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,
3,414 topics in this forum
-
- 0 replies
- 211 views
The world of poisons has always been something of immense fascination to me, I think because I always saw the other side to them. Don’t get me wrong, they were always alluring in that poetic and murderous way, sure, but growing up with an herbalist mother meant I was raised with the idea that a lot of things that may harm you can actually be used to heal more often than not. As the saying goes, it’s the dose that kills—and it’s that idea of the dose that has kept my interest all of these years. The fact one drop can help, and ten can kill. It’s also an idea that has existed throughout history. I recall sitting in a lecture hall one day in graduate school, staring at Pow…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 185 views
Well, I never had a use for one before, but once I realized that the book I’d embarked on with good cheer would require services of that kind, he wasn’t far to find. My story was located in Northern California and up to Seattle and environs in a summer—2012—that would prove either transitional or transformational for the recreational use of grass (skunk, weed, marijuana, ganja) up and down the Left Coast’s faulted and flamboyant shores. I already had a cop who was involuntarily constrained from busting the people he wanted to because if he did it his town’s economy would fall into the pit and then who would say anything like Eureka about it? I named this vengeful peace o…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 187 views
Riddle me this: I am that which when completed never stops Guards cities, and caves, confuses dimwitted cyclops. Always exciting to turn over but hard to place right, It can have four legs, then two legs, then three legs at night. It turns ravens into writing desks, when neither’s like the other, And reminds you that the old surgeon is really just his mother. What am I? (Yeah, it’s a riddle.) (In more ways than one.) I’ve been thinking about the ontology of “the riddle” since seeing Matt Reeves’s new film The Batman, which offers a total retelling of the story of the Caped Crusader and his struggles to fight crime in Gotham City. This time, he faces off against t…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 185 views
‘Glasgow is a magnificent city,’ reflects one of the characters in Alasdair Gray’s Lanark (1981); ‘Why do we hardly ever notice that?’ ‘Because,’ another character replies, ‘nobody imagines living here.’ Over the past half-century, some of the most vivid attempts to imagine living in Glasgow have been crime novels, from the Laidlaw trilogy of William McIlvanney to the fictions of Frederic Lindsay, Denise Mina, Louise Welsh, Christopher Brookmyre and others. And despite the assertion that ‘nobody imagines living here’, those novels take their place in a venerable tradition of writing about Scotland’s western metropolis. One of the first novelists to write about Glasgow di…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 175 views
Christian Fletcher was the ringleader of a band of nine infamous mutineers who, in April 1789, commandeered His Majesty’s Armed Vessel Bounty and, along with their Tahitian brides, launched a quest to find an idyllic island that had been incorrectly plotted in the British Navy’s nautical logs. Dubbed Pitcairn, after the fifteen-year-old deckhand who had first spotted it, the green dot was scribbled on a big blue chart of the Pacific some two hundred miles west of its actual location due to an error in longitudinal reading. After many months at sea, Christian and his men finally found their promised paradise—by the end of their third year, almost all of the mutineers would…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 184 views
IN THE GALAXY of New York City nightclubs, the Copacabana burned brightest. Getting in wasn’t easy. Celebrities, socialites, and sports stars all jockeyed for a coveted table amid the faux palm trees. But one particular patron never had a problem. When he made his entrance—striding briskly, confidently, and with a slight smile—a frisson of excitement rippled through the crowd. Patrons of the club knew exactly who he was. Asked where he sat when he went to the Copa, Sonny Franzese—handsome and charismatic underboss of the Colombo family—smiled and said, “Wherever I wanted.” Sonny frequented all the city’s top clubs, but he felt most at home at the Copacabana, with its r…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 176 views
I’ve never read a “crime” novel. Nor a “thriller”, a “horror”, a “fantasy”, “Sci-fi”, “Dystopia”, “Romance”, “YA”, “Middle Grade” or a “Children’s” book. Not true, actually. Pout Pout Fish is a wonderful book. It teaches a good lesson: smile if given the choice. It exemplifies the point of Good v. Evil: Fish is grumpy. He finds someone who isn’t. Now he’s happy. Not every book operates on that fulcrum, of course, but close. Good v. Evil. Socrates’s Tragedy v. Comedy. A good book is a good book, regardless of genre or topic. I don’t find myself searching the genre sections at the bookstore. At my local store Stephen King and Barbara Kingsolver are stocked next to each ot…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 202 views
Oscar, for the twentieth—maybe even thirtieth time since he got here—is lost in the medina. The problem this time is that his phone has died, so he can’t use it to navigate, and he has no cash, having given it to a man whose wife was dying and needed medical care. (A man who, in retrospect, might not have been telling the truth.) The medina is a maze as mysterious to Oscar as the many branches of his own misfiring neurons. Circlings; dead ends; occasional, unexpected connections. Above it all, the call to prayer, rising and undulating, in a language he can’t interpret.Which means Oscar can’t have grown up here. Useful information. One country, Morocco, ticked off the li…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 355 views
There’s a reason Clark Kent went to work for a major metropolitan newspaper. Newsrooms are where the action is. Clark knew that Superman had to be close to the heartbeat of Metropolis and that was the Daily Planet. When crime broke out, the newsroom knew it. Plus, newspaper break rooms are the best places to find day-old pizza and that last half of a donut that someone carefully cut off with a plastic knife because a whole donut was just too much. Newspapers and crime are a natural fit, as anyone who’s watched a newspaper movie will tell you. Has there ever been a newspaper movie without a crime plot? If so, I don’t want to hear about it. So here’s a look at newspaper …
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 199 views
David Corbett entered college never intending on becoming a novelist. In fact, he had no intentions at all—so he dropped out for a year to play bass in a bar band. He toured the Great Midwest, landing in such musical hotspots as Lima, Ohio, Ft. Wayne, Indiana and Midland, Michigan. It was a formative time for the nineteen-year-old Catholic boy who met many cocktail waitresses along the way. Returning to college, he majored in math, largely because of his professors. “They were the most humble, intelligent, honest, hard-working people I’ve ever been around—totally committed to their students, no gas bags, no phonies.” However, he soon found his talents drifting toward the…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 201 views
Western China in the late 600s of the seventh century. In a candle-lit bedroom of a shabby tavern on the outskirts of the Tang Dynasty capital Chang’an (now known as Xian) sits Dee Renjie. A man more commonly known simply as Judge Dee. He is the Imperial Circuit Supervisor of the Tang Empire, appointed by no-lesser personage than the Empress Wu herself. Judge Dee has a white beard, wears a blue robe and a black skull cap, while sipping his favourite Dragon Well tea. He is out of favour at court, a victim of the internecine infighting between the squabbling Wu and Li political clans throughout the troublesome middle years of the dynasty. He is a Confucian scholar-turned-ma…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 189 views
From the recent declassification of archival documents, to the high stakes, to the clear delineation between good and evil in the war between Allied and Axis powers, the popularity of WWII-set fiction endures. Writing fiction allows authors to imagine dialogue and fill in the blank spaces left by incomplete records, but to be able to do so with authenticity, they draw heavily on memoir, autobiography, and biography. In researching the real-life superheroines Virginia d’Albert-Lake and Violette Szabo, for Sisters of Night and Fog, there were many riveting works of nonfiction by and about the women and those in their networks. These accounts were a tremendous help in under…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 212 views
The woman across the table had a favor to ask of me. We were sitting in a windowless conference room on the basement level of the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley; I was there to do research for my new novel, and she was among the employees meeting with me to answer my questions about the agency. She was an in-house psychologist, warm but intimidating, with decades of experience at the CIA. When I told her that the spy at the center of my novel was a woman, she seemed glad at the news. But then came the request. Please, she said, with an acerbic tone: “Just don’t make her a promiscuous headcase.” I nodded and told her that wasn’t my plan. Normally I would have be…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 197 views
On April 13, 1922, two homemade bombs exploded in a tenement on Eldridge Street, in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, destroying the building’s top half and rousing the sleeping neighborhood into panic. Less than two years after the devestating Wall Street bombing, the city was on alert for any sign of anarchist insurrection. Rather predictably, the police arrested a pair of Italians, Gasparo Latiano and Rosario Ficili, accusing them of attempting to kill one of the tenement residents as part of an unspecified vendetta. It does not appear that they were ever formally charged. I’ve been transfixed by this forgotten piece of New York history since first stumbling on it over a d…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 243 views
Brrr. As I’m writing this article, the wind is whipping outside of my office window leaving a trail of snowflakes and hazardous ice, in its wake. With the inability to travel due to the pandemic, and the subzero temperatures that are keeping many of us huddled indoors, I’ve decided the best way to escape is an armchair staycation. Are you with me? Armchair travel is all about discovering the world, without going anywhere. And what better destination than the setting of a beloved cozy mystery town? Cozy mysteries are unique in that the author purposely creates these fictional community-based worlds—typically set in a small town, that are utterly quaint and perfect (minus t…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 238 views
Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Kellye Garrett, Like a Sister (Mulholland Books) “Brimming with suspense and wit, Like a Sister is a tense, twisting mystery that explores the complex bonds within family and the elusive nature of truth. Smart, sharp, and completely engrossing—an absolutely can’t-put-it-down read!” Megan Miranda C.J. Box, Shadows Reel (Putnam) “Old-school Nazis, newfangled terrorists, Big Sky country—it’s all here.” Kirkus Reviews Liam McIlvanney, The Heretic (Europa / World Noir) “A new master of tartan noir.” Publishers Weekly, starred review Tara Isabella Burton, The World C…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 217 views
In 2020, I had a telephone conversation with writer/editor Ronda Racha Penrice about the groundbreaking HBO series The Wire. As we shared our thoughts and theories on the show that many fans and critics believe changed television, one that I loved and had watched in its entirety, I had no idea that she would soon be compiling a book of critical essays on subject. However, that was precisely what Penrice did the next year with Cracking The Wire During Black Lives Matter (Fayetteville Mafia Press), even inviting me to be down with the project. What sets Penrice’s book apart from others that have covered the subject is all of the scribes are Black writers who watched The …
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 239 views
I return again and again, in my writing, to the same well—family, love and survival. In my latest book, ‘Sundial,’ I wanted to explore, in particular, the bonds between women in families—sisters, mothers. I think there can be a temptation to sentimentalize or sanitize these bonds – make them pretty. But they’re powerful, atavistic connections and powerful feelings come with them. In so many ways, family is the source of who you are. The novel asks questions about nature and nurture—those age-old questions that have haunted us throughout our species’ existence. How much of me is me? How much is predetermined by genetics, how much dictated by environment? ‘Sundial,’ is set…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 214 views
Revenge. The motive fuels major crimes and petty forms of aggression. I was inspired by Alison Gaylin’s excellent book on maternal revenge, The Collective, to investigate revenge as motive and means to keep a story moving. Stephanie Wrobel, author of the Munchausen-by-proxy thriller Darling Rose Gold and This Might Hurt. Ashley Audrain is the author of The Push, and Chelsea Summers’ book, A Certain Hunger, is a particularly rich canvas of revenge (spoiler: it’s about a woman who cooks and eats her exes). Winnie Li’s Dark Chapter is one of the most complex novels about rape I’ve encountered. Now that we have our cast of characters let’s turn to the conversation, which rang…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 216 views
Over twelve intense weeks at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, I learned how to analyze crime scene evidence, elicit information from informants, and detect a liar from a hundred yards away. As a brand new intelligence analyst, however, my training curriculum (regrettably) did not include reading about immortal demons, parallel universes, or reincarnation. Because that would’ve been ridiculous. A complete waste of time. Right? Well, maybe not. Paranormal crime thrillers, where these fantastical concepts thrive, don’t obey the neat and tidy rules of the universe. And in my experience at the Bureau, neither do the cleverest of criminals or sneakiest of enemy spies. A…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 310 views
By the end of World War II, it was obvious that pulp fiction magazines—which had served for a couple of decades as fecund breeding grounds for crime and mystery writers—were on the wane. Publishers of new-style paperbacks moved in quickly to gobble up those periodicals’ market share, rolling out reprints and, later, original works. A number of authors who’d made their bones penning short, punchy stories for the rough-paper monthlies (Raymond Chandler, Cornell Woolrich, David Goodis, and Erle Stanley Gardner among them) successfully made the leap into paperback publication, as did many pulp-practiced artists. The switch by readers to longer stories and slightly higher-qua…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 212 views
Families have secrets, they have complicated dynamics. And none more so than other people’s families. As children, we would visit friends and lay awake in the dark, listening to the unfamiliar groans of a shifting house, the nocturnal rustlings of unseen animals, parental murmurs through walls. A slow deciphering began of where this other family fit and how it compared to our own. Reading a novel about families can give an adult much the same feeling. An opportunity to glimpse into a new world – familiar and foreign at the same time—and a thrill from discovering the dark secrets of others, the reassurance that your family is the normal one. Because no matter how many arg…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 363 views
Rhys Bowen is now collaborating on the Molly Murphy Mysteries with her daughter Clare Broyles, which allows the two writers to work on a topic of great importance to both of them: women’s rights. RHYS: It’s funny how characters take on a life of their own, the moment a writer creates them. We can only follow helplessly as they forge a path for themselves and go in directions we never expected them to. When I started writing the Molly Murphy Mysteries I never pictured that Molly would become a champion for women’s rights. It was not my intention to write a treatise, highlighting the abuses against women. I just wanted to tell good stories about the immigrant experience an…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
David Heska Wanbli Weiden is a Renaissance man. Not only did he write Winter Counts, a book which won nearly every crime-writing award last year, David also holds an MFA degree, a law degree, and a Ph.D. As if that weren’t enough, Dr. Weiden is also a tenured professor of Native American Studies and Political Science at Metropolitan State University of Denver. Oh, yeah, he also teaches MFA classes on the side. I was more than thrilled to talk shop with such an erudite author. I might’ve even been a little nervous. Turns out, David’s kindness far exceeds his education. Which makes complete sense once you hear his amazing story. Eli Cranor: What’s your writerly origin st…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 218 views
On June 28, 2004, in rural Appalachia, a man with my name and my profession strangled his father in the passenger seat of his Toyota Tacoma. The other Dr. Gilmer was a family medicine physician in North Carolina, at a small clinic he’d founded with his wife near the tiny town of Fletcher. He was recently divorced, living alone in a house on the hill above his office. In the weeks and months before that night, he’d been drinking more than usual, going out to bars during the week. He’d also been making some impulsive decisions—like buying the brand-new truck he was driving, even though he was massively in debt. After a full morning of seeing patients, Dr. Vince Gilmer l…
Last reply by Admin_99,