I’m sure there are many of you who prefer your scary movies in the weeks leading up to Halloween, but for me, summer is the best season for horror. Maybe it’s because I find summer to be such a hopeful season, and that feeling is a good antidote to the anxiety-producing horror ge … | Continue reading
The CrimeReads editors make their selections for the month’s best debut novels. * Maia Chance, The Body Next Door (MIRA) A woman’s life unravels after the body of a young woman is dug up by a construction crew at her family’s vacation house on Orcas Island. Chance writes compelli … | Continue reading
“Just tell the truth, and they’ll accuse you of writing black humor.” –Charles Willeford Before I set out to write my first novel back in the mid-Nineties, I read just about every crime and detective book in the 58th Street branch of the New York Public Library. I’d chosen the lo … | Continue reading
I love the outdoors. Whether kayaking, hiking, gardening, or just walking down our wooded road, being immersed in nature provides a sense of peace and renewed creative energy. In fact, when I’m stuck on a scene or trying to noodle through a new book idea, I usually go for a walk. … | Continue reading
Like it or not, we all have relationships with certain CEOs. A whim at the top of a social media company, drug developer, or AI enterprise can reverberate across the lives of millions of people. The richest and most colorful of these corporate leaders achieve celebrity status, st … | Continue reading
I was very disappointed with the results of Poirot’s bomb attack on Chinatown. –Captain Arthur Hastings in Agatha Christie’s The Big Four If you ask people for their choice for Agatha Christie’s worst mystery, a great many of them, I suspect, would give the nod to some octogenari … | Continue reading
“I wrote novels the way people tinker with cars or go to the golf course. It was just a way to pass time,” says New York Times bestselling author John Gilstrap. “It was never a goal, per se, to publish a novel. The first three books I wrote were for me and they weren’t very […] | Continue reading
Nothing is more compelling than obsession. In About Yvonne, by Donna Masini, a Manhattan woman named Terry becomes convinced that her gallerist husband, Mark, is having an affair with a woman named Yvonne. Acquaintances remark on the physical similarities between Terry and Yvonne … | Continue reading
There is no horror quite like the horror of unpleasant people. Yet as a reader and author of horror and speculative fiction, I’ve always been excited by characters that are distasteful, objectionable, or downright insufferable. There is something freeing about embracing their neg … | Continue reading
There is no horror quite like the horror of unpleasant people. Yet as a reader and author of horror and speculative fiction, I’ve always been excited by characters that are distasteful, objectionable, or downright insufferable. There is something freeing about embracing their neg … | Continue reading
I was asked recently to describe my work as a novelist in two or three words. It was, I think, supposed to be a bit of comedic question at the end of an interview. I was told other writers had said, “caffeinated and crazy” “trying hard,” and, “poor sales.” As much I like (and rel … | Continue reading
As dawn breaks, William Kent Krueger can be found hunched over his notebook at the local coffee shop, fueled by the rising of the sun and the promise of a story. It’s the same routine he’s followed for the entirety of his writing career, from the short fiction of his fledgling yo … | Continue reading
When people hear that I’m a writer, there’s one question that they always ask: So, what kind of books do you write? It’s a sensible question, of course, but it’s very hard to answer. Um, I want to say, well, books about power, books about joy and betrayal and seduction, books abo … | Continue reading
The term antidetective generally refers to a category of stories that utilize, and then subvert, the conventions of a detective novel. These are stories that induce the desire to detect but often frustrate that impulse in various ways, casting doubt—not on the capability of the c … | Continue reading
I have a few personal barometers to determine if someone is a good time… 1. People that like Las Vegas. 2. People that like Pitbull. 3. People that like my books. I joke (mostly), but I really do prioritize having fun in all of my writing, even though I write thrillers so it defi … | Continue reading
There’s no best place to find out every book you’ve ever written is about to go out of print. But I’d imagine 30,000 feet in the air, two weeks after having a kid, is low on the list of preferred options to learn that particular bit of bad news. Halfway through a cross-country fl … | Continue reading
I love the thrill of reading a mystery that initially seems grounded in reality, only to find speculative elements drifting in around the edges. While I also appreciate books that smash together two disparate genres, like a cozy mystery set on an alien planet or a spy thriller se … | Continue reading
Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * William Kent Krueger, Spirit Crossing (Atria) “Krueger maintains an eerie tone throughout, folding subtle supernatural elements into one of his most puzzling mysteries to date. This long-running serie … | Continue reading
Orlando Whitfield’s All That Glitters: A Story of Friendship, Fraud, and Fine Art is a memoir that reserves a co-starring role for his erstwhile business partner, an ingratiating con artist whose $87 million fraud earned him a four-year prison term that ended in 2024. Inigo Philb … | Continue reading
There’s something about a body center stage. Or backstage. Or anywhere in and around the theatre. For as long as there has been crime fiction, it seems, the colorful cast of fictional detectives and amateur sleuths have trod the boards with the best of them, bringing drama and ju … | Continue reading
Last November, a family friend I’ll call Paul received an envelope in the mail. Inside was a notecard that said, “Hi” in cutout letters. There was no signature, no return address. Just ‘Hi” and four seemingly random stickers: the MTV logo, a cassette, a bird, and an animal. More … | Continue reading
Forget Hot Girl Summer. It’s (About to Be) Cold Undead Autumn! There’s been a resurgence of all kinds of classic creature features over the past few years, but this year turned the trickle of new offerings into a deluge, so I thought I’d celebrate with a list. Of particular note … | Continue reading
Yes, there is murder in Middlemarch! More famously, George Eliot’s Middlemarch is full of disastrous and disappointing marriages, marriages that seem promising at the start —between Dorothea and the dry historian Causabon, between the physician Tertius Lydgate and Rosamond Vincy, … | Continue reading
Wales is a country with a distinctive and fascinating character. A land of mist and mountains, of myths, magic—and mystery. The close geographical and historical association between Wales and England, coupled with the bilingual nature of Welsh literature, contribute to the unique … | Continue reading
The famous Irish-American Gilded Age police detective Thomas Byrnes, who in 1880 (thanks to his solving the Manhattan Savings Bank Robbery in 1878), was appointed to the Chief of New York’s Detecive Bureau. During his fifteen-year tenure, he became famous for staging elaborate, a … | Continue reading
For a small state (pop. 647,064), Vermont looms large in literature. Not only do we claim the second highest per capita number of working writers in the country, behind only Washington, D.C., but we can claim Robert Frost, Sinclair Lewis, Dorothy Thompson, Shirley Jackson, Chris … | Continue reading
I always aim for authenticity in my mystery novels, especially when it comes to depicting law enforcement personnel and methods of investigation. There are a number of sources to help in this endeavor: Facebook groups likes “Cops and Writers,” police procedure manuals and guideli … | Continue reading
In her first adult novel, Wordhunter, true crime maven Stella Sands brings readers an unusual and unique character: Maggie Moore, a brilliant basket case who happens to be a linguistic savant. Not a common crime fiction protagonist, Maggie was initially conceived as “a morbidly o … | Continue reading
I don’t generally snack when I’m reading (although I do love having a strong coffee or an Aperol spritz while I’m turning pages), but some books function like a feast for all senses: beautiful writing, quippy dialogue, and occasionally, food descriptions so sumptuous that I can p … | Continue reading
There are so many female archetypes in literature—the femme fatale, the damsel in distress, the angel of the house. While I was writing my novel The Wayside, I was thinking a lot about (and mindfully avoiding) one trope in particular: the madwoman. Alternately an object of fear a … | Continue reading
My interest in writing about motherhood started with several of my undergraduate professors on the green, rolling campus of Michigan State University. Professor Henry once wondered aloud why more horror stories didn’t focus on birth, which was surely just as bloody and traumatic … | Continue reading
When I ask crime fiction fans about their favorite books, they usually mention stories focused on traditional crimes, that is, the crimes recurring in the genre. Most often that’s murder mysteries, but occasionally I hear recommendations for books involving theft, kidnapping, or … | Continue reading
Shad White is the Mississippi state auditor who exposed the misspending of nearly $100 million in funds from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program — federal money meant to aid the poorest people in the nation’s poorest state. Eight individuals have pleaded gu … | Continue reading
Back in the 80s, a man being prosecuted for murder by my father, the district attorney, broke out of the county jail and, stranded on the roof of the county courthouse, threatened to kill my entire family. My father decided to go onto the roof himself, where he would eventually t … | Continue reading
Sister: I just finished reading your book. Me: Yeah? What did you think? Sister: …are you okay? A good friend once suggested that writing a book is like an exorcism. Being a horror novelist, I agreed immediately and enthusiastically. Looking back at my previous releases (They Dro … | Continue reading
Prior to writing novels I’d spent decades dreaming of being a filmmaker—specifically, a writer/director of more indie-type films. After watching thousands of movies, and writing nearly fifty screenplays, I had a strong vision of the kinds of films I wanted to make. And then a num … | Continue reading
When John Yunker and I wrote Devils Island, we set out to write a mystery set on a remote island off the coast of Tasmania — an island home to deadly snakes, nefarious poachers, endangered Tasmanian devils, and a naturalist concerned about their fate. So perhaps we shouldn’t have … | Continue reading
Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Jessa Maxwell, I Need You To Read This (Atria) “[A] palm-sweat-inducing psychological thriller.” –Booklist Elizabeth Staple, The Snap (Doubleday) “[The Snap] buzzes with all-too-familiar frustration a … | Continue reading
Being a PI in the 1970s was wild. I learned this from Jim Rockford and Bing Crosby. Let me explain. For many years, Bing Crosby was a private investigator in my hometown of Muncie, Indiana. I’m not talking about the crooner Bing Crosby, who died in 1977, but a local political pla … | Continue reading
In March 2001, the phone rang in the office of Rob Holm, the director of Global Security for McDonald’s Corporation. “Holm,” he said as he picked up the receiver. He didn’t expect what followed. “Hi, Rob. This is Special Assistant United States Attorney Mark Devereaux calling fro … | Continue reading
Alain Corneaus’s 1979 film Série Noire, which adapts Jim Thompson’s 1954 novel A Hell of a Woman, is set in the dilapidated suburbs of Paris. Its daydreaming, neurotic protagonist longs to escape his physical surroundings and their associated monotony. When he attempts to rid soc … | Continue reading
One of the greatest lootings of Mother Russia since the end of the Cold War happened in 1993: a corrupt Russian bureaucrat and his young protégé concocted a scheme to help the Kremlin extort billions from the De Beers diamond cartel while secretly siphoning $180 million in raw di … | Continue reading
For those of us who love witch-related history and lore, the last few years have been the literary version of an all-you-can-eat buffet. Dozens of novels have explored witches and witchcraft, and there’s something to appeal to every taste. Whether you like your witches unjustly a … | Continue reading
Rudy had the expression of an abused animal on an RSPCA advert. Laura reassured him, repeating what Olivia had told her, that nobody was in trouble, but his forehead was crisscrossed with guilt and anxiety. Olivia was right. Nothing would happen. There was no need to panic. But R … | Continue reading
During the 1990s, I spent many weekend afternoons and evenings in the delicious darkness of a movie theater sharing a bucket of bright yellow popcorn and a box of Milk Duds the size of a Buick with friends. When given the option at the multiplex, I consistently chose thrillers ov … | Continue reading
I just read this time management book, 4,000 weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman. The book begins with the stark fact that we only have 4000 weeks to live, if we’re lucky. That’s not a lot of time, especially for a woman. Let’s face it, we have a lot more to do, … | Continue reading
The expectations game: pick up a literary novel, and you usually start with an open mind. You hope for great writing, but structure-wise, plot-wise, the writer is free. Add the word crime, mystery, or thriller, and everything changes. You’re counting on someone dying in the first … | Continue reading
The Other Half, my debut satirical crime novel, was very much lampooning a very particular sort of privileged Englishman. Boarding School, hoary titles, Oxbridge less through intellectual ability but more through breeding, emotionally stunted, wealthy, white, straight, male. I wr … | Continue reading