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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What really happened? That question lies at the heart of so many crime novels, and yet the answer, that very truth, can often depend on who’s telling the story and the truth they believe. Authors employ various story structures to dole out information in a way that keeps the questions coming and the answers satisfying. When those truths don’t quite mesh, conflict and tension ensue. I love stories that play with perspective, and how different people interpret the same events, so that question—what really happened?—lies at the heart of my latest novel, Who to Believe. The story takes place over the course of a single night, as a group of friends gather in the wake of a br…
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When I had the idea to write a novel about coercive control set in a time before anybody knew what it was, I turned to some of my favourite novels for inspiration. While rereading them, making mental notes on unreliable narrators, atmosphere and the skilful basket-weave of uncertainty that permeated the plots, I realised that I myself had read most of these novels without knowing what coercive control was. A form of domestic abuse – in some ways the very dark heart of it – coercive control was only made a crime in the UK in 2015. I was 26 years old at the time, and it was the first I’d heard of it. It was not, however, my first experience of it. I realised coercive contro…
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What makes an academic institution the perfect setting for fictional crime? Perhaps it’s because there is so much at stake when a child or young adult is exposed to a crime. A campus, whether primary, secondary or tertiary, offers the potential for a juicy closed-room thriller – not to mention a substantial roll of suspects from a pool of pupils, teachers and parents. When I wrote my third novel The School Run, I chose a fictional private high school for my sinister goings-on. St Ignatius Boys’ Grammar was an institution so hallowed and revered that mothers would do anything to get an admissions offer for their sons – including commit murder. It was so intriguing to me…
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What do the following have in common: rituals shrouded in mystery; a closed circle of suspects; backstabbing intelligentsia; built-in power structures; and beautiful settings, from the gothic to the bucolic. They could be features of many crime novels, no matter the genre, but they’re also some of the reasons why academia has proven such a rich source for crime fiction. Here are six standouts (five novels and one true crime). Gaudy Night, Dorothy L. Sayers (1935) I teach a course called Women Crime Writers as part of the Emerson College MFA program. Sayers’ novel was the first book I added to the syllabus (paired with her fantastic essay, “Are Women Human?”). Set in O…
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Private schools—with their old-money elitism, ivy-covered buildings, and bucolic grounds that look more like country clubs than educational institutions—are ripe settings for mysteries and thrillers. Behind the stone gates, secrets are closely guarded, longstanding traditions can take on the air of cultic rituals, and justice is often meted out in a clandestine manner. I create just such a world of cloistered power in my upcoming novel, All the Dirty Secrets, where my main character, Liza, a graduate of a Washington D.C. private school, must face the dark side of such privilege. For research, I drew on my own last two years of high school at a New England boarding school,…
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In the spring of 2019, long before the global pandemic hijacked the news, the FBI’s Operation Varsity Blues (OVB) college admissions scandal dominated the headlines for months. Jaws dropped around the world as rich and famous parents were indicted for faking sports resumes, cheating on standardized tests, and paying huge sums in bogus philanthropic contributions to guarantee golden admission tickets for their offspring. The incessant news coverage continued with each plea deal struck and prison sentence meted out. A few years before OVB made headlines, we’d begun exploring the parental college admissions battleground—the crown jewel of competitive parenting. We’d observe…
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We get by with a little help from our friends—right? But what if those friends don’t really have our best interests at heart? What happens when a friendship veers into enemy—or frenemy—territory, leading to secrets, betrayals, maybe even murder? My upcoming novel, Keep Your Friends Close, follows Mary and Willa, two moms who meet at a Brooklyn playground and become fast friends … for awhile, at least. Only then, Willa ghosts Mary, disappearing from her life without so much as a trace. It all comes to a head later that summer when Mary sees Willa up in the Catskills. Or she thinks she does: Willa is calling herself Annie now, and she’s got an entirely different family i…
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I’ve been writing all my life but for most of it, it was a secret indulgence, like swimming naked in the sea at night or eating chocolate belonging to my children. Most people who knew me didn’t realise that I wrote, and wouldn’t have been interested if they had. I wrote snippets here and there, short stories and even shorter things that didn’t even warrant the title ‘story’. Observations, notes for characters, there was no pattern to it and no discipline. I had five children and when they were little they slept in a crib on wheels. I could rock the crib with my foot while I lay on the bed propped on my elbow, scribbling in an exercise book. Guess what, those children gr…
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A house whose sordid history plays into a storyline is catnip to my reader’s soul. I will invariably pounce on any cover featuring an old house—especially one whose size foreshadows infinite nooks and crannies in which secrets galore are hidden. Gothic house on a tidal island, posh Paris apartment building, glamorous Manhattan one, a Brooklyn neighborhood with homes clustered tight, an old-money family retreat in upstate New York, and an English country manor—I don’t discriminate; give me all the sprawling, sinister abodes. Perhaps the origin point for this proclivity is having spent my childhood poring over glorious Nancy Drews, many of which center around grand country …
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As readers of thrillers and suspense, we love the feeling of adrenaline pumping as we sleuth our way through clues left strategically for us by the authors. While we constantly crave these page-turning mysteries and action-packed plots that keep us guessing until the final pages, more and more authors have started turning to unique formats and structure to help them stand out among the masses. Not only does a unique format in a thriller give a breath of fresh air to readers in the genre who see a lot of similar tropes, but it’s also a fascinating and strategic tool for how those delicate breadcrumbs are revealed. These techniques, while more challenging to execute, propel…
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