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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“Write what you know,” they say. Which, on the face of it, is good advice. But what if you write about murder? What if, like me, your book is about the most depraved killers the world has ever known? Then, just maybe, you write what you can research. My new novel, The Echo Man, centres around a serial killer who takes his inspiration from infamous murderers of the past, the ultimate copycat killer. But imitation isn’t enough: he is ready to complete his own masterpiece. And it will be more horrifying than anything that has come before. At this precise moment, there are over 100,000 true crime books listed on Amazon. The choice is mind-blowing. I cannot claim to have rea…
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Setting is a character. This nugget of literary wisdom was written in a text by a writer whose name I no longer remember, but whose words resonated long after they were delivered. Travel, particularly as it pertains to research, all but confirmed this maxim. Atmosphere encompasses a few elements: mood, tone, a personality of sorts. I’ve discovered that whether here at home or abroad, each city, moreover each neighborhood, has its own atmospheric pulse. Each exudes an aura that takes considerable practice to be able to successfully translate onto the page. When done well, the effect is palatable. And it’s not just the obvious things. It’s whether the locals are outgoing …
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One joy of being an Oregonian is the number of writers the state can claim. From Raymond Carver to Beverley Cleary, not to mention Ken Kesey, Brian Doyle, and Ursula Le Guin, we have an almost embarrassment of literary riches. For crime fiction fans, here are some of the Oregon classics you should check out: Ken Kesey’s Sometimes A Great Notion is frequently overshadowed by One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, but avid crime readers should check the book for its creepy, heavy ambiance. The novel features the Stamper Family, contract loggers with a “never give an inch” motto. The story explores the dynamics of the Stamper family compared to each other and the town, and it’s …
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To my mind, the greatest cinematic depiction of a serial killer is Richard Attenborough’s astonishing portrayal of real-life murderer John Christie in Richard Fleischer’s 10 Rillington Place. Made fifty-one years ago—before the term “serial killer” was known to the general public—Rillington Place jettisons the psychopath archetypes entirely. Attenborough’s Christie is a tangle of chilling and pathetic characteristics—a mysterious collection of traits that are all the more terrifying in their messy, unclassifiable ambiguity. The serial killer is an icon of evil. He (it’s almost always a he) is easy to depict, and almost certain to terrify. Both criminal investigation and …
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“Is Gone Girl feminist or misogynist?” At the time of publication, Gillian Flynn’s bestseller unleashed an onslaught of discussions around this particular subject. Amy, a woman who falsifies rape, frames her husband for her murder because he fails to live up to her expectations and his potential before trapping him with a pregnancy. Is this the stereotype of the scorned woman revenge? Surely, this is all proof that the story is misogynist for painting a woman with such a dark brush. But, why stop at Amy Dunne? The question can be extended to the protagonists of Flynn’s previous novels—Camille from Sharp Objects, the alcoholic reporter who cannot cope with her relationship…
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Robert Dugoni has told the story many times. It’s a story worth telling. When the New York Times bestselling author was in seventh grade, he was assigned a class speech on slavery and chose the point of view of an abolitionist. He spoke before his classmates about how demoralizing and abhorrent slavery was. When he finished, no one clapped. They all just stared at him, and so did his teacher, Sister Kathleen. Dugoni was anxious. Was it really that bad? Standing alone before them, he felt embarrassed. Then Sister Kathleen pulled him from the classroom with no explanation. Now he was really in trouble. She told him to stand right there, outside his classroom in the hallw…
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Most crime writers love to torture their characters and put them in impossible situations—it’s what we do best, and that’s why isolated settings work so well. Whether it’s a group of strangers on an island, or friends who find themselves cut off from society due to extreme weather, staging a murder in a situation where those left behind are unable to escape or to contact the outside world for help adds an extra layer of threat and increases the tension. It allows for a closed cast of suspects—they’re the only ones there, so one of them must have done it—and provides the opportunity to bring in unreliable narrators so the reader is unsure of what really happened until the …
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When I had the idea to write a novel about coercive control set in a time before anybody knew what it was, I turned to some of my favourite novels for inspiration. While rereading them, making mental notes on unreliable narrators, atmosphere and the skilful basket-weave of uncertainty that permeated the plots, I realised that I myself had read most of these novels without knowing what coercive control was. A form of domestic abuse – in some ways the very dark heart of it – coercive control was only made a crime in the UK in 2015. I was 26 years old at the time, and it was the first I’d heard of it. It was not, however, my first experience of it. I realised coercive contro…
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I began hosting my podcast Making It Up because I’m fascinated with the origin stories of other writers. In planning my show, I knew I didn’t want to interview authors and simply ask the standard stock questions. Rather, I wanted to have free-flowing conversations and hear about the experiences of other writers on their own terms. I would prepare no questions (which, okay, is more lazy than strategy). My goal was to treat each guest like I just met them at cocktail party, pulled them into a corner, and listened to them with all my focus, asking questions only as a reaction to what they were saying. Fifty-plus conversations later, this strategy is working well. I’ve had d…
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The woman with whom I’d spent most of my morning is the third story on the evening news. She’s behind the black smoke of a big rig explosion shutting down all northbound lanes of the 101 Freeway and a water main break on Sunset Boulevard. She is my new client, an old childhood friend, and she is missing. Things don’t quite add up. How does one make it on the local news if gone for only a few short hours? She could’ve run out of gas and found her cell phone had lost its charge or signal for that matter. She could’ve just gone for a drive to clear her head and forgotten about the time. Elise is not someone people would recognize, a losable face in the crowd, hard to spot…
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“I can’t read science fiction. It’s not real.” I have lost count of the number of times I’ve heard someone say that—or something like that—when I try to explain my love of a genre chock full of alien invaders, interstellar spacecraft, and gun-toting princesses, alien or otherwise. There is something so “out there” about SF that many readers never give it a chance. If so, you’re missing out. Science fiction is “out there” because it sets its stories in a world that isn’t necessarily ours. Sometimes in a universe that has nothing to do with the one where you’re reading this article. Daunting for the non-nerd? Sure. But think about it this way. If the whole universe is you…
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“I find nothing more relaxing than a country house murder. I was not particular about method. Poison was always good—there were so many options among common household products, not to mention the items found in the garden shed. Knives were a bit tricky unless you really knew your stuff; hit an artery and you have a lot of bloodstains to explain. Awkward. There were always old service revolvers tucked into desk drawers for those less concerned with noise. As far as blunt instruments went, I was a fan of the croquet mallet. There was a nice solid head, the shaft was long enough to give you a little insurance against the aforementioned bloodstains, and fingerprints could be …
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To say John Glatt is prolific is an understatement. Glatt, an investigative journalist with more than three decades of experience, has researched, written, and published 19 true crime books and 4 biographies in the last fourteen years. His latest, The Doomsday Mother: Lori Vallow, Chad Daybell, and the End of an American Family, is a gripping, enraging narrative that chronicles the lives of Vallow and Daybell and then everything that happened after they met. The book, which Glatt wrote using everything from court documents and police reports to Vallow’s own text messages and interviews with many of the people involved, is the kind of creepy true crime narrative that gets …
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On a moonlit night, a pickup truck pulls off a dirt road in Vermont and backs up to a barn. The family isn’t home. Maybe they’re away on vacation or just in town at a school concert. Either way, the team of people in the truck know the family won’t be there. This theft has been planned and researched well ahead of time. They jump out of the truck, strap on climbing gear, then scale the barn. They cross the ridgeline. Working fast, they free the galloping horse weathervane from the cupola, a perch it’s maintained for over a hundred and fifty years. Ropes are used to lower the weathervane to a man waiting on the ground. He unties it, then sends up a different weathervane, …
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Back in 1998, when our children were still quite little, we took them on brief hikes in the lovely Dayton MetroParks. In addition to making sure they got fresh air and exercise, we wanted them to appreciate nature beyond our tiny suburban backyard. One of our favorite parks was Possum Creek MetroPark. On one hike, we discovered more than nature. We came upon remnants of a pool, a dance floor, a streetcar. A small sign indicated that we were in an area that had once been Argonne Forest Park. Metaphorically, we were traipsing through the echoes of a park within a park, nearly forgotten as nature took it back over. I became curious about—well, let’s be honest, obsessed wi…
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Crime thrillers in the big city can work well because the reader feels the anonymity of being one of millions; danger can come from around any corner. Conversely, rural crime thrillers work best by showcasing the intimacy of a small town, where it may be easier to hide a crime, but nearly impossible to hide a secret. I’ve long been obsessed with the crime genre, though most of my knowledge admittedly comes from film, so I thought I would break down 7 films that partially inspired my novel. All are rural mysteries or crime stories that take advantage of the “wide-open intimacy” of a small, tight-knit community. Lone Star Lone Star is a ‘90s rural crime drama spanning …
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As the author of several works of popular history, I knew when I began to write Hot Time, a mystery novel set in Gilded Age New York, that most of my characters would already be familiar to me from my extensive research on the period—Theodore Roosevelt, the gruff commissioner of police; Otto Raphael, one of the first Jewish officers on the force; and Minnie Gertrude Kelly, the first female stenographer hired by the NYPD. When I stumbled across William d’Alton Mann, a real-life magazine publisher who made a fortune extorting the crème of New York society, I knew I had found my victim. Known for his choleric temperament, long white beard, and flaming red bowtie, Mann was …
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The young woman, still new to San Francisco, descended onto Market Street with a dangerous shopping list. She was slim and very pretty, with a long neck, wide cheekbones, and a sharp chin. She likely would have been dressed in a frilled blouse with a high neckline, a meticulously tailored coat, and a long flowing skirt that just cleared the ground, like most of the women shopping along the busiest commercial street in the city. Her hair would have been pinned up and tucked under a brimmed hat trimmed with flowers or bows. She came from a distinguished family, was educated at pricy schools, and carried herself with an easy grace, though on the inside she was heartsick,…
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C. S. Harris, the pen name of Candice Proctor, is the author of the Sebastian St. Cyr novels, set during the Regency Era and featuring the dashing youngest son of a Viscount who inherits a title, and a wealth of responsibilities, after the death of his two brothers, all while solving plenty of crimes. C. S. Harris was kind enough to answer a few questions ahead of the release of her latest novel. Molly Odintz: Regency Romances are all the rage again these days. What do you enjoy when it comes to writing a Regency-era sleuth? C. S. Harris: Because I have a PhD in European history with the French Revolution and Napoleonic eras as my particular areas of focus, I knew I wa…
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Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Adam Oyebanji, Braking Day (DAW) “This is a story of people who are their own worst enemies as groups fracture, danger ramps up, and options close in. It will appeal to fans of colony ship stories and coming-of-age tales.” Library Journal, starred review Anna Downes, Shadow House (Minotaur Books) “Downes is . . . sowing the seeds of psychological terror, rooted in everyday traumas from sleeplessness to coping with teens, and branching out to create a nightmare world. A hair-raising mood piece you’ll be glad to awaken from.” Kirkus Reviews Will Thomas, Fierce Poison (Minotau…
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Sometimes this whole “city” thing can really get you down. So many people, so much noise, dirt, traffic. You need a break from the urban. Somewhere remote, quiet, maybe even lonely. I’m thinking perhaps, the Faroe Islands. Eighteen islands form the archipelago of the Faroes. Two hundred miles north of Scotland, about halfway between Norway and Iceland, technically a ‘constituent country’ of the Kingdom of Denmark, and with a population of just over 50,000 hardy folk speaking Faroese, which is apparently impenetrable even to their neighbouring Danes. The best descriptors for the islands are rugged, windy, wet, cloudy, and surrounded by whales. You’re a long way up north so…
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The big three. Or, maybe it’s The Big Three. Either way, it’s impossible to exaggerate their influence on literature the world over. Located in Edinburgh, Scotland, in an area of Old Town called Lawnmarket, is a place that celebrates them as they deserve to be celebrated. The Writers’ Museum is all about Scottish writers Robert Louis Stevenson, Walter Scott, and Robert Burns. Inside the museum you’ll find many collections – books, manuscripts, notes, portraits, and personal items like Burns’s actual writing desk, the rocking horse Scott used as a child, and Stevenson’s wardrobe, which was made by the infamous Deacon Brodie, whose life might have been the inspiration for…
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It’s been raining for three days straight by the time I find a moment to sit down and watch my screeners of Tokyo Vice, HBO Max’s new series, a fish-out-of-water newsroom-noir set in 1999 Japan. A dark, rainy evening is the perfect backdrop to take in the show, whose inaugural episode (directed by Michael Mann) takes place across numerous dark, rainy evenings. In this way, the series might seem to resemble every other movie set in Tokyo: shadowy and rain-slicked streets, glowing neon signs, dim karaoke lounges, billboards merging ukiyo-e aesthetics with pop art. It looks a little like Blade Runner, a little like Lost in Translation. But it clearly tries to move past such …
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When Satan finally returned, old Beelzebub came in the form of a smiley-faced, spray-painted figure on the wall of a small country church. The scene at the church, as reported in The Muncie Evening Press in April 1989, included a pentagram, the goofily drawn devil himself and a one-legged baby doll with some red substance on it. Could it be blood? And as Dana Carvey’s Church Lady used to say on “Saturday Night Live,” could it be … Satan? I can forgive my old newspaper employer and the reporter who provided the breathless coverage of what a police officer believed he had stumbled across: evidence of Satan worship. That’s because the “Satanic Panic” of the 1980s was a r…
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That there are two systems of justice in America, one for the wealthy, one for the poor, is hardly a novel observation. But that there are two types of science, one for the rich and one for poor people, is less commonly understood. “Poor people science,” a theme I explore throughout Junk Science and the American Criminal Justice System, is the difference between the scientific evidence used in civil litigation, where money is at stake, and the “scientific” evidence used in the American criminal justice system, where life and liberty are at stake. The difference speaks to our values as a society. I am not a scientist. I’m a lawyer, a second-generation public defender. My …
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