As Crime and the City has already done the other Birmingham – you know the one in the English Midlands, full of Peaky Blinders, warm beer, the famous “Curry Miles” and with more miles of canal than Venice – it seems only fair to tackle the other one – Birmingham, Alabama. Though … | Continue reading
Mashing genres can be a tricky business. Do it right, and you’ve created a short story, book or movie that remixes those respective genres’ elements in new and exciting ways—for instance, Philip K. Dick memorably using a detective narrative to explore the post-apocalyptic setting … | Continue reading
Twenty years after the job of “detective” was established in Britain, via the Criminal Investigation Division of the New Metropolitan Police in 1842, detectives began appearing on the stage. According to scholar Kyle R. Deise, in Britain, the first official detective character on … | Continue reading
Picture, if you will, this harrowing New York City scene. You’re an aging bank security guard about to lock up for the night, when some joker jams his big red shoe in the door and sticks a gun in your face. Once inside, he rolls up a novelty tuxedo top to reveal he’s wired with [ … | Continue reading
“Elsbeth,” the latest case-of-the-week show in “The Good Wife” cinematic universe, shares a lot with its predecessors. Like “The Good Wife” and “The Good Fight,” “Elsbeth” features a female lawyer, a roster of all-star guests, liberal sensibilities and a seemingly endless costume … | Continue reading
Who doesn’t love a hard-to-shelve book? Don’t get me wrong, genres are great. They keep libraries and bookstores neat and tidy but when it comes to my bookshelf? We’re talking full-on chaos. That’s because my favorite books are what I usually call “not reallys,” as in “It’s not r … | Continue reading
With The Blue Hour, Paula Hawkins delivers a different kind of thrill than the propulsive The Girl on the Train which put her on the map as a bestselling author. This new novel, a dark deep dive into obsession, betrayal, and the artistic life compels no less but feels more sophis … | Continue reading
At this time of the year, anyone can wear an outlandish mask. You can also carry a huge ax, or a machete, or wear gloves with knives for fingers, and no one will bat an eyelid. People will throw open their doors and hand candy to beasts and maniacs that, at any other time, would … | Continue reading
On March 2, 1933 Chicago tabloids trumpeted the shocking downstate death of Aldine Younger. Aging dirty blonde newsprint scotch-taped to cardboard was my formal introduction to my father’s beloved 20 year old sister. He was still a child when her broken body was abandoned on a fr … | Continue reading
You can often find me walking around my small town in New Zealand listening to podcasts about the worst things humans can do to each other. And I’m not alone in this slightly macabre habit – it’s estimated that at least 75% of the millions of true crime podcast listeners out ther … | Continue reading
I was steeped in forensic science before I learned how to read or ride a bike. My younger sister and I did our first “case” with dad, the county medical examiner, when we were six and eight. It was a twin engine airplane crash at our small, regional airport. We collected pieces o … | Continue reading
Friends of mine have been telling me to watch Lucifer. Lucifer, that show where Lucifer gets tired of being in hell and decides to kick it on earth and learn about humanity, and winds up solving mysteries. That Lucifer. I don’t really feel the urge to watch it, but I am intrigued … | Continue reading
A look at the month’s best reviewed new releases in crime fiction, nonfiction, mystery, and thrillers. Via Book Marks. Nick Harkaway, Karla’s Choice (Viking) “What a treat it turns out to be to wander anew the fusty, crumbling warren of the Circus … The prose of Karla’s Choice is … | Continue reading
Are we ready for fictional political intrigue in a time of real-life political intrigue? Fiction that concerns a powerful woman who also happens to be vice president – and a powerful woman who might replace her? Are we ready for season two of “The Diplomat?” The second season of … | Continue reading
Owning racehorses is the preserve of royalty, the rich and the famous. Right? Wrong! These days anyone can own a racehorse, or at least a part of one, as a member of a “syndicate”. Syndicate ownership was first permitted by the British Jockey Club in 1975 and, since then, it has … | Continue reading
A quick in and out, just as a favor. A big favor, a favor meriting repayment at some point down the line. A quick in and out – not even that actually. Breaking without entering. The alarm would kick in, though it always took time for anyone to respond. There might be cameras, but … | Continue reading
Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * J. Lincoln Fenn, The Nightmarchers (Gallery) “The Nightmarchers creeps up on you stealthily like a primordial vine, wraps itself around you, and before you know it, you are consumed in its elegant pro … | Continue reading
Darwin and the Northern Territories, or just NT, are just about as remote as you can get in Australia – you’re basically, once you get across the Torres Island Straits, up near Papua New Guinea. You’re looking at the Timor Sea and the Gulf of Carpentaria – and let’s early on note … | Continue reading
For some years between 2009 and 2013, I worked as a reporter on what was called, often dismissively, the “gender beat”. I had little experience of the crime beat, and had only two skills to offer: I liked walking around Delhi, India’s capital, as well as unfamiliar small towns an … | Continue reading
Conclave, Edward Berger’s taut new papal thriller, is excellent. And before I continue with this review, I want to dwell on and draw your attention to the descriptor “papal thriller.” Because that’s what this movie is, and that earned points from me before the movie even began. M … | Continue reading
I was a visual artist long before I was a writer, but I was always haunted. By the ghost of my beloved childhood cat, who sometimes ran past me down the hall long after she’d passed on. By the scent of cigarettes that sometimes drifted into the house we’d inherited from my grandp … | Continue reading
Scarpetta has a secret. Thirty-four years and twenty-seven books after Patricia Cornwell first introduced medical examiner Kay Scarpetta in Postmortem, she’s still discovering the vestiges of her character’s past—and sharing them with a legion of eager readers around the world wh … | Continue reading
It’s morning. The sky is clear blue, piercing even. The sun is bright warming everything it settles on. Gentle breezes blow tree branches, twist leaves that will soon change from green, to red, to brown before falling into piles to the ground. They will scatter at the first hint … | Continue reading
October may be spooky season, but that doesn’t mean you can’t pick up a psychological thriller or three to fill the evenings! Here are five new suspenseful novels that kept the pages turning, and me guessing, and all of us distracted from the real-world suspense of the descending … | Continue reading
It all started with Agatha Christie’s iconic And Then There Were None—the isolation trope closed circle mystery was born, and mystery-lovers have been hooked ever since. In my humble opinion, there can never be too many closed circle mystery/isolation trope stories like Christie’ … | Continue reading
Sherlock Holmes has Watson, Nero Wolfe has Archie Goodwin, Nancy Drew has Georgia…every detective needs a sidekick. In the Miranda Abbott mystery series, our sleuth has Andrew Nguyen, her level-headed, faithful, and often exasperated personal assistant who follows her from the gl … | Continue reading
I’ve lived in Dublin for many years, an innocent abroad, a fish out of water. It’s my home, but it’s never been home home. Like for every immigrant, home home is a mixture of fantasy, history and old geography. A shining memory of childhood hard to discern through the lens of rea … | Continue reading
You know Jack Reacher. Now meet twenty more heroes and heavies from the brilliant mind of legendary crime author Lee Child, in this new collection published by The Mysterious Press. These twenty intriguing, thrilling, and rapid-fire fictions are intimate portraits of humanity at … | Continue reading
Hercule Poirot famously said, “I do not approve of murder.” And with good reason. A murder is a bomb that blows up the delicate matchstick house we call “civilization,” driving shrapnel into everyone and everything it touches. A murderer kills more than a person; he destroys the … | Continue reading
The holidays are lurking around the corner—and so are porch pirates, gleefully awaiting their opportunity to steal your gifts. These are stories of brazen porch piracy are true, but names have been changed. THE POLICE OFFICER’S WIFE Wanda, a police officer’s wife, was at home aro … | Continue reading
Although I’ve written pseudonymously in the past, my novels, with only two exceptions, have been located in big cities. That includes All of Us, my first A.F. Carter novel, set in New York City. All of Us was a stand-alone, and meant to be, but after finishing the novel I decided … | Continue reading
“I began with a desire to speak with the dead.” This quote, from historian Stephen Greenblatt, hung above my desk on a pink Post-It note for ten years. It travelled with me from house to house, city to city, and eventually, country to country, a reminder to myself about why I’d s … | Continue reading
In all of spy fiction, there’s no one more ostensibly average than George Smiley, he of the “soft face” and “pudgy” hands, the narrow shoulders and woeful posture, the perennial gloom and wonderfully ironic surname. John le Carré’s fictional British intelligence agent features in … | Continue reading
It should be no surprise to anyone that Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple has always been a reassuring presence. After all, her first appearance followed an exciting but also tumultuous time for Christie. The beginning of the 1920s saw the publication of her debut novel, The Mysteriou … | Continue reading
When the idea of writing the story of a woman forced to head the family drug business she despises first came to me, I was apprehensive. How could I tell the story of family run drug cartel while being respectful to Mexico, its citizens, and those hurt by the decades long war on … | Continue reading
Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Nick Harkaway, Karla’s Choice (Viking) “Karla’s Choice is a note-perfect tribute to le Carré. Nick Harkaway has pulled off the remarkable trick of providing the long-term reader with something which i … | Continue reading
Readers can be forgiven if they think after reading The Puzzle Box—and its predecessor The Puzzle Master—that Danielle Trussoni is puzzle obsessed. She’s not. What drives her fiction, though, is the same pursuit for understanding how it—meaning life—all fits together. And we’re l … | Continue reading
“Every town has a haunted house.” This is the thesis statement of my new novel, Killer House Party. And I believe it to be true. Not that every town has a house with ghosts, but that every town has a house that is haunted. A house that is infamous or legendary. It evokes a very [ … | Continue reading
The girl, over those days, ate without a fuss. Maybe she was afraid I would tell on her for staining my apron, for getting flour all over the floor. If I served her chicken, she ate the chicken. If I gave her salmon, she ate the salmon. She still took an hour to eat, and […] | Continue reading
Quick quiz: What’s the first crime committed in the Bible? And no, it’s not Cain murdering his brother Abel out of jealousy, though that definitely ranks up there. The first crime, I would argue, is when Eve gets blamed for violating God’s instructions—and she gets all the blame, … | Continue reading
There are few films as fascinating, for good reasons and bad, than The Postman. Directed by lead star, Kevin Costner, and released in 1997, critics coalesced to name it one of the worst movies of all time. It won several Razzie Awards (given to the “worst” films of the year), and … | Continue reading
I have always loved stories about witches. As a child, I adored the idea of a feline familiar, but on hindsight I think it was the powerful female protagonists that really did it for me. Nowhere else did I read about women who possessed such autonomy and skill – and yes, magic wa … | Continue reading
What is literary horror and why do we have to make things complicated, you might ask. Complicated books for complicated folks, I say! It’s a scary book that also, in my opinion, has a philosophical bent, sometimes it’s about racism or misogyny or classism, or it might be a reflec … | Continue reading
Hello chaps! It’s high time we put out another quiz. Why? Because they’re fun, I don’t know. Like the quizes that came before it, this one is part quiz, part trivia. Under “questions” I have listed many famous opening lines from crime, mystery, and thriller novels. And you have t … | Continue reading
I’ll never forget my Sunday school teacher telling us that little girls are born into more sin than little boys. I was probably seven or eight. I raised my hand and asked if it was true, and the teacher nodded slowly and sadly, citing Eve, and the Fall. Eve was both Adam’s prize … | Continue reading
Beach reads—we usually associate them with the summer. A steamy romance, a cozy seaside mystery, a horror story of beach parties and blood. Those are a great time, but right now in the northern hemisphere, summer is waning. Depending on where you are in the world, it might alread … | Continue reading
When he was young, bestselling thriller author J.D. Barker never thought he could make a living as a writer, so he instead studied business while unaware of his special gift. It would create barriers in his life and career that he would struggle to surmount. Yet it would help him … | Continue reading
The writers’ arsenal may come similarly equipped for most authors, but Jenny Milchman has a secret weapon that can’t be equalized: Joy. It’s the thing that sustained her through eleven years and seven unpublished manuscripts before Cover of Snow debuted in 2013. That book won the … | Continue reading