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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Ahead of the launch of Out of the Ashes, my first book for adults, the question I keep getting asked, more than any other, is: What difficulties did you encounter writing this novel, as a YA writer? Before my adult debut, I published seven mystery novels for teenagers. It seems natural that readers would be curious about the difference between writing for adults and writing for teenagers. But in certain cases, the phrasing of that particular question has an undeniable subtext. What some people really seem to be asking, is, was it hard, writing your first real book? The bias against young adult literature has been discussed at length in the book community and within pub…
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It was 2006. Heartbeats by The Knife was raging through the plastic pores of our computer speakers as we thrust our legs into our American Apparel tights. My best friend Emily and I were preparing to go to Lit Lounge in the East Village. Emily was deliriously beautiful with long blonde hair and outrageously big eyes like one of those 80’s kitsch paintings. I was in art school. Emily was modeling, mostly paid in clothes which she’d pawn at Tokyo 7 for cash. It didn’t take long before she became a nightlife micro-celebrity. And each night we’d go out I’d hover in the background providing a chunk of shoulder or a blur of skin to frame her, watching as her image was sliced aw…
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The setting of South Kilburn in my autobiographical novel Who They Was, is not a typical literary setting. It is a large housing project in northwest London, made notorious by gangs and crime. I moved there in my teens and lived in an apartment in one of the blocks until my early thirties. Those years were formative, and my experiences there are an integral part of my identity. Unlike some representations I have seen of public housing, my portrayal isn’t of a fetishized location, limited to a criminal battleground, nor is it a politicized zone that cries out about social neglect and institutional marginalization. Of course, by truthfully depicting the things I saw, those…
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As I type this, a new film has been released which offers a backstory into the motivations of the Disney villainess Cruella de Vil, a character who needs no introduction (or even, some might say, explanation) but has been given one anyway. I haven’t seen this new film, Cruella, which stars Emma Stone and sets itself up as a pseudo-prequel to Disney’s live-action 101 Dalmatians film from 1996, which starred Glenn Close as the diabolical, piebald, puppy-stealing termagant. I probably won’t see the new film (simply because I’m not very interested in Disney’s live-action remakes and such), but I’m not writing this to knock it. All I can say about it is that I’ve noticed that,…
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“Well, that was fun, but it wasn’t at all realistic!” is an often shared opinion by readers after snapping closed an engrossing though twisty thriller. I always find those kind of assessments amusing because: Don’t we read fiction to escape reality? No matter how far-fetched the plot, I bet I could find a real-life example that is even more outlandish because “Truth is stranger than fiction,” as Mark Twain once said. When I decided to begin researching for my book The Three Mrs. Greys—a novel about Cyrus Grey, a conman who marries three different women and lies unconscious in the hospital room while his wives are left to unravel his secrets and solve his attempted murd…
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Imagine a male character in a book who kicks ass and stands up to bullies. He has chiseled abs and lifts heavy things. He keeps his worries and emotions to himself, but has a vulnerable side and a heart of gold, tucked in deep and shared only with the most deserving. You’re swooning, right? Now, change “he” to “she” and consider how your feelings change. I ask because the idea of “strong women” in fiction seems to be everywhere these days. When I first started as a writer, this wasn’t the case. I was shopping a manuscript that kept getting rejections due to the “likeability” of the heroine. This was a heroine who rescued abused and neglected pit bulls for a living, whi…
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I have a clear memory of one of my earliest conversations with another author. It was perhaps nine months or so before the UK publication of my debut novel, then called The Ghosts of Belfast. I was talking with Colin Bateman, writer of the seminal Belfast crime novel, Divorcing Jack. He said to me, quite confidently, “They won’t let you keep that title, you know.” When I asked why, he told me it was because UK retailers wouldn’t stock a book with Belfast on the cover. He was proven correct a few months later when I received a phone call from my editor—himself a Belfast native—telling me the title needed to be changed for exactly the reasons Colin had predicted. After much…
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la valle d’abisso dolorosa . . . the valley of the sad abyss . . . —Dante, Inferno You find comparatively few murderers among WASPs. Harry Kendall Thaw (the Pittsburgh coal heir who shot Stanford White, the beaux arts architect, on the rooftop of Madison Square Garden in 1906), Jean Harris (the Smith College alumna and Madeira School headmistress who murdered the diet guru Dr. Herman Tarnower in 1980), and William Bradford Bishop (the Yale-educated diplomat who bludgeoned his family to death with a sledgehammer in Bethesda, Maryland, in 1976) very nearly exhaust the list of WASPs who killed other than in the service of the state and the intelligence agencies. As for Li…
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It is hot out there, so why not read a YA mystery or thriller? Young adult crime and suspense is booming, and this list is the proof, with 18 riveting, thrilling, thought-provoking, new and upcoming YA novels. From summer camp slashers, to gothic romance, visceral horror to devastating psychological thrillers, powerful social issue dramas to crackling social parody, you’ll find everything you’re looking for on this list, and more. Check out part one of this list, which ran back in January. Jessica Goodman, The Counselors (Razorbill, May 31) Now, I am way more a fan of a good summer camp slasher than I ever was of actual summer camp, and Jessica Goodman’s The Counsel…
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The CrimeReads editors select the season’s best debut novels. * Latoya Watkins, Perish (Tiny Reparations) In this devastating debut, generational trauma has riven a Black Texas family, but the death of their matriarch may give the family a final chance to tell unvarnished truths to each other and maybe, finally, heal. Latoya Watkins’ impassioned prose brings to life her complex characters and their heavy internal struggles, as well as the flawed, but overwhelming, love they feel for one another. –MO Rasheed Newson, My Government Means to Kill Me (Flatiron) You don’t want to miss My Government Means to Kill Me, the debut novel from Rasheed Newson, producer and w…
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Ahoy there. As I write this, I am sitting in my apartment, with the AC cranked up all the way. It is a sweltering, blindingly-sunny day in New York City. After taking my dog outside for the most unpleasantly hot dog walk we’ve had in a while, I find myself I keep gazing out my window squinting to look at the sliver of some apartment complex’s pool (yes, a pool) visible in the distance. Is it a mirage? I’m not quite sure. IS THAT A BEACH UMBRELLA I SEE BEFORE ME? O, to have a swimming pool in New York City. Or, really, to be somewhere else other than New York City where swimming is more easily accomplished—in a pool, on the beach, wherever. The South of France! Tuscany! Th…
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Everyone, gather round! Sadly, this list marks the end of our Summertime Crime Movies series. But we’re ending it on a very cozy note: campfires, s’mores, looking up at the stars through a lush canopy of evergreens, being hunted by deranged hillbillies… The thing about summery crime movies set in the woods is that they’re almost always horror movies. This is fine, but it’s kind of not what this series is about. (They are often also westerns or war films, which again is fine, but not the target, here.) I’ve tried to keep them as non-horror as possible, but forgive me if some tropes worm their way in. This is why there aren’t many… if I could build a list from Straw Dogs t…
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The season is changing! As I write this, it’s eighty-four degrees and sunny outside. I can hear an ice cream truck out my open window, and also a cop shouting over the cruiser speaker at that ice cream truck, because I guess it’s illegally parked. My eyes are itchy from the pollen and my hair is voluminous from the humidity. On my block, the smells of grilled hot dogs wafting from the balcony barbecues above mingle with the smells of hot dog urine from the sidewalk below. This morning, I saw a pigeon fight with a seagull over a Popsicle wrapper. Rejoice, all, for it is summer in the city. I love—and I mean really love—summer in New York, the terrible place where I was bo…
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Last week, in our Summertime Crime Movies series, we spotlighted urban summer crime films: movies where the heat is so hot, your ice cream cone won’t stand a chance. But this week, we’re spotlighting summer crime movies set in small towns, where things may not be as bustling, but the atmosphere will be just as tense. The thing about crime movies set in small towns is that so many of them are set in the wintertime. Fargo! Winter’s Bone! The Burned Barns! Wind River! A Simple Plan! Blow the Man Down! Alas. ALAS. I wish we could include them, but who wants to watch a film about the cold, right now? Maybe me, actually, because it’s really in New York. In the Heat of the Nig…
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In my last two posts in this series, I have joked that living in New York City during the summer makes me want to go somewhere else (take a road trip or go to the beach). But actually, no, living in New York City during the summer also just makes me want to stay here, because I love summer in New York City. I do. What’s not to love? I love almost getting hit by a barreling ice cream truck every time I cross the street. I love that I can’t take a stroll down to the river in the evenings without six old Italian men blowing cigar smoke in my face. I love wondering “leaf or cockroach?” every time I step on something crackly in the dark. You would love it all, too, if you, lik…
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There’s just something about the Gulf Coast region that invites gritty crime stories. From Dennis Lehane’s Joe Coughlin stories to the work of Carl Hiaasen to Nic Pizzolatto’s Galveston (not to mention the absorbing first season of Pizzolatto’s True Detective), there are many popular examples of hardboiled and noir stories in particular that revel in griminess of the Gulf’s swampy settings and rotten milieus. As someone who grew up on the Gulf, I can understand how the region became so strongly linked with the bleakness of noir. My hometown was a grim, two-faced place: if you wandered a few blocks past the short stretch of road along the waterfront that sold driftwood c…
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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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Thomas Harris could never be considered prolific, publishing just 5 novels in the 44 years since his debut (66% of those novels being Hannibal Lecter-related), but he almost became a household name anyway, when he had the fortune of publishing Red Dragon (his masterpiece) and, more specifically, the bestselling phenomenon The Silence of the Lambs at a pivotal time in pop culture history. The very successful film adaptations of his Lecter novels seem to have permanently overshadowed the source material, however, and even though some might argue that the novels are as noteworthy as they deserve to be, or even slightly overrated, I still maintain this his work is the teeny-t…
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The following is excerpted from the introduction to Palm Springs Noir. * Ten years ago, when my first noir short story, “Crazy for You,” was published in Orange County Noir, my mother-in-law asked me to define the genre. She read mystery fiction and cozies but wasn’t familiar with noir. “In noir, the main characters might want their lives to improve and may have high aspirations and goals,” I said, “but they keep making bad choices, and things go from bad to worse.” Her response was immediate: “Like real life.” We burst into laughter, but it was tinged with the bittersweet pain of knowing. All of us, at one time or another, have found ourselves in sticky situations w…
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In March 2013, a c-suite executive with a large Mexican corporation traveled with his family to their home in Miami, and later to New York City. On Friday, the 29th, they visited the Metropolitan Museum where he attempted to take a 19th century Islamic rosewater/perfume sprinkler from its case in the Damascus Room. Fortunately, a specifically designed mount secured the eleven-inch-tall object’s base and a wire held its top. The museum visitor walked away but returned twenty minutes later and snapped the carved red coral lid and silver stopper off and, after looking lovingly at it, put it in his pocket. The act was recorded on video and because his daughter had used a cred…
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Readers become writers the moment they glance away from the page, distracted by their own inner voice announcing, Hey, I can do that. In my case, it took a few nanoseconds more to sense that my first protagonist, would be, like me, a suburban Long Island mom. She’d have left behind a stimulating job (in my case, as a magazine editor and freelance political speechwriter) for the stay-at-home life. She’d be bright. Curious. Sardonic? Sure, why not? She adored her kids yet sometimes she yearned for discourse more elevated than pre-school repartee. Without a doubt, she was someone with whom I could identify. The year was 1978 and Judith Singer became the protagonist of Compr…
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Earlier this year, when my second novel was published, an interviewer asked me which writer, alive or dead, I’d like to meet and under what circumstances. I wanted to say Susie Steiner in a pub somewhere in Cambridge, England, where Steiner’s novels are set. In my mind, I imagined it would be an opportunity to be in the presence, even for a short time, of the author who created detective Manon Bradshaw. I knew I’d need to be on my toes. From her social media and interviews, she came across as smart, brutally honest, and unlikely to suffer fools. In the end, though, knowing of her grave illness at the time, I decided the choice was inappropriate and named someone else. No…
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I’ve always loved superficial fear, the tickle of anticipation or drop of my stomach before a book’s plot twist, a jump scare in a slasher movie. I was watching Stephen King adaptations at age nine, inhaling R.L. Stine before I finished second grade. Maybe it’s schadenfreude for those poor characters who are on the verge of decapitation or about to receive a letter blackmailing them into doing unspeakable deeds. Perhaps it’s a way for me to convert my generalized anxiety into something ephemeral that I know will dissipate when I close a book or watch the credits roll. But pathologizing aside, I have always loved edge-of-your-seat suspense, immersing myself in the unknown …
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Tension is the jet fuel that propels a thriller. From the slow burn to the shocking reveal, I strive to pack as much of it as possible into my stories. I am often labeled as a medical thriller writer, but I don’t view myself as such, because I also write psychological thrillers and historical suspense. Besides, it’s a deep rabbit hole to fall down to try categorizing suspenseful novels into specific genres and sub-genres of mystery, thriller, or crime fiction. For the sake of this article, and my sanity, can we lump them all into one giant category of suspense fiction? Because, regardless of which of those sub-genres you put a novel into, I guarantee you’re not going to …
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Is someone a liar if they tell you something that isn’t true—but they think it’s true? Is a person guilty of misleading you even if the false information they’ve given is a sincere effort to convey something to the best of their understanding? These are the sorts of questions I think of every time I hear the term “unreliable narrator.” In what ways are they unreliable, and what does it mean that we call them that? Is a confused person unreliable? An inebriated person? A traumatized person? Is a character unreliable because they’re manipulating other characters? Or because they’re manipulating you, the reader? Perhaps the term was originally reserved for characters who w…
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