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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According to Scottish crime fiction author Denise Mina, Glasgow— her hometown where she lives and works and gets around as a pedestrian and a bicyclist—is a city of brutal frankness where a thick skin is a necessity of life and it’s very hard to feel special. “Glasgow,” Denise says, “is a place where people come up and talk to you, … my whole career has been people walking up to me in the street and saying, ‘I read your last book. And I thought it was shit. And this is what you did wrong.’” And, at least according to Denise, that’s okay because “everyone is a central character in Glasgow.” A perfect example of this Glaswegian-as-central-character occurred during a recen…
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Munich – capital of Bavaria with over a million and a half people and where the annual festival sees about three times as many steins of beer consumed at Oktoberfest. One of the world’s most livable cities according to some indicators but, of course, not without its crime writing…. Let’s jump straight in with Hans Hellmut Kirst’s Konstantin Keller series of detective novels set in Munich in the 1960s and featuring a retiring detective inspector. The trilogy was published in English translations as Damned to Success (also as A Time for Scandal, 1973) subtitled A Novel of Modern Munich, A Time for Truth (1974) and Everything has a Price (1976). Kirst is still best known fo…
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There’s an episode of Columbo I really like to watch. The first episode of the second season, “Étude in Black.” John Cassavetes guest-stars as a conniving orchestra conductor who murders his piano-virtuoso mistress after she threatens to go public with their affair, jeopardizing his marriage to Blythe Danner and the related funding he receives from his mother-in-law Myrna Loy. James McEachin’s in there, as is Pat Morita. As is often the case with Columbo villains, Cassavetes almost commits the perfect crime except for a small dumb error, and he would certainly still get away with the whole thing if any other detective were on duty. Like most episodes, this one is around a…
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How much we love the “perfect murder.” (Talking fiction here. Right?) It means many things to many people. Just getting away with murder doesn’t make it perfect—by that definition, every murder that does not result in a conviction would be “perfect.” No, we need more than that. A murder so immaculately planned that nobody is even charged? So perfectly committed that it doesn’t even look like murder? So diabolical that someone else takes the fall? An impulsive killing hastily but brilliantly covered up after the fact? Yes, yes, yes, and yes. I love all those different variations so much that I couldn’t choose just one—I put all of them in my new novel, LOOK CLOSER, a dom…
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Mystery novels are both timeless and popular because the reader is a participant in the action more so than in other genres—just as the detective or investigator is trying to figure out whodunnit, the story always implicitly challenges the reader to solve the crime first. But what if in addition to discovering things about the crime, you were also discovering things about a new and speculative world at the same time? My debut novel, The Peacekeeper, is a murder mystery set in the present day in an alternative history in which North America was never colonized. Specifically, it is set in an independent Ojibwe nation surrounding the Great Lakes. As we follow our detective,…
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Debts play a prominent role in crime novels. Someone owes someone else money, and if they don’t pay it back on time…well, you know what happens. A threat. A beating. A body part removed. And then— As readers, we understand the lengths the debtor will go to either avoid the punishment or to make the debt right. Beg, borrow, plead, bargain, steal. We can relate because we’ve all had debts to pay. It’s the American way of life. Hell, the government owes over thirty trillion dollars. That’s more than 91k for each citizen in the country. Not to mention mortgages, car payments, credit cards. Student loans. Yup, I went there. I said it. Student frickin’ loans. Twenty-f…
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The Detective at Leisure: 8 Books In Which Characters Solve Crimes While On Vacation
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In my new Maggie D’arcy mystery, The Drowning Sea, Maggie, a former homicide detective, is trying to relax and take a vacation. She’s out of a job and spending the entire summer on a gorgeous and remote West Cork peninsula, where she and her boyfriend and their children plan to get to know each other and decide if Maggie and her daughter should move to Ireland in the fall. When a body washes up at the base of the cliffs, she’s thrust back into her old line of work. I’ve always loved the trope of the professional detective who goes on vacation, but is pressed into service when the discovery of a body interrupts the leisurely rhythms of a recreational trip or restorative h…
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The sun is shining, the flowers are blooming, and the historical fiction is proliferating! Here are a whole bunch of very good historical crime novels coming out over the summer months (with a few titles from spring and fall thrown in there), each one a richly detailed historical imagining that channels history for a modern audience while remaining true to the ideas and mores of its time period. While every day is a good day to read crime fiction set in the past, I personally feel this summer of setbacks to be a perfect time to remember the ways that ordinary people fought against powerful repressive forces in the past, and even managed to find some joy while doing so. Th…
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“James Kestrel” is a pseudonym for the author of Five Decembers, recipient of this year’s Edgar Award for “Best Novel.” The man behind the nom de plume is a successful author in his own right with six published novels already under his belt. He’s also a partner at a Honolulu-based law firm. Oh, and one time he canoed from New Orleans to Mississippi. This was before cell phones, by the way. Before the age of weather calls and GPS. A few months back, I was lucky enough to strike up an online friendship with Kestrel. When we first connected, I didn’t know anything about the pen name. I didn’t know anything about Five Decembers either. I recently tore through the four-h…
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In my new thriller, Reputation, my protagonist, Emma Webster, fears she is being followed as she cycles home from work one night. Her apparent stalker is a teenage boy who loops behind her, leering, then cycles past while bestowing a dead-eyed stare. The boy’s fourteen at most, but the sense of threat is so acute that Emma panics as she races up the steps to her front door and fumbles to get in. Once inside, she fears he’s listening outside; that he’s primed to post something unwelcome through the box; and – when her phone pings – that he’s sent an abusive text. Of course, she suspects – as many a protagonist of a psychological thriller does – that she’s being irrationa…
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The CrimeReads editors select the month’s best new fiction in crime, mystery, and thrillers. * Jennifer Hillier, Things We Do In The Dark (Minotaur) I’ve been obsessed with Jennifer Hillier’s sly psychological thrillers since her breakout hit Jar of Hearts, and Things We Do In the Dark promises to showcase her characters’ signature slippery grasp on morality once again. Paris Peralta is found at the center of a shocking crime scene, but she’s not afraid of the police: she’s afraid of the woman from her past who will recognize the crime and come calling. I cannot wait to read this book. –MO Daniel Silva, Portrait of an Unknown Woman (Harper) Every Daniel Silva h…
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I shouldn’t be alive today.” That was one of the first things Boris Nayfeld told me when I met him four years ago. On a sweltering Saturday in late June 2018, we sat outdoors at Tatiana Grill, a popular restaurant on the Brighton Beach boardwalk, tossing back shots of Russian vodka chased by the warm salty Atlantic breeze, surrounded by young women from St. Petersburg and Kiev and Odessa who wore more makeup than clothes. Known to his friends and family as “Biba” and described in the New York tabloids as “the last boss of the original Russian Mafia in America,” Boris had every right to marvel at the fact that he was alive and smiling and talking into my digital recor…
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Elements of the Gothic permeate every aspect of American media. We see it in film, music, literature and on TV shows, where it continues to grow in popularity from the crumbling plantations of HBO’s True Blood, to the lush landscapes of Louisiana’s Oak Valley Plantation in the first season of True Detective. More recently, Ozark and Love Craft Country have captured the imagination with its Gothic settings and characters. It’s no surprise that the Gothic is making its presence felt in the pages of crime fiction. But why should we care? We should care because the stories we tell ourselves shape our society, and crime fiction is the second bestselling genre in the country…
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The Bloodless Boy begins with a gruesome discovery: a dead boy entirely drained of his blood. (The title is apt.) A Justice of Peace seeks help from the Curator of the Royal Society, Robert Hooke, who brings with him his assistant, Harry Hunt. From various signs on the body, the two ‘natural philosophers’ quickly establish that the boy’s blood was partly removed at various times, then all of it was taken. With their experience of blood transfusion, the pair conclude that someone has subjected the boy to a series of grisly experiments. As thrillers do, this initial finding leads to a greater mystery. Set during the Popish Plot—when anti-Catholic hysteria was fanned by fa…
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Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Sarah Vaughan, Reputation (Atria) “Vaughan offers a cast of strong characters that are sharply realistic and consummately human. A complex, slow-burning examination of double standards, misogyny, and public image that shares strong appeal with Scott Turow’s literary legal thrillers.” –Booklist, starred review Denise Mina, Confidence (Mulholland) “Mina keeps the plot charging at a breathless pace, and Anna is an engagingly tart narrator. Even for true-crime podcasters, the truth is tough to find in this brisk, entertaining thriller.” –Kirkus Reviews, starred review Paul Trembl…
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“Today, though, he worries that it is hard for white men to get writing gigs in film, theatre, TV, or publishing. The problem is just ‘another form of racism. What’s that all about?’ he muses. ‘Can you get a job? Yes. Is it harder? Yes. It’s even harder for older writers. You don’t meet many 52-year-old white males.'” –James Patterson: white male writers are victims of ‘racism’” The Sunday Times Ah, the classics. He’s since apologized and the news cycle has slogged on, but James Patterson’s comments were familiar to many of us. I’ve heard variations of this complaint from fellow novelists for years now, always from white men. It usually comes after they’ve confided …
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I’ve long had a love for an unconventional woman, perhaps because I consider myself to be one. I blame my mother. Growing up, I stole her books as soon as she finished with them. I immersed myself in the world of the female PI, fascinated by these independent women who didn’t need husbands and refused to give up the job they loved, even at the risk of their finances or lives. I’ve never had the aspiration to follow in their footsteps exactly, but I’ve always wanted to create characters like them; women who don’t always follow the rules of society. Lena Aldridge started off as an unnamed woman in my first novel, This Lovely City, published in the UK. My protagonists, a co…
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Our fascination with twins (and particularly identical twins) likely dates back to the dawn of humankind, as evidenced by Romulus and Remus, Artemis and Apollo, Shakespeare (Twelfth Night and The Comedy of Errors), the Cheeryble Brothers in Nicholas Nickleby, all the way through to contemporary literature. Monozygotic (aka identical) twins make up approximately 0.3% of the world’s population. But, thankfully, they are significantly more prevalent in crime fiction. When I ponder fictional twins the first image in my head is that of the Grady twins in the Overlook Hotel. Stephen King’s The Shining and Stanley Kubrik’s screen adaptation are both seminal pieces of work. The…
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Chris Cander found national success writing character-driven novels whose struggles play out in remote and evocative locales. The USA Today-bestseller has transported readers to such places as West Virginia, Chicago, Soviet Russia, and the California desert. But for her fourth novel, A Gracious Neighbor, Cander turned her novelistic gaze on her own neighborhood: West University, an affluent tiny city within the sprawling expanse of Houston Texas, home to business executives, doctors from the nearby medical center, and professors from Rice University—the U in the titular WEST U. At home during the pandemic, Cander found inspiration in her surroundings, transposing the 1917…
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Near the end of his enthralling 2019 book Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, Patrick Radden Keefe recalls the frustration he felt while trying to solve a cold case that had stymied detectives for almost fifty years. His main concern? That those who knew “the whole truth of this dark saga”—the 1972 kidnapping and murder of Jean McConville, a Belfast mother of ten—“would take it with them to their graves. Then, just as I was completing the manuscript, I made a startling discovery.” His digging essentially solved the case. If Say Nothing confirmed that he’s among the finest true-crime storytellers working today, Keefe’s new book suggests he…
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Always versatile, a writer of contemporary noir, domestic thrillers, horror, graphic novels, and both Marvel and DC tie-in novels, Jason Starr has now turned to the sort of alternate-reality nightmare story Philip K. Dick might have dreamed up. A criminal attorney named Steven Blitz, who lives in the New York City suburbs, is in the middle of a murder trial for his serial killer client. At the same time, he is undergoing a difficult period in his marriage. When his wife, one evening, declares that she wants a divorce, Steven leaves the house and drives away to spend the night someplace else. A stop at a local gas station leads to an altercation with a man, and a sudden…
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There’s a lot of good crime tv happening right now. In the interest of helping you sort out viewing schedules, we bring you a monthly guide to what’s coming next. We Hunt Together Showtime – Premieres July 3rd (season 2) The British detective series returns, after a bit of a hiatus, for its second season to air in the States. Serial killers, emotional traps, sexual attraction – all still at the center of the series, which has a bit of style and wit to it, setting it apart from the usual fare with an interesting perspective and a charismatic detective pairing. Black Bird Apple TV – Premieres July 8th One of the year’s most anticipated crime shows, this one comes …
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London, June 11, 2016 Backstage at London’s Wembley Arena, Dr. Ruja Ignatova was nervously pacing up and down, dressed, as usual, in a full-length ball gown. I will double your coins, I will double your coins. She could hear the whoops and cheers of thousands of adoring fans in the background. Ruja wasn’t usually nervous before events, but today she was announcing something that went against every rule of financial investment—even the idea of money itself. If she couldn’t convince the crowd, who’d already invested a fortune in her promise of a global “financial revolution,” the whole thing would be over. Up to a billion dollars were at stake. Her second-in-command,…
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In crime fiction, there is always a victim. Someone is murdered or a body is found, and the police are called in to investigate. The murder victim generally leaves behind loved ones who mourn them. They want the crime solved, and the culprit brought to justice. On the other hand, someone wanted the victim dead, so chances are they weren’t all sweetness and light. That’s the line mystery writers walk. We generally want a victim sympathetic enough to make readers want to see justice served, but they also have to believe the victim did something bad enough to move the villain to murder. Generally. Once in a while you find a victim who lived their life in such a way that the…
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Kellye Garrett interviews Cheryl Head about her new novel, Time’s Undoing, a searing and tender novel about a young Black journalist’s search for answers in the unsolved murder of her great-grandfather in segregated Birmingham, Alabama, decades ago—inspired by the author’s own family history. Time’s Undoing is both a passionate tale of one woman’s quest for the truth and, as newfound friends and supporters in Birmingham rally around Meghan’s search, the uplifting story of a community coming together to fight for change. Time’s Undoing is forthcoming on March 7, 2023. Cheryl Head (she/her) writes the award-winning, Charlie Mack Motown Mysteries whose female PI protagonist…
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