–Originally delivered as the Annual Speech (28 June 2023) for the Dorothy L. Sayers Society, edited. Exactly a hundred years ago this October, Dorothy L Sayers published Whose Body? It launched her career as an illustrious author of eleven novels featuring Lord Peter Wimsey that … | Continue reading
While mysteries can usually be trusted to compel the reader within the first chapter or even the first few pages, it’s rare for them to hook us from the first paragraph. But West Heart Kill, Dann McDorman’s clever debut, achieves this with intriguing tongue-in-cheek confidence. T … | Continue reading
John le Carré (born David Cornwell) hated giving interviews. “First you invent yourself, then you believe the invention”, he wrote in his autobiography The Pigeon Tunnel. Despite these reservations, Le Carré/Cornwell ended up participating in a documentary about his life. Surpris … | Continue reading
Filmmaker Alan Rudolph has been working in the movie business for most of his life. Coming from a Hollywood family where his dad Oscar was also a director, Rudolph began his career as an assistant director on various projects including the Jim Brown/Gene Hackman flick Riot (1969) … | Continue reading
It’s hard to think of a $21 million dollar motion picture as a “cult movie” but that’s what Brian DePalma’s 1983 Scarface almost became until it was saved by an audience that the filmmakers never had in mind. A cult movie is nothing to be ashamed of; The Rocky Horror Picture Show … | Continue reading
Two things jumped out at me back when I started watching the first season of Lupin, Netflix’s wildly successful show about a ‘gentleman thief’ in Paris who spends his days plotting heists and piecing together a scheme for righteous revenge. One, the show had some far-fetched mome … | Continue reading
How do you plan a murder? Do you rely on chance or fate to create a crime of opportunity? Do you meticulously plot the steps, the way a chef might devise a recipe? Or do you study how other killers have done it? In my debut novel, West Heart Kill, I adopted the latter approach. [ … | Continue reading
Many thanks to the contributors who sent the below responses. Never Whistle at Night, a haunting new anthology of dark fiction crafted by Native writers and edited by Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst, is now available from Vintage Books. Tiffany Morris: Haunting is history th … | Continue reading
What JR, Alexis, and Domingue Taught this Mystery Writer One of the best compliments I’ve received from readers about the Lady Mystery series is that each mystery unfolds like an episode of television. The vivid nature of the storytelling, the feeling that you’re in the room watc … | Continue reading
Even the worst of us have feelings. That assassin with the high-powered rifle atop the building, squinting through their scope at their unsuspecting target, might yearn in their heart for something more. At least, that’s the message we’re supposed to take away from certain crime … | Continue reading
Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Dann McDorman, West Heart Kill (Knopf) “Potent. . . . McDorman’s knowledge is abundant, as is his cleverness.” —The New York Times Book Review Lisa Unger, Christmas Presents (Mysterious Press) “Fans o … | Continue reading
Let’s go to Las Vegas with one of the great kings of the American hard-boiled Charles Willeford in his novel Wicked Wives (1956): ‘Once the sun comes up in the desert it rises fast. It hung on the horizon like a solid neon pumpkin, beaming through our windshield. It grew warmer a … | Continue reading
“Does your novel speak to Hamas’s attack on Israel?” I got the question during a podcast interview I was giving to support the launch of my new novel, which is set during the 2006 34-day Hezbollah-Israeli War. My novel came out shortly before Hamas’s October 7 assault on Israel … | Continue reading
It’s a rare crime fiction reader who doesn’t love curling up with a mystery during the winter months, especially if that mystery is one of the many Christmas-themed puzzles that the genre is famous for. The tradition goes back to the Golden Age of detective fiction, that period a … | Continue reading
The night I saw Killers of the Flower Moon I dreamed wildly, fitfully. Until I went to bed, I spent my waking hours thinking about the film, and then I suppose I continued to think about it as I slept. I have many questions about it. There are so many details I’d like to discuss. … | Continue reading
Picture it: Woodstock, Georgia, 1988. I’m at a sleepover party. We’re eating pizza and watching The Amityville Horror and probably drinking Ecto Cooler and jumping around on Pogo Balls because the eighties were wild like that. There are four other girls and one mom hanging out in … | Continue reading
Every picture tells a story. If you don’t believe me, just ask Rod Stewart. Sir Rod practically coined the phrase in 1971. He liked it so much he used it for both the title of his third solo record on Mercury and for the title of the album’s opening track. The album was a br … | Continue reading
“Murder will out…” –Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales Poetry and pathology. Verse and victim. Meter and murder and mayhem. Poetry and crime fiction seem to go together like, well, rhyme and reason. Crime novelist and CWA Diamond Dagger winner Martin Edwards has been quote … | Continue reading
Being inside a church always made her feel good, and her anxious brow relaxed as she absorbed the peaceful and uplifting atmosphere. A few people were milling around admiring the architecture, and several worshippers were praying. She brushed past a group of tourists and sidled d … | Continue reading
Nothing much happens in Mélin, a picturesque village of little over a thousand people about an hour’s drive from Brussels. If the sleepy town has a claim to fame, it is that many of its buildings — farmhouses, the church and the vicarage, the restaurant —are built from a chalky s … | Continue reading
So often in books and movies, women are put against one another. There is some sort of competitive spirit or revived childhood rivalry over social status, a job promotion, or even a love interest. The stereotypical “mean girl” of the cast brings out a malicious and spiteful side … | Continue reading
From tales told around the campfire to major literary classics, there’s a reason we turn to folklore when we want a scary story with staying power. Stories from mythology and folklore persist through the centuries because there’s something in them that speaks to us on a deep huma … | Continue reading
The risk of becoming an unidentified decedent, or a John or Jane Doe, isn’t something most of us will face when we die—but it is a possibility, especially for the most vulnerable among us. There are tens of thousands of long-term unidentified persons in the United States, whose c … | Continue reading
Will the real Walter Hill please stand up? The screenwriter and director is hard to label. Should Hill, now in his 80s, be considered the screenwriter of classic crime films like “The Getaway” and “The Drowning Pool?” The director of uncharacteristic, offbeat films like “Streets … | Continue reading
A lawyer in 1920s Bombay. A computer hacker/tech investigator in 1990s Paris. A deputy sheriff in 1914 New Jersey. What unites these characters, separated by time and diverse locales? Each one is an independent, unconventional woman in the role of investigator. I have been an avi … | Continue reading
I began writing my third novel, Hazardous Spirits during one of the many national lockdowns for Covid in the UK. At the time, my partner and I were living in a studio flat which shared every available wall with a neighbor in a block of flats. ‘Stay at home’ orders were in place u … | Continue reading
David L. Ulin has spent the better part of thirty years as the preeminent book critic in the West; first at the late, great, LA Reader and then as book review editor and later Book Critic for the Los Angeles Times and currently as the books editor for Alta Journal. At the same ti … | Continue reading
I’ve always been a tremendous fan of thrillers, especially of the psychological variety. Whether on the page or on the screen, they rank amongst my favorite thing ever. (I can practically recite the entirety of Rear Window verbatim, with a convincing Grace Kelly, Jimmy Stewart or … | Continue reading
I used to say I hated Taylor Swift. The year was 2008. I was a poor grad school student subsisting on cheap slices and dollar Bud Lights, the latter of which brought me to a dive bar close to campus one night after an evening poetry seminar. Crowded and loud, I was sipping from … | Continue reading
Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Sara Davis-Goff, Silent City (Flatiron) “The novel’s worldbuilding is crisply efficient…Fast-paced and suspenseful, and the banshees satisfyingly heroic. . . A headlong thriller.” –Kirkus Anbara Salam … | Continue reading
I got into a car accident right after college, and I knew some insurance money was coming my way. The insurance agent had hinted it would be in the tens of thousands, and I told myself that I was going to make a movie with the money. That was something I’d always wanted to, but [ … | Continue reading
In 1978, a young man escaped from the psychiatric institution where he had been held for fifteen years, ever since he murdered his older sister as a six year old boy. After his escape, he began a brutal killing spree that left at least four people (and one dog) dead. Anyone looki … | Continue reading
2023 has, so far, been a year full of innovative and mind-bending anthologies, and Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror is one of the best. With an incredible list of contributors, and Jordan Peele as editor, this collection is meant to be savored and celebrated. … | Continue reading
The idea of taking care of family and fellow citizens who cannot physically or mentally support themselves has long been a part of the fabric of American life. But somewhere along the line, that noble notion began to fade. Following World War II, young people in extended families … | Continue reading
When I was a kid, Superman bored me. The dude is invincible! He can fly and see through walls and crush lumps of coal into diamonds! Where’s the fun in a flawless, all-powerful character? I preferred more realistic heroes—ordinary people whose fates were truly uncertain. In 1975, … | Continue reading
I did not grow up religious. Once in a while, when she could convince the feral girl I was to comb her hair and put on something nice, my grandmother would take me to a Unitarian church, where there was no talk of the devil or hell, no fire and brimstone. So why is it […] | Continue reading
It has been nearly 90 years since Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were ambushed by police on a Louisiana backwoods road, and cut to pieces by gunfire. The pair have entered the cultural lexicon and remained there, the term “Bonnie and Clyde” has come to be stand for any dangerous … | Continue reading
Who are you without your memories? If you developed amnesia, how could you find yourself again? By listening to people who may have known you before? By searching out more objective scraps of your past? If you’re lucky, maybe you’ll find a diary. If you’re not, you might have not … | Continue reading
“Speed kills” has always been identified with fast-moving cars and drugs. But today it best describes the crime novel genre, which combines murder with a quickened pace to compete for the conscious mind of an Attention Deficit Disorder society. “It is a different world now and w … | Continue reading
Humans have always lived with deep-rooted fears of someone or something stealing our children. It’s a cultural anxiety that pops up in cases as varied as the story of Hansel and Gretel and the Lindbergh baby. But it was in the latter decades of the 20th century that these fears w … | Continue reading
While we all romanticize the notion of a writer engrossed in their craft solely to satisfy their creative impulses, seasoned authors understand that a pivotal moment arrives when their book is slated for publication. This critical juncture heralds judgment in the form of reviews … | Continue reading
Florida is a sunny place. You’ve got your rich Republicans on the Gulf Coast, especially down around Sarasota and Naples, the Tampa Mafia north of them, your rich New York Democrats wintering along the East Coast, families of all sorts hunkered down at Disney World, Cubans and Ha … | Continue reading
It’s probably unfair to say that a podcast ruined my life. Technically, my life was destroyed the night Savvy was murdered. And then it was destroyed again, the next day, when I decided to take an early-morning stroll with her blood drying on my dress. And for a third time, when … | Continue reading
Helen Garner once described herself in the essay “Marriage” as “a small grim figure with a notebook and a cold.” In the piece, she makes her way to the Royal Mint in Melbourne to witness the day’s civil marriages, wearing an “unobtrusive black suit” that she hopes won’t show up i … | Continue reading
A lot of my work is about the power of stories. How they shift over time and how the mythologies surrounding a single story can spiral into an entire system of beliefs, beliefs people are willing to die and kill for. I find the process of storyfication fascinating. So I thought I … | Continue reading
The late 1980’s is a long time ago—it’s also when both Ellen Hart and J.M. Redmann started writing mysteries with lesbian protagonists. At the time many states still made queer sex illegal, and marriage was likely to happen after pigs found wings and soared aloft. Hart’s first bo … | Continue reading
I went on my first public tour of an asylum five years ago and something happened immediately upon stepping onto the grass-covered grounds, gazing at the massive and sprawling stone building for the first time. It was a spark of awe that, as I drank in the looming and heavy prese … | Continue reading
As most Cuban Americans would tell you, Viva-po-Ru (Vicks VapoRub) can cure anything from a cough to a fever, but when it comes to matters of the soul, you’re better off visiting your local curandera tossing shells or cards out of her shed. Then, be prepared to make a trek to you … | Continue reading