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Lindy Ryan on Setting a Vampire Novel in a Small Texas Town
When I first started writing Bless Your Heart and the Evans women, it was a goodbye letter, not the start of a new series. I’d recently lost my grandmother to a brief but brutal sickness, and not long...
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Henriette Lazaridis on the Magic of Discovering Detective Fiction in Her...
In my teenaged years, when I traveled to my parents’ native Greece for the summers, I brought with me an entire duffel bag full of books. In high school, and taking myself seriously (too seriously) as...
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The 81 Best, Worst, and Strangest Dr. Watson Portrayals of All-Time, Ranked
Three years ago, when I ranked 100 Sherlock Holmes performances in an article for this very website, I had thought that I had landed upon the most challenging project I’d ever undertake at CrimeReads....
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10 Queer Crime Novels To Check Out This Spring
Spring is here, summer is coming, and June is Pride Month. What does this mean? Lots of great new queer mysteries and thrillers to read on the beach or at the park on a lazy Sunday. This season, many...
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A Bloody-Minded Business: Julian Symons’ Evolution as a Crime Fiction Critic
Most of the generation of authors that produced the Golden Age of detective fiction–that brief era when the puzzle plot purportedly reigned supreme in mysteries–had departed not only from the field but...
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Anthony Horowitz on Giving Himself a New Role in His Latest Mystery
Anthony Horowitz is missing. Not the real Anthony Horowitz, of course. He’s exactly where you’d expect him to be—hunkered down at his desk, toiling away at the next novel even as his newest is hitting...
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Philip Miller On Using Ouija Boards to Fuel Creativity
At the beginning of my new novel The Hollow Tree, a man stands on the roof of a Scottish hotel. It is night, and the distant mountains are hidden. It is rural Argyll, and the stars above are clear in...
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“My Mind Had Been Fired By Reading Cheap Detective Stories”
Part One: An Unkindness of Ravens It was almost three years to the day after the great quake had laid waste to so much of San Francisco’s pride that the first of the extortion letters arrived, dated...
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10 Great Books About Books
I recently came across the first pages of a crime novel, written when I was eleven. It was called The Hair of the Dog and was about an author who steals someone else’s plot and is subsequently...
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The Heyday of Pulp Fiction
“Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows …” / Insert sinister laugh here. The Shadow, a proto-Batman who, unlike the Caped Crusader, was more than willing to gun down the bad...
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How Four Investigative Reporting Experiences Led to Great Mystery “Material”
During my career as an investigative reporter – and as the wife of an expert in the field of computer-assisted investigative reporting – I have experienced situations that could be distressing if you...
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On the Invention of M. Dupin
This is a transcript of a talk that was given, by Dr. Olivia Rutigliano, at New York University Law School’s Poe Room Event, on May 19th, 2023. Briefly, from 1845-1846, Edgar Allan Poe lived in a...
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The Author as Protagonist
“People should be interested in books, not their authors.”—Agatha Christie A couple of years ago, on the sun-drenched Amalfi Coast when it was climate-change hot outside, I had a thought (Okay, I had...
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The State of the Crime Novel, Part 1: Writing Life
Once again, the Edgar Awards are upon us, and once again, I’ve had the privilege of asking dozens of great writers to contribute to our annual roundtable discussion on the state of the genre. This...
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The Exploits and Exploitation of Indian Street Magic, Jadoo
From ancient times, India has had a rich tradition of magic, active and thriving even today. Lord Indra, Hindu God of the heavens, who wields the power to control thunder and lightning, is also...
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The Rare Entertainments of E.C.R. Lorac’s Death of an Author
Death of an Author is a rare example of a novel by E. C. R. Lorac (the principal pen name of Carol Rivett) that does not feature her popular and long-serving series detective Inspector Macdonald. The...
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The State of the Crime Novel, Part 2: The Future of Crime Writing
This is part two of our annual roundtable discussion ahead of the Edgar Awards, in which we discuss major issues (and minor peeves) in crime writing. Thanks so much to all the nominees who contributed...
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The Backlist: C.J. Tudor on the Wild, Inventive Noirs of Michael Marshall Smith
I love writers who mix genres. It’s like an athlete who plays sports and somehow, improbably, manages to be good at all of them. C.J. Tudor’s novels cross boundaries between mystery, horror, and...
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Los Angeles as Setting and Character
Los Angeles is the quintessential city of mystery, and I firmly believe that my decision to live here ultimately led me to write crime fiction. But that journey took decades. I wasn’t one of the...
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Why Trains Make the Perfect Thriller and Mystery Setting
The 8:04 is coming down the tracks. Board at your own risk. This is the warning on the cover reveal for my new thriller The Man on the Train. Ever since the original damsel in distress was tied to...
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