest in re-visiting it.” I get it. Part of the reason you tear through a suspense novel—even when it’s waaaay past your bedtime–is to uncover the secret, reach the reveal, finally know whodunit, and of course learn if the protagonist survives the whole awful mess. Once you have the answers, why would you want or need to go back? And yet there have been a few suspense novels over the years that I just had to revisit. Yes, I knew the ending, but I wanted to try to…
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The first time I publicly wrote about my masochism, I was fully prepared to be shamed by strangers. It wouldn’t have been the first time, after all. What I got instead were private messages thanking me for being open about my experiences and a barrage of questions about the best ways to safely enjoy pain. If I’ve learned anything about life, it’s that most of us have a darker side, whether or not we show it to the world. It was a huge driving force behind my debut Walking Through Needles (June 29, 2021, Polis Books), which delves into many types of dark desires. Tapping into those darker needs isn’t always easy (or legal) for people to do, which is the beauty of books.…
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The sight of a human head floating in my local lake—the top few inches of the brown-haired skull, the body submerged vertically beneath—was the moment when my career as a writer of fly-fishing-related crime novels began. It made perfect sense that a dead body would be in the weedy shallows of a busy urban lake where I was fly-rodding from my canoe for spawning bluegill. Why not? People drown in Lake Monona all the time, and the nearest properties were ominous-looking, high-security trophy houses perhaps acquired through obscene business practices, inhabited by mistresses, and on the disputed-asset lists in ugly divorces. It made perfect sense that I would find the bod…
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He would remember that day, always. He was with his mother. They were outside the New York Institute for Special Education, or as the people in the Bronx neighborhood called it——The School for the Blind. There was a small building on the property at the corner of Williamsbridge and Astor where the Institute sold brooms and mops that the blind made there. His mother always bought extras and gave them to friends and neighbors in the apartment building. She was that kind of person. They were standing in the shade of the Institute trees waiting for the streetlight to change when out of the clear blue the boy’s mother said, “Dean…I want you to remember…God is always working …
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