Sherlock Holmes, the literary epitome of rationalism and clear-headed detective work, spent his career debunking and illuminating the mysterious, the unexplainable, and the supernatural. But Holmes’s author, Athur Conan Doyle, could not have been more different from his creation. … | Continue reading
As someone who has spent years living in cooperative housing, I will admit that when it comes to community, I’m ready to drink the cool-aid. But in an age of increasing inequality, an ongoing housing crisis, and increasing segregation between the haves and have-nots, I find it di … | Continue reading
Juliet Grames: Immigrant Detective. It’s not an official title, nor does it rank among the distinctions listed in her biography (though maybe it should). Those include Editorial Director at Soho Press, for which she received the Ellery Queen Award from the Mystery Writers of Amer … | Continue reading
An unreliable narrator is a point-of-view character who describes the story in such a way that the reader cannot trust his or her version of reality. There can be purposeful reasons for this—for instance, to hide their own biases or wrongdoings. In The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, th … | Continue reading
In 1917, the seventy thousand residents of San Diego had a decision to make: “Smokestacks versus Geraniums.” Few cities have the chance to define their future, but the candidates in the 1917 election for mayor made the two possibilities clear. Gilded Age bankertype Louis J. Wilde … | Continue reading
It makes my dark little heart happy to see how the young adult horror genre has evolved. It was far more limited when I was younger, which is one of the reasons I got into Stephen King so early (and when people ask me “Jill, why are you the way that you are?” I often […] | Continue reading
Peter Houlahan’s Reap the Whirlwind: Violence, Race, Justice, and the Story of Sagon Penn is an engrossing, insightful account of a traffic stop gone horribly wrong. On March 31,1985, Penn, a Black man driving a pickup truck carrying several other Black men, was pulled over by Do … | Continue reading
Obsession, addiction, and disease: They are themes that coexist as a strange hierarchy of social horror, like the raw matter of what makes a subculture tick, and how self-destruction often takes control of the individual long before they can identify the source of the hurt. They … | Continue reading
By the time I got there, everything was cleaned up. That’s how it always was. Casings collected by the cops, or kicked by passersby into the storm drain; blood scrubbed off the sidewalk; witnesses with three days to vanish or make up a story about how they didn’t see what they sa … | Continue reading
As I write this essay at the start of fire season, the skies near me are smoky from a blaze north of where I live. For many residents of wildfire-prone areas, the smell of smoke or strong gusts on a hot day can be triggering. We check our apps or bookmarked links. We text friends … | Continue reading
“What’s Denver’s dating profile?” When the prolific novelist, Rachel Howzell Hall, asked me that question in a podcast interview, I was stumped. “Is she sultry or what?” Rachel continued. “I want to know more about the city. Who is Denver?” Rachel’s question forced me to dig deep … | Continue reading
Some would say all writers are criminals. We steal bits of reality to make our fictional worlds. But is using someone else’s experience in your fiction really a crime? That’s the question I pondered as I wrote The Widow on Dwyer Court, a domestic thriller about an erotica writer … | Continue reading
Brian Winchester and Denise Williams began a torrid affair in the late 90s, and soon enough decided they wanted to be together for real. The problem? Their communities and families would judge them harshly for getting divorced. They decided the only solution to their problem woul … | Continue reading
THE AUTHOR Having just survived writing a speculative mystery novel that allows readers choose what happens at certain points in the story, when CrimReads asked me to write an essay about the experience in the same format, I felt: Terror Excitement * TERROR It’s already hard enou … | Continue reading
More than two decades ago, the idea hit me. The kind of novel that I’d wanted to write, been trying to write for years, was equally influenced and informed by the early blues music I loved as it was by the hardboiled masters I idolized. I realized the direct connection between Ha … | Continue reading
“We don’t have that kind of problem around here.” This is the first thing Santo Alvaro* says to me when I ask him about the ’Ndrangheta. “The mafia is all in the city, in Reggio and Milano. You don’t have to worry about that at all in this area.” Alvaro is a third-generation rest … | Continue reading
Detective Chief Inspector Bob Perks nursed half a shandy in Scruffy Murphy’s and sat wishing he was more interesting. He didn’t want to be a cliché, like all those coppers on the telly, with broken marriages and drink problems, he just fancied . . . livening his lot up a little. … | Continue reading
A ceramic skull, grinning at visitors from a side table in the entry hall, offers a clue to the identity of the former owner of this grand home perched above the banks of the River Dart in Devon. You don’t need Hercule Poirot’s little grey cells or the observational skills of Jan … | Continue reading
Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Juliet Grames, The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia (Knopf) “As a mystery, Grames’s novel is as gripping as they come; it’s also a deeply satisfying character study of an outsider learning more about a place … | Continue reading
Out of the ashes rose the … Edgar. In 2021, Meg Gardiner’s Austin home was destroyed by a fire that spared lives while consuming nearly everything else in its path. Though the flames were eventually extinguished, the house was a complete loss, as were the majority of the things c … | Continue reading
Historical mystery with its portrayal of life in another time and place has long been one of the most popular subgenres of crime fiction. From ancient Rome and medieval monasteries to the pre-Civil War South, the foggy streets of Victorian London, and the trenches of WW1, readers … | Continue reading
America’s serial killer obsession is bottomless, a seedy fixation with inexplicable horror. It often glorifies murderers in its attempts to psychologize those who kill without any discernable motive, and to draw comfortingly clear lines between good and evil. This obsession was a … | Continue reading
In the world famous test of visual attention designed by Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris, an off-camera voice instructs participants to watch a short video of a group of students playing basketball, during which they must count the number of times the players in the white s … | Continue reading
Not since Allan Sherman first sang “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah” have tales of summer camp woes been quite so entertaining. While regular summer camp can be annoying—heat rashes, ant piles, wild pigs, impossible beauty standards, line dancing, and whatever nastiness lies at the bo … | Continue reading
Over the Christmas season in 1938, as the world glumly slouched toward war, Welsh author Howard Spring, book reviewer for the London Evening Standard, decided that he would relax by reading a couple of English crime novels. Heartily disliking both of the books—a detective story b … | Continue reading
The CrimeReads editors make their selections for the best debut novels in crime, mystery, and thrillers. * Donyae Coles, Midnight Rooms (Amistad) Never. Eat. What. The. Fairies. Give. You. Especially if it’s as disgusting as what’s consumed at the wedding feast in this atmospheri … | Continue reading
If asked to pitch my debut contemporary fiction novel, The Confidence Games, I usually say something like: “Think Ocean’s 8 meets a modern day Thelma and Louise”. In the book, best friends Emma and Nellie, who adhere to only two rules—they will only swindle men, and only ones who … | Continue reading
I’ve always been obsessed with houses: their different shapes and colors; layouts that couldn’t be seen from the curb. Maybe this curiosity started because I grew up in a boxy two bedroom apartment in Queens, NYC. Or because the very first chapter book I read was Nancy Drew’s The … | Continue reading
Atmosphere is a hugely important part of crafting suspense fiction, conjuring mood and emotion for a reader and contributing to the reading experience in so many ways. The right atmosphere can fully immerse a reader in the world you’ve created, both toying with their emotions and … | Continue reading
“I am sorry that people are so brutal to one another when it takes so little to love one another.” –model Bani Yelverton On January 6th, 1970 electronics engineer Jack Froelich returned home to New York City after a two week vacation in Haiti. Coming from that sweltering country … | Continue reading
With her first two novels, Margot Douaihy has created one of the most memorable characters in contemporary crime fiction. In Scorched Grace and Blessed Water, her tattooed, punk rock nun/private investigator, Sister Holiday, solves crimes while following her vocation in the troub … | Continue reading
Forget quaint cottage gardens and picturesque trails—sometimes, Mother Nature has murder on her mind. Growing up in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Pennsylvania, I learned firsthand that the great outdoors isn’t just something to admire from afar. When you spend as much time as I did … | Continue reading
We all know the primary focus of a novel is the main protagonist(s), but sometimes the most memorable personalities in the book are the scene-stealing sidekicks. Some of the funniest characters are the secondary ones who sometimes shine brighter and make more of a lasting mark th … | Continue reading
What is it that draws us to destinations unknown? That compels us to explore and discover new places? There’s something so alluring about taking that leap out of our comfort zone, about traveling to unfamiliar locations far and wide, even if only within the pages of a book. There … | Continue reading
Who doesn’t love Ian Fleming’s James Bond? Most professional intelligent officers, as it turns out. Oh, we don’t hate him, but I’d say that, at best, we have a love-hate relationship with him. It tickles us that the public thinks we could be that suave and charming, that physical … | Continue reading
Down on the East Side, far from the Broadway of Arnold Rothstein’s New York, Lillian Lieben and Antonia Rolnick lived on “Jewish Broadway,” or Grand Street. Back in 1900, the New York Tribune wrote that “Grand Street is Broadway plus Fifth Avenue, only very much more so. Its wide … | Continue reading
Gore Vidal was intellectual culture’s reigning champion of social liberalism and secular advocacy for decades. His famous wit indicates that he would appreciate the irony of someone awarding him the title of “prophet,” but it was well-earned. His series of novels chronicling Amer … | Continue reading
Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Alisa Alering, Smothermoss (Tin House) “Surreal, thrilling. . . . Moody, potent, and tinged with the occult, Smothermoss is unlike anything I’ve read in a long time.” –Bustle Carinn Jade, The Astrolog … | Continue reading
The first book I can remember reading is Where The Wild Things Are. I have clear memories of being equal parts enthralled and frightened by Max’s journey across the ocean to the land of wild things. I was also horrified that Max had been sent to bed without dinner. As a greedy ch … | Continue reading
If there’s an all-business town in Italy then it’s Turin. Capital of Piedmont, northern Italy, it sits impressively on the Po River. Just under two million inhabitants in the wider urban area. Like everywhere in Italy there’s a lot of history – the capital of the Duchy of Savoy b … | Continue reading
Twice Round the Clock is a long-forgotten mystery by a woman whose life encompassed professional fame and personal tragedy. Although she was once extremely well-known, it was not as a crime writer. When the book was first published by Hutchinson (a company of considerable renown) … | Continue reading
Much has been written about the origin of characters in fiction, and the inspiration that presses a writer to embark upon a story—perhaps a novel or short fiction, or returning to the character time and again in a series. Sometimes characters are inspired by a writer’s past—perha … | Continue reading
I love a thriller that makes my heart race. But throw in a bit of sexiness and I won’t be able to stop turning the pages. Make the sexiness edgy and forbidden? Even better—I’ll read it in one sitting. Though the added component is not about sex, per se; it’s more about the emotio … | Continue reading
This month’s best psychological thrillers come with a certain symmetry, as well as a speculative twist. There are two novels included that explore celebrity and obsession to their logical (and rather horrifying) conclusions; you’ll also find two different books about robot wives! … | Continue reading
New York, July 22, 1884 They were detectives, accustomed to plunder, But they’d never seen anything like this. It had taken some doing to open the safe. After bursting into the modest haberdashery shop on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, they’d demanded the keys from the shopkeeper, … | Continue reading
I love to laugh. I love reading stories and watching films that make me laugh. I’m not so fond of people trying to make me laugh. You have to be really talented to try to make me laugh and succeed at it. Comedians like Dave Chappelle, Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Steven Wright, … | Continue reading
During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Venice was the richest and most powerful nation in Europe. You’d be forgiven for thinking that title would go to one of the larger nations like England or France, but through a combination of physical location, a robust mercantile econo … | Continue reading
In my latest dark thriller, Honeycomb, a washed-up singer takes part in a mysterious—and ultimately nefarious—social experiment that quickly turns catastrophic. Exploring the relationship between celebrities and fans, as well as the addictive nature and relentless pursuit of fame … | Continue reading