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
Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Jean Kwok, The Leftover Woman (William Morrow) “A heart-wrenching examination of transracial adoption and its influence in the lives of a Chinese American child and the two mothers who love her.” –Ell … | Continue reading
I’ve been a stay-at-home dad for six years now and I could tell you horror stories. I’ve changed diapers on gas station bathroom floors that should have been condemned. I’ve caught my babies picking up the most vile things in city parks. There are events with Roombas and couch cu … | Continue reading
Among the few guarantees in life is that on any survey of great sports films, Ron Shelton’s name will appear more than once. The résumé of the minor-league ballplayer turned screenwriter and director boasts what is arguably the definitive baseball movie with Bull Durham (1988), a … | Continue reading
When I started writing crime fiction, what I worried about most was all the stuff you had to know. I had never been a criminal, a detective, a private investigator, or a lawyer. I didn’t know how to steal a car or bury a body or fake an alibi. Of course there was always Google, [ … | Continue reading
As one of the terminally online, I really enjoyed the recent “how often men think about the Roman Empire” discourse on Twitter. One response that went viral claimed that the female equivalent of thinking about the Roman Empire is thinking about your ex-best friend, and after a re … | Continue reading
One hears it all the time. A reader praises a book because they find the characters “likable” or “relatable.” Another reader dismisses a book because they couldn’t “identify with the characters” or, more damningly, “didn’t care about the characters.” Why do some characters inspir … | Continue reading
I am sitting on the sweeping terrace of the Imperial hotel in Torquay, England, looking out over the breathtakingly blue water of the bay, soaking up crime fiction history. This is Christie country, the place where Agatha Christie was born, and the venue for the International Ag … | Continue reading
Lou Berney is one of the reasons I write crime fiction. Coming up, I cut my teeth on Southern writers like Flannery O’Connor, Larry Brown, Harry Crews, and Jesmyn Ward. It wasn’t until I found The Long and Faraway Gone, Lou’s third novel, that I realized the full power of crime f … | Continue reading
“We all have secrets… Secrets are a part of our lives and the lives of literature’s great characters. But spies operate in a more complex world of secrets – things they hide from family, from friends, and from themselves,” says Paul Vidich, whose latest novel, Beirut Station, buz … | Continue reading
I find myself reflecting on my own teen years as I tackle Frankenstein-author Mary Shelley and her step-sister at age sixteen years for my new series, which begins with Death and the Sisters. Mary and her kaleidoscope of siblings gathered opinions and values from the books they r … | Continue reading
Once a narrowly defined genre—set in the American frontier of the 19th Century—the definition of Western has expanded with contemporary takes from such authors as Cormac McCarthy, Ivy Pochoda, Alma Katsu, Jim Harrison and Louise Erdrich. And now, along comes HOT IRON AND COLD BLO … | Continue reading
In another life, I’m sure I was a political assassin or, at the very least, a cold-hearted femme fatale who was on the right end of a gun or winning cause. How else to explain my long-standing obsession/fascination with mayhem, gore, and murder most foul? A voracious reader from … | Continue reading
The scene couldn’t have been written any better. It was the middle of the night and a father bolted upright in bed, hearing noise downstairs in the kitchen of his suburban home. His wife and children slept peacefully, but the man suspected an intruder had entered the house. A … | Continue reading
School field trips. Exhibitions. Guided tours. It might be easy to dismiss museums as stuffy or even boring, but they are far from that—especially to an aspiring crime writer looking to write her first murder mystery. The idea for my debut historical mystery, A Traitor in Whiteha … | Continue reading
Bars in grand hotels figure prominently in the canon of spy literature. One of the pleasures I get from reading the novels of Joseph Kanon, Graham Greene and other masters of the spy genre, is that the anonymous guests in the grand hotels come alive with a backstory and confident … | Continue reading
The argument erupted at the supper table in a Colorado lumber camp near Castle Rock, a spot on the map at the edge of the Rocky Mountains and about thirty miles south of Denver. William Atcheson, who was working at Hocker & Gray’s sawmill in March 1876, had a large dog and the la … | Continue reading
Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Paul Vidich, Beirut Station (Pegasus) “This taut, nuanced spy thriller centered on Lebanese American CIA agent Analise Assad further establishes Vidich as a new master of the genre. Vidich ably descri … | Continue reading
I think it’s fair to say that, in general, Hamburg is a rather underrated German city. Berlin and Munich get the crowds, Frankfurt the money, and Hamburg gets a bit overlooked. But not by crime fans as Hamburg has a long history of being, shall we say, a bit sleazy? It’s a port c … | Continue reading
A look at the best reviewed crime fiction from September. * Jessica Knoll, Bright Young Women (S&S/Marysue Rucci Books) “Brilliant, blistering … Writing with pulse-pounding tension and urgency, Knoll expertly conjures an atmosphere of dread and anxiety while paying tribute to all … | Continue reading
The history of travelling carnivals, or circuses, is complex. The form is steeped in tradition, but the people who live and make their living in modern circuses are a diverse bunch, hailing from everywhere in the world. Often they live a nomadic life, travelling internationally w … | Continue reading
For someone who would dress all in black in the guise of a priest or in a dapper all-white suit, there remain shades of gray surrounding Thomas King Forcade (née Gary Goodson). He blazed out of Phoenix in the late ’60s, becoming the head of the Underground Press Syndicate—a natio … | Continue reading
A look at the best reviewed crime fiction from September. * Jessica Knoll, Bright Young Women (S&S/Marysue Rucci Books) “Brilliant, blistering … Writing with pulse-pounding tension and urgency, Knoll expertly conjures an atmosphere of dread and anxiety while paying tribute to all … | Continue reading
There once lived a man who was naked, raving, and could not be bound. According to the Gospel: “He tore the chains apart and broke the irons on his feet.” It turns out (spoiler) he was possessed. The demons were exorcised and cast out of the man. Lacking a human host, the demons … | Continue reading
I’d only been working for the British government for a few weeks when I met my first spy. I’d already had my background checked, and I thought that part was over when I first met Eve in the kitchenette at my office. She was new she said. Worked in the legal department. A few day … | Continue reading
There’s something beautiful about ugliness. We all have it simmering under the surface. But we make damn sure not to show it. Why? In my debut, The Stranger Upstairs, Sarah Slade is a popular influencer who struggles with a dark side. Her marriage is falling apart and her career … | Continue reading
A crime as large as a war may exceed the definition of crime in the usual sense. Crime is bad enough when it’s one or a few victims and one or a few perpetrators. That kind of crime, though reprehensible, one can get arms around while often cringing in horror or disbelief. But ho … | Continue reading
From where he sits and writes in his Long Island home – in longhand, 10 pages a day – Mike Lupica can see a framed photograph of Robert B. Parker, the prolific author of the Spenser mystery novels. Parker wears a grin on his face and a Pittsburgh Pirates cap on his head. Also eas … | Continue reading
(some names and dates have been changed) From Sin City to Hustlers to Zola, more than a few of my favorite neo-noirs feature strip clubs as part of their narrative. My interest in these naughty places began when I was a kid growing-up in New York City. Whenever mom took me throug … | Continue reading
Gordan Greenberg and Steve Rosen’s new play Dracula: a Comedy of Terrors, now open at New World Stages, is production is replete with playful contradictions. Despite the presence of the word “terrors” in the title, there’s nothing too grisly to worry about. After all, the fanged … | Continue reading
Michele Campbell worked at a prominent Manhattan law firm before spending eight years fighting crime as a federal prosecutor in New York City. She launched her fiction career in 2005, writing as Michele Martinez, with the Melanie Vargas legal thriller series. Then in 2017 she piv … | Continue reading
My objective is to list the six best mysteries that feature real people. Quite a challenge given all the published stories meeting this criterion. There are, for example, several series that portray famous personages as detectives. Some, like Nicola Upson’s Josephine Tey Mystery … | Continue reading
There’s a joke among millennials that our favorite childhood television shows would have sucked if the characters had owned smartphones. Videos of Buffy fighting vampires would have been uploaded to TikTok in a second; Joey would have spent her evenings texting Dawson instead of … | Continue reading
When people talk about great fictional detectives, there are classic names that come to mind: Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot; Sam Spade; Phillip Marlowe; and Columbo trip easily off the tongue. In the modern era there’s even Batman, whose cool gadgets are second only to his skil … | Continue reading
Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Jeffrey Archer, Traitor’s Gate (Harper) “Only someone like Jeffrey Archer . . . could have written a compelling story like this.” –David Baldacci Ben Fountain, Devil Makes Three (Flatiron) “Fountain b … | Continue reading