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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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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 …
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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When you think of mysteries and thrillers set in institutions of learning, no doubt you think first of all the terrific novels that take place in universities and elite boarding schools in New England and the British countryside. These novels, known collectively as the “Dark Academy” sub-genre, have a gothic quality—with turreted buildings, eccentric teachers, overly smart students, secret societies, and classical languages. The perfect archetype of this genre is Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, although my own favorite is Tana French’s The Secret Place (does any other crime writer pack as much into a single sentence as French?). There are old classics such as Dorothy Sa…
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