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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The Baker Street Irregulars, Sherlock Holmes’s organization of motley street urchins, are going to get their own Netflix series. It’s a dark show, full of supernatural mysteries, but the paranormal activity is not the only modification to the Sherlockian world you know and love. The program, titled The Irregulars, posits that the group is manipulated into solving dangerous supernatural crimes by Dr. Watson (who is evil)—feats for which his sketchy business partner Sherlock Holmes gets all the renown. The series, which consists of eight episodes, is due to make its streaming debut on March 26th. In an interview with the BBC, writer Tom Bidwell sums up the series as a new …
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A look at the month’s best reviewed crime novels, mysteries, and thrillers. Abigail Dean, Girl A (Viking) “Girl A, Abigail Dean’s debut novel, shares a kinship with Emma Donoghue’s Room and Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones in its harrowing portrayal of trauma. Like those titles, Girl A is certain to rouse strong emotions. It is a haunting, powerful book, the mystery at its heart not who committed a crime, but how to carry on with life in its aftermath … I kept wanting to read Girl A as a fairy tale or parable, to cauterize some of the suffering in its pages, but Dean resists that impulse at every turn, always rooting Lex’s story in the real. Dean looks squarely at …
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They were the all-American couple and their town had been called the typical small American city. The daughter of a doctor and the son of a factory owner, they went to the privileged high school on the rich side of town. Their futures were bright. But the September 1985 murders of Kimberly Dowell, 15, and Ethan Dixon, 16, ended the promise of high school graduation, college years and long, fulfilling lives. And their murders left a mark on the city of Muncie, Indiana: bereft parents, saddened classmates, frustrated investigators. In 1997, my frequent co-author, Douglas Walker, and I first wrote, for The Star Press newspaper where we were reporters, about the tragic de…
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The CrimeReads editors recommend the month’s best new crime nonfiction. * Ellen McGarrahan, Two Truths and a Lie (Random House) In 1990, Ellen McGarrahan, then a reporter working for the Miami Herald, attended the execution of Jesse Tafero. The bungled execution stayed with her for a long time after, and the haunting only grew worse when she learned, years later, that there was serious doubt as Tafero’s conviction. McGarrahan eventually left behind life as a reporter and turned private investigator. From her new perspective, she decided to delve into the case to find out what really happened, and to wrestle with some of her own demons in the process. Two Truths and…
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When I tell people that I write cozy mysteries, the most common question I get is “Who are you and why are you knocking on my door at three o’clock in the morning?” The second most common question is “What are cozies?” Cozy mysteries are fun, light-hearted adventures—with a side of murder. A reluctant sleuth in a quaint town filled with zany characters follows a twisty trail of suspects and clues to uncover the unlikely killer. Compared with their more hard-boiled mystery cousins, cozies have surprisingly little blood with their murders, and limited adult situations—with no strong language and no sex. The first full-length cozy mystery appeared in the 1930s, featuring A…
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How’d you get like this? * One night, I’m talking to my three older siblings—Linda, Karen, and Lee—about our proximity to heinous crimes and mysterious deaths over the years. We talk about our neighbors in Oakland who plunged to their death off an icy mountain road on Thanksgiving, 1972. Husband, wife, two children, a lone surviving son. A tragedy. Forty-nine years ago now. They’re buried across from our grandparents in a Jewish cemetery in Portland. Whenever I’m up there, I leave a stone on their graves, though I have no memory of them, just a memory of the story. “Mom said it was a mob hit or a murder-suicide,” Karen says and we all sort of agree: That was a thing Mo…
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Featured image: Clara Shortridge Folz, public defender pioneer Public defenders are finally having a moment. For decades, these lawyers and other court-appointed attorneys for the indigent were derided as the red-headed stepchildren of the criminal justice system. Often portrayed in literature and movies as bumbling, overwhelmed, and on the wrong side of justice, the real-life men and women who chose this line of work inevitably faced the question: How can you sit next to that scumbag? But in recent years, as the nation has begun to reckon with a criminal justice system that is error-prone and rife with racial bias, this same group of lawyers is gaining recognition a…
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My favorite game as a young child was spies. I loved the hiding, the heart-pounding thrill and fear of discovery. I recruited all my friends for it, even if they’d rather have been swimming or eating ice cream. When I was an adolescent and my mother told me her father had been a spy, I was gobsmacked. I developed this idea that it must be something genetic you could inherit. No wonder I loved that game when I was little, I told myself. My grandfather was a spy! Then, nothing. Never heard another thing about it. What he did as a spy, where, when. All closed books to me. Nothing. A dark void. Because he was a spy. Secrecy ruled his life, and sloshed over into mine. Only re…
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Black History Month only lasts for a paltry few weeks, but you can (and should) read Black mystery authors all year long! Here is a month-by-month breakdown of upcoming works, so no one has an excuse to ever plead ignorance again when it comes to diversifying their reading lists. The following list includes a wide variety of subgenres, including cozies, crime fiction, legal thrillers, international thrillers, psychological thrillers, detective novels, historical fiction, romans noirs, urban fiction, and even some YA, because (unsurprisingly) there’s as much variety in crime fiction by Black authors as there is in the genre at large. This list is intended as both a resourc…
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As an undergraduate in the 1980s I took a class on Ernest Hemingway taught by poet Donald Junkins. Late in the semester, Junkins invited a bunch of us over to his house to watch a Hemingway documentary. The video opened with some stock footage of Hemingway: There he was aboard a deep-sea fishing vessel; here alongside a trophy animal; there with a bottle of booze; here with a woman, and so forth. The narrator commenced the video with a bravura the producers must have imagined fitting for the masculine writer. “Hemingway,” he announced, “Fighter. Hunter. Fisherman. Drinker. Lover.” I must admit, it sounded promising to me at the time. But from the back of the room Junkins…
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Of King’s epics, many fans rate The Stand as the best. Others might point to the haunted house story to end all haunted house stories, The Shining. But for me, Misery—especially in the form of its outstanding William Goldman film adaptation—is his greatest story of all. With Misery, Stephen King plays the game straight up with no chaser. There are no ghosts, no telepathic children, no Randall Flagg on his evil way to town. (*Warning: Spoiler Alerts ahead*) In Misery, there are only two very real seeming people who are pitted against each other. In one corner, there is a romance writer named Paul Sheldon, and in the other is a nurse named Annie Wilkes who is his murder…
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When I was in college, I lived in a house with five other girls. Next door to us lived six more boys. Behind us lived my roommate’s boyfriend and his five roommates, and across the parking lot we all shared lived my boyfriend and his five roommates. Then, in a small house bumping up against the corner of the parking lot, were locals: a slight, older man, his wife, and a pack of chickens who wandered among our houses and escorted us to our doorsteps. Our lives were messy and intertwined, even with the man and his chickens, but also glorious, defined by the rare kind of effortless intimacy that can only be temporary, unable to sustain itself for too long without splintering…
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___________________________________ The Life and Crimes of Jennifer Mee ___________________________________ The whole thing seemed kind of silly if you didn’t look too closely. Here was a girl, on national TV, who couldn’t stop hiccupping! Her hiccups were short and high-pitched. It was kinda cute, right? She was only fifteen. She didn’t come from money. And now she was being flown all over the country to appear on every talk show imaginable; she was being put up in fancy hotels and given expensive manicures. She was experiencing that very specific sliver of the American Dream: fifteen minutes of fame. Andy Warhol was the one who came up with that fifteen minutes of fa…
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Son of a bitch! Lynch leaned back in his chair after he slipped his phone back in his jacket pocket. He should have known better than to trust Chodan. He’d been fighting for years in these mountains to lure his brother back to his village and away from Beijing’s influence. Now that he could see how close Lynch was to negotiating a settlement where he’d failed, he wasn’t about to let him leave. Chodan might not have lied, but he wouldn’t have balked at turning away and presenting a more pleasant view of Kendra’s situation if it was more comfortable for him. Which left Lynch not knowing what the hell was happening with Kendra, but realizing it wasn’t good. He’d been luck…
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John le Carré Offered a Piece of Advice to a Struggling Novelist. She’ll Never Forget It.
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People say you should never meet your heroes. When, in 2011, I sat next to David Cornwell (aka John le Carré) I was more worried for my hero meeting me. As the bright-eyed 81-year old leapt, smiling, to his feet, a kink of snow-white hair kicking up over the collar of his dinner jacket I made a pact with myself: Under no circumstances should I bring up the crime novel I am struggling to plot. Crime novels (including spy novels) are best known for their plots. Almost all reviews of successful crime novels will talk about plot before they mention character. Grisham’s plots are “intricate”, Agatha Christie’s are “ingenious”, Ruth Rendell’s are “twisting”. But le Carre, this…
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One thing I’ve noticed about cozy mysteries is that—for those unfamiliar with this charming genre—they seem to have a bit of a reputation. Basically, older women snooping into crimes, possibly a knitting group, definitely a cat. But this isn’t always the case. Well, except for the cat. Although really it can be any cute animal companion. This misunderstanding makes sense. I mean, famed characters like Miss Marple and Jessica Fletcher arguably defined the genre. But it’s grown from their foundation, branching out to encompass so much more in terms of characters, themes, narration, and mystery elements. First, you might be asking, what exactly is a cozy mystery? A puzzli…
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Ever since my husband died, I had been drawn to true crime as a way to process trauma. Hearing dark, tragic stories made me feel less alone. I started with Dateline, watching episode after episode, sometimes for hours, alone in my flat in London. Then I heard about True Crime podcasts. There was something so intimate about these—smart, funny women journeying into the world’s darkest places to make order out of chaos. I became addicted, listening to every episode, attending live events where I met incredibly kind, open people. I became immersed in the True Crime fandom. In my novel, If I Disappear, my protagonist Sera is obsessed with true crime podcasts. It gives her a s…
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There is no going back now. The taxi glides away from the house, down the street towards South End Green, retreating effortlessly from my family home, away from the expensive brickwork and tended gardens I will never see again. The sound of the indicator clicks out a steady rhythm. My body quietly shaking, I turn my head so that my driver will not look at me and see what I have done, I watch my life streak past through the window, the bumping motion of the car, the low hum of conver- sation from the radio. The girls hadn’t lifted an eye as the horn beeped from the road. Why should they? To them, today is just another day. How long will it be until they learn the trut…
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Jane Harper’s authorial-origin story is both the stuff of a lifelong dream-come-true, and the outcome of professional focus, preparation, and planning. The seeming overnight international success of her debut novel The Dry, belies a keen backstory of Harper channelling her creativity via a highly pragmatic approach, the same combined effort with which she now plots her tightly-woven mysteries. Even as a full-time business reporter, Harper knew she had a book she wanted to write, squeezing in fiction writing time before and after her journalism workday. In 2014, she pursued an online writing course, and, the following year, won the prestigious Victorian Premier’s Literar…
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Imposters play a role in many contemporary novels, including Stephen King’s The Outsider, Bret Easton Ellis’s Glamorama, Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys, Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, and others. Imposters are part of our literary tradition, appearing as con men in crime fiction, as double agents in spy fiction, and in a variety of other guises in literary fiction. The imposter takes on another person’s identity, or makes up a false identity, and the usual motive is to gain the trust of others in order to exploit it. Deception can be an artful way to seduce, steal, enable the double agent to betray, and for some there is the allure of slipping into another life si…
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My buddy Tex had witnessed two executions for his job with a wire service. He told me it was going to be no big deal. We had been out drinking at an oyster bar near St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge, a marshy stretch of mudflats and alligators on the Gulf of Mexico. “They sit up straight when the juice hits them, and then they slump forward and they’re dead,” Tex told me, in his molasses drawl. “The worst part about it, babe—and I mean this—is the long, boring drive back home.” That is not what happened to Jesse Tafero. When the electricity hit Jesse Tafero, the headset bolted onto his bare scalp caught fire. Flames blazed from his head, arcing bright orange with …
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When I conceived When the Bough Breaks, the first Alex Delaware novel, in 1981, I had worked as a clinical child psychologist and medical school professor for several years and was astonished at the lack of anything close to an accurate portrayal of the mental health professions in fiction. Back then, depictions of psychologists and psychiatrists in novels, plays, movies and T.V. shows tended to fall into two categories: evil, Svengali-like and often homicidal mind-rapers—think Dressed To Kill—or nerdy doofuses saddled with more tics, quirks and neuroses than their patients—think The Bob Newhart Show. The absence of verisimilitude extended to the therapy process, whi…
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Aside from writing, I have another huge passion—being outdoors, surrounded by nature, especially in winter. Feeling the bite of cold wind high in the mountains makes me feel so alive and when I can’t get outside, the next best thing for me is reading books which conjure that same feeling, immersing you in their setting so absolutely that you really do feel the cold slap of wind on your face or hear the crunch of snow beneath your feet… The Sanatorium is set in Switzerland, high in the Alps, in a luxury hotel converted from an old abandoned sanatorium which gets isolated by a once in a generation snowstorm. It’s a locked room crime thriller where the remote mountain setti…
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“Conspiracies are melodramatic, my dear, especially when they’re made by rich people with too much money and time on their hands.”—The Smiler with the Knife, Nicholas Blake * Orson Welles arrived in Hollywood in July 1939 with a Mephistophelean beard and a clutch of potential projects. The facial hair was an artifact of Five Kings, a wildly ambitious synthesis of Shakespeare plays that had closed in Philadelphia. John Houseman, then Welles’s producing partner, wrote that “as a final token of defiance, Orson announced that he was retaining his beard and would not shave it off until he had appeared as Falstaff on a New York stage.” The affectation provided additional ammu…
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Pontoons crashed across ocean swells. The Kokomo Cat II cut a straight bearing toward something in the distance: a single triangular orange marker amid whitecaps over the shallows. A handful of other boats were already scattered above the reef, attached to mooring buoys installed by the preservation authorities to prevent anchor damage. Conversation among the divers quieted, a counterpoint to the boat’s hull loudly smashing up and down on the waves, shooting water over the railings. Many of the passengers—especially first-time visitors—watched over the side as the sea went by, getting naturally stoned on the Keys phenomenon of the rapidly changing palette of vibrant col…
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