CrimeReads Brief: Week of August 6, 2018

THIS WEEK: On July 29, 1909, Chester Himes was born.

• Laura Lippman on the complex and evolving ethics of writing crime fiction inspired by real crimes. | Vulture
• Sarah Weinman on two upcoming books on Sally Horner, whose kidnapping inspired Nabokov’s Lolita, and the dangers of fictionalizing history. | Vanity Fair
• “We’re stuck on Bundy like a girl with a crush, forever asking ourselves how evil could wear such a pretty face.” Tori Telfer on Ted Bundy’s enduring place in the pop culture. | Vulture
• Reese Witherspoon makes her new book club choice and author Maria Hummel gets ready to step into a very big spotlight, along with her art history thriller. | EW
• Wendy Walker picks 12 great novels of suburbia, where time stands still andcrime shatters the illusions of the sheltered few. | CrimeReads
• “I think anyone who writes crime fiction is just aware that history often has a large impact on the present.” Karin Slaughter on history, road trips, and plotting the turns in her latest thriller.| The Big Thrill
• Lara Bazelon on stubborn cultural biases, courtroom performance, and what it takes for women to succeed as trial lawyers. |The Atlantic
• “One essential ingredient is a hook that’s irresistible, and considerably more mysterious than ‘Who killed this dead person?'” Sophie Hannah comes to “By the Book.” | The New York Times
• Diana Whitney on inherited trauma, and finding out that her mother was nearly killed by a notorious Sixties charismatic campus radical. | Longreads
• Jim Ruland was enjoying a life of “eyeball liberty” in the Navy, when he discovered Jim Thompson and hardboiled literature. That changed everything. | CrimeReads
• Mike Sonksen goes on a tour of LA’s Little Tokyo with crime writer Naomi Hirahara, and looks at the history of LA’s Japanese-American community. | LARB
• “This was a neighborhood crime, a tribal crime, a family crime.” Ninety years later, Nina Barrett looks for the truth about Leopold and Loeb. | Crimereads
• The Dell Mapbacks: J. Kingston Pierce explores the art and history of everyone’s favorite murder mystery back cover graphics. | CrimeReads
• A Chinese crime author arrested in a 20 year old robbery-murder case is sentenced to death. | The New  York Post
• August’s best crime novels and mysteries, selected by the editors ofCrimeReads. | CrimeReads
• Sadie Trombetta talks with Molly Odintz, Sarah Weinman, and Abby Endler about the long history of the thriller as a feminist battleground. | Bustle
• Sisters in Crime celebrates emerging writers of color in mystery with the Eleanor Taylor Bland Award. |CrimeReads
• A Manson Family Reader: Wendy Corsi Staub on pop culture’s enduring fascination the Manson Family, and what to read when you’re done with Helter Skelter. | CrimeReads
• Skip Hollandsworth on a water park empire that was supposed to be a family haven and ended up sending guests down a “deadly weapon.” | Texas Monthly
• Sebastian Rotella and Alex Segura discuss immigration, exile, and writing crime fiction across cultures and languages. | CrimeReads
• “It is strange that the first thing she asks about when you get in the car is ‘What have you heard about North Korea?’” The Uber driver who was (maybe) a spy! | GQ
• “If the crime was a metaphor for the War, then the resolution was a metaphor for the future.” Christopher Huang on the rise of detective fiction after World War One. | Crimereads
• Patrick Radden Keefe profiles Astrid Holleeder, the author of a new memoir, now in hiding after giving evidence against her criminal mastermind brother. |The New Yorker
• Adam Lebor on the Roma community, reporting in Budapest, and making sense of modern Hungary through crimefiction. | CrimeReads
• Casey Barrett—a former Olympic swimmer, turned crime author—on sexual abuse in elite athletics, and the temptation to seek vengeance in fiction. |CrimeReads
• Ryan Steck rounds up August’s Best New Thrillers and spotlights the Clancy classic,The Hunt for Red October. | CrimeReads

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