Let’s say the current golden era of high-quality television shows started 20 years ago with The Sopranos. When we watch these shows, we are usually watching crime shows. Nearly every prestige show …

When I was a newspaper reporter, one of my colleagues on the advertising side of the operation was as much a fan of the TV series “Justified” as I was. My family hails from Tennessee, so I was attu…

I don’t remember why I watched the pilot episode that came on one night after dinner in 1974: in those days before our family had a remote it was sometimes a passive decision, simply easier to keep…

You’d be hard pushed to find a city more invested in books and literature than Dublin. Of course none other than James Joyce himself took a keen interest in crime and punishment—the 1803 execution …

Depending on their ages and viewing habits, some fans of Pam Grier (who was born in 1949) might know her primarily through her title role in Quentin Tarantino’s 1997 movie, Jackie Brown, or perhaps…

Let’s say the current golden era of high-quality television shows started 20 years ago with The Sopranos. When we watch these shows, we are usually watching crime shows. Nearly every prestige show …

I have a confession to make, perhaps an embarrassing one. When Abby Westlake invited me to go through the working files of her late husband, crime writer Donald E. Westlake, in order to put togethe…

I love the show Moonlighting, but everyone loves Moonlighting. To see Moonlighting is, in fact, to love it, though if you didn’t watch it when it aired, from 1985 to 1989 on ABC, there’…

You’d be hard pushed to find a city more invested in books and literature than Dublin. Of course none other than James Joyce himself took a keen interest in crime and punishment—the 1803 execution …

I have a confession to make, perhaps an embarrassing one. When Abby Westlake invited me to go through the working files of her late husband, crime writer Donald E. Westlake, in order to put togethe…

What is Sneakers, the early 90s film featuring Robert Redford, Sidney Poitier, Dan Aykroyd, David Strathairn, and River Phoenix as a motley group of security specialists pulling off an impossible j…

Tana French’s The Searcher, Don Winslow’s Broken, Ivy Pochoda’s These Women, and Liz Moore’s Long Bright River all feature among the best reviewed crime mystery and crime fi…

It’s that time of year when we celebrate Elmore Leonard. Okay, who am I kidding, we celebrate Elmore Leonard just about every week here at CrimeReads, but on October 11th we give the project …

If you’re starting your year wishing for a sense that time is passing, than look no further! For the best way to know that each day is not, in fact, the same as the last is to keep a close wa…

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stretched onto the bed, curling ever so slightly to his side. He looked crisp yet casual in his suit trousers and shirtsleeves. If he worried the FBI had bugged his room…

“Think Downton Abbey meets Sneakers, but in World War II!” That’s how a Hollywood bigwig might pitch the story of Bletchley Park, a remote English country manor stuffed with codeb…

The CrimeReads editors make their picks for the year’s best fiction. * Jessica Knoll, Bright Young Women (Simon & Schuster) Jessica Knoll’s brilliant, blistering third novel is a ta…

What is Sneakers, the early 90s film featuring Robert Redford, Sidney Poitier, Dan Aykroyd, David Strathairn, and River Phoenix as a motley group of security specialists pulling off an impossible j…

What is Sneakers, the early 90s film featuring Robert Redford, Sidney Poitier, Dan Aykroyd, David Strathairn, and River Phoenix as a motley group of security specialists pulling off an impossible j…

On January 21, 1992, Little, Brown and Co. published the debut novel of a writer so obscure that even the newspaper where he worked, the Los Angeles Times, did not seem to notice. The upstart crow …

The CrimeReads editors select their favorite crime novels, mysteries, and thrillers of the year. Check back in the coming days for more of the Best Books of 2021. * PJ Vernon, Bath Haus (Doubleday)…

The crime and mystery community is nothing if not passionate. Its members read intensely, fall in love with authors and characters, and never shy away from a chance to champion the books they admir…

[This post contains spoilers for JAWS, a forty-five year old movie…] I watch Jaws every year on the Fourth of July, in view of its timelessness as well as its seasonality. Jaws is specificall…

Let’s say the current golden era of high-quality television shows started 20 years ago with The Sopranos. When we watch these shows, we are usually watching crime shows. Nearly every prestige show …

What is Sneakers, the early 90s film featuring Robert Redford, Sidney Poitier, Dan Aykroyd, David Strathairn, and River Phoenix as a motley group of security specialists pulling off an impossible j…

Harper Lee wasn’t Capote’s first choice. He’d wanted to bring along his friend Andrew Lyndon, another young southern writer, but when Lyndon said he couldn’t do it, Capote turned to Lee instead. He…

Though I grew up watching Perry Mason on television, I didn’t crack the spine of my first Erle Stanley Gardner novel—The Case of the Rolling Bones (1939)—until two years ago. When I did, what a cou…

Deadwood, arguably the greatest television series ever made, was a western, or possibly a morality epic, or maybe a social parable, that was very nearly set instead in ancient Rome and very much wa…

When it comes to a series, a decade is both a long and short period of time—long for an author enough to start a series, long enough to publish multiple books continuing it, but not quite long enou…

There are times in life when you need a good opener. Maybe you’re caught in a rut and need the charge of a new world, new characters, something that carries with it the quiet thrill of possib…

When news of Stephen King’s latest novel, The Outsider, first broke, the horror community found themselves divided into two camps: those willing to welcome this new title with the same enthusiasm a…

I’ve long been a fan of Tana French’s innovative Dublin Police Squad series, and I was delighted when she began to write standalones and expand her fictional universe. While the lyrical…

On January 21, 1992, Little, Brown and Co. published the debut novel of a writer so obscure that even the newspaper where he worked, the Los Angeles Times, did not seem to notice. The upstart crow …

Nostalgia, in the wake of the Tate-LaBianca murders, redolent of a greener, guileless city, paled Robert Towne’s vision. Thick with memory, he discovered, in a pile of West magazines Julie had coll…

It’s happened. You’ve finally taken that dream trip to England. You have seen Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, and Hyde Park. You rode in a London cab and walked all over the Tower of London. Now you’ve…

In 1961, a dashing young President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was sworn into office amidst world crisis. To greet the new President, East Germany covertly erected the Berlin Wall and Russia launched…

Elmore Leonard was “the Dickens of Detroit,” “the poet laureate of wild assholes with revolvers,” and above all a master craftsman. Ever a writer’s writer, Leonard hon…

When I wrote The Crossing Places in 2009, I didn’t think that it would be the start of a long-running series. I was only grateful that it was published at all. My first four books, written under my…

We were up in Calgary doing final re-writes on our first movie and staying in a fancy hotel and just doing that screenwriters getting their first movie made/showbiz thing, which feels real nice whe…

Okay, everyone, it’s time to rank Prison Escape Movies. What are the parameters? The criteria for this category seem straightforward, but might involve even more hair-splitting than usual, so…

When recently discussing his forthcoming adaptation of Macbeth, director Joel Coen drew a direct line from William Shakespeare’s grand tragedy of power, murder and madness to the bloody business fo…

In 1961, a dashing young President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was sworn into office amidst world crisis. To greet the new President, East Germany covertly erected the Berlin Wall and Russia launched…

The American Historical Association in Washington, D.C. was two blocks from James Grady’s apartment on Capitol Hill. Each day, Grady would pass the large white townhouse at the corner of 4th and A …

We had books, radios and cars. What we didn’t have was the internet, cell phones or GPS. It was 1976, the bicentennial year, and I was a young private investigator, employed by a small detective ag…

Can you recall all the plots of all the books in all the mystery series that you’ve read over the years? Of course not. There are simply too many to retain the specifics. But what you DO remember f…

Okay, everyone, it’s time to rank Prison Escape Movies. What are the parameters? The criteria for this category seem straightforward, but might involve even more hair-splitting than usual, so…

A look at the month’s best reviewed crime novels, mysteries, and thrillers. Lawrence Osborne, On Java Road (Hogarth) “No one else writes ‘thrillers’ as languid as Lawrence Osborne…

There’s the New York we see. The streets and neighborhoods, townhouses and office buildings, stoops and bodegas. That’s a damn good city, electric and irrepressible, but there’s another place just …

Another year has dawned, and it’s time for another list purporting to be the sum of all Most Anticipated Titles in our beloved genre. I have been asked to keep the number of titles on the lis…

104 years ago today, the most cynical bastard one of the greatest crime writers who ever lived was born in….wait, Oklahoma? As a Texan, I need to process this news. Oh, well, Thompson may not…

It’s happened. You’ve finally taken that dream trip to England. You have seen Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, and Hyde Park. You rode in a London cab and walked all over the Tower of London. Now you’ve…

There’s a lot that marks “Miller’s Crossing,” which turns 30 this week, as a film by Joel and Ethan Coen. Frequent collaborators like Jon Polito, John Turturro and Steve Buscemi are in it (not to m…

Selecting the Very Best Books of any year (or, heaven forbid, of all time) can feel like a daunting exercise, especially in the world of crime fiction, where the books are plentiful, the readers ar…

The 1970s detective would not be an American pacifist ready to burn his draft card down on Main Street, nor would he be a Lieutenant Calley, murdering civilians and singing his own battle hymn. Det…

In 1961, a dashing young President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was sworn into office amidst world crisis. To greet the new President, East Germany covertly erected the Berlin Wall and Russia launched…

Nostalgia, in the wake of the Tate-LaBianca murders, redolent of a greener, guileless city, paled Robert Towne’s vision. Thick with memory, he discovered, in a pile of West magazines Julie had coll…

There are times in life when you need a good opener. Maybe you’re caught in a rut and need the charge of a new world, new characters, something that carries with it the quiet thrill of possib…

What is Sneakers, the early 90s film featuring Robert Redford, Sidney Poitier, Dan Aykroyd, David Strathairn, and River Phoenix as a motley group of security specialists pulling off an impossible j…

Twenty years ago, Elmore Leonard visited the New York State Writers Institute. The Institute, a literary organization founded when William Kennedy passed along his MacArthur fellowship money, is ba…

Michael Mann’s “Heat” (1995) is widely considered a cinematic masterpiece. Not only do we follow as L.A. detective Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino) chases ultra-disciplined thief Neil McCauley (Robert De …

One of the greatest appeals of genre fiction, from romance to sci-fi to thrillers, is the way the narratives can hold up a magnifying glass to the fault lines in our societies, and shine light into…

Orphan, hobo, painter, poet, boxer, book critic, decorated tank commander, actor, truck driver, teacher, author and inveterate prankster—Charles Willeford led a life that could provide him with a z…

On this day, like every day, Joan Harrison was impeccably attired in a designer suit, with her golden blonde hair stylishly coiffed. At five foot four, she had a trim, petite build. Her slightly tu…

There’s an episode of Columbo I really like to watch. The first episode of the second season, “Étude in Black.” John Cassavetes guest-stars as a conniving orchestra conductor who …

This past decade, we’ve been pleased to see publishers, readers, editors, and reviewers alike have come to the same conclusion—crime fiction is a big tent, and we need our bookshelves to refl…

Lee Child has sold millions of books worldwide, and his Jack Reacher character has virtually become a household name. This series follows the adventures of former American military policeman, Jack …

Early on, HBO executives asked David Simon to cut a seemingly pointless scene featuring a shadowy figure named Omar, who robbed drug dealers. His presence did not seem relevant to them in moving th…

I’ve long been a fan of Tana French’s innovative Dublin Police Squad series, and I was delighted when she began to write standalones and expand her fictional universe. While the lyrical…

“A Carnival of Murder on the High Seas,” announced the Halifax Herald, the evening paper of the Canadian port where the Herbert Fuller arrived on the morning of July 21, a week after the killings. …

Most American novels—even canonical literary ones—are built on genre conventions. And it’s interesting to note that many of the twentieth and early twenty-first century’s greatest novels have at th…

Fifty years after his creation, Scooby Doo needs no introduction. But when he appeared on television for the first time, on Saturday, September 13th, 1969, he was not given any sort of explanation.…

The year may not have given us much to celebrate, but we can grateful at least for a banner crop of crime novels, books that gave us insight and entertainment, nuanced narratives and chills running…

In honor of Asian-American and Pacific Islander heritage month, we’re highlighting the incredible array of crime books and thrillers by Asian-American authors publishing in 2021, so you can k…

As 2019 comes to a close, it’s time to take stock of the decade that was in crime fiction and mystery. Why? Because we can. Because the books are there to be read and re-read, debated and rec…

As of January 1st in this year 2021, copyrighted works produced in the year 1925 have entered the public domain in the United States, which means they are totally free and legal for anyone to use, …

The sun is out, the flowers are in bloom, the vaccines are flowing freely, and this summer, we all deserve to have some much-needed (and long-delayed) fun. With that in mind, this year’s summ…

When it comes to a series, a decade is both a long and short period of time—long for an author enough to start a series, long enough to publish multiple books continuing it, but not quite long enou…

As writers and readers, we’ve all cruised those lists of great must-read novels. You know the ones.  They frequently come in rundowns of a hundred. Here’s a short list of the very many out there:  …

It may be the fact that this CrimeReads editor moved back to Texas, but did anyone else feel like summer started months ago?!? Or maybe I just felt that way because I started reading for the summer…

Whether you’re packing a locked-room mystery for that long-delayed vacation, seeking the perfect thriller to keep you up at night, or looking for a noir so bleak and beautiful you’ll be…

The CrimeReads editors select their favorite books of the month. * Kelly J. Ford, Real Bad Things (Thomas & Mercer) Ford’s 2017 novel, Cottonmouths, remains a standout in the suspense category,…

Another year in the books and the world of crime fiction is a little wiser, a little more mature, its tastes and approaches more varied than ever before. Psychological thrillers continue their asce…

When it comes to a series, a decade is both a long and short period of time—long for an author enough to start a series, long enough to publish multiple books continuing it, but not quite long enou…

Tonight in Dallas, Texas, at a gala celebrating the 50th anniversary of Bouchercon, the world mystery convention, the winners of the Anthony Awards were announced. The “Anthonys” honor …

This year marks the 74th anniversary of the Mystery Writers of America’s gala celebrating the Edgar Awards—one of the crime fiction world’s highest honors. Under normal circumstances, t…

Some time in the night, William Goldman died in his sleep. He was at home in New York and passed with a solid claim to being the greatest screenwriter who ever lived, not to mention a fine novelist…