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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Back in 2011, Saturday Night Live spoofed the Lifetime network’s original movies with a game show for suburban moms of troubled teens called “What’s Wrong with Tanya?” When the host comments that “Mary-Jo-Beth Jo-Jo” from Pleasanttown (Anna Faris) has a perfect life, Mary-Jo-Beth wearily raises a glass of wine and murmurs “Perfect… from the outside.” What used to be a working formula for Lifetime has now become big bucks for publishing, and many of the elements from the SNL skit—suburban setting, a crime that may or may not have happened, amateur sleuthing, alcoholism—reappeared in Paula Hawkins’ 2015 best-seller The Girl on the Train, followed by several subsequent be…
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Is it 2022 already? While I’m still holed up at home (as a native-Floridian-turned-New-Yorker, I don’t emerge from my cozy cocoon until the mercury hits at least forty degrees—celsius, preferably), podcasts are giving me a much-needed dose of true-crime heat. Even if you’re located in more forgiving climes, there’s nothing like curling up with a brand-new (or fresh season of a returning) podcast. Check out these nine ear warmers. Chameleon: Wild Boys (Campside Media) – Premiered January 22 In case you’re thinking this is one of those “what-are-they-up-to-these-days?” pods featuring the “boyz” of a certain mid-aughts MTV spin-off (Steve-O, if you’re reading this, I’…
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Hello, thriller fans, and welcome to deep winter. There is lots to choose from, and I do hope that one of my favorites becomes your next read. If none of these suit you, fear not—the new installment in Stephanie Barren’s Jane Austen series, The Year Without a Summer, was a witty read. If you liked Lola on Fire, Rio Youers is back with No Second Chances. Anna Pitoniak’s Our American Friend is a clever espionage tale, and Japanese crime writer Fuminori Nakamura’s My Annihilation is a stream-of-consciousness novel featuring the thoughts of chickens at a Purdue plant (no it isn’t, but I might read that). Anyway, these five rose to the top: I present your psychological thrille…
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I had always intended to be a writer of adult mysteries. When I conceived of the first novel I would eventually publish, it concerned a murdered hippopotamus at a zoo. I had imagined that one of the zoo’s veterinary staff would discover something suspicious during the autopsy and decide to investigate the crime. But I soon realized (with the help of my literary agent) that this novel might make more sense in the middle grade space, with a tween cracking the case. Now that I was setting out to write a mystery for young readers, I decided to reread the stories of three seminal junior detectives to see what made them successful as both novels and mysteries—ones that appeale…
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There’s just something about Laura Lippman. Some unquantifiable X-factor. A raw power, buzzing beneath the surface of the bestselling author’s laid-back demeanor. When we sat down for our talk, it was getting late, a little past nine. Laura stared back at me through my computer screen almost sleepy-eyed. Glass of red wine in hand, she admitted it was nearing her bedtime. I got straight to it, not wanting to waste the time of an author of over twenty books (including the award-winning Tess Monaghan series). It didn’t take long before I realized exactly what it was I’d seen in Laura from the start, that X-factor I mentioned. The following story sums it up much better tha…
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For years there was an unwritten rule that Reacher’s face should never be shown on the cover of a Lee Child book. It was first broken by his first publisher, New York’s G.P. Putnam Sons, in an act of petty revenge when Child was in the process of switching over to Bantam. Not only did they splash Reacher’s face all over Without Fail: they dressed him in one of big brother Joe’s Treasury suits, with white shirt and tie and Men-in-Black shades. Then came the Hollywood years, with tie-in editions between 2012 and 2016 proclaiming, against all plausibility, “Tom Cruise IS Jack Reacher”. I was present when a new cover image for Never Go Back came through over text: “I said no…
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For years now, Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne have been making crime films . . . but no one seems to have noticed. This is because the writer-director duo concern themselves primarily with character interiority and psychological development—the kind of thing that wins them Palme D’Or awards—not with guns or heists, nor with cops or tough guys. Their films are typically quiet affairs, stories about people on the fringes, often at odds with larger social structures. But make no mistake, the catalog of films the brothers have helmed are full of crimes and transgressions, illegal acts that figure crucially in the narratives and in the evocation of the larger themes they explo…
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The Big Island of Hawaiʻi is a magical place. Moonscape lava fields and rain forests. Black sand beaches, palm trees, and snow atop Mauna Kea. Ancient kipukas surrounded by new volcanic flows. A lyrical language and an engaging mythological past. Ocean breezes and bubbling lava. Astronomical telescopes to tease out the secrets of the universe. Six of the world’s major climatic zones. Wide ethnic diversity and every faction of political persuasion from far-right to sovereignty activists to agnostic hippie leftovers from the 60s. How could I not fall in love with this place? I was hooked. Over the years, I explored the nooks and crannies of the Big Island. The more I learn…
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Crime fiction reflects the world it is written in. Sherlock Holmes is the first detective. Let’s not count Sergeant Cuff and Dupin. They are policemen. Sherlock Holmes is the first modern detective, the one who sets the template. He is a private man, who follows his own definition of justice, not that of the law. He is brilliant, self-assured, the cleverest man in the room, with his dogged and not quite as bright friend chronicling his adventures. After Arthur Conan Doyle created this pattern, other Victorian detectives followed. Carnacki hunts ghosts, admiringly chronicled by Dodgson. Max Carrados is blind, but rich, and clever. Dr Thorndyke is a doctor, and a lawyer, a…
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Here is a month-by-month breakdown of upcoming mysteries and thrillers by Black authors, because Black History Month comes once a year but we should be reading Black authors all year long. The following list features a wide variety of subgenres and crossovers, including cozies, psychological thrillers, detective novels, historical fiction, romans noirs, dark fantasy, and young adult. This list is intended as both a resource and a reminder: there’s tons of good stuff out there. So let’s all get to reading it. Abby Collette, A Killer Sunday (Berkley, January 4) “A deliciously satisfying new cozy mystery series. It’s got humor, a quirky cast a of characters and ice crea…
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Through the classroom’s grimy windows, Eleonor watches the bushes and trees bend in the stiff breeze as dust is blown along the road. It almost looks like a river is flowing outside the school, murky and silent. The bell rings, and the students gather up their books and notes. Eleonor gets to her feet and follows the others out of the classroom. She watches Jenny Lind button her jacket in front of her locker. Her face and blond hair are reflected in the dented metal. Jenny is pretty, different. She has intense eyes that make Eleonor feel nervous, make her cheeks flush. Jenny is artistic. She likes taking photos, and she also happens to be the only person in school w…
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There’s a huge gulf in Sherlock Holmes’s biography. Backstory. Probably Freud’s fault. Wanting to know whether we were in love with our mothers or had killed our fathers. That is to say, that every character—every modern character—needs a backstory, according to today’s practice, all worked out by a writer (or an actor), even if the details of the backstory are never actually revealed to the audience. Adds depth, don’t you know? It didn’t use to be the case. We’re not concerned with Hamlet’s childhood, or Faust’s, or Quixote’s. And none of them felt the need for 23and me. But those days are gone. Now we want to know a character from the inside out. Now we even want (th…
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The novels of Paul Vidich are far removed from the sheen and opulence of James Bond, and feel more at home with the wry wit and stuff air of John le Carré’s George Smiley. In Vidich’s world, few can be trusted and the double-crosses often become triples, creating a gray, murky world of uncertainty and intrigue that propels his lush prose. Vidich’s latest, The Matchmaker (available February 1, from Pegasus), could very well be his best yet—and it features some unexpected influences. I had the chance to discuss the new novel, Vidich’s views on the spy genre, and what role—if any—comic books play in his literary DNA. ALEX SEGURA: Paul, your latest, THE MATCHMAKER, feels lik…
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The nosy neighbor is a classic character in crime fiction. Miss Marple, Agatha Christie’s elderly amateur detective, is a progenitor of the archetype: she is not an official investigator, just a curious and interested observer. In more recent times, the nosy neighbor has appeared as the girl on the train or the woman in the window, catching glimpses of the world and concocting stories about what she sees. She’s the busybody who witnesses a murder while spying on the house next-door over her morning coffee, the town gossip who realizes there’s something not right about the family down the block and won’t relent. She creates mysteries to solve. There’s always something abo…
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The ring of the doorbell, the pop of a champagne cork, a peal of laughter from another room. Wicked gossip, a meaningful glance across the dining table, a knife secreted in a napkin. The host must step away for just a moment to take an urgent phone call, would you all keep yourselves occupied? No, nothing is the matter. Unless something is? Thrillers and mysteries are genres of danger, suspense, violence, murder. Not anything you’d want at an elegant soirée or holiday bash or a cozy dinner with close friends. But a startling number of thrillers and mysteries have at least one party in their pages or onscreen. All those cozy mysteries set at house parties at some grand …
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There are many surprises to come for a newly published author, but one that surely seized Virginia’s attention was that almost immediately upon publication, Flowers in the Attic was banned from almost every high school library as well as adult ones, some bookstores, and especially by many parents who forbade their children— daughters in particular—to read the novel. What had Virginia revealed in the young female characters she captured that so unnerved or challenged these people who wouldn’t open the cover of one of her novels? What were they afraid to read? A young girl like Cathy Dollanganger coming alive, feeling things she had never felt—what woke her at night, “pu…
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The CrimeReads editors select the month’s best new crime fiction. * Delilah S. Dawson, The Violence (Ballantine) The Violence continues a trend in dystopian thrillers concerned with gendered violence, including Vox and The Power. In The Violence, a new pandemic arrives—this one with the power to infect its hosts into committing unstoppable acts of savagery against all those nearby. It isn’t long, however, before some begin to see their infection as their savior, for finally those with the Violence can fight back against those who are bigger and stronger than they are. Throw in a bat-shit professional wrestling plot arc, and this one is not to be missed. –Molly Od…
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I was going to title this essay ‘Dragons, Butterflies, and Professional Wrestlers’, but then I realized that you’re not here for a college essay that deconstructs Thomas Harris’s use of William Blake’s art as a tool for metamorphosis. You’re here for the down and dirty on pumping up your story via character arc. Therefore, let us continue as we have begun: with your book’s metaphorical rump. When you alight on a story idea, it’s generally either in the form of a character, a setting, or a hook. Whichever one comes first, your job is to create a perfectly balanced triangle in which your story could only happen to this particular character in a setting that uniquely challe…
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Located just outside a quaint British village in North Buckinghamshire is a mysterious country estate concealed by a wall of trees and shrubbery (and, I’d imagine, an electric fence embellished with several impenetrable security systems), known as Hanslope Park. Or, officially, Her Majesty’s Government Communications Centre. It is here—twenty or so miles north of its more famous cousin, Bletchley Park—that cutting edge spy gadgets and mind boggling technology has been developed and tested for the British Intelligence services since WWII. It was also once the location of a bizarre murder/suicide and a troublesome poltergeist. But more on that later. Now, on account of th…
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Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Delilah S. Dawson, The Violence (Del Rey) “Delilah S. Dawson has crafted a pandemic thriller that’s so much more—a piercing examination of survival, courage, and self, terrifying and hopeful in equal measure.” Peng Shepherd Lara Elena Donnelly, Base Notes (Thomas & Mercer) “Scent is everything in Donnelly’s unique, voluptuous thriller…Manhattan’s beau monde served up in juicy, evocative prose.” Kirkus Reviews Brian Freeman, The Ursulina (Blackstone) “Enthralling…Freeman brings all the characters to life, highlighting their strengths as well as the darkness that lies wi…
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Like most crime writers, I’m drawn to stories about broken homes, dysfunctional families and those surviving at the edges of society. In my D.I. Marnie Rome series which began with Someone Else’s Skin (Headline UK, Penguin USA), Marnie is locked in a lethal dance with her foster brother, Stephen, whose actions altered her life forever. Nell Ballard, my young heroine in Fragile (Pan Macmillan) is herself a foster child, caught up in a perverse power struggle in an older couple’s home. Crime fiction is packed with orphans, outcasts and the reinvented. Care leavers – those raised in foster care or by relations – feature again and again. In one very simple sense, by removi…
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Christopher Marlowe was Shakespeare’s collaborator, exact contemporary and, until his violent death in 1593, aged 29, the better-known playwright and poet. But since then both his life and death have fertilized conspiracy theories and mysteries. Who killed him, why, how, was it deliberate murder or was it self-defense? Or did he live on in secret to write Shakespeare’s later plays, as some conspiracists claimed? He was killed during the reign of Queen Elizabeth 1, whose position was precarious. If she died the throne might pass to Mary Queen of Scots, her cousin. Mary had been brought up a Catholic in France and if she inherited the throne Spain would forcibly reverse th…
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I was a little kid the first time I saw Frankenstein. It was the 1931 version with Boris Karloff in the role of the monster. On Chicago station WGN after 10 p.m., there was a show called “Creature Features” that opened with Henry Mancini’s theme from the film Experiment in Terror and a TV announcer reading this poem: “Gruesome ghouls and grisly ghosts Wretched souls and cursed hosts Fog rolls in and coffins slam Mortals quake and full moons rise Creatures haunt and terrorize …” That’s all I remember of that part. I also remember that most of the giant-bug-giant-lizard movies shown back then seem rather innocent by the standards of teen-slasher films of today. (I e…
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I think my wife is plotting to kill me. Countless mysteries have begun with some poor fellow uttering these most ominous words. And all too often, as it turns out, the poor fellow was correct. Murderously-minded females do hide in polite society—but of some such femmes fatales, you need have no fear. Consider the case of this young chap whose anxious missive recently crossed our desk: Dear Miss Lovelost, I think my sweetheart is plotting to kill me. Or worse: she may have given her heart to another. I have lately entered into an engagement with a dear and sweet Young Lady of Substance—accomplished, well-read, and able to converse on the widest variety of subjects. I b…
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In a world of excess, nothing exceeded expectations like Elias Vicker’s Fire Rites of Beltane, the legendary stag party he held every year on the first Tuesday of May, just as spring buds were bursting into the brightness of just-opened leaves, lending midtown streets a transitory illusion of innocence. For years, the hedge fund centibillionaire, dubbed by Forbes New York’s richest man and by the New York Post its most odious clown, had taken over The Pierre Hotel on Fifth Avenue to cultivate a couple hundred carefully curated denizens of the hedge fund, finance, and political elite. To avoid an uproar, Vicker went to extraordinary lengths to make sure that the details of…
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