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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Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Michael Connelly, Desert Star (Little Brown) “Thrilling… Both cases require deep dives into the past; both lead to great action scenes; and, as always, Connelly displays his encyclopedic knowledge of the latest forensics… Bosch, however, takes a low-tech approach and follows leads in the field with his trademark intensity, driven by his desire to restore order in a violent world… [Desert Star] ranks up there with Connelly’s best.” –Publishers Weekly Lauren Nossett, The Resemblance (Flatiron) “A timely, expertly plotted mystery about power and privilege, The Resemblance will grab …
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The Maldives may be many people’s idea of paradise, a dream holiday, the perfect honeymoon. But in the world of crime fiction it’s most definitely a paradise gone seriously wrong! Nobody is who they seem; the perfect partner a potential killer; those clear blue seas a death trap. But it still looks like an oasis in the idle of the Indian Ocean and has emerged as a rather specialist location for the sub-genre of crime writing we admittedly mention all too rarely in Crime and the City – romance mysteries. It’s a big genre for Maldives-set books – that man you thought irresistible, handsome, rich, kind, in love with you? Well it usually turns out that maybe he’s none of thos…
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I have a weird job. I think. Maybe. On the one hand, when I tell people what I do, it almost invariably brings them up short. To me, on the other hand, it seems perfectly normal. I sit in front of a computer reading spreadsheets, scanning emails, and jumping onto Zoom calls. It is the everyday life of the everyday 21st century knowledge worker. To the extent that I do anything out of the ordinary at the office, it’s that I’m extremely resistant to working during my lunch hour: which just makes me . . . French? “Non, mon ami. Call me in an hour. I am about to leave the building to eat something. Join me if you wish, but don’t talk about le travail.” Oddly, though, my lun…
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What goes into writing a Holiday-themed mystery? We brought together three mystery masters who between them have written at least eighteen Christmas whodunits. The writers chiming in on this Christmas crime-novel confab are Carolyn Haines, most recently author of Bones of Holly, the new book in her Sarah Booth Delaney series; David Rosenfelt, who’s novel Santa’s Little Yelpers is the sixth X-mas mystery in his long-running Andy Carpenter series; and Donna Andrews, who has has written several holiday mysteries featuring her amateur sleuth Meg Langslow, most recently Dashing Through the Snowbirds. Carolyn Haines: I’ll start us off by throwing a writing question out there: …
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The CrimeReads editors select the best new fiction in crime, mystery, and thrillers. * Erika T. Wurth, White Horse (Flatiron) Erika T. Wurth’s White Horse is part horror novel, part detective story, as a haunted woman finds herself compelled to investigate her mother’s long-ago disappearance. Why did her mother leave her at two days old? Why did no one listen to her father when he suspected foul play? How many others have gone missing the exact same way? What is her mother trying to tell her through the visions she sees when she wears her mother’s powerful beaded bracelet? And what is the horrifying presence she’s accidentally conjured into this world, along with he…
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Netflix’s sequel to Enola Holmes, cleverly titled Enola Holmes 2, is a very elaborate presentation, with a great number of side elements and subplots attached to an excellent historical mystery, one that involves real-life characters and situations. I expect some will say that the romance, action, and comedy distract from the main story, while others will see those embellishments as helping to sell a whodunit based on a factual injustice. At a couple of places, I found myself wondering if the love story, the dance hall number, the rooftop chase scene, the ballroom gala, the prison break, the sword fight, and the many asides spoken directly to the audience were all necessa…
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An assassination. A hanging. An axe murder. How much of the way I tackle these topics in YA true crime caters to teens themselves, and how much is presenting ugly realities in such a way that adults (aka: gatekeepers) won’t balk at handing these books to a kid? In the current political climate, that’s a very big question. Hanged! Mary Surratt and the Plot to Assassinate Abraham Lincoln and The Borden Murders make almost no concessions to gatekeepers — especially the current breed. I agree with Laurie Halse Anderson’s assessment that the folks who are bent on censoring books are mostly concerned with “protecting” kids from conversations adults don’t want to have. Here’s …
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Murder After Christmas is an unusual and amusing Christmas mystery novel that has been out of print for three-quarters of a century. First published in 1944, this is a little-known book by a little-known author whose life was tragically cut short before he could continue his career in crime fiction. The story is a Yuletide mystery in the fine old English tradition, but there are frequent reminders of the hostilities taking place elsewhere. The story opens at the home of Frank and Rhoda Redpath in the run-up to the festive season, and the couple reflect on the inability of Rhoda’s stepfather, rich old “Uncle Willie,” to take his usual trip to Italy. Rhoda reckons that “Mu…
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Thanks to the contributors to Close to Midnight: New Horror Short Stories, edited by Mark Morris, for sending some thoughts on short form horror to the CrimeReads inbox. Close to Midnight is now available from Flame Tree Press. What does the short story form bring to horror? Charles Hughes: It means there is nowhere to hide. Fiction which unsettles, terrifies or shocks needs to touch core human instincts. Telling a horror story in a few thousand words disciplines writers to focus on those core elements. Horror short stories can still be complex and ambitious, but, when done well, they also pack a punch which is often lost in the longer form. Mark Morris: Short fiction…
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We were half-way through the day shift when we got word that a woman in preterm labor was being admitted through the Emergency Room. Though cryptic, the presenting information on the case seemed routine enough to me. Thirty-four, third trimester, first baby. But what did I know? At nineteen, as a nursing student in my Maternal Child Health rotation, it was my job to shadow a nurse and doctor team and do as I was told. Things escalated quickly. The chart that had been hastily put together with her name running down the spine was confiscated. The protected one that replaced it, that only our small team had access to now, said Doe or Jones or Smith. I can’t remember which f…
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At a little after ten, Mrs Hudson and Billy, our page, approached the door to the sitting-room bearing between them an enormous basket of fruit with a red ribbon tied atop it. ‘Mrs Hudson,’ I exclaimed. ‘Billy! Let me help you with that.’ I placed it on our dining table, where it took up nearly the entire surface. Against the background of Holmes’s sombre quarters, it appeared like a sparkling pirate’s treasure chest set out in a dusty library. Oranges, pears, lemons, apples, grapes, currants, pomegranates and even peaches and plums were crammed in profusion into the wicker basket. On the top was a pineapple. The out-of-season produce must have cost that same pirate’s …
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I met Yasmin Angoe in Minneapolis for Bouchercon 2022. We hit it off and later became part of a super exclusive group chat entitled, “Real Housewives of Bonnets and Shade.” Kellye Garrett is also a member of the group—maybe the founding member—but that’s another story. Today’s story is all Yasmin, or just “Yas” if you’re cool and you know her like that. Yas is a first-generation Ghanaian American. Prior to becoming a bestselling, award-winning author, she spent nearly twenty years in education teaching middle and high school students. Maybe that’s why we’ve become besties (teachers got to stick together!), or maybe it has more to do with how we approach writing. Yas’s …
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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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I hate conflict of any kind. I go so far as to take the pickles and tomatoes off my burger rather than ask for them to be held, thus ensuring there is no mistake for me to point out later (or more than likely not point out at all). That doesn’t stop conflict from occurring regularly. It has been around every corner since I was a child, always waiting to turn. Conflict is bad. Violence is worse. And yet it is violence that has historically been the natural progression of conflicts, both major and minor. From wars to riots to domestic disputes, barroom brawls and playground bullies. Violence is inherent. An infant or toddler when faced with something disagreeable will try …
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The Story of a Cheat (1936) is my favorite hidden gem. It’s a film that not many people today know of, written and directed by someone that not many people (especially in America) have heard of, and it is as innovative and delightful as anything I can think of. The picaresque adventures of the titular “Cheat,” and the dazzling cinematic style which the filmmakers use to tell his story, are just as entertaining today as they were when audiences saw them during its first release 86 years ago. I have been showing this film to friends and family for years to help it find new fans, and they always find something to appreciate. I can think of few other films which are as ripe f…
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Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Anthony Horowitz, The Twist of a Knife (Harper) “This humorous homage to golden age closed-circle mysteries is not to be missed.” –Publishers Weekly Amita Murray, Arya Winters and the Cupcakes of Doom (Agora) “A captivating blend of mystery and romance that explores themes of diversity and social dysfunction with subtlety and empathy but also with wacky, sometimes ribald humor. Offbeat, irreverent, funny, and boasting a broad, multifaceted plot, this one will appeal to fans who enjoy quirky, genre-defying reads.” –Booklist Sevgi Soysal (transl. Maureen Freely), Dawn (Archip…
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From Holmes to Marlowe, Dupin to Spade, depictions of a brilliant man solving crime outside the law became the default canon for the private investigator. He’s a lone wolf, capable of taking a punch but taking no bull. His keen powers of observation and understanding of human frailty provide insight into every crime. Femmes were fatales or Fridays, honeytraps or helpers. Rarely the sleuth in charge. One of the queens of sleuth fiction herself, Dorothy L. Sayers, bemoaned in an introduction to the first Omnibus of Crime in 1928: “There have . . . been a few women detectives, but on the whole, they have not been very successful.” Crime fiction is often considered a misogy…
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There is a saying that there is no one more devout than a convert. And when it comes to a committed relationship with a city that runs deep and runs true, there is no writer more devoted to Los Angeles and its environs than Robert Crais, whose latest Elvis Cole and Joe Pike novel, Racing the Light, was published on November 1, 2022. That’s not to say that other writers past and present haven’t given the City of Angels its rightful due, or that Bob’s Los Angeles is all moonbeams and unicorns—after all, this is crime fiction, bad things happen to good people— it’s just that Bob’s affection for the locations where the denizens of his novel work and live pours out on the page…
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Whenever I’m asked for tips about writing, the first piece of advice I give is always the same: The trick to crafting a good mystery is reading a good mystery. Any time a story surprises you, any time a twist takes your breath away or makes you rethink everything you thought you knew up to that point, you’re learning something essential about the art of building a top-notch whodunit. I cut my teeth as a writer on books by Agatha Christie, Gillian Flynn, and Sara Shepard, authors well-versed in the art of red herrings and sleight of hand, whose novels made me itch to open my laptop. And the late, great Sue Grafton taught me you could play your hand face-out and still shoc…
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Like so many others, my interest in true crime podcasts started with Serial, the award-winning 2014 production that investigated the murder of Hae Min Lee. I was captivated by the twisty narrative and the complicated question of a killer’s guilt, which culminated in Adnan Syed’s release from prison in 2022. In the years since, Serial launched a tide of true crime podcasts that cover a range of formats and narrative structures. Popular weekly podcasts such as Crime Junkie and My Favorite Murder highlight different cases each week, while other shows use ten or more episodes to explore a single case, similar to the Serial format. Then there’s Dateline NBC, the most popula…
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“Hello?” Red called, her voice hollow, her eyes alive, sorting through shadows. Perfect. This was the absolute worst way to die. Mid–squat-pissing behind a tree while Maddy’s axe-murderer charged at her from the front. Dignified till the end. No, the worst way to die must be suffocating, no, no, actually, the worst was on your knees, two shots to the back of the—all right, all right, let’s finish up here. There wasn’t anyone in the trees. Red knew that. She did. The only people were the ones she knew of, behind her on the scrubland. It was just a rat, or a bat, or a raccoon, or maybe a vampire. But it didn’t matter because she was finished. Her legs shook as she strai…
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—This story is a co-publication with The Delacorte Review. Debra Star Rizzo, age fifteen, disappeared shortly after 4 p.m. on Monday, July 24, 1978. Her badly decomposed remains were discovered nine days later. That’s a long time ago, but I have not forgotten. On that long-ago afternoon, Debbie had just left her daily one-hour counseling session at Comprehensive Mental Health Services of Pinellas, Inc., on South Belcher Road in Clearwater, Florida. It has since been rebranded as Directions for Living (“Life Gets Better Here”), but the center is still there. Landscaped oaks and palms shelter it from the sweltering sun and surrounding sprawl. A green awning wraps around t…
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When I started writing Welcome to The Game, I knew the car would be a lead character. I’m not claiming any of Wernher von Braun’s deductive powers here. After all, the novel’s protagonist is an ex-rally driver who sells niche performance cars in not just any old city, but the Motor City, and who unwittingly becomes involved in a heist, the successful execution of which requires a very specific driving ability. Cars bring to the modern thriller what horses brought to the Western; namely, speed and excitement, car chases, drive–bys, hit and runs and so forth. I’m not saying one needs a car chase to make a bank robbery exciting. That’s the wonderful thing about imagination …
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Ninety-two-year-old Kathryn Johnston was dead, which meant big trouble for police officers Jason Smith and Gregg Junnier. Three hours earlier, everything had looked so promising. Atlanta police had busted Fabian Sheats for the third time in four months. In exchange for his release, the local drug dealer-turned-informant had tipped them off to a major stash at 933 Neal Street—an entire kilo of cocaine. Sheats wasn’t one of their registered informants so they couldn’t legally use him to get a warrant, but Smith and Junnier applied for a warrant anyway by inventing an imaginary snitch. They called him a “reliable confidential informant” and told the magistrate judge that th…
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In 43 AD, the Romans founded the settlement of Londinium. In 61 AD it was stormed by Iceni Queen Boudica and burnt to the ground but, by 100 AD, Londinium had superseded Colchester to become the capital of the Roman province of Britannia. Roman London had a population of around 60,000, nowadays the city is home to almost nine million people. Given London’s rich history, it’s not surprising that the metropolis has been the setting for many classic novels. Think of Sherlock Holmes: Baker Street, hansom cabs, Big Ben looming out of swirling fog. Holmes’ creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, was from Edinburgh but he knew there could only be one address for his sleuth. Charles Dicken…
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