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,
2,801 topics in this forum
-
- 0 replies
- 212 views
In Paul Vidich’s latest novel, The Matchmaker (February 2022), an American woman working as a translator in East Berlin in 1989 discovers her husband missing, then discovers that he was an East German spy who targeted her for marriage as operational cover. She agrees to help to help the CIA investigate the Stasi spy chief who ensnared her in his “Romeos” network. Here, we have an exclusive first look at the book’s cover and a conversation with Vidich about his growing body of work, the ethics of espionage, and the allure of spy fiction. Where do you see your books in the canon of spy fiction? What interests you about this genre? My books explore the moral landscape …
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 265 views
Much has been written about the style and mood of William Friedkin’s The French Connection (1971). Commentators are fond of identifying influences ranging from Costa-Gavras’ Z and the Maysles brothers work, to the more recently noted Kartemquin documentaries of the 1960s. There’s been a great deal of talk about long takes, overlapping dialogue and the film’s “gritty” verite style generally. What’s so interesting to me, however, is how the elements of cinematography and sound establish the important formal elements of the police procedural in The French Connection. The scenes unfold in a manner so completely artful and seamless that we forget we’re watching a Hollywood co…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 248 views
Welcome to the CrimeReads Streaming Guide, where we spotlight a very specific category of crime movies we think you should be watching right now. ___________________________________ It’s September! Autumn may not have officially arrived, and Labor Day hasn’t happened yet, but still… autumn is just around the corner. Autumn, for me, is about Robert Redford. I don’t know why, but when the air gets chilly and the leaves get crispy, I want to watch a Robert Redford movie (even more than I usually do, which is often). Maybe it’s because he wears the color brown so well? I don’t know. You’d think that his sun-bleached hair would fit the aesthetics of summery movies, but his o…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 200 views
A Viking is a raider from the sea. During the Viking Age, roughly 750 to 1050, Europe was plagued by such pirates in their swift dragonships. The Vikings were traders and explorers, too. They were farmers, poets, engineers, artists—but their place in history was carved by their swords. “From the fury of the Northmen, O Lord, deliver us!” wrote a French monk around the year 900. They “ransacked and despoiled, massacred, and burned and ravaged,” wrote another, who witnessed the Viking attack on Paris in 885. In Ireland in the mid-800s, a monk praised the safety of a storm: Bitter is the wind tonight, White the tresses of the sea; I have no fear the Viking hordes Will sail…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 245 views
At first glance it seems self-evident that valuable artifacts that were looted as spoils of war or plundered by our colonial ancestors should be sent back to where they came from. No one would argue with the notion that art stolen by the Nazis from countries they occupied during World War Two should be restored to its rightful owners, so why not treasures snatched by colonial powers? Repatriating the cultural heritage of nations that were robbed is part of a long process of restorative justice for past wrongs that Western powers are approaching in a variety of ways. Morally, it has to be the right thing to do. But where do you draw the line? In the mists of antiquity, or…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 229 views
Whenever longtime New England friend Maryanne pays a visit to the Tampa Bay area of Florida, we always arrange for a get-together, however brief. When Maryanne announced that she’d be staying at the nearby town of Gulfport, we agreed to meet for lunch at her hotel—the historic Peninsula Inn. It happened that I was in the planning stages of a new paranormal mystery, and had come up with a loosely-structured plot involving a young woman who inherits a haunted Florida hotel. Turns out the Peninsula Inn is haunted—by a gentle ghost named Isabelle—along with her little ghost cat. It took only a few minutes on the Peninsula’s wrap-around front porch for Gulfport to become a s…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 205 views
September brings an outstanding line-up of new crime releases showcasing the breadth of the genre and the variety of talented approaches to the world of crime. With new works from established voices and plenty of debuts, September also provides further proof of an ever-expanding and evolving genre. Whether you’re looking for shocking twists, historical thrillers, or fair-play mysteries, here are twelve new releases perfect for finishing out the summer. Vera Kurian, Never Saw Me Coming (Park Row) Vera Kurian’s extraordinarily entertaining Never Saw Me Coming is one of a few books in a new trend I’m calling “yoga pants noir,” in which hot girls in athleisure wear are …
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 660 views
Television history may not recall the second week of September 1974 as indelibly momentous. Yet for fans of small-screen private eye series, it most certainly was. On Friday, September 13, NBC-TV’s The Rockford Files premiered, featuring James Garner. That was just one night after competitor ABC launched another Southern California-set gumshoe drama with a well-known lead and lofty ambitions: David Janssen’s Harry O. The former program went on to five and a half seasons of public acclaim (plus eight TV reunion movies), and in 2002 was ranked No. 39 on TV Guide’s list of the “50 Best Shows of All Time.” While a previous Janssen crime series, The Fugitive, scored even bett…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 638 views
Agatha Christie once said that, “the best way of getting down to work is in a very bad hotel where there is nothing else to do but write, for there are no distracting comforts to indulge in, no good meals or interesting guests.” If anyone was an expert on the best way to “getting down to work” it was the Queen of Mystery—although I doubt that her version of a “bad” hotel would come close to mine! It’s not surprising that many of Christie’s novels were written in, or inspired by, hotels. She was a passionate traveler and in 1922, Christie took a ten-month voyage around the British Empire with her first husband, Colonel Archibald Christie, as part of a trade mission to pr…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 239 views
In October 1881, the chief commissioner of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, George Talbot, received an intelligence report that Patrick Egan was in town. “His business most important. . . . Received a very large sum of money from America according to some new arrangement. . . . I am assured that the money alleged to have been brought by Egan is altogether independent of the weekly receipts and it is supposed to be over £5.000 [about $600,000 today].” Talbot’s source was almost certainly Superintendent Mallon, who had learned from a reliable informer in November 1880 of the emergence of a secret society calling itself the Mooney Volunteers, after Thomas Mooney, the Iris…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 324 views
We can all identify the final girl early in any slasher story. She’s the bookish one. She dresses conservatively, she takes her responsibilities seriously. If it’s the eighties, she’s probably just gone camping at the wrong place, or signed on to work at an unlucky summer camp, and if it’s the nineties then she’s probably already dealing with some trauma, has some issue this confrontation with horror can make her deal with, and if it’s the 2000s or later then she’s in a time loop, she’s up against the ancient ones, or maybe she’s even the slasher herself. If it’s the seventies, though? If it’s the seventies, then she’s Laurie Strode in John Carpenter’s Halloween, w…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 245 views
Michael Mann’s “Heat” (1995) is widely considered a cinematic masterpiece. Not only do we follow as L.A. detective Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino) chases ultra-disciplined thief Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro) across the city, but we also dip into the lives of characters tangential to that pursuit—wives, daughters, hustlers, marks, cops, and criminals who are often fully realized despite having relatively little screen-time. Like many masterpieces, “Heat” didn’t emerge fully formed. You could argue that much of Mann’s cinematic career up to that point was a rehearsal of sorts, allowing him to work on character and story points. This progression begins in 1981, when Mann rele…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 221 views
The book smelled old. It must have been sitting on the shelves of the secondhand bookstore for a long time before I bought it. The title was enigmatic: With the Italia to the North Pole. What was the Italia? And who was going to the North Pole? The author was just as mysterious. Who was Umberto Nobile? I was looking for a mystery to solve—and now I had found one. When I opened the stiff pages of the ninety-year-old volume to try to find the answers, I felt a slight draft on my hand. An equally old and irregularly cutout newspaper clipping slipped out of the book and fluttered to the floor. The faded headline of the story answered some of my questions. It read: “Bound…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 210 views
In storytelling, we are in the middle of what I call the ‘age of the “strong woman” character’. If asked, probably everyone has a slightly different idea of what exactly we mean when we say, ‘strong woman.’ I like to think about strong women has any story where a woman main character has desires that transcend the stereotypical roles of women falling in love, keeping house, and raising babies. Many of the below novels are occupied with those familiar roles, but they explore them in extravagant, nail-biting ways that give new life to what are often old narratives about women in the domestic sphere, to breathe life and character into routines that used to be the backdrops f…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 239 views
Over the weekend, during a virtual celebration of “Bouchercon,” the world mystery convention, the winners of the Anthony Awards were announced. The “Anthonys” honor the year’s best achievements in mystery and crime fiction. This is the thirty-sixth year the awards have been handed out. Keep scrolling below for a list of the year’s Anthony winners and nominees. Congratulations to all the authors. ___________________________________ BEST HARDCOVER NOVEL ___________________________________ Winner: Blacktop Wasteland, by S.A. Cosby (Flatiron Books) Nominees: What You Don’t See, by Tracy Clark (Kensington) Little Secrets, by Jennifer Hillier (Minotaur Books) And Now …
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 316 views
A look at the month’s best reviewed crime novels, mysteries, and thrillers. Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Velvet Was the Night (Del Rey) “Throughout her career, the style-shifting novelist Silvia Moreno-Garcia has demonstrated a remarkable ability to employ the tropes of genre fiction while simultaneously subverting and decolonizing them … Velvet Was the Night her riveting new noir, is an adrenalized, darkly romantic journey set during Mexico’s Dirty War … Moreno-Garcia keeps us guessing … Moreno-Garcia always leaves her own indelible stamp on any seemingly familiar genre.” –Elizabeth Hand (The Washington Post) Megan Abbott, The Turnout (Putnam) “Desire and ballet …
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 255 views
Tuesday, November 19 A Place for Children Simi Valley, CA 10:43 p.m. At that time of night, there was peace. No burbles from the water cooler. No ringing telephones or whooshing copiers. Just her hands scratching against paper envelopes. Just her sweet soprano harmonizing with Ariana Grande’s. At twenty-three years old, and the most junior on the team, Allison Cagle stuffed envelopes as part of her job. Didn’t matter that she didn’t have a car. Didn’t matter that Jessica, her work best friend and regular ride home, had just called three minutes ago—little Conner had a fever and Jessica needed to drive him to the emergency room. (Watch your back! Don’t wanna stress …
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 224 views
Series have been popular since the beginning of the mystery genre. Anyone remember Sherlock Holmes? Holmes was a professional, however, as was Hercule Poirot. Miss Marple, on the other hand, was an amateur who usually solved cases beyond the capabilities of the police. All three of these characters and their creators remain hugely popular, despite the fact that the characters change very little throughout the course of their respective serial adventures. Most detectives of this Golden Age (roughly 1920 to 1945) never really aged. Margery Allingham, the creator of Albert Campion and a younger contemporary of Agatha Christie, took a different approach, however. Campion age…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 260 views
Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Stephen Graham Jones, My Heart Is a Chainsaw (Gallery / Saga Press) “Horror fans [will] be blown away by this audacious extravaganza.” Publishers Weekly (starred review) Dervla McTiernan, The Good Turn (Blackstone) “A simply brilliant writer.” Don Winslow Paula Hawkins, A Slow Fire Burning (Riverhead) “The flaws of each character will surprise and perhaps even enchant you — and only a clairvoyant could anticipate the book’s ending.” The New York Times Book Review Jaye Viner, Jane of Battery Park (Red Hen Press) “A touching love story superimposed on a tale from Americ…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 223 views
Portland, Oregon. To outsiders perhaps the “City of Roses” with a penchant for hipsterdom, coffee and food trucks. But, as we’ve seen recently, it’s a city of opposing sides, clashing views, uneasy gentrification and social marginalisation. Fertile ground for crime writers, and Portland has turned out quite a few excellent exponents of the genre. You want the Portlandia image of a hipster Oregon city of coffee shops, crafts, poetry circles and food trucks? Then don’t start your Portland crime reading with Don Carpenter’s 1966 classic novel Hard Rain Falling. Jack Levitt, the orphaned teenage anti-hero of the book, living off his wits in the fleabag hotels and seedy pool…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 226 views
CrimeReads asked me to write a post, and as soon as I read the suggested title, I went to the corner drugstore and bought two nine-ounce packages of Coffee Nut M&Ms. I needed inspiration. There are such a lot of ways to eat chocolate. I should know. I was born loving chocolate. And, like every author, I was a reader before I was a writer, and I loved stories before I could read them. My mother used to tell the following one. “When she was around three, JoAnna’s special treat was chocolate milk, which she called ‘choc.’ One afternoon, I was reading, and she came to me and asked for ‘choc.’ And I answered, ‘As soon as I finish my chapter.’ “And she said, ‘When I ask…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 237 views
Kristen and Layne chat with Megan Abbott about her deliciously dark (and New York Times bestselling!) ballet thriller THE TURNOUT, the connection between perfectionism and womanhood, and how to write authentic conflict between female characters while avoiding catfight stereotypes. Grab a copy of THE TURNOUT, or any of Megan’s 9(!) other incredible books in the official podcast Bookshop. From the episode: LAYNE: One thing we’re both so fascinated by in your writing in general is how you create this atmosphere of extreme dread and tension. It’s oppressive almost when you’re reading your books, it’s incredible. And with this one especially, the real action comes later in…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 212 views
Since my first novel was published in 2012, there is one interview question I have been asked more than any other: how does being a clinical psychologist affect your writing? The answer involves not only the material I’m drawn to but also where my focus lies within the story. As an example, in my upcoming novel, The Night We Burned, the main character—a fact-checker—scrambles to conceal the truth about her connection to a twenty-year-old cult massacre, all while dealing with an unacknowledged eating disorder resulting from the trauma she experienced as part of said cult. I wanted to show an extreme example of the ways we carry our past experiences in our bodies, often wit…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 222 views
I first discovered Philip Kerr’s excellent Bernie Gunther series seven years ago. The experience of walking the streets of Nazi-era Berlin to watch Kerr’s good-hearted detective solve a murder mystery while trying to stay true to his moral compass in that snake pit felt exhilarating, challenging, and strange. Reading another of Kerr’s Gunther novels this year, shortly after the Jan. 6 insurrection and an election in which democracy itself seemed at stake, felt altogether more chilling. *** I’ve long been a fan of the sliver of crime fiction that I’ve dubbed totalitarian noir: stories of cops and detectives who try to ply their difficult trade while living within the …
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 233 views
“I don’t know what London’s coming to — the higher the buildings the lower the morals.” ― Noël Coward Noel Coward wasn’t a crime writer, but I think he was right. The rise of the great metropolitan city in the twentieth century neatly dovetails with the rise of crime fiction. For me, the city is where crime writing seems most at home. Cities are full of grifters on the make, the downtrodden and the lost, and the sound of easy money. The D.N.A. of crime fiction. Maybe it’s the memory of dark shadows and dangerous streets in American Noir movies, maybe it’s the fact I’ve lived in cities all my life but I can’t separate the two. Not that there aren’t great crime novels…
Last reply by Admin_99,