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
For such a hotshot lawyer who’s never lost a court case, you’re a lot younger than anyone would expect. And it’s your win/loss record, not your good looks, that’s wooed Rob Jacobson—publishing and real estate heir—to hire you. He’s accused of killing three and needs you to get hi … | Continue reading
Big Pharma is an industry that touches most everyone in some way. We have connection to it on a personal level as individuals and, even more importantly to many, our families. It touches us whether we want it to or not. The first draft of The Deadly Deal was written when I worke … | Continue reading
Matthew Meacham’s body quaked, his mind raced, and his skin burned. He raked overlong fingernails down the tender flesh of his arms, praying for his eyes to adjust to the lightlessness. They never adjusted. After a time, he sat up in that dark space, feeling the elements of the w … | Continue reading
In another era, the cinematic car chase was a purely analog affair: stunt performers would strap themselves into modified vehicles, then do their best to violate traffic norms and the laws of physics for the audience’s pleasure. But at a certain point, that changed. The demand fo … | Continue reading
For over a thousand years, the area known as Smithfield, north of St Paul’s, has been home to London’s principal meat market. Live animals were banned from Smithfield in the 19th century, but until then the ten-acre site was filled with sheep and cattle pens, nearly two million a … | Continue reading
Horse racing and gambling are intertwined – always have been, and always will be. But the biggest gambles in racing are not made at the races or with a bookmaker, they occur in the sale rings, where vast sums are staked on untested, unridden and as yet unnamed one-year-old Thorou … | Continue reading
Like many great novels, the book you are about to read is one whose every page is imbued with the art of storytelling. Its first five words, ‘I still remember the day’, spoken by the narrator, Daniel Sempere, open the door to what will soon expand into a complex world of both mys … | Continue reading
The CrimeReads editors select the best debut novels in crime, mystery, and thrillers. * Laura Picklesimer, Kill For Love (Unnamed Press) The bored college fifth-year narrating Kill For Love has always been good at suppressing her appetites—you can see it in her carefully counted … | Continue reading
I met Anjili Babbar smoking cigarettes at Bouchercon last year (she has since quit), and thought, this chick is really cool. And also, she knows a lot about Irish crime fiction. Babbar is, in fact, the author of an excellent new work on Irish crime writing, aptly titled Finders: … | Continue reading
I met Nina Simon shortly after I read her beautiful, heartfelt debut, Mother Daughter Murder Night. If there were ever an author whose persona perfectly captures the verve of her work, it’s Nina. Nina’s all natural, almost crunchy in a Santa Cruz kind of way. She speaks from the … | Continue reading
What’s a character without motivation? Even if that character is dead, they need a reason to be in the scene. In my novel Ghost Tamer, one of the ghosts tells the main character, “Everyone who dies had plans, Raely.” Whether it’s revenge, righting an injustice, or protecting a lo … | Continue reading
More than any other variant included under the umbrella of “crime fiction,” mystery novels embody a straightforward setup of the conflict-and-resolution components of storytelling. The conflict is murder. The resolution is naming whodunit. Everything in between—the rising and fal … | Continue reading
With the exuberance of Pride Month in June, it’s easy to get excited about new queer crime fiction in the summer months. But, with shortening days, ubiquitous Pumpkin Spice lattes, and of course, Halloween—arguably the queerest holiday of the year—the fall is the perfect time to … | Continue reading
I love trying to guess the ending. When picking up a new thriller, I’m almost immediately immersed in the mystery and the twists and turns. I greatly admire authors who keep their secrets under wraps, because I feel pretty smart when I figure out what an author was trying to hide … | Continue reading
Most people have aunts, but not everyone has aunties. It’s hard to explain the difference to the uninitiated–aunties have nothing (or very little) to do with blood relation or age. To be an Auntie requires a certain kind of energy or vibe, that perfect storm of love and judgment, … | Continue reading
The first crime novels I ever read were by Agatha Christie. I was probably about thirteen at the time and I remember being blown away by how clever she was. The way she could hide her killers in plain sight, or contrive a plot as deviously intricate as Murder on the Orient Expres … | Continue reading
It’s hard to spend much time online these days without bumping into true crime of one form or another. Countless podcasts examine murders and trials, and television offers an overwhelming array of both docuseries and fictional reenactments. Meanwhile on social media, influencers … | Continue reading
It’s the detectives, the private investigators and the lawyers who are usually front-and-center in crime fiction, but there are scores of professionals working in the criminal justice system to whom most of us give little thought. There are archivists who manage police records, p … | Continue reading
Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Richard Osman, The Last Devil to Die (Pamela Dorman Books) “Osman’s greatest strength is fusing the puzzle-mastery of Christie and her Golden Age peers with emotional earnestness and wry humor.” –Esqu … | Continue reading
Haiti has never been an easy place to live. From colonialism to liberation by the ex-slave revolutionary leader Toussaint Louverture at the start of the nineteenth century – the largest slave uprising since Spartacus – it’s been a country wracked by violence, foreign interference … | Continue reading
I was impressed by A Haunting in Venice as much as I was relieved by it. I had always found it both delightful and intriguing that, of all the possible franchises to take on, Kenneth Branagh chose Hercule Poirot, a funny, punctilious little Belgian detective. Yes, Poirot is one o … | Continue reading
I was working the day that it happened, preparing meals. Jason should’ve been watched every minute! He was … he wasn’t a very good swimmer. —Pamela Voorhees, Friday the 13th What would he be like today? An out-of-control psychopath? A frightened retard? A child trapped in a man’s … | Continue reading
On the eve of Hallowe’en, 1980, Dick Cavett’s television guests included Stephen King, George Romero, and Peter Straub. Watching it now, King is the most voluble, playing the open-shirted raconteur, stage right, closer to the audience than the others in several senses. He is aler … | Continue reading
Published in 1947, Dorothy Hughes’ noir novel In a Lonely Place is a masterpiece of crime fiction whose influence has extended to both books and films, including a 1950 movie adaptation starring Humphrey Bogart. The story follows a mercurial and mysterious lead, Dix Steele, who i … | Continue reading
It’s a cliché to cite some decades-old book, movie or TV show and say, “This is as relevant today as it was back then.” That said, one 1957 film satire is possibly more relevant today than when it was first released to movie theaters. “A Face in the Crowd,” directed by Elia Kaza … | Continue reading
The millennial is a strange beast. Though “millennial” is factually the word to describe someone born between 1981 and 1996, hearing it conjures a number of confusing associations: we’re soap killers, selfish and entitled, we can’t afford diamonds yet we hoover up avocados as if … | Continue reading
I wrote my newly released Lily Wong novel, The Ninja’s Oath, during the pandemic when my newborn granddaughter was in lockdown in Shanghai. Twenty-three months would pass before I could hold her in my arms. Writing this book helped me feel as if I were there, not in lockdown Shan … | Continue reading
Gardening detectives, both professional and amateur, abound in crime fiction and they appeared early on. Wilkie Collins introduced the first horticulturally inclined investigator in The Moonstone. The serialized story first appeared in the United Kingdom in January 1868 in Charle … | Continue reading
I have a confession to make. I have a mad crush on my neighbor. Whenever I see him sprinting in my direction, my heart swells and I can’t hold back a smile. His eyes are as blue as a cloudless day, and his gleaming coat…Oh—did I neglect to mention something? My neighbor, Benzo, i … | Continue reading
The first crime was the most defining moment in the history of the human. It was not Cain’s murder. That was defining too. But the first crime began in the realm of the numinous. It could only be deemed an act of spirit. Philosophers and religionists and mystics struggle to defin … | Continue reading
In 2016, journalist Amelia McDonell-Parry and I were asked to look into the death of Freddie Gray for the Undisclosed podcast, a series that focused on wrongful convictions. Gray had been killed in Baltimore police custody the year before, which led to mass protests and riots and … | Continue reading
I still own three of Lois Duncan’s books. Growing up, I read so many, but these are the three I have left: Daughters of Eve, Stranger with my Face, and Summer of Fear. The covers are creased and falling apart, and the pages are so fragile that they tear when I try to turn them, [ … | Continue reading
Jeneva Rose is a whirlwind. When the publishing world didn’t work for her, she created her own. Like most aspiring authors, she first took the conventional route to hoped-for literary success. For her efforts, agents and publishers turned her down a combined 500 times. After she … | Continue reading