There was a time when almost all the crime fiction I read had been recently published. I was young and callow and dismissive of any novels my parents or—heaven forfend!—my grandparents might have enjoyed in their own salad days. I desired nothing so much as to stay current with the genre’s latest developments, its freshest authors, its most wet-behind-the-ears trends.
But then I started buying vintage paperback mysteries and thrillers—primarily for the excellence of their cover illustrations, those eye-catching 1940s, ’50s and ’60s fronts graced by long-limbed lovelies and treacherous blondes and bent-nosed mobsters sporting pistols ...
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“More than any other writer, except perhaps Elmore Leonard, [Robert B. Parker] shaped my style and taste in storytelling,” Ace Atkins told me last spring after he’d delivered to his publisher the first installment of a new string of novels starring Parker’s celebrated Boston private eye-cum-knight errant, the single-monikered Spenser.
“I learned a lot from him and use much of his technique in everything I do. We also have a very similar worldview and an appreciation for sports, beer, food and dogs,” Atkins continued. “I also draw a lot into my work from my love of Westerns. You ...
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Mark Mills’ impressive fourth novel, House of the Hunted, is all about imminent loss.
The loss of its protagonist’s safety and anonymity. The loss of his relationship with people he has grown to adore and depend upon. And, since this story is set on the French Riviera in 1935—just as Europe is about to explode with a second world war—the loss of peace and tranquility and a lifestyle that operates according to a different clock from the one by which most folks arrange their days.
Did you read the Rap Sheet’s remembrance of Arthur Lyons?
A ...
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There’s no better way to demonstrate respect for an author—especially one who’s no longer among the living—than to continue enjoying his or her work.
Read the Rap Sheet’s interview with Owen Laukkanen, author of ‘The Professionals.’
Fortunately, there are still some U.S. publishers willing to keep mystery and thriller novels by older wordsmiths in circulation. Hard Case Crime, for instance, has resurrected fiction by the likes of David Dodge, Lester Dent, Steve Fisher and spy novelist-turned-Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt. Stark House Press offers a catalogue of reprints that includes works by Dan J ...
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Owen Laukkanen used to work as a website reporter, covering high-stakes poker tournaments around the world. Then he took a gamble of his own, penning a novel about a quartet of educated young Americans who—finding themselves without acceptable job prospects—set themselves up as expert kidnappers.
Catch up with the last Rap Sheet on must-read crime books this spring.
As Laukkanen explains in The Professionals, these abductors stay on the move, demand relatively modest payoffs and keep their targets low profile: “Midlevel executives, hedge-fund managers, guys with enough cash to make the job worthwhile, with families to pay the ...
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Although spring is being shy about showing its colors in some parts of the United States, trust that the season is finally upon us. With any luck, we should soon be able to sit out on our front porches, a cool drink in one hand and a new novel in the other.
The following seven works of mystery and thriller fiction, all to be released between now and the end of May, would be fine accompaniments to that pastime. They’re distracting enough to provide you relief from quotidian pressures, but not so enthralling that you’ll miss any interesting ...
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Lyndsay Faye moved from California’s Bay Area to New York City in 2005, intending to advance her stage-acting career. Instead, she turned to fiction writing.
Her debut novel, Dust and Shadow (2009), drew Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John H. Watson into a suspenseful pursuit of London’s most notorious and mysterious murderer, Jack the Ripper. That wasn’t a wholly unique plotting concept; Ellery Queen (in A Study in Terror, 1966), Michael Dibdin (The Last Sherlock Holmes Story, 1978) and Edward B. Hanna (The Whitechapel Murders, 1992) had all imagined an identical pairing of bloodhound and blackguard. Yet Faye ...
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New Jersey-born author Brad Parks spent two decades writing for newspapers, beginning as a teenager and leading to his employment with the Garden State’s largest-circulation daily, The Star-Ledger. He finally left the troubled world of print media in his mid-30s, hoping to make a new name for himself penning crime novels. Which he promptly did: His first book, Faces of the Gone (2009), won both the Nero Award (presented by the Nero Wolfe fan organization, The Wolfe Pack) and the Shamus Award (given out by the Private Eye Writers of America).
Did you read the Rap Sheet’s preview ...
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When promising authors deliver promising debuts, we like to bring attention to it. In Threats, short-story author Amelia Gray delivers an “old-fashioned gothic tale as rewritten by David Lynch or Williams S. Burroughs,” according to our review.
Read more new and notable fiction this March.
David’s wife suffered a violent death in their own home, due to the wounds found on her body, and now this former dentist is under intense scrutiny as to whodunit. As the mystery unravels, and he starts to grow more and more paranoid, he receives threatening message on scraps of paper throughout their house ...
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In a novel that we called “an even more thrilling, densely packed novel that makes most Chicago crime thrillers seem tame,” Charlie Newton returns to the mean streets with Start Shooting.
Read more new and notable thrillers.
This densely plotted police procedural pits two local cops against a conspiracy of violence and corruption that dates back to World War II, with a soulful spoonful of Chicago blues to boot. Just returned from Austin, Texas, where Kirkus Reviews and the Texas Book Festival presented Charlie’s talk about his new novel, the novelist sat down to talk about cops, criminals and ...
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Over the last several years, I’ve become a pretty reliable consumer of handsome, complete new sets of works by prominent crime and mystery fictionists.
Which is why you’ll find on my office shelves Academy Chicago’s uniform series of Earl Derr Biggers’ Charlie Chan novels, Vintage Crime’s paperback collection of Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö’s Martin Beck novels, Bantam Books’ reissues of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe yarns (published in double-book volumes), W.W. Norton’s annotated hardcover editions of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes novels and short stories, and a growing group ...
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Crime and thriller novels, once read, can usually be slotted with ease into one of three categories: those you found rewarding, intriguing and memorable; those you’re content to have poured through but probably won’t recall well in the long-run; and others you wish you could unread if only to recoup the valuable leisure time you wasted in their company.
Some books, though, demand extended cogitation before an opinion of their value can be rendered. William Landay’s new work, Defending Jacob—an emotional roller-coaster ride of a tale that examines the extremes to which parents might go out ...
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William Ryan’s debut historical thriller, The Holy Thief (2010), put him on the literary map but fast. The tale of a dogged, obdurately individualistic cop—Capt. Alexei Dmitriyevich Korolev of the Moscow Militia’s Criminal Investigation Division—who’s assigned to probe the torture slayings of a nun and a crook in Stalinist-era Russia, it picked up a nomination for the British Crime Writers’ Association’s John Creasey Award and was shortlisted for both a Barry Award and the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award.
Read the last Rap Sheet on Richard Dougherty’s ‘The Commissioner ...
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Most longtime crime-fiction fans have probably seen the 1968 film Madigan. Directed by Don Siegel, who’d go on to make the first of Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry movies in 1971, Madigan starred Richard Widmark and Harry Guardino as a couple of case-hardened New York City police detectives struggling to run down a hoodlum on the loose in Spanish Harlem. Henry Fonda played the city’s by-the-book police commissioner, who was aggravated by the cowboy tactics of Widmark and Guardino, while James Whitmore executed a splendid turn as a chief inspector suspected of doing favors for a dirty-money man ...
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No sooner have we made it through 2011’s biggest book-buying and giving season than it’s time to think about next year’s crop of mystery and thriller fiction. Below are seven works I’m betting will be big sellers during the opening three months of 2012, plus a rundown of 14 other criminous yarns meriting serious attention.
Did you read the Rap Sheet’s list of five favorite British crime novels from 2011?
Defending Jacob, by William Landay (January): After debuting with Mission Flats in 2003, former New England assistant district attorney Landay delivers this fleet legal drama ...
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OK, I admit it: last month’s list of my favorite crime novels of 2011 was incomplete. That wasn’t solely because I restricted my choices to 10, but because I limited them further to works produced in the United States. I read more widely than that, especially among novels originating in Great Britain.
So below are five books—all of which were published this year, but none of which has yet seen print in the States—that would be worth your crossing the Atlantic to buy. Or you can simply order them online.
Read an interview with El Gavilan ...
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Illegal immigration across the U.S.-Mexico border seems destined to be a topic of debate during next year’s presidential race. So the publication of Craig McDonald’s new standalone novel, El Gavilan, is well-timed.
This tale takes place in a fictional Ohio town that’s struggling with its growing influx of Latinos. Racism and violence have both reared their ugly heads in what used to be a quiet community. Now, the rape-murder of a Mexican-American woman, Thalia Ruiz, threatens to cause those tensions to boil over, and it falls to the town’s just-installed police chief, former Border ...
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Developing a list of the top mystery and thriller novels for any particular year is necessarily limited by the scope of the author’s reading, as well as by his or her tastes. Fortunately, I’ve had plenty of excuses to read broadly in the genre since Jan. 1. While most of the books in my stack were pretty commonplace, a number stood out for their quality of storytelling and character development.
Catch up on your mysteries and thrillers with the last Rap Sheet.
To prevent my list from getting out of hand, I have restricted the choices to books ...
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When, in 1886, Scottish physician Arthur Conan Doyle created his fictional “consulting detective” in the novel A Study in Scarlet, he didn’t expect the man to outlive him.
However, the egotistical, eccentric and narrowly brilliant English sleuth he originally called Sherrinford Holmes—later rechristened Sherlock—went on to star not only in three more novels but also 56 short stories by Conan Doyle. And though the doctor sought to kill off his protagonist in the 1893 tale “The Final Problem,” he was unsuccessful. Fans ultimately convinced Conan Doyle to bring Holmes back from the grave. Even today, eight decades ...
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London was a city very much at war in 1915. Its streets were rampant with soldiers—either healthy and accompanied by girlfriends, or maimed and beset by despair. Recruiting placards challenged other men hesitant to join the fighting. Mammoth German Zeppelins appeared like apparitions in the night skies, raining bombs down upon the ancient British capital. It was “very terrible to contemplate that it is impossible to sleep in one’s bed in perfect safety,” observed the London Times.
Did you see the last Rap Sheet, about crime novels worth rediscovering?
Further exacerbating civilian angst in that second year of ...
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