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
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