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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Hello kids. This is a very short post whose only intention is to provide you with access to the following hysterical sketch from That Mitchell and Webb Look, the British sketch show featuring the comedy duo David Mitchell and Robert Webb. (If you’re having dé·jà vu about reading a similar post about a Mitchell and Webb Look sketch… it’s because you probably did read one such post. Apparently Mitchell and Webb are the official comedians of CrimeReads. So it goes.) Anyway, in this skit, Mitchell and Webb play two guys coming up with a list of friends to invite to a party. But they realize that if they invite Freddie, Daphne, and Velma, they’re going to have to invite Sh…
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It’s almost time for SXSW, and since I moved back to Austin a year ago, I figured I’d put together a list of novels featuring musicians to read. I thought this list was just going to be a random selection from multiple years, but it turns out there are a ton of great music mysteries coming out just this year alone! Below, you’ll find seven novels exploring the intersection of creativity, celebrity, and crime, with a variety of musical genre inspirations, including pop stars, punk rockers, classical musicians, metalheads, aging folk singers, and even a tribute to grunge. Jennifer Banash, The Rise and Fall of Ava Arcana (Lake Union, April 1) So, anyone familiar with th…
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Nothing is ever as it seems. That’s the way it goes in murder mystery stories, isn’t it? Nowhere is quite what you believe it is. No one is exactly who they say they are. Nothing happens entirely as you think it will. At least, that’s what any author would hope to achieve – keep you guessing right up to the end when the skill and bravery of the detectives allows them to reveal all before apprehending the culprit. I’ll never forget the ‘reveal all’ scene in the 1968 movie Where Eagles Dare, which starred Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood. It may be an action-adventure, war-and-espionage movie but there are a couple of murders along the way, so I feel justified in giving …
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Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Peter Swanson, The Kind Worth Saving (William Morrow) “The plot is an ingenious puzzle… Forget trying to solve the mystery yourself. But be aware that if you look closely, you may spot the murderer… hiding in plain sight.” –New York Times Book Review David Handler, The Girl Who Took What She Wanted (Mysterious Press) “The empathetic Hoag’s narrative voice compels, and Handler makes his role as an investigator easy to accept. Fans of hard-edged whodunits set in La La Land will be riveted.” –Publishers Weekly Owen Matthews, White Fox (Doubleday) “The adventure elements of th…
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“You any tougher than you look?” “Hell yes! At least, I used to be.” “I used to be. We all used to be.” Harry Ross (Paul Newman) was, as he describes it, a cop for twenty years, a PI for five, and then a drunk. When an errand to retrieve the wayward daughter of film stars Jack and Catherine Ames (Gene Hackman, Susan Sarandon) goes awry due to Harry’s inattention and subsequent injury, the Ameses allow him to recuperate in an apartment above the garage in their Art Deco mansion. Two years later, Harry remains, having settled into a cushioned role as a handyman and sort of kept friend to Jack. His mutual attraction with Catherine adds a pinch of spice to bland days of…
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Founded by Catherine the Great, though often described as distinctly un-Russian in manner and disposition, the Ukrainian port city of Odessa (and nowadays often spelled “Odesa”) is currently in the news for the horrors of war and the city’s brave resistance to Russian attack, historically Odessa stands out as a crime city…criminal legends have been built here in this amazing city on the Black Sea in southern Ukraine. Charles King’s history of the city (which explains a lot about how this Black Sea coastal city became so notorious for crime, exotic criminals, and violence) Odessa: Genius and Death in a City of Dreams (2011) lays out the case for Odessa: ‘a taste for the …
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Mysteries and weddings are a match made in storytelling heaven. Seriously, think of all the juicy conflict that can arise with all the abounding love, high stakes, societal expectations, and melding—and sometimes meddling—families. Not to mention the setting potential with backdrops from hilariously tacky to enviably elegant to refreshingly exotic. It’s enough to make any writer salivate. And that’s before taking the cake into account! It makes sense given the rather colorful history of wedding traditions. The smooshing of the cake that started with the groom crushing barley bread over his bride’s head, the throwing of the bouquet that originated as a free-for-all to sna…
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In the opening chapter of Christopher Bollen’s immersive, intricately constructed new novel, aptly titled The Lost Americans, a “weapons tech” named Eric falls to his death from his hotel balcony in the pulsating city of Cairo. Did he jump or was he pushed? The scene shifts to his grieving sister, Cate, back in The Berkshires of Western Mass. Struggling to find meaning in her brother’s death, she bristles at Polestar’s explanation that Eric either committed suicide or had a drunken accident. “Cate would accept an accident. In the worst case, she even take murder.” As a villainous presence, Polestar makes for an ideal embodiment of evil, and Eric and Cate had clashed ov…
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Gus Vollmer was lost in thought. It was February 1921, and the chief was sitting at his desk at police headquarters, sun-wrinkled face creased into a frown of concentration. He jotted notes on a yellow pad in his looping handwriting. He’d spent the morning flicking through the latest issue of the Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology, which had finally published a paper he’d submitted more than six months earlier, about his plans to build a policing school in Berkeley. But something else had caught his eye. Sandwiched between Vollmer’s article and one debating the benefits of hanging the mentally ill was a paper by a psychologist and lawyer…
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Witches—and witch trials—have long been a subject of fascination in literature. Not even Shakespeare was immune. In Macbeth, the Weird Sisters (originally called the Weyward Sisters) set the scene for the bard’s tragedy about fate, evil and malign female influence. Fast forward four hundred years, and witchy novels—across a range of genres—are bigger than ever. Perhaps we’re so spellbound by witches because we find them difficult to explain. The witch trials of the early modern period are one of the darkest chapters in human history: thousands of people, mainly women, were put to death in continental Europe, Britain and North America. This was a phenomenon that spanned c…
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Every crime story is, on some level, a story about justice served or justice denied. And when the author situates the crime or crimes that are perpetrated within the context of a system of oppression that negatively effects one or more groups of people based on their affiliations or identities—social justice—the world of the novel cracks open to let in some of the biggest, darkest, deepest questions about humanity itself. When I set out to write my debut novel, The Dig, the heart of the story came straight from the ancient Greek tragedy, Antigone. In Sophocles’ play, a young woman follows her moral and ethical conviction that the death of her brother who rebelled against…
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Yes, strange as it may seem—and hard as it may be to believe today, with two cinematic blockbusters now under his sash and key roles in several other super-hit films as well—back in the 1960s and for decades afterward, Doctor Stephen Strange was one of Marvel’s less important, and least popular, marquee-level heroes. (In fact, Marvel editor Stan Lee later revealed the hero was nearly christened ‘Mr Strange’, but instead he got promoted to being an actual doctor, because Marvel already had a ‘Mr Fantastic.’) He started off his four-color life in a mere five-page throw-away story by scripter Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko in Strange Tales #110 (July 1963), basically just …
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As soon as you try to define a crime novel, things get complicated. Is it any novel in which a crime occurs? Is Middlemarch a crime novel? Crime and Punishment? Lolita? In the contemporary context, the problem is often solved by categorizing a novel of high quality in which a crime occurs as a “literary mystery” or “literary thriller”—terms that presuppose both a blending and a demarcation of genres that many writers are reluctant to admit exist in the first place. With definitions so hard to come by, what can we say about a novel that takes the form of a mystery but defies all the expectations of the genre? I’m not sure I can answer that question, but I do know that the…
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The Victorians were fanatical about the dead. During this era, the spiritualist movement—central to which was communication with the dead, especially through mediums—was in its heyday. Victorians were fascinated by anything supernatural, otherworldly, or occult, and a number of our present-day traditions around death and dying echo the practices of this bygone era. Public theatrical displays of mediumship and psychic power were a common occurrence in the Victorian era, particularly séances. These were an especially popular affair among the wealthy looking to entertain their friends with elaborate parlor-room displays. Though the Victorians did not abide by any standard …
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If I had to choose a favorite lineage within crime fiction, I’d pick one that includes Tony Hillerman, Barbara Neely, and Tiffany D. Jackson. Though their styles differ dramatically, these writers deliver satisfying stories whose marginalized protagonists question traditional responses to crime. Their books offer insight into survivors’ healing needs beyond exposing “the bad guy.” And they highlight the community’s role in responding to crime where institutions fall short. My debut novel, Play the Game, follows in their footsteps. Play the Game, a YA mystery, opens with the announcement that Phillip Singer, known to the public for killing a Black boy named Ed Hennessey, …
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Across the nearly two-and-a-half-hour sprawl of Inherent Vice, Coy Harlingen, surf rock saxophonist and heroin addict turned CIA asset, appears in two centerpiece scenes. In the first, soon after Doc has been hired by Coy’s wife, Hope, to investigate his whereabouts, Coy emerges on a fog-cloaked pier to ask that Doc keep an eye on Hope and their daughter, Amethyst, and provides a minor clue as to the significance of the words “Golden Fang.” In the second, Doc finds Coy at a house party, where the anxious and paranoid Coy bemoans his self-imposed alienation from his family and urges Doc to find Shasta before she is enmeshed in the same morass that he is. In both cases, Coy…
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As far back as I can remember, I’ve made my home within mysteries. Not mystery, mind you – any real-life uncertainty is just a tripwire for my anxieties. But maybe that’s why the classic whodunnit has been such a reliable source of solace for me, a problem and its solution conveniently giftwrapped for my entertainment; a ship I can enjoy without wondering how it fit inside its bottle. Lately, I’ve cozied up in the clockwork castles of Christie’s biggest acolyte, Rian Johnson. If his Knives Out and Glass Onion are a joint thesis statement that the narrative wellsprings of Christie’s style of mysteries are not yet dry, then his new case-of-the-week mystery show, Poker Face…
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A little over ten years ago, Gillian Flynn already had two successful thrillers under her belt, Sharp Objects and Dark Places, but her third release would be a genre-defining moment. Gone Girl propelled domestic noir into the spotlight, bringing in new readers to the thriller genre in droves, and paving the way for the now-wildly popular subset of the thriller genre. Crime fiction, and even domestic suspense, didn’t start with Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl. Amy certainly isn’t literature’s first unreliable narrator. However, the release of Gone Girl catapulted domestic thrillers into what they are today, it brought the genre’s readership to numbers it had never experienced.…
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Opioids. Human trafficking. Domestic violence. Sexual violence. These are all topics I’ve plumbed the depths of in my work. And no, I don’t write incendiary exposes or insightful non-fiction. I write commercial thrillers, page-turning fiction designed to captivate readers and fuel sleepless nights. My foremost motivation is to entertain people. I live for the craft of storytelling. I love creating lush worlds and complex characters that lure you in and rob you of hours of your time. So why would I choose to lead my readers into such somber and macabre real-world issues like human trafficking? Because in addition to being a commercial artist, I’m also an invested citizen…
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For Henry: Although I’m not a teacher by profession—I’m a writer—I have for decades conducted writing workshops, including at Occidental College, USC, UCLA. Recently, when the wife of author Henry Turner, who had begun his professional writing journey years ago as an especially talented writer in my workshop, informed me that Henry’s car had gone out of control at a notorious curve on his way to Ojai, I was in shock. The driver, Henry Turner, was dead. To be invited into my workshop, applicants were required to submit a sample of work. I avoided noting gender and age; only talent was considered. Once in a while a submission of such refined quality appeared that the cho…
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I had been thinking a lot about serial killers. In fact, as I drove through the steep, rugged terrain of northwest Georgia, on my way to Cloudland Canyon State Park, I was listening to a true crime podcast. I think it was an episode about Lawrence Singleton, the “Mad Chopper.” For months now, I had been slowly wading into true crime documentaries and podcasts, wanting to understand our culture’s fascination with all things murder. While watching one of these documentaries, I had recognized footage of a school where a famous serial killer abducted his final victim. I realized with horror that I’d spent the early years of my childhood just a few blocks away, that I had of…
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Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Donna Leon, So Shall You Reap (Atlantic Monthly Press) “As always, Brunetti’s sensitivity to the human factor in his work—apparent in his sense of responsibility to the victims and his empathy with nearly all those he encounters—is what draws the reader to care for this character in a way that is very different from how we respond to most fictional sleuths. Add to that the richness of Brunetti’s domestic life—loving but never sentimental, defined more by a raised eyebrow than a rhetorical flourish—and you begin to see why this series occupies a very special place in the crime-fiction wo…
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Of course it’s a big claim but there may not be a more beautiful, ethereal city on earth than Kyoto. Greater Kyoto contains one and a half million people but the city’s centre is the cultural heartland of Japan. It is a city (alternatively known as the Imperial City sometimes) of ancient culture, religion and architecture – those picturesque streets of wooden houses that make Kyoto so instagramable! The capital was moved from Kyoto to Tokyo after the Meiji Restoration in 1868 and so the city avoided the worst of the firebombing in World War Two that levelled the current capital. It is a city where you can still capture a Japan before it began to interact with the West and…
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Few things in life excite me more than doing research for a new novel. For me, it is the phase of the book-writing-process where new ideas manifest themselves, where rabbit holes are explored, and new discoveries are made. It is a phase full of wonder and limitless aspirations for what your book could be, but also a Herculean double edge sword when you realize that the research rabbit hole you’ve climbed down is none other than your brain’s careful attempt to camouflage what you are really doing: Procrastinating. That being said, let’s dive into my research process. Since my books can be categorized in the spy/geo-political thriller genre, I can safely say that I get mo…
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When I celebrated the publication of my first novel, one of my friends briefly steered me away from the hubbub and toasts and quietly asked: “Now what do you want?” I don’t remember what I said in the moment, but the question later haunted me as I struggled to find a satisfactory answer. It had taken me years to write the book. What did I really want from all that dreaming and effort? Sales? Of course, but I was under no misconception that my little mystery would be a bestseller or make me rich. A fellow author once told me, whatever the number of books you sell, it’ll never be enough. What else did I want? Good reviews? Sure, and I got them, but that wasn’t the point.…
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