Lev AC Rosen is the author of many books for adults and children, including the award-winning Evander “Andy” Mills mystery series, the fourth book of which, Mirage City, came out last fall. His new book is The Disaster Gay Detective Agency. Despite the title, the books is a Hitch … | Continue reading
Almost exactly two years ago, as I was deep into my second proper draft of Based on a True Story, my sixteen-year-old son came to me with a confession. He didn’t really know Macbeth. This wouldn’t matter except that he was due to take his English Literature GCSE, a public exam te … | Continue reading
There’s nothing like a murder to really set a vacation off right. At least, this is what I imagine other mystery authors think when they plant a body on a beach or in a museum or at the luxurious resort where their sleuth just settled down for a nice rest. When I sent my heroine, … | Continue reading
When I first cracked open The Clique by Lisi Harrison back in middle school, I didn’t know what I was in for. I was immediately hooked by these Westchester mean girls, and I begged my mom every weekend to take me to Barnes and Noble so I could buy the next one in the series. […] | Continue reading
Story/Mood: Parasite begins in the home of a family living in a basement hovel in Seoul. The son, Kim Ki-woo “Kevin,” gets a job tutoring the daughter of the wealthy Park family who live in a pristine minimalist home behind high walls. Kevin figures out a way to sneak in his sist … | Continue reading
Like most folklore, the myth of the Jersey Devil trickled into my consciousness, rather than arriving wholesale. When did I first hear of the Jersey Devil? It could have been during a childhood afternoon, spinning on sun scorched black rubber inner tubes on a cedar lake with a ga … | Continue reading
Why this Film: Mad Max: Fury Road is, for the most part, one long chase sequence. There’s a reason why, right from its earliest days, cinema has been obsessed by chases—whether on foot or via other modes of transportation: because they work! The chase format generates suspense an … | Continue reading
J.M. Barrie’s Peter and Wendy contains one of the most unsettling lines in children’s literature: “The boys on the island vary, of course, in numbers, according as they get killed and so on; and when they seem to be growing up, which is against the rules, Peter thins them out.” I … | Continue reading
Do you love reading cozy mysteries featuring intrepid senior sleuths solving crimes in their retirement community? It seems like the perfect hobby for a retiree, right? You’ve got time on your hands and a lifetime of wisdom—two attributes that make for a great detective. There’s … | Continue reading
The CrimeReads editors make their picks for the best psychological thrillers of the month. * Lisa Jewell, It Could Have Been Her (Atria) Lisa Jewell’s books have become some of my go-to recommendations in recent years, with their suspenseful plotting, thoughtful characterizations … | Continue reading
Photo credit: Edward Bluemel (Image: Mammoth / Jonathan Ford) via BBC I like to imagine that the deliberations to cast the eponymous lead in the new Hercule Poirot series went a bit like the choosing of a new pope. Meetings are held behind closed doors, totally outside of the pu … | Continue reading
Camille Perri is the author of The Assistants and When Katie Met Cassidy. She has worked as a books editor for Cosmopolitan and Esquire. She has also been a ghostwriter of young adult novels and a reference librarian. She splits her time between New York City and the Hudson Valle … | Continue reading
Rodney Young arrived in Cairo in May 1943 and moved into a hand-some three‑story stone villa near the Greek legation. A staffer showed the spymaster to his room, which he found to be completely empty, not a stick of furniture in sight. He set down his bags and, the next morning, … | Continue reading
“Ugly things happen….The best and worst of everything came to me.” –Frank Lloyd Wright, Spring Green, Wisconsin, August 15, 1914 Uncle Jenk smelled death. The foul odor of blood and burned flesh punched through his nostrils and made him nauseous. For a brief moment, he felt like … | Continue reading
Grudge is a funny word. It looks sort of funny with its crowd of heavy Germanic consonants flanking a little u, while a silent e trails pointlessly behind. It sounds funny too, if you can say it at all. A person trying to learn English will take one look at dg and confidently exp … | Continue reading
Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. James Ellroy, Red Sheet (Knopf) “As always, Ellroy’s jargon is jazzy, his characters caricatures on steroids. In the late Otash adventure, readers will find themselves seduced by Ellroy’s hipster take o … | Continue reading
The movie Gilda, starring Rita Hayworth, is known for many things, including the lush cinematography, and for solidifying the stardom of Hayworth, previously known primarily for musicals and comedies. The film features the most iconic scene of Hayworth’s career, a gif-length meme … | Continue reading
Cleveland, Ohio, the most populous city on Lake Erie and the second-most populous city in the state (after Columbus) with over two million residents in the Greater Cleveland area. Looking right across the border to Ontario, Canada. There’s a lot of factors conducive to crime in C … | Continue reading
Why are rollercoasters fun? It’s the thrill, of course. Adrenaline, dopamine, endorphins. They allow one to experience danger in a safe environment. Fiction can serve a similar purpose. Researchers have found it can, in effect, place the reader’s brain in the protagonist’s body. … | Continue reading
Featured image credit: Amazon MGM Studios via Variety In the new film The Sheep Detectives, the rules that govern murder mystery novels—specifically fair play whodunnits—are holy principles. They very clear, entirely foolproof, and apply to life as much as they do to fiction—comm … | Continue reading
We all have complicated relationships with our mothers, don’t we? As a daughter, and now a mother, I can attest that as deep and precious as these relationships are, it’s still not always smooth sailing when it comes to kith and kin. But some dynamics go far beyond the usual, eve … | Continue reading
Whether we choose to use it or not, social media a huge part of many of our lives—from tweets appearing in news headlines to the constant possibility of appearing in the background of content as an innocent passerby. For those who do use social media, there are few profiles more … | Continue reading
A mystery lover’s guide to what’s new to streaming this weekend. ___________________________________ New and Returning Mystery and Thriller Series __________________________________ Spider-Noir (Prime Video) Set in the 1930s, this stylish new series combines the look and storyte … | Continue reading
Hot off the heels of our enormous summer reading list, it’s time to turn to June! You’ll find a wide variety of crime books in the list below, and that feels like the whole point of our website: a book for every reader, and a reader for every book. June brings plenty of new relea … | Continue reading
Someone hold my beer, ‘cause I can’t hold my tongue But I can hold one hell of a grudge –Grudge by Carter Faith Grudges are as American as jazz and comic books. Often they lead to the feuds and beefs that fuel the plotlines of so many crime novels and movies. Still, sometimes tho … | Continue reading
Obscuring even as it reveals, a successful suspense story will contain enough twists to keep a reader captivated, but not so many that the book can’t stick the landing. This is a hefty enough task on its own, but some of my favorite mysteries and thrillers are the ones that add a … | Continue reading
At their deepest levels, fiction writers are nefarious characters. They’re leading you down a path that will keep you up at night worrying for the fate of your favorite characters, and possibly the world as we know it. They are, in fact, liars, manipulators, twisters of the trut … | Continue reading
I like my beaches with a side of book, thank you very much, and the cozier the book, the better. The irony in all of this, of course, is that I barely take vacations—I prefer to escape into writing. But with my most recent release, Murder on Vacation, just launched and the after- … | Continue reading
Story/Mood: Shortly after she’s received an award in Switzerland, fashion designer Lina (Isabel Aimé González Solano) jumps off a bridge into an icy cold river. She survives and returns to Buenos Aires where she develops a secret phobia of water and struggles to resume her normal … | Continue reading
That’s right! The mystery-thriller of Summer ’24 is getting a Netflix adaptation! Liz Moore’s God of the Woods is going to become a limited series. As the kids say, I am so seated. According to Netflix, Moore is going to be a co-showrunner of the project along with veteran write … | Continue reading
It’s summer! Which means its time to read some books. Some mysteries, to be exact. And thrillers. So, so many mysteries and thrillers. Here are a whole bunch of books coming out this summer, to peruse at your leisure, because that’s what summer reading is for: leisure. The list b … | Continue reading
There’s nothing cozy about murder. Not really. Yet by some sort of magic, murder-mystery stories can be very cozy indeed. It’s about their setting, their characters, their atmosphere—and the quiet satisfaction of a killer being caught. After all, there are few things more comfort … | Continue reading
Why this movie: David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises is a film about bodies and violence in London’s underground Russian mob scene. There are horribly mutilated and murdered bodies, bodies that get trafficked, bodies that fight naked in a bath house, and heavily tattooed bodies th … | Continue reading
A mystery and a rom-com shouldn’t work together. On the surface, they sit on opposite ends of the spectrum from one another. But structurally, the two have more in common than you’d assume: both are puzzles of a sort, both depend on clues that you might not notice until your seco … | Continue reading
When a heart stops beating, in a hospital, that moment signals an end. In fiction, it can be the beginning. Medical advances have always fueled storytelling, but in today’s world—where science routinely crosses lines that once felt absolute—they have become one of the most powerf … | Continue reading
I can’t remember the first scary movie I saw but I read my first horror novels and ghost stories probably far too young: enjoying Stephen King, James Herbert, and M.R. James from the age of ten. Horror movies soon caught up though and when I was in my teens I watched three over a … | Continue reading
Toek Tik’s work was a kind best done by night. As an adolescent in rural northwest Cambodia, he had been a foot soldier in a military force whose very name was a byword for terror: the Khmer Rouge, the radical communists whose rule had left perhaps two million people dead before … | Continue reading
Several months ago, I finished co-writing a novel with my father, bestselling writer Louis L’Amour. But Dad passed away thirty-eight years ago. So, that makes the process … somewhat different than one might expect. Our book, Skyring Water, began its life in the late 1950s as a co … | Continue reading
I’ve been a fan of Gothic literature since before I even knew what the word meant. When I was eight or nine our family listened to Dracula (an abridged version) on a road trip; I was reading The Secret Garden for fun when I was ten. Together, those served as my gateway drug, lead … | Continue reading
Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. Matthew Campbell, The Man Who Stole the Gods (Penguin/Portfolio) “Painstakingly researched and paced like a thriller, this sweeping, cinematic account weaves together true crime and Asian history to shi … | Continue reading
Too busy to get away this summer? Does your traveling companion have a broken leg and everything has been cancelled? You can still get away from the comfort of home. My new release, The Diva Hosts a Murderer takes you to Old Town, Alexandria, Virginia, located just across the Pot … | Continue reading
My debut novel, Valley of the Moms, is about struggles of wealth, power, and belonging. The book centers around the death of protagonist Anna Plummer, and, through dual points of view and timelines, telescopes the end of her life and what has happened to her. But just as importan … | Continue reading
My son and I were walking and chatting about researching law enforcement in order to write about it credibly, when the conversation drifted to composite sketches. Out of nowhere, he said, “wouldn’t it be wild if instead of police using a composite sketch to catch a killer, the ki … | Continue reading
I can’t believe it took this long, but Professor James Moriarty, arch-nemesis of Sherlock Holmes, is getting his own TV series. I suppose it was inevitable, after CBS gave Dr. Watson his own show. But now… yes, the greatest villain in detective novel history, the Napoleon of Crim … | Continue reading
A mystery lover’s guide to what’s new to streaming this weekend. ___________________________________ New and Returning Mystery and Thriller Series __________________________________ Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, Season 2 (Netflix) Season 1 of the series based on Holly Jackson’s … | Continue reading
When Ian Fleming’s family commissioned me to expand the world of 007, it was a lifelong dream come true. I played as Bond in childhood imaginary games and Fleming was one of my favorite authors since first reading From Russia with Love aged twelve. The Flemings gave me just two c … | Continue reading
Agatha Christie has her own list on this website. This is the list of everyone else. The detective story is thought to have been invented by Conan Doyle. And ironically, not only did he invent it, but he became the greatest practitioner of it. I don’t think he’s ever been equalle … | Continue reading
When I first heard Sting’s lyrics to “Every Breath You Take,” the song’s chilling, threatening tone made me genuinely uneasy. Was someone watching me? Should I be looking over my shoulder? It seemed he had written a definitive stalker’s anthem. And yet, as unsettling as it was, t … | Continue reading