Portsmouth – known to the locals as “Pompey” – is, and has been for centuries, England’s largest Royal Navy base, 75 miles south of London in the country of Hampshire. Home to two-thirds of the UK’s surface naval fleet and with a reputation you might expect of a town filled to th … | Continue reading
The Mysterious Mr. Badman is a long-forgotten but entertaining crime novel, its light-heartedness all the more unexpected given the author’s reputation as a master of the macabre. The teasing tone is set right from the start, in the opening sentence: “When at two o’clock on a sul … | Continue reading
Teenagers don’t have it easy. On top of navigating a microculture rife with veiled rules and unspoken expectations—also known as high school—they often get a bad rap. Adults tend to view them through the lens of popular culture, assigning labels born of books and screen: rebel, c … | Continue reading
This November, FX released the fifth and possibly final season of the popular anthology series Fargo. Based on the 1996 film by Joel and Ethan Coen, and set in that film’s extended universe (every property needs one these days), Fargo the series has been some ride thus far. Since … | Continue reading
–Adapted from a Center For Fiction conversation between Joseph Kanon and Paul Vidich, November 9, 2023 The Spy Who Came in From the Cold was published in September 1963 in London under the name of a little-known writer, John le Carré, and several months later the novel came to Am … | Continue reading
I cut my teeth on Larry Brown. If you’ve never heard of Larry before, let me introduce you by way of Michael Farris Smith. Both are Mississippi authors who aren’t afraid to stare straight into the hard stuff. Both write prose so clean it sings. Larry was gone by the time I starte … | Continue reading
Anna Pitoniak, The Helsinki Affair (Simon and Schuster) “Atmospheric, well-researched and packed with tradecraft, conspiracies, murder and, best of all, two fascinating women … Pitoniak has something unexpected up her sleeve. For Amanda and Kath, the novel’s conclusion also feels … | Continue reading
On January 24, 2014, Miriam Rodriguez received a call at 4 a.m. from her eldest daughter Azalea—a call that would change her and her family’s lives forever. Miriam’s younger daughter, Karen, had been kidnapped by the Zeta drug cartel and was being held for $77,000 in ransom. Thou … | Continue reading
From Book Marks, a look at November’s best reviewed new releases. * Anna Pitoniak, The Helsinki Affair (Simon and Schuster) “Atmospheric, well-researched and packed with tradecraft, conspiracies, murder and, best of all, two fascinating women … Pitoniak has something unexpected u … | Continue reading
The source of the great Burgundy deception was the shortage of wine caused by the destructive force of phylloxera. It made its first appearance in France in the vineyards of the Rhône in 1863; Burgundians held out for more than a decade hoping that somehow they would not be touch … | Continue reading
Not too long ago I found myself nearly alone in the Maritime wing of the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem. The Peabody Essex was formed from the gradual merging of the Essex Institute, once the historical society for Essex County in Massachusetts, and the Peabody Museum, a descendan … | Continue reading
Parties are terrible at the best of times. So much hope and anticipation is heaped onto them, they can never live up to the pressure, collapsing into tears and piles of vomit. Not only the teenage ones, either… The preparation is the best part, when hope still springs eternal as … | Continue reading
There are so many reasons to love fall, from the splendor of the changing leaves to settling back into a comfortable routine after a hectic summer. Cooler temperatures and fewer insect pests encourage us to spend more time in nature which has been proven to have numerous mental h … | Continue reading
Late in July 1976, the Coppolas returned to the Philippines. Sofia was enrolled in first grade at a Chinese school where no one spoke English (“Francis said it would be a terrific experience for her,” Eleanor recalled), and, the day before production was to resume, Eleanor dreamt … | Continue reading
On the day Agatha Christie died in 1976, London theaters dimmed their lights for an hour in a show of esteem for her. While best known as the top-selling novelist of all time, Christie also set a record for the longest running stage production. The play she predicted would last 8 … | Continue reading
For a bibliophile, there’s nothing better than curling up with a good book. The last place most booklovers want to be is stuck in the middle of a crowd. However, nothing can draw an introverted booklover into a crowd better than a book event. Book clubs, book conventions, book fe … | Continue reading
In 1958, America was at the peak of the post-WWII boom. The country had emerged from the war as the strongest economic and military power in the world. Prosperity abounded. Returning soldiers went to college on the G.I. Bill, which also offered longer-term loans to allow the purc … | Continue reading
The White Priory Murders is an “impossible crime” novel by the master of the locked-room mystery, John Dickson Carr, masquerading as Carter Dickson, the name associated with his stories featuring Sir Henry Merrivale. Originally published in 1934, this was Merrivale’s second recor … | Continue reading
Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Nita Prose, The Mystery Guest (Ballantine) “Solving a crime has never been more delightful. Molly Gray is a gift to the world, and this is a book to hug when you finish it.” –Nina de Gramont Laura Ann … | Continue reading
A closed circle of dubious personalities gather in one house at the invitation of a mysterious host. They hide tragic secrets, financial disasters, and desperate ulterior motives as they compete to get their target alone. This is the premise for several Agatha Christie novels, an … | Continue reading
No one (well, maybe one person) runs for president without accepting the inevitability that they’ll be accused of ugly things. It’s almost impossible for a president to sue for libel or slander, not just because of their status as the ultimate public figure but also because of th … | Continue reading
Sorry, folks—we got a little behind with the column, but there’s been so many wonderful new novels in translation coming out this fall, I had to do at least one more new release roundup before the end of the year. Below, you’ll find an eclectic melange of mystery, thriller, and h … | Continue reading
It’s 1986, and I’m lost in the forest. I’m ten years old, huddled at the base of a Ponderosa pine at the far reaches of Silver Lake, California, one of innumerous small, high Alpine lakes strewn across the Sierra Nevada mountains like blue-green jewels in a tangled necklace. It’s … | Continue reading
Everyone who has ever tried to write crime fiction understands the importance of pacing. It’s not enough to have a plot that sounds exciting on the jacket copy—getting the plot to move in a way that keeps the reader breathlessly turning pages is another matter altogether. When I … | Continue reading
It’s about to be the start of the holiday season, and with everyone gearing up to spend as much (or as little) time with family as possible, it’s also the perfect time to pick up a psychological thriller and and wonder if Tolstoy would have enjoyed the era of domestic suspense wh … | Continue reading
There’s a wonderful world where all you desire And everything you’ve longed for is at your fingertips Where the bittersweet taste of life is at your lips Where aisles and aisles of dreams await you –Queen of the Supermarket, Bruce Springsteen, 2009 Last year crime writer Duane Sw … | Continue reading
Several years ago, I was sitting in a café with a group of fellow New Zealand writers, discussing books we’d recently read. With several of us, me included, working on thriller or suspense projects, we meandered onto the subject of thrillers and mysteries set in Iceland, as well … | Continue reading
I didn’t intend to write a book about an angry woman. After all, furious, embittered characters—despite much progress—often remained the province of men. To write an angry woman was to risk her becoming Unlikeable, a nebulous state of being still somehow able to deliver the killi … | Continue reading
Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Femi Kayode, Gaslight (Mulholland) “Kayode delivers another ensnaring, vividly realized, suspenseful, and witty tale of a reluctant yet gifted investigator who susses out the truth about people trappe … | Continue reading
Hello everyone! It’s the Holiday season (the big long holiday season from Halloween to New Year’s that starts around the 4th of July). As always, I am charge of putting together this year’s CrimeReads Holiday Gift Guide, and I am positively chuffed. Shopping for cute mystery-ish … | Continue reading
The following is an excerpt from Deanne Stillman’s new book, American Confidential: Uncovering the Bizarre Relationship Between Lee Harvey Oswald and his Mother. The book explores Lee Harvey Oswald and his mother Marguerite, and how their strange relationship factored into the JF … | Continue reading
“You can’t be serious.” Twice in my life, academic colleagues and friends have had that reaction when I’ve told them what I was planning to do. The first time was in the early 1990s, when I decided to teach a course on LGBT politics at the University of California, San Diego, one … | Continue reading
When it comes to romance in cozy mysteries, readers range in their preferences from, “I’m more about the mystery,” to “Gimme all the romance.” While writing my cozy mystery, A Nutcracker Nightmare, I toyed with how much romance to include. In the end, I kept it on the lighter sid … | Continue reading
Halfway through Among the Bros: A Fraternity Crime Story, investigative reporter Max Marshall recounts his meeting with a man who used to sell illegally sourced prescription drugs to fellow College of Charleston students. Describing a typical Saturday on campus, the former dealer … | Continue reading
Recently, I saw an article that claimed that 1999 was the best year in Hollywood history. Then another claimed it was…1971? I beg to disagree. It is my belief that the greatest single year in Hollywood was 1987. Here’s my thinking. To me, a classic film is basically one that you … | Continue reading
Joe Finder must have thought he knew the secrets to selling a book. His first, a work of nonfiction, Red Carpet: The Connection Between the Kremlin and America’s Most Powerful Businessmen, had a hardcover run of 10,000. It sold out. Sounds like an early and smooth ride into the … | Continue reading
It’s a perennial question at readings and signings: Where do you get the ideas for your books? I usually mumble something that amounts to (phrased politely), “I pull them out of thin air.” But when it comes to Best Be Prepared (Severn House), my most recent in a series featuring … | Continue reading
A man with his back to the world waits for two impossible and perfect eggs. He follows an officer to the transport as a dream-generated locomotive leaves the story. He dreams of a holiday in Egypt and wakes up in the gnarls of memory’s black and white world; his famous face is sh … | Continue reading
A good villain is essential to a good mystery. He or she is the author of the crime, the driver of the plot, and the key to solving the ensuing investigation. Often, the more cunning and deceitful the villain, the more satisfying their unmasking and capture. This is one reason fo … | Continue reading
Oh, the Horror! It doesn’t often come up but when it does, people are often surprised when I tell them I never set out to be a horror writer. Sure, I’m a die-hard, lifelong fan of the genre, and it was reading Stephen King’s The Shining at thirteen that opened my mind and imagina … | Continue reading
Before Mandy Matney was the award-winning host of the #1 Murdaugh Murders Podcast, she was a local Hilton Head reporter practiced in viral stories about sharks and tornados. Was she up to the task of reporting on the crimes surrounding a powerful South Carolina family with genera … | Continue reading
5:44 PM Rain smacks my windshield. The wipers fight a losing battle. The Elantra’s on its last legs, and there’s so much water I can barely see the nearly one thousand feet of causeway ahead of me. Waves pound either side of this narrow link between the mainland and Ketchum Islan … | Continue reading
The movie was a spur-of-the-moment idea. The prime minister had had a stressful week. Seeing a comedy with his wife and son and his son’s girlfriend was just the tonic that Olof Palme needed. Bodyguards? It would have been cruel to call them back to work on a Friday night. Beside … | Continue reading
In January 2020, I drove down from Orlando to the easternmost edge of the Everglades and booked a room in the neon-dazzled Miccosukee Casino & Resort, a hotel in the no-man’s-land between the glitz of Miami and the seemingly endless wilderness of the glades. That night, I looked … | Continue reading
As a kid, I broke what I like to think was a normal amount of rules. There was the time in kindergarten when we were sitting on the rug for storytime, and the boy in front of me kept leaning back against my legs, even when I asked him to stop, and eventually I got […] | Continue reading
I try to be good but fail every day. My natural state is lazy, self-indulgent, resentful, and dangerously avoidant. The damage I’ve done in life has mainly come from not-getting-around-to something I ought to do. If you’re still waiting for my thank you card or RSVP or post-retir … | Continue reading
I’d wager a box of my favorite tea that you’ve heard of Bridgerton by now. Maybe even that it’s that occasionally spicy period drama based upon author Julia Quinn’s romance series of the same name. And, most likely, that it’s set during the Regency period and features lots of bal … | Continue reading
April 2020 Detective Chief Inspector Karen Pirie tucked her hands into the pockets of her down jacket. Even silk-lined leather gloves weren’t enough to keep out a night wind that was whipping straight across from the Urals to this Edinburgh rooftop. It had been three weeks since … | Continue reading