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. * Guillermo Martinez, The Oxford Brotherhood (Pegasus) “An intellectual thriller that can be much enjoyed even by those whose grasp of mathematics is limited. If you like your detective stories gore-free, with a strong crossword-solving element, this is for you.” The Times (UK) Paige Shelton, The Burning Pages (Minotaur) “Historical Burns references add spice to a complex series of intertwined mysteries.” Kirkus Reviews Amanda Eyre, The Lifeguards (Ballantine) “Arresting . . . Like a cool lake on a hot day, this story hits the spot.” Publishers Weekly Stacie Murphy, The …
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The only time in my life I got a job I didn’t apply for it was midnight and I was in my nightgown. It’s not what you’re thinking. In 1989 my family and I were living in Moscow when it was still the USSR. My husband, the first Voice of America correspondent to be sent to the Soviet Union, was on the phone with a friend from ABC News discussing a story they both were on deadline to file. Our friend told André that he and the other correspondent in the bureau were so slammed by the tsunami of news they needed to cover that they were looking for a radio correspondent so the two of them could focus on television reporting. “Do you think Ellen would be interested?” he asked.…
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Serial killers are a regular feature in crime novels. More often than not, they’re pitted against a hero sleuth who is sickened by their nemesis’s behavior and lives for the chance to see the monster behind bars. What happens, though, when the killer is a member of their own family? In recent years, several mysteries and thrillers have explored this premise, which adds a layer of moral and emotional complexity to the conventional good vs. evil theme. There’s a lot to unpack with a concept like this one. What kind of loyalty, if any, would somebody feel toward a member of their family knowing that individual committed an unforgivable crime? What if the killer’s family is…
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“Adeena, can you please shut that off? If I have to listen to that Mariah Carey song one more time . . .” I scratched out the third mistake I’d made while trying to finalize the menu for the annual Shady Palms Winter Bash. It tied with the Founder’s Day Celebration as the biggest event in my tiny town of Shady Palms, Illinois (population: 18,751), and this was the first year my business—my dream—the Brew-ha Cafe, would be participating. Considering what a mess the Founder’s Day Celebration had turned out to be, I really needed to wow at this party. Despite obsessing over it for the past month, I had less than two weeks till the big bash and hadn’t finalized anything. My…
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Each month the CrimeReads editors make their selections for the best upcoming fiction in crime, mystery, and thrillers. * Alma Katsu, The Fervor (Putnam) Alma Katsu’s latest historical horror thriller takes us into the internment camps of WWII, where Meiko Briggs and her daughter Aiko wait for news of her husband at war, and find themselves at the center of a strange new pestilence, and in confrontation with folkloric monsters. No one does historical gothic horror better than Katsu, and I can’t wait to immerse myself in this very creepy tale. –MO Gary Phillips, One Shot Harry (Soho) Phillips’ vision of Los Angeles in 1963 comes to vivid life in the form of Har…
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Time for another roundup of the best of the international true crime podcast scene. All the best from Yorkshire to Singapore…. ___________________________________ UK ___________________________________ Hometown: A Killing (BBC Sounds) Award-winning journalist Mobeen Azhar moves back to his hometown of Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, to cover the death of Mohammed Yassar Yaqub but realises that there is a much bigger story in town. Yaqub was shot dead by police in January 2017 but at the trial of the man driving the car Yassar was in at the time, Moshin Amin, at Leeds Crown Court in 2018 Yassar was said to have obeyed police instructions. Hometown uncovers a world of …
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Thinking back on the story of how this book was written, I am reminded of just how powerful a force stubbornness can be. The first time my Dad asked me to help him write his book, I remember saying, (I don’t want to be over-generous in my recollections), “God no.” But he kept asking, to the point where I started trying to avoid him. The fact that I was still living at home at the time meant this was no small feat. I was experiencing that malaise which many recent college grads will find relatable. Upon leaving school, I discovered the economy was either less forgiving, or my degree of more dubious merit, than my college advisor had led me to believe. I sent my resume to e…
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As a proper genre, spy fiction splashed onto the market in the 1950s, reaching critical mass in the ‘60s. The Cold War, well underway, provided fodder for writers to spin narratives from the readers’ worst fears: nuclear war and fallout, deadly technological gadgetry, double agents hiding in plain sight. In England, Ian Fleming published Casino Royale (1953), marking the debut of James Bond. Less fanciful and more forensically detailed than 007, John le Carré introduced intelligence officer George Smiley with Call for the Dead (1961). Across the pond, Edward S. Aarons wrote Assignment to Disaster (1955), the first in a series featuring C.I.A. agent Sam Durrell. Equipped w…
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As we settle in for our Zoom, I flip through the opening to Erika Krouse’s remarkable true crime memoir, Tell Me Everything. She wrote: “I became a private investigator because of my face. It’s an ordinary-looking face, but if I ask, ‘How are you?’ sometimes people start crying.” Her face is an invitation to tell her the worst things about yourself: she hears about messy divorces; terminal diseases; all sorts of traumas; and just plain confessions. “I was a storage locker for people’s secrets,” Krouse writes, and then shows the reader just how effective that ordinary face was in helping attorneys working on a very complex Title IX case at a Colorado university. Here’s my…
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A look at the month’s best reviewed crime novels, mysteries, and thrillers. Eli Cranor, Don’t Know Tough (Soho) “Eli Cranor’s top-shelf debut, Don’t Know Tough is unmistakably noir in the Southern tradition, a cauldron of terrible choices and even more terrible outcomes … There is a raw ferocity to Cranor’s prose, perfectly in keeping with the novel’s examination of curdling masculinity. Don’t Know Tough is, so far, one of the best debuts of 2022.” –Sarah Weinman (New York Times) María Gainza (transl. Thomas Bunstead), Portrait of an Unknown Lady (Catapult) This is a truly exquisite novel … It is moving, clever and written with a wry precision … The quest f…
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This spring is so packed full with new and returning crime series, we decided to lay out a viewing guide to help you keep track of all the dates and streaming services. There’s almost no way you’re going to be able to watch all these shows, so plan carefully. Slow Horses Apple TV – Premieres April 1st Based on the widely acclaimed Mick Herron novels, Slow Horses follows the exploits of Slough House, where the bottomed-out agents of MI5 are sent to shuffle through the rest of their careers in quiet disgrace. But then, of course, something happens that brings them back into action. A compelling thriller bundled up with grace notes of dark humor, this adaptation boasts …
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Ah, gaslighting: when someone in your life tries to convince you that you’re going crazy, usually for their own gain. It’s normally a spouse or a partner acting as the villain, but that’s not always the case—and especially not for this list. I’ve always found gaslighting scary, but especially during the time when a woman could be put away for nothing more than being “hysterical,” which is why I chose it as a theme for my third Jane Wunderly novel, DANGER ON THE ATLANTIC. So let’s take a look at some classic gaslighting films. Gaslight, 1944 We couldn’t have this list without it! In fact, this is one of the places that the term originates from. (Remembering that this i…
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The first stories I can remember are crime stories. Episodes of Unsolved Mysteries, watched with my mother while my father was away on business trips. My mother, a nightshift ER nurse, had seen the worst of what can happen to a human body up close. This fact radiated outward in palpable waves of anxiety at all times, but especially when my father was away for the night. On those nights, we propped kitchen chairs under the handles of every door in our suburban home and picked up the phone at regular intervals to make sure the line hadn’t been cut, Golden State Killer-style. The sound of the synthed-out Unsolved Mysteries theme song excited me not so much because it indica…
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The CrimeReads editors best new books out in paperback published in January, February, and March, because usually we do this every month but in January and February we were busy, okay?!? Anyway, here is a very long list of books out in paperback to make up for missing the first two months of the year. Enjoy these newly affordable favorites! * Alma Katsu, Red Widow (Putnam) “Terrific…Fans of FX’s ‘The Americans’ will recognize a world where professionalism can fall prey to sexism, careerism, and garden-variety klutziness. Duncan’s job is a lot ‘like juggling knives,’ and Katsu makes us care that she doesn’t bobble.” –The Washington Post Hank Phillippi Ryan, Her P…
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Several years ago, I sat in a Toronto theater watching a production of Les Miserables. The two leads’ singing were technical masterpieces. They were perfect. Indulge me a moment, this is going to get weird—as I sat in that theatre listening to one of the secondary characters sing her solo, I had an inexplicable sensory moment that, to this day, I have not been able to explain. At one point during her solo, I stopped perceiving the music and lyrics. In those few precious moments, I didn’t hear anything, I felt everything. I didn’t even know that was a thing. On the way home, my husband confirmed his favorites were the two leads. As an audio guy, he understood their techni…
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What is happening in Ukraine is a timely reminder of the way the truth gets blurred in time of war. And so it was in Berlin in 1939. For many Germans, it seemed that the war, which had begun in September, was already over. Poland had been crushed. With that there was no longer any reason for France and Britain to fight since there was no longer any chance of saving Poland. It was merely a question of time before the enemy grasped the futility of prolonging the war, it was believed. It seemed that Hitler’s strategic vision had been proven once again. Others were not so sure. They understood the Fuhrer’s inexhaustible ambition and knew that Poland would never be enough. I c…
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A look at the best new crime nonfiction books released in February and March. Susan Jonusas, Hell’s Half-Acre (Viking) The many murders committed by some members of the Bender family in late 19th century Kansas remain one of the most confounding, unsettling cases in American history, in no small part because the killers seem to have escaped into oblivion, lost to history. In Hell’s Half-Acre, Susan Jonusas goes deep into the period’s archives to uncover previously unknown pieces of the story, focusing in large part on the Bender’s escape across the frontier, aided by communities of outlaws and tracked by incompetent detectives at the center of a sudden public maelstro…
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I’m never really sure whether I believe in ghosts. Despite growing up in some seriously spooky and remote old houses, I’ve never actually seen anything: no figures in white sheets, no women in suspiciously generic period costume. However, particularly when alone, I’ve felt—well, something. The sense of a presence. The idea that you’re not actually alone; that something unseen is with you. Other people, of course, might experience this as the presence of the divine. But for me, it was always something supernatural. My debut novel, All The White Spaces, deals with a fictional expedition to Antarctica in the years immediately after the First World War. I chose to write abou…
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When we think of Maine food, it’s lobster and blueberry pie that first spring to mind. As instantly-recognizable icons for the Pine Tree State, they’re right up there with lighthouses, Mount Katahdin, and the majestic moose. But you won’t see many of the other Maine food items on postcards; take mackerel, for instance. There’s an old downeast Maine recipe for the best way to cook mackerel: you clean it and put it in a brown paper bag, bake it at 400 degrees for an hour or so, and then you eat the paper bag. The oily, strongly-flavored fish is loaded with bones, too, and it spoils so fast once it’s out of the water that in the 18th century, mackerel was the only fish that…
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In order for totalitarianism to succeed, information needs to be controlled, both internally, and from the outside world. An alternate vision of reality has to be created, and repeated every day, every minute, in various forms, in order for the population to gradually accept their leader and the system under which they live. At the very least, the people have to believe that they cannot change the status quo, that they are helpless. A paralyzing apathy is created. The reign of Nicolae Ceausescu, the second and last communist leader of Romania, (1965 – 1989) underwent a gradual evolution toward increasing censorship and restrictions. By the beginning of the 1980s, informa…
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Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Gilly Macmillan, The Long Weekend (William Morrow) “Macmillan writes with verve and emotional acuity…the final meal is rich and satisfying.” New York Times Book Review John Lescroart, The Missing Piece (Atria) “John Lescroart is not only a master of the legal thriller but a master storyteller as well. The Missing Piece is clever, sly, and delightfully twisty.” Joseph Finder Ally Wilkes, All the White Spaces (Atria) “A gripping narrative that is at once explorer’s yarn, trans man’s coming-of-age story, and a tale of a survivor grappling with horrors that defy definition.” P…
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Sure, the killer butler is an obvious suspect, but why isn’t anyone looking at the maids? The easy answer: they were invisible. The harder one: they were too busy dragging water and running from the master to plot a homicide. In the late 19th century, there were many more maids than butlers, and they lived exponentially harder lives than the gentleman’s gentleman at the front of the house. Most of them didn’t choose domestic service; it was often simply the only honest work young girls could find to “do their part in the family.” Maids started early, literally and figuratively. Before child labor laws, it wasn’t unusual to find tweens working sixteen-hour days as scull…
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The first time we meet Irene Barnes—eighty-year-old widow, retired dental receptionist, loyal friend, voracious reader, and possibly my favourite of all the characters in A Slow Fire Burning—she is sorting through a pile of books. The books in question used to belong to Irene’s neighbour, Angela, who has recently died. Now, as Irene flicks through the pages of Angela’s books, she has to decide which to keep and which to pass on to the charity shop. This, as any book lover will tell you, is neither a rapid nor an uncomplicated process; there are many factors to consider. For Irene, the usual considerations (Has she read it? Did she love it? Does she own it? Is this copy a…
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This ‘Crime and the City’ comes to you with a free dose of seriously dry heat, the tinkling sound of sprinklers and the low hum of a thousand a/c units. Yes, we’re in Palm Springs, California. A resort for tuberculosis sufferers (including that most famous crime writing “lunger” Dashiell Hammett briefly), “Playground of the Stars” for Hollywood types, just 107 miles from LA. Raymond Chandler decided to take Philip Marlowe out of the City of Angels to Palm Springs (and into a bad marriage) in his final unfinished novel Poodle Springs. It remained uncompleted at the time of his death in 1959. Poodle Springs was very much Chandler’s version of Palm Springs – “Poodle Springs…
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West Side Story, the charged, nimble musical created by Leonard Bernstein (music), Stephen Sondheim (lyrics), Arthur Laurents (book), and Jerome Robbins (story and choreography) is one of the greatest artistic achievements of mankind. It is a blaze of sound and movement and feeling, full of pathos and gracefulness, indelible and ephemeral at the same time. Since it premiered on Broadway in 1957, and even more so since it was made into a Best Picture-winning movie in 1961, West Side Story has hummed in the air, permanent and resonant and revolutionary in the modern cultural imagination to such a degree that it might seem like a terrible decision for anyone to ever remake i…
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