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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Today, we’re revealing the cover for Kelly J. Ford’s new novel, The Hunt (Thomas & Mercer), scheduled to be released on July 25, 2023. In anticipation of the release, Alex Segura sat down with Ford to discuss the inspiration for her new story. Alex Segura: Kelly, what can you tell us about THE HUNT? Kelly J. Ford: Everything I write seems to come from a nugget of my Arkansas upbringing that I can’t shake, whether it’s the chills I got listening to my dad and Uncle Larry’s ghost stories around a fire, the smells of the world once you leave the asphalt for dirt roads, or the sounds of my childhood favorite local radio DJ revealing the latest clue to the annual Hunt …
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“We are the adequate, forgettable Occasionally regrettable Caretaker presidents of the USA.” -The Simpsons, “I Love Lisa” The dawn of the 1920s looks surprisingly familiar a century hence: America contemplated the path forward from a devastating pandemic, revolutionary forces clashed in the streets with counterrevolutionaries both representing the state and sanctioned by it, and demagogues sought to blame immigrants and anarchists for it all. The man elected president on a promise of ending all this, however, is largely a footnote in history. This is unusual; a president elected on a platform of turning back an era’s anxieties typically comes to be identified with t…
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“The Passenger,” Cormac McCarthy’s first novel in 16 years, begins with a scene familiar to anyone who regularly reads thrillers. A small passenger plane has crashed in the Gulf of Mexico; Bobby Western, a racecar driver turned salvage diver, is tasked with examining the wreck. But when he dives, he finds an odd scene: the plane is miraculously intact. One of the dead passengers is missing, along with the pilot’s flight-bag and an instrument panel from the cockpit. Once Bobby returns to shore, the mystery only deepens—and so does the threat. Government men lurk around his New Orleans apartment, asking scary questions about the wreck. He explores the coastline near the di…
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Fiction is freedom in ink. There’s nothing as freeing as pulling up to a blank page, where the only limitation to worlds, plot and character is our imagination. A blank page is a lot of things – expectation, potential, fear – but it is never one thing: restrictive. So it’s not surprising that some authors aren’t a fan of rules, and view them as creativity-crushing restrictions that better belong guiding a group (a classroom, a football team) in an activity than on our pages. I used to think like that too. But here’s the thing: I write mystery novels. And writing mysteries is a team sport. I’m not talking Holmes and Watson buddying up. It’s much more important than that…
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Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods (Flatiron) “Marshall explores the complicated dynamics of childhood friendships and the powerful effect that memory has in shaping narratives…In a novel filled with emotional depth and convincing red herrings, Marshall delivers a propulsive mystery about trust, secrets, and friendships.” –Booklist Grady Hendrix, How to Sell a Haunted House (Berkley) “A delight…Hendrix, with relentless efficiency—and a bit of humor—forces us to confront our fears.” –The Washington Post Stephen Amidon, Locust Lane (Celadon) “Amidon’s compulsively r…
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I will read any book or poem, watch any movie or show, if within its story there is another story. Like most tastes, this one is hard to explain, but part of it is that the Russian nesting doll structure appeals to my sense of mystery. I read quite a few YA books incorporating this technique at a young age, so its rules feel familiar, and one is that, within a nested structure, the inner story holds a key (or keys) to the outer. Whether it be a clue, a metaphor highlighting theme or vital foreshadowing, the inner story becomes a text to scour for clues. It becomes a mystery box, and as a curious reader, I simply must know what’s inside. The reason I read so many embedde…
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The suburbs are safe. They’re clean and orderly and civil. At least, that’s what my parents used to tell me whenever I asked why we lived there, instead of somewhere exotic and exciting, like Greenwich Village or the Left Bank. Long maligned for their boredom, conformity, and status-consciousness, the subdivisions and planned communities that sprouted during the Baby Boom years continued to be a big draw for one main reason – their promise of providing a safe haven from the perilous cities they surround. It was better to endure the boredom of a pot-luck dinner party than suffer a mugging. Or so I was told. For me, the suburbs soon became something quite different than th…
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March 1976 Josephine Wright could have kissed the ground, she was so glad to arrive back at her house in West Mills, North Carolina. She looked at her watch. It was seven o’clock. She had been on the road from Harlem since eight o’clock that morning. Typically, the drive took only eight hours. And that allowed for congestion on the George Washington Bridge and the bumper-to-bumper traffic one could count on while passing through D.C. But today there had been a bad automobile accident as Jo entered Delaware. She had crept at a snail’s pace for nearly an hour. “Home at last,” Jo said, allowing herself to enjoy the stillness in her car. For a moment, she sat looking at the…
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My introduction to the criminalization of fine art happened on a personal level. And by “criminal” I mean the use of fine art to commit tax evasion. Later, I would discover fine art could serve as an efficient vehicle for other crimes ranging from fraud and money laundering to theft. It was the eighties and I was an art critic for a national magazine and a major American newspaper. In my private life, I was also the member of a socially prominent museum support group thanks to my marriage, at the time, to a wealthy businessman. It was during my museum activities that I became aware of two people whom I knew socially who were donating paintings and drawings to the mus…
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I write a historical fiction series set in World War Two London. My protagonist is a Scotland Yard detective called Frank Merlin. I place great importance on being historically accurate in my books. I take the view that as I am attempting to transport my readers to a very different time and place, accuracy is a key element to doing that successfully. I am very aware that words like ‘atmospheric’ and ‘authentic’ are among the most commonly used in positive reviews of historical fiction. However, it cannot be denied that there are many books, films and plays that are historically inaccurate but still regarded as successful. Why? And does it really matter? In this internet …
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Seaside villages are beautiful, but they also hold secrets. Sometimes dark, nefarious ones. Like the fact that the picturesque French islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, south of Newfoundland, were in the 1930s a major offshore smuggling hub for American gangster Al Capone. Of course, you’ll find similarly outlandish stories on both sides of the North Atlantic. The UK series Broadchurch, for instance, shows us what the men of a quaint Dorset port town are capable of hiding. While on the other side of the water, the murderous black comedy Blow the Man Down tells of a fishing village in northern Maine where it is the women who keep the secrets. Both of these are dark, bl…
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I’ve never been much of a reader. As a published writer I suppose I should be embarrassed to confess such a thing. But it’s true. As a lad I was too impatient to nuzzle down with a good book. There were too many distractions; girls to chase, balls to kick, cigarettes to choke on. I relied on television and cinema to stoke my cultural development. Those were the days when the TV had to warm up before you got a picture. There were only two channels. For the modest cost of a television license, you could enjoy the dramatic marvels of the BBC and watch hours of sport. Then there were the affordable Saturday morning picture shows. I was a proud minor of the ABC cinema on Wimbl…
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The CrimeReads editors select the month’s best debut novels in crime fiction, mystery, and thrillers. * Michael Bennett, Better the Blood (Atlantic Monthly Press) Michael Bennett is a much-lauded Maori screenwriter and director, and this, his debut, brings his skills of storytelling to a new medium and introduces a compelling new heroine. Hana Westerman is a Maori CID detective with a rebellious teenage daughter, uncooperative colleagues, and now a truly puzzling case—someone’s been killing the descendants of a group of men responsible for an early 19th-century lynching, and it’s up to Hana to track them down while proving herself once again to her department. –Moll…
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The most important thing about the mystery at the heart of (what is hopefully just) the first season of BritBox’s Karen Pirie—the midnight stabbing of twentysomething barmaid Rosie Duff in the middle of the St. Andrews Cathedral graveyard—is that it hinges on the yawning 25-year gap between the night the original murder takes place and the cold case investigation that will ultimately put Rosie’s ghost to rest. In the 2003 Val McDermid novel the BritBox series draws its inspiration from, The Distant Echo, this means Rosie’s life and tragic death is fixed firmly in 1978. In the 2021-set streaming adaptation, though, the unrelenting force of math moves Rosie’s half of the t…
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Once I got over the excitement of being asked to write an essay for CrimeReads, I settled into several days of racking my brain over exactly what to write. Essays and articles, for me, are more difficult than writing a full novel. My 7th novel, and newest release, is called The Nightmare Man, a story where nightmares come to life, so I initially migrated toward writing something about dreams and nightmares and folklore and legends, which all cover many of the book’s main themes, but I kept coming back to this being my first horror/crime novel, the first under my pen name, and I got to thinking: I’ve had one interesting road getting to this point in my career, and I think …
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The humid air pulsed with music from a thousand open windows, the live bands in every bar fighting a sonic Ragnarök with the tunes blasting from the cars crawling the 18th Street drag, all of it smashing into a thunderhead of drums and bass you could hear from a half-mile away, beckoning the city’s drunks and partiers: head to Adams Morgan, where all your needs can be satisfied, and all your bad decisions will be washed away tomorrow morning along with the crushed beer cans and half-eaten jumbo slices. Adams Morgan, the loudest and drunkest neighborhood in Washington, D.C. A place you could still find a cheap drink and trouble. Inside the Brass Nut, one of the sketchiest…
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The Mystery Writers of America has announced the nominees for the 2023 Edgar Allan Poe Awards, honoring the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction and television published or produced in 2022. The 77th Annual Edgar® Awards, which also celebrates the 214th anniversary of the birth of Edgar Allan Poe, will be celebrated on April 27, 2023. ___________________________________ BEST NOVEL ___________________________________ Devil House by John Darnielle (Farrar, Straus and Giroux – MCD) Like a Sister by Kellye Garrett (Hachette Book Group – Little, Brown & Co./Mulholland Books) Gangland by Chuck Hogan (Hachette Book Group – Grand Central Publishing) The Devil Takes Y…
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The CrimeReads editors select the month’s best new international crime fiction. * Michael Bennett, Better the Blood (Atlantic Monthly Press) Michael Bennett is a much-lauded Maori screenwriter and director, and this, his debut, brings his skills of storytelling to a new medium and introduces a compelling new heroine. Hana Westerman is a Maori CID detective with a rebellious teenage daughter, uncooperative colleagues, and now a truly puzzling case—someone’s been killing the descendants of a group of men responsible for an early 19th-century lynching, and it’s up to Hana to track them down while proving herself once again to her department. –MO Christoffer Carlsson…
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Literature is so full of evil dolls and puppets that it’s probably best to assume that any doll or puppet you encounter in a book is up to no good. Maybe they’re having sex with your girlfriend, maybe they’re trying to drive you insane, whatever their method, remember that we are not the same species and your first response should always be to throw it in the fire. Read these books at your own peril (not recommended) but if you want to avoid the trauma, I’ve done you the favor of reading them myself and compiling a list of the dolls and puppets you should go out of your way to avoid. Fats (Magic, William Goldman) Every time a killer puppet listicle pops up, William Go…
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Deciding that you want to rob a bank is the easy part. We’ve all thought about it—how wonderful it would feel, shouting those first, forceful words, “this is a stick-up”—but an idle reverie amounts to very little, and pretty soon we all bump up against the inevitable: this isn’t something one person can do alone. No, you’re going to need a team of operators filling discrete and sometimes ridiculously convoluted roles, and even then, without the proper leadership and a shared vision, you still might not pull this thing off, or if you do, you might not make a proper getaway or get the right kind of identity-altering plastic surgery later. Choosing the right team—one that …
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Bleak, bone-chilling settings. Dark days and darker nights. A cheerless snow globe filled with tormented characters doomed to collide. Where brutality rings as true for the elements as it does the violence these characters do unto one another. These are the components of Nordic Noir, a subset of crime fiction that often takes place in Scandinavian countries such as Norway, Denmark, and Sweden—to name a few. But what about the Midwest? Come along with me, and we’ll explore my world of Black Harbor, writing as a social experiment, and the Midwest’s endless potential as a setting for crime fiction. Midwestern Noir: It’s a thing Quite simply, Midwestern Noir is what hap…
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In my latest novel The Twyford Code, a former prisoner navigates life on the outside while revisiting a traumatic childhood event. Motivated by the need to understand what happened when his teacher disappeared on a school trip, Steve’s quest is complicated because he has only just learned to read and still can’t write. All we have to go on are transcriptions of the voice-recordings he has to make on an old iPhone to keep track of his investigation. Despite its unusual narrative format, The Twyford Code is not unusual in taking the experience of a prisoner or former prisoner as its narrative drive. In fact, while prison may be the end of the road for a murderer in the tra…
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After combing through advanced reading copies, publisher catalogues, lists upon lists, and publicity emails galore, I can confidently say that 2023 is going to be a great year for YA. So good, that you may curse us for adding so many damn books to your TBR list. There’s quite the variety in the list below, including hard-hitting social thrillers, high-concept heists, intriguing use of multiple narration à la Rashoman, queer apocalypse thrillers/romances, and some highly symbolic haunted houses. There are also two different thrillers featuring sea-mesters at sea (get it?). This is not an error. There really are two books out this year featuring murder during study-at-sea p…
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Secrets long buried, old flames rekindled, grudges resurfacing—there’s endless dramatic potential in a homecoming. Especially when murder is involved. There’s something elemental in the way that place and memory become intertwined. Anyone who has returned to their family home and discovered themselves reverting to old habits and falling into old arguments can attest to the power our physical context has to shape our behavior. Returning to the coffee shop around the corner of your old apartment brings back the memory of old friendships, break-ups, the ache in your feet of a long shift at a terrible job. The ghosts of sensation and emotion stir—there’s a reason we call our…
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In a sense, every detective novel is about the inside of someone’s head. What immediately captures the reader at the beginning of a Sherlock Holmes story is the tick-tock of Holmes mind: what brilliance will he conjure next, what detail will he pull out of an ordinary scene, who is this guy? But we’ll come back to Holmes later, because the character of Tom Mondrian in Watch Me Disappear began to take shape alongside a more modern hero. I discovered one of my favourite series characters in a Majorcan villa when I picked a book off the shelf, curious to know why it was so dog-eared. What was it about this novel that meant it had been read so many times that many of its pag…
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