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    • Features
      • Essays
      • Interviews
      • Reading Lists
      • New Nonfiction
    • Culture
      • TV & Film
      • Podcasts
      • Craft
      • Awards/Festivals
    • True Crime
    • Daily Thrill
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      • Mystery
      • Noir/Hardboiled
      • Suspense
      • Espionage/Thriller
      • Legal/Procedural
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    Five Mystery Novels That Prioritize Character, Style, and Insight

    Five Mystery Novels That Prioritize Character, Style, and Insight

    "Genre fiction can be every bit as inventive and arty and revelatory as something dubbed literature."

    By Mark Stevens | September 15, 2022

    Kate Atkinson: A Crime Reader’s Guide to the Classics

    Kate Atkinson: A Crime Reader’s Guide to the Classics

    A study of the life and work of one of contemporary crime fiction's greatest authors.

    By Neil Nyren | September 15, 2022

    The Language of Brutality

    The Language of Brutality

    How we speak of violence, what we name it, how we show it, and why it matters.

    By Rijula Das | September 13, 2022

    Messy Women in Crime Fiction: A Reading List

    Messy Women in Crime Fiction: A Reading List

    "There’s just something so compelling about a female character trying to fix her life when it, or she, is in shambles."

    By Meredith Hambrock | September 9, 2022

    Five Novels With Deeply Troubled Protagonists

    Five Novels With Deeply Troubled Protagonists

    Sometimes, we want complicated...

    By Christopher Swann | September 6, 2022

    Tommy Udo: In Praise of Film Noir’s Greatest Homme Fatal

    Tommy Udo: In Praise of Film Noir’s Greatest Homme Fatal

    75 years later, that iconic, sadistic laugh is still reverberating through the culture.

    By Zach Vasquez | September 2, 2022

    Best Reviewed
    Books of the Week

    • Luna, Phoenix, Queen
    • Music Against the Night
    • Peck & Peck
    • The Best Kind of American: A True Story of Murder, War, and America's Undoing in the Middle East
    • The End of Everything
    • Morbid: Debunking Modern Longevity Science
    • American Socialist: The Life and Legacy of Eugene V. Debs
    • Solace House
    • On Another Planet They Can Save Me
    • Reds: A Global History of Communism

    Don’t Turn My Book into a TV Series 

    By Jason Mosberg | August 30, 2022

    The Gospel According to Flannery O’Connor, Harry Crews, Toni Morrison and Donald Ray Pollock

    By Jonathan Woods | August 29, 2022

    The Dangers of the Open Road: 5 Key Works of Motorcycle Noir

    By Nick Kolakowski | August 26, 2022

    Hungry Like a Dog: James Ellroy Will Not Stop Being James Ellroy

    Hungry Like a Dog: James Ellroy Will Not Stop Being James Ellroy

    A conversation with the author (and now podcaster) who has no intention of pulling back his writing or his personality.

    By M.R. Allan | August 26, 2022

    Two August Thrillers That Complicate the Definition of Victim

    Two August Thrillers That Complicate the Definition of Victim

    A close reading of Complicit, by Winnie M. Li, and The Last Housewife, by Ashley Winstead

    By Samantha Ladwig | August 23, 2022

    Bad Mutha: On the Life and Art of Isaac Hayes

    Bad Mutha: On the Life and Art of Isaac Hayes

    How the composer, actor, and Black Moses soul man put his indelible stamp on the culture.

    By Michael Gonzales | August 19, 2022

    The Five Great Novels of Dashiell Hammett

    The Five Great Novels of Dashiell Hammett

    Hammett's works may have been few, but they were all brilliant.

    By Larry Beinhart | August 10, 2022

    How Michael Mann and Meg Gardiner Made 'Heat 2' – An Opus of International Crime

    How Michael Mann and Meg Gardiner Made 'Heat 2' – An Opus of International Crime

    The evolution of an iconic crime story.

    By Nick Kolakowski | August 9, 2022

    Creating a Compelling Love Interest in a Suspense Novel

    Creating a Compelling Love Interest in a Suspense Novel

    "[A]sk yourself: What does my main character need most on her journey—and how can my love interest provide that?"

    By Elissa Grossell Dickey | August 8, 2022

    High Noon in Bedford Falls: 'Cop Land' at 25 

    High Noon in Bedford Falls: 'Cop Land' at 25 

    The 1997 film from James Mangold was part western, part noir, and a deeply nuanced portrait of America.

    By Zach Vasquez | August 5, 2022

    « First‹ Previous222324252627282930Next ›Last »
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