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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Louis Armstrong did not need to be told that the honky-tonks that were connected were the honky-tonks where you wanted to be. He learned this from King Oliver, whom he worshipped. Oliver was twenty years older than Armstrong. In many ways, the veteran cornetist and bandleader was both a mentor and father figure to the young musician. “I never stop loving Joe Oliver,” said Armstrong. “He was always ready to come to my rescue when I needed someone to tell me about life and its little intricate things and help me out of difficult situations.” Oliver had a big, bald head that he often topped with a bowler hat. He could be formal and stern, but he had a laying style on the…
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This is not a post about puzzle mysteries, but rather a roundup of puzzles for mystery readers. I believe I speak for many of us when I say that in the pandemic I’ve developed a taste for jigsaw puzzles. Yes, just like a newfound love of baking or house plants, jigsaw puzzles are the perfect hobby for home. But I haven’t been doing just any jigsaw puzzles – I’ve been doing themed puzzles! Here are a few very cool recent puzzles that appeal to horror, mystery, and crime fiction lovers. Some are based on specific books to the point of being able to follow along with the plot through solving the puzzle. Some are odes to the beloved figures behind the genre, or to the places …
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Anatomy of a Supercell Supercells are the king of thunderstorms. They can tower ten or more miles high, spin like a top, and produce some of the fiercest weather on Earth. They are elegant and destructive, and beautifully terrifying. And they are a force to be reckoned with. Supercells aren’t like ordinary thunderstorms, which clump together into clusters or gusty squall lines. Supercells are small and potent. A single storm may only be five or ten miles wide, but in that tiny space could be packed destructive straight-line winds, softball-sized hail, flooding rains, and tornadoes. What makes a supercell special is its isolation. While other thunderstorms may compete…
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Limehouse prison is, as you might imagine, horrible. Except maybe you can’t imagine it, not really. There are no games consoles and flat-screen TVs, as you have surely read about in the newspapers. There’s no friendly communal vibe, no sisterly trib—the atmosphere is usually frantic, hideously loud, and it often feels as though a fight will break out at any moment. From the beginning, I’ve tried to keep my head down. I stay in my cell as much as possible, in between meals that could optimistically be described as occasionally digestible, and attempt to avoid my roommate, as she tiresomely likes to be called. Kelly is a woman who likes to ‘chat’. On my first day here four…
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Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Amina Akhtar, Kismet (Thomas and Mercer) “Akhtar brings to her second novel…a gimlet-eyed view of Sedona, Ariz.’s wellness pretensions and a wicked way with one-liners…the surprises Akhtar has in store upend assumptions about trauma, healing, and the motivations of those who helicopter into lands they claim to hold sacred.” –Los Angeles Times S. S. Van Dine, The Benson Murder Case (American Mystery Classics) “Mr. Van Dine’s amateur detective is the most gentlemanly, and probably the most scholarly snooper in literature.” –Chicago Daily Tribune Tyrell Johnson, The Lost Kings …
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I was born in Hawaii and have at least one picture of my young self on the beach with a huge hibiscus in my hair. Since we moved when I was two, I don’t remember much about constantly being on a beach in a playpen, but I do have the photographic evidence to show that it happened. Maybe that’s why my perfect reading day involves sand, sea, a light breeze, a frosty beverage, and a healthy dose of murder! However, we then moved to Pennsylvania, which does not exactly have oceanfront property. We have a lot of rivers, creeks, and lakes, but not so much a seaside, with Pennsylvania being a mostly landlocked state. New Jersey wasn’t that far away though, and I took every oppor…
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One of the first public events I attended after lockdown was a Solve-Along-A-Murder-She-Wrote at a London cinema, with my mother, brother and cousin. Together, we cheered as Jessica Fletcher asked probing questions and tested alibis in a convent full of nuns. All the while our host, dressed as Jessica in various guises, asked us to judge who we thought was most suspicious—based entirely on which guest star was most famous when the episode originally aired in 1987. It was an absolute hoot, and we loved every moment of it. You see, I grew up in a family of murder mystery addicts, and a mass solve-along is absolutely our idea of fun. As a small child, my first murder myste…
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I aspire to be the feminine embodiment of California Noir. I like neon skies and neon signs. I like the way sunburns turn to freckles. And like in the Cali Noir, I have a dark angsty underlayer. I giggle flirtatiously as I describe my debut novel The Roommate as a psychological thriller when there’s a straight-up slasher scene. I like to imagine Dorothy B. Hughes did the same when describing In a Lonely Place. The Roommate is about Donna, a restless twentysomething who unexpectedly inherits a turquoise bungalow in SoCal. After settling in, she recruits a roommate to help pay the bills. But soon, she realizes her sunny, quirky comrade is not a long-lost bestie but a dange…
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As I’ve been watching an eclectic bunch of classic films lately, it occurred to me that I was unintentionally watching a series of what I came to call stealth, or unexpected, crime films. Especially in the sense of the films not being known as stories about murder and mayhem. But they were just that. Moviegoers in 1960 could almost – almost, I say – count “Psycho” among such films, just for the audacious fake-out that takes place more than a half hour into director Alfred Hitchcock’s classic. Sure, it was a Hitchcock movie, so you knew there would be violent death. But that plot twist. In Hollywood history to that time, had there ever been a more unpredictable murder? S…
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To be perfectly frank with you, August is not a banner month for crime series on TV (except for one very bright spot, the first selection below, which isn’t really a crime series). Why? It’s hard to say. Traditionally it was a dead time on the TV calendar but that’s not really the case anymore. Maybe there’s a drought in productions, but then why did the streaming services all run their best stuff in the same three week period in April? If I had to guess, the current gap is down to the juggernaut series coming at the end of the month: the Game of Thrones spinoff on HBO and the Lord of the Rings project on Amazon. So, a good month for fantasy fans. Let’s try to be happy fo…
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It’s summer and thoughts turn (after the last couple of stay-at-home years) to travel, venturing abroad, places foreign. CrimeReads’ Lizzy Steiner has recently recommended US-based podcasts so let’s look a little further afield. Here’s a summer round up of the best international podcasts you might want to download before taking off… ___________________________________ England ___________________________________ Scotland Yard Confidential (Noiser Podcasts) Bristol-based Noiser Podcasts have had great success with their Real Dictators, Real Outlaws, Real Pirates, and Real Narcos series’. Their latest is Scotland Yard Confidential, ranging from the early nineteenth ce…
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Prologue “Do you hear that?” her uncle whispered. “Hear what?” she said, refraining from taking a big bite of the caramel apple she’d made. “The rustling. Over there. In the bushes.” Her ears strained. The fire burning in the pit between their lawn chairs popped, sending up orange embers that failed to alleviate the encompassing darkness. She shook her head and lifted the apple to the corner of her mouth where she still had teeth capable of piercing the hard flesh; adult incisors had yet to fill the holes in her smile. “Listen,” he hissed, once more stopping her from taking a bite. “I don’t hear any—” The rustle of leaves sounded from far off in the yard, back where…
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Dwyer Murphy is a man of letters. Before becoming the editor of CrimeReads, Murphy was a lawyer, a litigator, and an Emerging Writing Fellow at the Center for Fiction in New York City. He also plays a mean game of pickup basketball, or so I hear. What I do know for certain is that Dwyer has written one hell of a debut. An Honest Living sings like a classic from the first page. Every line is packed in tight but still manages to dance all the way up until the novel’s brilliant conclusion. Murphy isn’t just a writer to watch, he’s a writer we’ll all be talking about for a long time to come. Which is just my way of saying, I was more than excited to get to sit down and …
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So who would be nuts enough to write a novel with six viewpoint characters who have nothing in common except for their connection to an old self-storage facility? Apparently, me. My previous three novels, The Art Forger, The Muralist and The Collector’s Apprentice, were all historical art-themed stories told in multiple voices across multiple times in multiple locations with multiple plotlines. When I sat down to write my next novel, I decided to do something different. And easier. My plan was to create a present-day story that takes place in Boston—where I live—rather than Paris or Philadelphia or NYC, where I don’t. It wouldn’t have anything to do with art, and it woul…
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When I was eighteen, my best friend and I ditched our afternoon classes, hopped in a truck with a guy we’d met that morning, and drove from Connecticut to Vermont to see the Halle-Bopp comet streak across the sky. In the days and weeks that followed, our televisions hummed with the news of a group called Heaven’s Gate—thirty-nine people who died en masse by suicide in an effort to board the spaceship they believed followed in the comet’s wake. I shared this story with my sixteen-year-old daughter recently. She was horrified. “You drove all the way to Vermont with a guy you didn’t even know?” She managed to be completely jaded and utterly shocked, all in one sentence. T…
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It always seems to be quiet when it happens, when no one else is around. It’s often late at night when the blackness that surrounds can’t possibly get any more oppressive. But then it does. The stillness pulsing in my ears grows louder, as if there is no such thing as complete silence. At least, not in my head. I grew up fully aware of the spooky stories associated with my grandmother’s creaky old house in Maine. We visited every summer on family vacations, and I absolutely adored being there with her. She was the inspiration for Amelia, the sweet grandmother in my Coastal Maine Precipice Series. Over the years my parents regaled me with their experiences of seeing the …
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In the early hours of October 17, 1953 in Fairbanks, Alaska, businessman Cecil Wells, 50, was shot by a .380 caliber pistol while he slept. His wife Diane, 31, was badly beaten during what she told police was a two-man home invasion turned deadly. A few days later, police got a tip-off that Diane was having an affair with Black musician Johnny Warren, and the investigation went in a different direction. During research for The Alaskan Blonde: Sex, Secrets, and the Hollywood Story that Shocked America, my book reexamining the case, I expected to be quizzed about what I thought had happened that chilly morning. Instead, the question I was repeatedly and incredulous…
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For better or worse, I’ve lived in small towns nearly all my life. Taking the old “write what you know” to heart, I set my domestic suspense novel, The Perfect Neighborhood, in a leafy suburb that closely resembles the town where I grew up as well as the community where I currently live. One thing you’re all but guaranteed to find in these quaint hamlets is gossip. From back decks to church basements, loose lips are as commonplace as sidewalks and schoolyards. Sometimes the chatter is lighthearted. (Think: Did you hear Bob was twerking at the neighborhood block party?) But on other occasions talk can be more malicious and even downright slanderous. (As in: Meg told me …
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It took Anthony Bourdain forever to get around to featuring Taiwan in one of his food shows, even though he’d been to the country a few times already. He finally made an episode about the capital, Taipei, for his series “The Layover.” I was psyched to see it but after the show aired in January 2013, a few things bugged me. First of all, Bourdain lands at Taoyuan International Airport and then takes an hour-and-a-half cab ride to the W Taipei. He has a few drinks in the hotel bar that hit him “like a cement mixer.” Then he hops on an eastbound commuter train for half an hour to go to Keelung Night Market? Assuming that the jet lag and alcohol intake don’t knock him out (…
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When I decided to set my Gilded Age novel Hot Time during the real-life heat wave that ravaged New York City during August 1896, I imagined that the hellish weather would intensify the drama. But as the book took shape, I found the oppressive heat elbowing its way to center stage alongside the other principal characters—even such imposing figures as Theodore Roosevelt and J.P. Morgan–until the weather permeated every page, amplifying the characters’ misery and even helping to drive the plot. Hot Time unfolds in a roiling city where luxurious wealth exists side by side with abject poverty. The story centers on the (fictional) murder of the real-life publisher William d’Al…
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Megan Miranda is known for her twisty psychological thrillers, atmospheric settings, and deep insight into the psychology of her characters. I’ve been a fan ever since I picked up her second book, The Perfect Stranger, and Megan Miranda’s latest continues to cement her reputation as a writer at the top of her field. In Miranda’s latest slow-burn suspense, The Last to Vanish, a small town is the setting for a series of disappearances against a dramatic mountain backdrop. Megan Miranda was kind enough to answer a few questions about craft, setting, and the art of building suspense. Molly Odintz: One of the themes of the novel is that small towns change their residents; new…
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The domestic blowback of the Vietnam War. The sleaze and corruption of Watergate. The incipient rollback of the counterculture and many gains of the 1960s. Economic recession. The upheaval and uncertainty in the 1970s may have been tough on America’s collective psyche, but it resulted in some incredibly good crime cinema, particularly prior to Jaws in 1975, which helped to usher in the culture of the cinematic blockbuster. And while I will happily admit to being a due paying member of the First-half-of-the-1970s-was-a-great-period-of-American-crime-cinema-fan-club, it does strike me that we tend to focus on the same handful of films from this period over and over. Yes, Th…
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I have a fairly large crime fiction library at home and had access to a vastly larger one still for several years while I was working days at the Center for Fiction, in the old building on Forty-Seventh Street, just shy of the diamond district, which you crossed through on your way to and from the subway and where, in the afternoons, when the diamond hawkers were settled in and feeling good, they would give you a look up and down and decide whether you were a better prospect to buy or to sell. It was a really impressive collection, the Center for Fiction’s. They still have it, only it’s in Brooklyn now, moved by the greater forces of New York City real estate, itself the …
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Featured Image: Painting of Haymarket Riot-1886 (Harper’s Weekly, in the public domain) At the Toronto Parliament of World Religions in 2019, I learned that the first Parliament was held during the 1893 Chicago’s World’s Fair. This caught my interest, because in Murder in Old Bombay, my characters Captain Jim and Diana travel to the States in 1892. When I read that Indian sage, Swami Vivekananda attended the fair, I knew this would be part of my next novel. A towering figure in India, Swami Vivekananda introduced the western world to Vedanta philosophy, Hinduism and Yoga. He must have seen a bustling Chicago. Twenty-seven million people (almost half the US population) c…
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George Dawes Green is the founder of the Moth Radio Hour and the author of several thrillers. His latest novel, The Kingdoms of Savannah, is a dark and humorous portrayal of Savannah, its denizens, and a complex family led by a singular matriarch who also happens to be the head of a private detective agency. Green was kind enough to answer a few questions about genre, character, and the city of Savannah. Molly Odintz: Do you consider this a Southern Gothic novel? What did you want to explore about romanticization versus the realities of the South? George Dawes Green: The nature of any Southern novelist is to resist all labels. But this one I can’t fight. Thomas Bjerre…
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