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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When I was ten years old my mother handed me a worn paperback called THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP by John Irving. “What’s it about?” I asked her. “Life,” she said. I had never read anything so brilliant. She used to take me to the used bookstore and let me buy stacks of paperbacks because I read so fast it was hard to keep me in books. And if we got the usual comment. What’s a little girl like you doing with so many big books…she would look at them and snap…She’s reading them. How may books have you read this week? My mom had one rule about what books I read growing up. Which was there were no rules and I could read anything I wanted. You know what she told me? Use your o…
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Leda was taking a lunch break when a heads-up knock on her door and a friendly “Hello” announced that Grady Merritt was doing the same. “Hey there!” she attempted to reply, but she was still working on a mouthful of pizza, so it came out garbled and a little bit gooey. “Hold on a sec,” she added, and that didn’t come out too much clearer. Grady pulled up a secondhand IKEA seat while she chewed and then swabbed her mouth with a napkin. He crossed one leg over the other and grinned. “Don’t choke. If you choke, I can’t ask you for a real quick favor.” Her final swallow was too big by half, and it stuck in her throat. She seized her soda and chugged it. “Sorry,” she belched…
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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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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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Blackwater Falls is a book I wrote during the pandemic. It was inspired by the killing of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, and by the wave of the protests that swept the nation after his death. George Floyd was a Black man killed by a white police officer who knelt on his neck for nearly ten minutes, despite Floyd pleading for his life. That police officer, Derek Chauvin, was eventually convicted on charges of second degree murder, third degree murder and manslaughter, and sentenced to twenty-two years in prison. As a police officer, Chauvin had a record of at least seventeen misconduct complaints prior to his killing of George Floyd. It was not the first killing of a Black…
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The job du jour in thrillers is the influencer, an unfortunate but accurate reflection of life. Time was a beautiful, fashionable woman would be a model, or an actress, or a waitress who wants to be a model or an actress and sometimes teaches yoga too. Or meditation. Anything where she can be photographed in enviable scenic locations doing something Insta worthy: headstands! Jet skiing! Joking with some native children! She’s plugging several athleisure companies, a pop-up that makes pure beeswax candles infused with exotic oils, and a new and better bottled water. Lots to cover this month. Stay tuned for the aforementioned influencers, an extreme prepper, a tech whiz, …
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In my literature classes, I often asked students to investigate literary texts for their representation of contemporary social issues. What, for example, does Franz Kafka’s The Trial say about the absurdity of life and the legal system in the early twentieth century? Or, how does a natural disaster reveal a crisis of the social order in Heinrich von Kleist’s 1807 “The Earthquake in Chile”? This probing of human truths is an exercise often applied to literary fiction, but less so to genre. And yet, crime, like other examples of literature, holds a magnifying glass to the vices and virtues of the human condition. The first time I spoke with my editor, he asked me, why, as …
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One of my favorite things, as an author, is to play with structure. My home genre is science fiction because it allows me to tip the natural world to the side to expose the interconnected tissue. But I also have a deep love for mystery as well. I love the twists and reveals. It turns out that these two genres play really well together. I think that genres divide into two major types: structure-driven genres and aesthetic-driven genres. Structure-driven genres are things like mysteries, thrillers, and romances. Without a meet/cute and happily ever after, it’s not really a romance. Without red herrings and unveiling the murderer, it’s not a murder mystery. Science fictio…
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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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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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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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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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Ann Woodward had resolved to live a quiet life in Europe, where she could mourn her late husband, Billy Woodward, far from the madding crowd of the American press, the town of Saint Moritz, high in the Swiss Alps, was certainly an unusual place to retreat to. Renowned for its winter sports, popular as a spa hamlet, and exclusive as a community where entertainers, celebrities, and assorted socialites gathered, Saint Moritz was a lesser European sun around which various society moons revolved. While summer tourism was popular, it was in winter that this small city shined. Luminaries descended in head-to-toe furs in the daytime and flashy jewels at night, their diamonds and …
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Where it All Began
