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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I wasn’t much of a reader in high school. In fact, other than sports books about my beloved New York Yankees, I doubt I read more than four or five novels in my three years of high school. Why would I waste my time on books when there were girls to chase and time to waste? In college that started to change. For various English classes, I read some of the classics: Grapes of Wrath, Great Gatsby, The Sun Also Rises, Catcher in the Rye, and so on. Then I came to The Stranger by Camus, and it was love at first sight. Not because of the heavy themes of existentialism or absurdism, but because about halfway through the novel, the protagonist, Meursault, turns into a cold-bloode…
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Kellye Garrett interviews Cheryl Head about her new novel, Time’s Undoing, a searing and tender novel about a young Black journalist’s search for answers in the unsolved murder of her great-grandfather in segregated Birmingham, Alabama, decades ago—inspired by the author’s own family history. Time’s Undoing is both a passionate tale of one woman’s quest for the truth and, as newfound friends and supporters in Birmingham rally around Meghan’s search, the uplifting story of a community coming together to fight for change. Time’s Undoing is forthcoming on March 7, 2023. Cheryl Head (she/her) writes the award-winning, Charlie Mack Motown Mysteries whose female PI protagonist…
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“Today, though, he worries that it is hard for white men to get writing gigs in film, theatre, TV, or publishing. The problem is just ‘another form of racism. What’s that all about?’ he muses. ‘Can you get a job? Yes. Is it harder? Yes. It’s even harder for older writers. You don’t meet many 52-year-old white males.'” –James Patterson: white male writers are victims of ‘racism’” The Sunday Times Ah, the classics. He’s since apologized and the news cycle has slogged on, but James Patterson’s comments were familiar to many of us. I’ve heard variations of this complaint from fellow novelists for years now, always from white men. It usually comes after they’ve confided …
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The Bloodless Boy begins with a gruesome discovery: a dead boy entirely drained of his blood. (The title is apt.) A Justice of Peace seeks help from the Curator of the Royal Society, Robert Hooke, who brings with him his assistant, Harry Hunt. From various signs on the body, the two ‘natural philosophers’ quickly establish that the boy’s blood was partly removed at various times, then all of it was taken. With their experience of blood transfusion, the pair conclude that someone has subjected the boy to a series of grisly experiments. As thrillers do, this initial finding leads to a greater mystery. Set during the Popish Plot—when anti-Catholic hysteria was fanned by fa…
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Amina Akhtar and Erin Mayer have had fashion and media careers that people dream about. Between them, they’ve worked at every major publication, including Vogue, The Cut, Elle, Bustle, NYTimes.com and more. But they both also made the leap from fashion/celebrity editor to thriller writer. We had to know more! The author of Fan Club and the author of Kismet (out 8/1) interviewed each other to talk about their experiences, and why, exactly, fashion inspires so much rage. Questions from Amina Akhtar: What’s your fashion/media background? Erin Mayer: I have been working in media since 2014. I’ve freelanced for a variety of publications, and was previously an Associate…
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Sometimes we want simple. Black hats versus white. Monsters versus humans. Nazis versus…well, everyone else. In a world of crime fiction, where order is upended and moral codes are broken, readers can appreciate a story that draws clear distinctions between right and wrong. Sometimes we want stories where the villains are villains and the heroes are heroes. And sometimes, we want complicated. The tough protagonist with a mysterious past has been a common trope since at least the pulp fiction of the 1920s and the advent of film noir. Over time, the protagonists of suspense fiction became more complex, more haunted, more damaged. It seems only natural that the villains w…
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If I could only recommend one movie from this past month, it would be Confess, Fletch, a movie of epic coolness and smoothness featuring Jon Hamm in his best role in a long time. It is so relentlessly enjoyable that I was positively shocked it didn’t have a wider release. Indeed, if you want to see it, you’ll have to hustle over to some faraway theater to catch a showing, or (like me) ride a million escalators to the top floor of the Times Square AMC, but it will be worth it, I promise you. Confess, Fletch, directed by Greg Mottola and co-written by Mottola and Zev Borow, is an adaptation of Gregory Mcdonald’s 1976 novel of the same name, the third in his series about a …
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Sometimes you discover writers in the most roundabout ways. I must have seen Michael Powell’s 1960 film Peeping Tom two or three times before I knew anything about its screenwriter, the man responsible for its unusual story about a shy and sympathetic cameraman who is also a serial killer, his modus operandi being to film his victims while he stabs them. I’d never put together that the name listed as screenwriter in the film’s credits, Leo Marks, bore a similarity to the main character’s name, Mark Lewis. It wasn’t until I bought the Criterion edition of the film on DVD and watched the documentary extra on it called “A Very British Psycho” that I learned the rich story…
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Film criticism is always a delight to read—you get to learn as much about your favorite movies as you do about the Bristol Palin pregnancy conspiracy, but without the icky feeling you get after googling “Bristol Palin birther conspiracy”. Horror movie criticism distinguishes itself not only through its broader than average engagement with social criticism, but also by having the best titles in any critical genre, featuring such gems as Men, Women, and Chainsaws (best use of the Oxford comma) and Torture Porn in the Wake of 9/11 (which is about exactly what you’d think it’s about). Given horror cinema’s ongoing renaissance, and my own growing interest in this most intimate…
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Although the word “Blaxploitation” has become an acceptable one to describe African-American films released from the early-to-late 1970s, many of the actors and directors never liked the term. Still, that was the era when any movie with more melanin was tossed on the Blaxploitation pile. Recently watching a ReelBlack interview with the actor/director Ivan Dixon, whose directorial debut Trouble Man celebrates its 50th anniversary this month, he referred to the film as an “action/adventure” before sarcastically using the dreaded term. In the film Robert Hooks plays Mr. T, a neighborhood fixer in South Central, Los Angeles who is also a private detective. Like Phillip Marlow…
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Yes, DNA technology is amazing. Roughly 99.9 percent of human DNA is identical from person to person; the other 0.1 percent is what distinguishes each of us, and scientists have long sought to pinpoint those differences. Advancements in DNA testing allow us to identify the source of a genetic profile with unparalleled accuracy and from ever smaller quantities of biological material like blood, semen, hair, saliva, or skin tissue. As a result, the tool has proved the innocence of 375 convicted criminal defendants and led to their exoneration. But DNA testing is a relatively new phenomenon. The first exoneration based on that technology didn’t occur until 1989. Also, biol…
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Who among us, crime movie fans, wouldn’t want to see Agnes Moorehead and her sidekick traveling around and solving murders? Who wouldn’t want more of Denzel Washington as Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins? Or follow-ups to “Gone Baby Gone” with more faithful versions of author Dennis Lehane’s complex characters, Boston private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro? That’s the frustrating, never-gonna-happen discussion I’m hoping to draw you into today. Namely, the crime movie series that cried out to exist but do not. Hollywood made four dozen Charlie Chan movies.” Six “Thin Man” movies. Six “Perry Mason” movies in the 1930s alone. And we get one lousy Hoke Moseley movi…
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George Stebbins was tearing down a stone wall in the cellar of his home in Northfield, Massachusetts when he uncovered the bones. A skull emerged first, then the spine and the bones of the arms and legs. The remains were packed together in a space measuring less than three feet, suggesting the body had been dismembered or had decayed to a skeleton before being interred. Had Stebbins, who operated a ferry on the Connecticut River just inside the state’s border with New Hampshire and Vermont, disturbed a forgotten grave? Or was there a more sinister explanation for the discovery? “The condition of the wall appeared as if part of the wall had been removed,” he informed the …
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It’s no secret I love historical mysteries. I spent my childhood reading Nancy Drew, The Famous Five and Secret Seven, progressing to Agatha Christie in my teenage and adult years. I rejoiced when the genre moved away from bumbling women who solved mysteries purely by luck to strong, interesting and diverse characters solving crimes through pluck, grit and intelligence in a variety of settings, with a motley crew of supporting characters. In the real world during these time periods, women would have been confined to strictly domestic roles, but in the realm of historical fiction, they emerge as powerful figures, breaking free from patriarchal constraints and asserting the…
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This is not a piece on writing about abortion as crime. This is a call to do crimes in order to secure reproductive choice, and to write sympathetically about those who would break the law in a myriad of ways in order to do the right thing. Because reproductive choices just got a whole lot more expensive to make, that means a discussion of Property As Theft, and the Justified Theft of Property, so tune out now if you value $ over people. One more quick note before we begin: there is an excellent abortion thriller already out there, called Don’t Look Back, by Jessica Barry, in which two women are racing to New Mexico to make it to an abortion appointment, and someone is f…
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It’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for! Or, one of them. The sequel to Knives Out has a title and a release date. The film will be called Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery and it will make its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, which takes place from September 8th to 18th, 2022. While the plot of the film is currently unknown, we do know that it finds Daniel Craig’s gentleman sleuth Benoit Blanc in Greece, where he encounters a new mystery. The cast includes Janelle Monáe, Edward Norton, Kathryn Hahn, Leslie Odom Jr., Kate Hudson, Dave Bautista, Jessica Henwick, and Madelyn Cline. Stay tuned for more of our Knives Out series coverage. View the ful…
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At its heart, the cozy mystery is the story of a woman—usually—determined to restore the social order in her community after a crime—murder, usually—tears it apart. Driven by a deep sense of injustice and armed with her wits, her knowledge of the community, and her belief that one passionate individual can make a difference, she dives in. She puts herself in harm’s way. She asks questions only an insider can ask and sees connections only someone with a stake in the matter can see. Because she understands the community and the people within it, she can look beneath the surface and identify the true conflicts, relationships, and motivations between the victim, witnesses, an…
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Tamron Hall is an Emmy-Award-winning talk show host who is also an advocate for domestic violence awareness. She brings all this impressive experience to her debut psychological thriller, As the Wicked Watch (now in paperback from William Morrow), the story of a crime reporter who becomes consumed with her need to bring attention to the murder of a Black teenage girl, the kind of victim who never gets their fair due in the news. As the Wicked Watch eviscerates the news industry as the home of Missing White Woman Syndrome, and combines a driving narrative with a fierce main character for a novel that will keep you turning pages well into the night. Thanks to Tamron Hall fo…
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Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Val McDermid, 1989 (Atlantic Monthly Press) “McDermid has fired up her time machine again and is taking us back to 1989 . . . A riveting look backward from Scotland’s Queen of Crime.” –Booklist Raquel V. Reyes, Calypso, Corpses, and Cooking (Crooked Lane) “As she proved in her 2021 debut, Miami author Raquel V. Reyes has found the right recipe for an engrossing, light mystery that blends Cuban-American culture, a love of food and appealing characters.” –Oline H. Cogdill, Sun-Sentinel Karen Odden, Under a Veiled Moon (Crooked Lane) “[An] exceptional sequel . . . Fans of Lyn…
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I started writing fairy tales after my daughter was born. I already had a son, but I found giving birth to a daughter to be a different experience altogether: it made me think even more deeply about what it meant to be a woman and, most importantly, what sort of woman I hoped my daughter would become. This, of course, made me reflect upon what sort of role model I wanted to be and how I would raise her. I was raised, like most women, to be a “good girl”. This was decades before parents had books like Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls to read their daughters at bedtime and, although my parents were both feminists, they were also steeped in traditional gender values and no…
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April 28, 2012 The neighbor’s iron gate stood ajar, something Isabel Nuñez failed to notice when she woke to her Saturday morning routine, during her household chores, or when she left at about 1 p.m. to go shopping. It was on her way home when Yolanda Balderas stopped Isabel to ask her about the gate. Yolanda was a street vendor selling yogurt, as she always did on Saturdays, and stopped by the neighbor’s house. Not only was the gate ajar, Yolanda said, but across the cleanly swept concrete patio with the giant palm, the front door was open as well. The neighbor was never that careless. “I knocked on the gate,” Yolanda told Isabel, “and I yelled her name, but there…
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Imagine being arrested for killing someone. Imagine that there are witnesses to the crime, that there is evidence, a trail and trial. The extensive details are presented before a jury of your peers and you are found guilty without a shadow of a doubt. And now imagine that you cannot remember any of it. Not the murder, not what led to it, not even who the victim was. Imagine being put in prison for years, decades, waiting to be executed, and you sit there day in and day out, alone, scared, confused, trying to figure out what exactly you did and why. You feel like you were framed. It’s a slow torture. You beat your head against the wall trying to remember, trying to put the…
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Yes, that’s right, mystery fans! The great director Rian Johnson, who masterminded Knives Out and its soon-to-be-released sequel Glass Onion, has made a murder mystery TV show, to be released on Peacock on January 26th. It’s called… Poker Face. For the first time in my life, I can’t wait for January! The project is a collaboration between Johnson and Natasha Lyonne, who plays a PI named Charlie Cole, who can always tell when people are lying (a very good quality to have in a PI). It is a ten-part, case-of-the-week murder mystery show and appears to also feature Adrien Brody, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Lil Rey Howery, and Rob Perlman. (In case you missed the carousel of famous…
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“I’m in my decadent years,” Tariq Goddard told me early on in our conversation. I was at my home in Brooklyn; he was on the other side of the Atlantic, in his study at a home in rural Yorkshire — which also happens to be the location of High John the Conqueror, his head-spinning new work that blends elements of the police procedural with psychedelic folk horror. Imagine David Peace’s Red Riding Quartet gene-spliced with Ben Wheatley’s film A Field in England and you’ll have a good sense of the aesthetic at work here. At the heart of Goddard’s novel is a rural town where children are going missing. As for what this has to the plant that gives the novel its title, its pote…
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