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,
3,429 topics in this forum
-
- 0 replies
- 197 views
CrimeReads editors select the best new crime novels, mysteries, and thrillers coming out in October. * Hannah Morrissey, Hello, Transcriber (Minotaur) I’ve been looking forward to Hello, Transcriber for months, just based on the cover design alone, but the plot is just as compelling. Hazel Greenlee works the graveyard shift as a police transcriber in Black Harbor, Wisconsin, a rustbelt city plagued by addiction and hopelessness. Her days are filled with her husband’s hunting exploits, and her nights are taken over by clinically precise descriptions of lurid crime scenes. She tries to keep her emotional distance, but one case in particular—and the mysterious detectiv…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 217 views
Mothers are like the Roman god Janus, one face looking to the past and one to the future. They exist in a duality because motherhood is temporal, themselves transitioning from maiden to crone while ferrying their charge from infancy to adulthood. That duality and journey make them delightfully complex characters for authors. And dare I say the perfect amateur sleuth. In Nursery Crimes, the first of Ayelet Waldman’s Mommy Track mysteries, the reader meets Juliet Applebaum, a public defender with a preschool-aged daughter and another on the way. Waldman illustrates Juliet’s Janus status in this passage from chapter two. “Awash in ambivalence, alternately bored and entrance…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 241 views
Under an Outlaw Moon follows the true story of Bennie and Stella Mae Dickson. He’s reckless and she’s an outsider longing to fit in. When they pull off a bank robbery to celebrate her sixteenth birthday, their lives take a turn that they never could have imagined. In late August, 1938, Bennie and his new wife, Stella, walked into the Corn Exchange Bank in Elkton, South Dakota. With guns drawn, they were faced with having to wait thirty minutes for the vault’s time lock to release. Keeping their cool, they assembled employees and customers against a wall, and without a shot being fired, they robbed the bank of just over twenty-one hundred dollars. Driving to his family’s …
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 223 views
Family is messy, and let’s face it: literature thrives on mess. Fiction, it seems, is chockfull of unpleasant and even twisted family relationships. As both a reader and writer, I don’t mind mess, of course. But, when it comes to father-daughter relationships, I prefer complex and tender over destructive and perverse, and I must confess: I’ve always been a sucker for the books that capture that particular relationship with just the right tenor. My newest book, These Silent Woods, has themes of love, sacrifice, and redemption at its core, and I hope readers will fall in love with the father and daughter who inhabit the pages. Cooper, a flawed but dedicated dad, and Finch,…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 299 views
My new novel, Shoot the Moonlight Out, opens with two epigraphs. One comes from the great Garland Jeffreys song that gives the book its name, a New York City ramble that feels partly like a Tunnel of Love carnival ride and partly like following a map to an uncertain destination, providing a jolt of tone and atmospheric energy right out of the gate. Everything I wanted in my book was right there under the surface of that title. The other epigraph comes from a favorite poem of mine, “Riding the D Train” by Enid Dame. In the poem, Dame’s narrator is on the subway, noticing the passing rooftops and people in the windows of buildings and other riders in the car, scarred and sc…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 263 views
I confess to the almighty reader, and to you, my friends and colleagues, that I have sinned through my own faults, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do with my novel, and I ask, blessed reader, and you, my friends and colleagues, to pray for me to the deities of writing. I confess that at first I was reticent to write a detective novel, but that I overcame that hesitation quickly and confidently, so confidently that I embraced every detective fiction trope in existence with the audacity only the unenlightened possess. I confess that in my novel there is a beautiful corpse, and that she is female. I may have chosen not to cr…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
The pandemic derailed pretty much every aspect of regular life – office jobs moved home, shutdowns and social distancing became standard, and a sense of chaos and insecurity permeated those early months. The comic book industry was no different, and acclaimed writer Ed Brubaker found himself turning to a certain kind of crime novel for comfort – which, in turn, provided him with a bit of inspiration. “When the pandemic and the lockdown hit, I found myself turning to old favorite pulp and detective books for comfort reading. Parker novels, Lew Archer, Travis McGee, and I had this realization that American comics and graphic novels never really had anything like that,” Bru…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 278 views
I love a mystery set in an exotic location. The Orient Express. A renovated sanatorium in the Alps. Bangkok, Egypt, Paris, Mumbai. Sometimes there’s nothing more exciting than hopping on a literary red-eye and reading about murder in the Australian Outback. Still, as much as I love to imagine the scent of eucalyptus in the air as I read, there’s something uniquely gripping about a mystery set a bit closer to home. With a setting as familiar as stepping out my own front door, books grounded in the heart of America have an almost visceral appeal. It’s easy to imagine devilish deeds unfolding in far-flung locales where snow batters the windows and harsh mountain peaks stab …
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 317 views
It’s good to have work you’re respected for. Women have worked forever, no matter what memes fetishizing the 1950s try to tell you. It’s just that, with rare exceptions, like Queens, their jobs were often confined to the home, toiling as maids, as cooks, or as governesses. It was less common that a woman might find a job outside the home that could elevate her financially and socially. You should not become a professional poisoner. But it did seem to work for Locusta of Gaul, Rome’s most famous poisoner, often described as history’s first serial killer. (Although, as far as I can tell, her motives were entirely mercenary, and, unlike most serial killers, she derived no…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 212 views
Cherry Street ran between Main and Harvard, a short, narrow street clogged with police vehicles, fire trucks and an ambulance, painting the night red and blue. Sam parked a good hundred yards up from the call address — a blue-and-white two-story clapboard. However dissimilar they might otherwise be, the two detectives reflected professionalism in their dress, the department requiring “business casual” but the partners going well past that. Today they were accidentally a matched set in sharp gray suits, differentiated only by Sam’s crisp tie and Taylor’s silk blouse. The somewhat chilly evening had them both in very traditional trench coats with the lining in. They badged…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 202 views
Even as a child, I was already obsessed with my childhood. As I grew older, so did my interest, and whenever I told my mother about my frequent thoughts on the events that happened and why they did, she told me: “Don’t dig too deep in that stuff. What has happened, happened.” She urged me to look ahead because there, in the future, everything was possible. The future like a soft rain of opportunity waiting to happen. Her picture was clear: what lay ahead was beautiful and still unwritten, and the things behind us were stale and of no interest. Then my mother died, and I went to therapy to detangle my childhood, but I know what she would have said: “Don’t dig too deep in t…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 260 views
Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Alison Gaylin, The Collective (William Morrow) “Alison Gaylin’s The Collective is an astonishing feat. In the tradition of Ira Levin’s unforgettable social thrillers (Rosemary’s Baby, Stepford Wives), it’s a nerve-shredding, emotionally harrowing ride that also speaks volumes about our current moment, the dangers of our digital world, the potency of female rage. Don’t miss it.” Megan Abbott William Boyle, Shoot the Moonlight Out (Pegasus) “Boyle emerges not just as a consummate crime writer but as a poet of the underclass, unwaveringly portraying lives gone wrong but still findin…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 235 views
Harare, known back in the British colonial days of Rhodesia as Salisbury, and now the capital of Zimbabwe with over two million inhabitants. Harare and Zimbabwe have gone through a few problems post-independence – an initial economic boom tailed off in the 1990s with economic stagnation and rampant inflation. In 2009 Harare was voted the toughest city to live in according to the Economist Intelligence Unit’s livability poll and life has remained pretty tough even as the city has continued to expand. Robert Mugabe ran the country and the city for 30 years until 2017 and his death shortly afterwards. Much contemporary writing from Harare, of whatever genre, deals with the M…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 223 views
“Poets,” wrote Percy Shelley in 1821, “are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” That is, if a vision were made real enough upon the page, it could capture readers’ imaginations—and, if compelling enough, it could persuade entire societies to change. Examples abound. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s bestselling novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which she wrote to protest the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, depicted the horrors of enslavement so vividly that it swayed millions of readers and was, according to historians, a factor that helped incite the Civil War. In nineteenth-century England, Charles Dickens’s vivid critiques of workhouses, boarding schools, and the plight of impoveri…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 273 views
It’s not easy playing second-fiddle. Think about this for a moment: is there a character in all of Western literature more misunderstood, more defamed than Doctor Watson, the erstwhile sidekick of detective Sherlock Holmes? So often, in twentieth-century film and television adaptions, Dr. John Watson is represented as a blithering idiot—often old, always naive, and perpetually astonished. He exists in a constant state of amazement; at the very most, providing a contrast that makes Holmes seem even smarter. This is strange, because, as he is written in Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories, Watson could not be more different than this scurrilous remaking. Holmes and Watson meet i…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 660 views
By the 1890s James was confronting the painful reality that his serial and book sales were modest and his finances needed bolstering. In 1891 he confided to Robert Louis Stevenson, “Chastening necessity has laid its brutal hand on me and I have to try to make somehow or other the money I don’t make by literature. My books don’t sell, and it looks as if my plays might.” This turned out to be a vain hope. “I mean to wage this war ferociously for one year more,” he wrote William in December 1893 of his efforts in the drama field, and then “ ‘chuck’ the whole intolerable experiment.” A little over a year later, on January 5, 1895, the dismal premiere of James’s play Guy Domv…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 255 views
Here are the starting points of two movie thrillers we recently watched: a low-level group of crooks rob a small town bank and come away with vastly more money than they expected. It turns out they’ve mistakenly stolen Mafia money. What do they do now? (This is Don Siegel’s terrific 1973 movie, Charley Varrick, improbably—but wonderfully—starring Walter Matthau.) Second example: a serial killer has massacred two entire families in different cities who seem to have nothing in common. (This is Michael Mann’s 1986 movie Manhunter, based on Thomas Harris’s Red Dragon.) By comparison, this is how we got the idea for our 1999 book, Killing Me Softly. We were driving to visi…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 242 views
I grew up in a haunted house. It was a plain red brick 1890s farmhouse with 12-foot ceilings, an attic I never went into, and a basement that the family from “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” would have loved, complete with floor drain. We would hear pounding in the walls and overnight guests told us they’d been visited by friendly, inquisitive figures who opened their bedroom doors to peer in. Well, the mysterious figures were usually friendly: To this day, one of my cousins who stayed overnight is certain she saw an old woman standing over her bed, brandishing a knife. She closed her eyes, sure she was dreaming. When she opened them, the old woman was still there. My cousin …
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 286 views
How do you begin writing a book? In the case of my debut collection of fiction, you walk out onto your front lawn in the midst of trying to decide between two book ideas that are stirring inside of you—one eerie, one less so—and find a dead hare on your lawn, then, viewing it as a sign, pack up your possessions and pets and move from your cottage on a gentle hillside in the south west of England to part of a remote looming farmhouse on top of a northern almost-mountain above an infamous 17th-century plague village where, snowed in during the most ferocious winter in recent memory, you let the ghosts of the landscape and the building take over your mind until, as the first…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 265 views
A look at the month’s best reviewed crime novels, mysteries, and thrillers. John le Carré, Silverview (Viking) Silverview, the final completed novel by the master of spy fiction, John le Carré, arrives 10 months after his passing, like light from a dead star to illuminate nothing less than the slippery nature of truth and the very concept of loyalty … In many ways Silverview is a fitting conclusion to the long career of a writer who redefined an entire genre with the deceptive ease of pure genius … In this final work le Carré has lost none of what made him remarkable: here are characters operating at the very limits of their own endurance, confronting fundamental tr…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 220 views
Michael Koryta is a machine. He published his first book at twenty one and went on to become the New York Times-bestselling author of 14 novels. His work has been translated into more than 20 languages and has won or been nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Edgar Award, Shamus Award, Barry Award, Quill Award, International Thriller Writers Award, and the Golden Dagger. I came to our “Shop Talk” as a fan of Michael Koryta’s. What I didn’t know, though, was the process behind his staggering production. I didn’t realize just how much of a machine this dude really was. All I knew was that he’d written The Prophet, one of the best crime novels about high school f…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 377 views
What’s better than a horror movie? A horror comedy of course! And after another long and terrifying year, we all deserve a chance to spend Halloween however we choose, including doubled over with laughter. And, if your kids are still at home, each of these films easily doubles as an educational tool, as you explain each and every joke, and with it, the entire history of 20th century cinema. This article is dedicated to every child who saw Young Frankenstein before they had even heard of Frankenstein. Hocus Pocus (1993, dir. Kenny Ortega) While most of the 21st century has been a steaming pile of horseshit, the growing status of Hocus Pocus as a cult classic is one of…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 447 views
I love to feel unsettled while I’m reading. My favorite books leave the reader teetering in the precipice of certainty, wondering what’s real. I think of them as “fever dream” novels—books that you read in a mad, sweaty dash and that make you feel dazed and disoriented when you turn the last page. Thrillers and crime novels are especially well-suited to this style because they thrive on ambiguity. It’s one of the reasons I chose to leave the narrator of my debut, Fan Club, unnamed. Who, exactly, is she? The reader knows her intimately, yet not at all. And as she slips deeper into her obsession with international pop star Adriana Argento and a group of her enigmatic super…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 212 views
Defining genre is a notoriously dirty business, and no genre is murkier than literary fiction. Any attempt to pin down this slippery creature will naturally descend into mudslinging, no matter the intentions of the intrepid definer—the very name ‘literary fiction’ implies a smug, little jibe. Whereas the ‘crime’ in ‘literary crime’, of course, is easy enough. A reader must find at least one crime within the book’s pages. And it’s likely that this reader will encounter said crime in one of the ways they have previously encountered fictional crimes—through mystery and suspense, through red herrings, jaded detectives, the uncovering of clues. Whether it begins with a dead b…
Last reply by Admin_99, -
- 0 replies
- 197 views
The CrimeReads editors pick the month’s best new books out in paperback. * Marie Benedict, The Mystery of Mrs. Christie (Sourcebooks Landmark) “A stunning story… The ending is ingenious, and it’s possible that Benedict has brought to life the most plausible explanation for why Christie disappeared for 11 days in 1926.” –The Washington Post Brian Selfon, The Nightworkers (Picador) “Electric, surprising, and tightly plotted . . . A compelling writer to watch.” –Adrienne Westenfeld, Esquire emily m. danforth, Plain Bad Heroines (William Morrow) “Full of Victorian sapphic romance, metafictional horror, biting misandrist humor, Hollywood intrigue, and multipl…
Last reply by Admin_99,
"King of Pantsers"?
ALGONKIAN SUCCESS STORIES
