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. * Jacqueline Bublitz, Before You Knew My Name (Atria/Emily Bestler) “A brave and timely novel which will fuel the debate on women’s rights to walk safely through our streets. I raced through the pages, anxious for resolution, yet at the same time not wanting this beautiful writing to finish.” –Clare Mackintosh Kenneth Johnson, Holmes Coming (Blackstone) “Clever, tight plots, fresh dialogue, and a take on Holmes that should not only be embraced by those delightful fans of Sherlock…but general readers who want a book that they won’t forget are guaranteed to become fans of the Great D…
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My debut cozy, historical mystery, THE SOCIALITE’S GUIDE TO MURDER, started like this: I wanted to write a story that was essentially Eloise at the Plaza all grown up and solving mysteries. Once I got into the nitty gritty of writing, my main character Evelyn became her own person – er, fictional – with her own problems (she’s a little bit agoraphobic) and quirks (she’s got a talent for finding things). But the vibes that were inspired by one of my favorite childhood stories are still there: a fancy hotel in New York, a main character who goes anywhere she likes inside of it, and a general disregard for the sanity of the hotel manager. This got me wondering what other ch…
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On the eve of the parade, Hanna Schröder was asked to have the Allerton sisters ready for the party in under an hour. It would be difficult, given the girls’ general recalcitrance and specific disregard for the help, especially those with whom they lacked any consequential rapport. When Hanna appeared in their bedroom and asked that they please wash and clothe themselves, the children called her a stranger and told her to go away. “I may be unfamiliar, but I’m no stranger,” Hanna said, stepping toward the girls. “I do your laundry every day. We’ve spoken before. You’re Alice, and you’re Rose.” “I’ve honestly never seen you in my life,” the older one, Alice, said, and H…
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Kate knew something was wrong the moment her phone buzzed. Well, maybe not the exact moment. But, like, pretty soon after. Once her brain registered that the clock read six thirty. In the morning. During summer break. And she’d already missed, like, five messages from Rowan. Six thirty a.m. texts were never a good thing. Kate grunted as she pushed herself to a sitting position, running her fingers through her tangled rat’s nest of wavy auburn curls. She took a deep breath and steeled herself against Rowan’s news. Although, seriously, how much worse could it get? It had been less than twenty-four hours since the bomb dropped, since the cops had shown up at Dex Prat…
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I never thought I’d watch a show like Evil, by which I mean I never thought I’d watch a show in which evilness was the central theme, especially in a Biblical sense. In Evil, a Catholic seminarian, a psychologist, and an environmental researcher investigate numerous mysterious events, attempting to conclude on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church if such incidents have been caused by true supernatural (often demonic) forces or have scientific explanations. Possessions and exorcisms terrify me. I am not a religious person, or an overly superstitious one, but I still don’t mess with content that includes those things. No, thank you. I keep my head down. I avert my eyes. And…
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After a slow couple months of crime television, saved only be the launching of the new Magpie Murders series, which has graciously given you and your mother something to discuss over the holidays, November is back with an array of choice offerings. Personally, I’m going to trust in Steven Knight’s wild reimagining of already bizarre historical events (Rogue Heroes), but there’s plenty more to be excited about. The English (Amazon Prime / Premieres November 11th) Emily Blunt and Chaske Spencer star as an Englishwoman and a Pawnee ex-cavalry scout united in a quest for revenge on the western ranges of 1890s America. The series, created by Hugo Blick (The Honourable Wom…
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(Adapted from the introduction to The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, Volume 3, edited by Paula Guran.) * Poverty, inequality, climate change, violence, disease and so many other evils—real life is frightening. Why, then, would anyone want to read dark fantasy or horror? One traditional view of why we enjoy horror—because it gives us a feeling that bad stuff can be overcome and order restored—may be true, but today’s dark fiction often challenges and discomforts, even in these challenging and uncomfortable times. The fiction of H. P. Lovecraft and Stephen King and many others arose after the societal nightmares of the first world war and a worldwide influenza pa…
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My historical crime novels The Bloodless Boy, The Poison Machine— out on October 25!—and a subsequent sequel The Bedlam Cadaver are all set during the Restoration era of late 17th century London. All three books have a firm grounding in the science—the ‘New Philosophy’—of the time. After 1666’s Great Fire, one of my main characters, Robert Hooke, was appointed as City Surveyor. (Yes, I use real people in my fiction.) Hooke oversaw the rebuilding of a more fire-resistant city, setting regulations, dictating street widths and which materials should be used. He personally surveyed ground plots and adjudicated disputes over land use, and awarded compensation. (And was handso…
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In mid-October, Kensington Books, publisher of some of the finest cozy mysteries, hosted its first Cozy Min Con in two years along with the Mechanicsburg Mystery Bookshop in Pennsylvania. I was fortunate to attend with authors such as Julia Henry, Sherry Harris, and Darci Hannah. Over one hundred attendees drove hours to meet fellow readers and their favorite authors for a few hours. Prizes were given, books were purchased. Everyone shared a passion for the whodunnits of an amateur sleuth with a set of skills to help restore justice to their town, their community, their friends, and family; often with a pet by their side and sometimes a love interest in the works. We all …
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Cozy mysteries have been subtly changing in recent years to try and appeal to a more diverse and younger audience. While the rule of no graphic violence remains, the unwritten rule of no sex and no swearing seems to be showing some flexibility. There has also been a shift to promote a slate of younger sleuths in their 20s, whereas traditionally, cozies have featured sleuths that trend older. Mature sleuths such as Miss Marple and Jessica Fletcher have been cozy mystery staples for many generations, and there’s a reason for this. They are likeable and invoke a feeling of connection and community within their cozy settings. These iconic sleuths have sharp minds that can d…
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Lev AC Rosen, Lavender House (Forge) “A tense character-driven story … Rosen sculpts fully realized characters … Each character’s personal struggles are expertly shown. Like in most families, there are squabbles, pettiness and annoyances punctuating every day, but there also is pure, unconditional love and acceptance that elevate Lavender House. Rosen leaves the door open for what would be a most welcomed sequel.” –Oline Cogdil (South Florida Sun-Sentinel) Ian Rankin, A Heart Full of Headstones (Little, Brown and Co.) “Rankin captures both the heroism and the pathos of that ultimately doomed quest in this cleverly constructed and deeply moving novel.” –Bill Ott…
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Film criticism is always a delight to read—you get to learn as much about your favorite movies as you do about the Bristol Palin pregnancy conspiracy, but without the icky feeling you get after googling “Bristol Palin birther conspiracy”. Horror movie criticism distinguishes itself not only through its broader than average engagement with social criticism, but also by having the best titles in any critical genre, featuring such gems as Men, Women, and Chainsaws (best use of the Oxford comma) and Torture Porn in the Wake of 9/11 (which is about exactly what you’d think it’s about). Given horror cinema’s ongoing renaissance, and my own growing interest in this most intimate…
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I started writing fairy tales after my daughter was born. I already had a son, but I found giving birth to a daughter to be a different experience altogether: it made me think even more deeply about what it meant to be a woman and, most importantly, what sort of woman I hoped my daughter would become. This, of course, made me reflect upon what sort of role model I wanted to be and how I would raise her. I was raised, like most women, to be a “good girl”. This was decades before parents had books like Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls to read their daughters at bedtime and, although my parents were both feminists, they were also steeped in traditional gender values and no…
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Yes, that’s right, mystery fans! The great director Rian Johnson, who masterminded Knives Out and its soon-to-be-released sequel Glass Onion, has made a murder mystery TV show, to be released on Peacock on January 26th. It’s called… Poker Face. For the first time in my life, I can’t wait for January! The project is a collaboration between Johnson and Natasha Lyonne, who plays a PI named Charlie Cole, who can always tell when people are lying (a very good quality to have in a PI). It is a ten-part, case-of-the-week murder mystery show and appears to also feature Adrien Brody, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Lil Rey Howery, and Rob Perlman. (In case you missed the carousel of famous…
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Witches in novels, and in real life, are having a moment. While last summer was defined by the nap dress and Cottagecore, this year’s end to Roe V. Wade makes “goth witch” the only reasonable aesthetic to embrace. After all, the original witch crazes, according to Silvia Federici’s essential theory book Caliban and the Witch, were meant as methods of reproductive control—village women steeped in herblore understood how to terminate a pregnancy, and the capitalist need for new workers, soldiers, and prisoners, (or as Amy Comey-Barrett calls it, the “production of infants”) demands that women with enough knowledge to end a pregnancy be themselves terminated. Paradoxically, …
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Bela Lugosi spoke before a Los Angeles crowd of over two thousand people in August of 1944. The Hungarian-American Council for Democracy (HACD) sponsored the mass rally to urge the Roosevelt administration to end immigration restrictions for Hungarian Jews and to pressure the collaborationist Nazi regime that controlled Lugosi’s homeland to protect those that remained. He had no way of knowing the effort did little good. The SS, with the direct aid of Hungarian fascists, had already deported nearly half a million Jews to death camps in Austria and Poland the previous month. Lugosi described the plight of Hungary’s Jews nearly a quarter of a century after he fled his nati…
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For anyone who has read my debut novel SIGN HERE, it should come as no surprise that I am a fan of dark humor. My mom is the funniest person I know and watching her, especially together with her three brothers, turned me to the dark side early on, and I never looked back. That’s the thing about dark humor. Few simply dabble in it. Either you are a dark humor person, like me and the rest of my family, or you’re not. And you can’t fake it. While all humor has a punchline, dark humor comes with a one-two punch. The way your audience receives the first punch tells us everything, and usually goes one of three ways. Option A: shock, and then strict disapproval. If you are a da…
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When I was a kid I saw two seconds of a horror movie on TV that started a life-long attraction to—and terror of—the genre. In it, a woman on some sort of indoor roller-coaster slams into a brick wall. That’s it. I have no idea what movie it came from; Googling “indoor roller-coaster slam wall horror movie” bears no fruit. All I know is that image has haunted me for decades and led to breathless viewings of Are You Afraid of the Dark? and under-the-covers reads of Goosebumps that both thrilled me… and kept me up at night. I was addicted to the scares, but sleeping with the lights on was really wearing on my sanity — and my parents’ electric bill. Ever the practical kid, a…
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THE DEVIL’S PREDECESSORS For as long as humans have been able to tell one another stories, there have been tales of malevolent and chaotic spirits. The world was full of distressing events that people could not understand—whether it was famine by blights or deaths from mysterious internal causes. To explain life’s most fearful elements, cultures worldwide developed the idea of superhuman beings that sometimes preyed on humanity and engineered misfortunes. As a means of countering these malicious forces, many invoked protection from benevolent gods through prayers and rituals. Such early spiritual traditions also helped uphold the social order: whenever there was conflict…
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Lee and Andrew Child’s new book, No Plan B, was released earlier today, so we asked them a few questions about writing routine, advice, and influence. * What time of day do you write (and why)? Lee Child: I’m ruled by my biological clock, which mandates one unshakeable conclusion: nothing of value is ever achieved in the morning. Typically I get up late and spend a couple of hours moving from a comatose state into something resembling human life. Then I’ll start work about 1 or 2 in the afternoon. I have learned to sense the point when quality starts to diminish, which is usually about 6 hours later, so I’ll stop then. Often I get a second energy peak around midnight, …
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W. Scott Poole has one of those jobs slightly warped kids dream of: he’s a professor and expert in modern horror. His new book, Dark Carnivals: Modern Horror and the Origins of American Empire, focuses on the ascension of the classic monsters—vampires, wolfmen, Frankensteins—and about the real monsters we face. His previous book, Wasteland, argued that the Great War greatly influenced our fears and monsters, and Carnivals is both a continuation and a shift from classic monsters to truly nefarious—and often invisible—enemies. Horror is not my jam, but I’ve read the classics: Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the entire Twilight trilogy. I am interest…
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When I finished my debut novel, The Confessions of Matthew Strong, I planned a trip to Birmingham, Alabama to search for the plantation homes and graveyards of the southern slaveholders who inspired the book. Yet, when my wife suggested I bring my 14-year-old daughter with me, I hesitated. After all these years, the racist violence in the deep South that tormented me and drove my family to migrate from Alabama to New York City still haunted me. But, come on, I thought. Did I really think she or I would become targets of some white supremacist? That was ridiculous. I knew Birmingham had done tremendous work to repair the racial divide since the 1960s. The city was over 50 …
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On Monday, December 23, 1799, the morning after Elma Sands disappeared, the death of George Washington dominated New York newspapers. Muffled church bells tolled continuously for an hour beginning at noon, as they would each day up to the former president’s ceremonial funeral in Manhattan a week later. To memorialize the general who liberated New York from the British on Evacuation Day in 1783 and was inaugurated in the city as the nascent nation’s first president six years later, marchers accompanied a symbolic three-foot-tall urn to a service at St. Paul’s Chapel on Broadway, where Washington had worshipped after he was sworn in. “Every kind of business ceased, and ever…
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The following is excerpted from the introduction to Spies and Lies: How China’s Greatest Covert Operations Fooled the World by Alex Joske. _____________________________________ One April day in 2001, Lin Di sat before an exclusive audience in Washington, DC. His host, the former US government China expert Chas Freeman, gave only a brief introduction to the talk. Lin was well known to Freeman and the many foreign policy luminaries gathered at the National Press Club. As secretary-general of a key Chinese cultural exchange organisation, Lin had established contacts across America’s policymaking circles and Chinese communities. In Beijing, he’d warmly welcomed dozens of Am…
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Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Wanda Morris, Anywhere You Run (William Morrow) “Beautifully rendered prose written in the vernacular of a small Mississippi town will immerse readers in the lives of two sisters trying to survive. In this viscerally frightening novel of the Jim Crow era, Morris writes a stunning, heartbreaking portrayal of being Black in the 1960s U.S. South.” –Library Journal Claudia Lux, Sign Here (Berkley) “Lux brilliantly combines satire, suspense, and pathos in her remarkably assured debut…Lux balances the whodunit plot and her antihero’s quest perfectly as the action builds to a surprising…
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