CrimeReads Brief: Week of July 8, 2018

THIS WEEK: In 1959, Otto Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder premiered, based on the novel by Robert Traver (the pen name of John D. Voelker).

• • She was an Aretha Franklin imposter who sang to thousands, but all Mary Jane Jones wanted was her own sound. Jeff Maysh looks at celebrities and their less-than-legal impersonators. | Smithsonian Magazine
  • Lucy Atkins looks at the five creepiest housekeepers and nannies in fiction, from Mrs. Danvers to The Perfect Nanny‘s Louise. | Crime by the Book
  • April Snellings goes up close with author Riley Sager to discuss “summer camp gothic,” Picnic at Hanging Rock, and whyThe Parent Trap is an unexpectedly chilling story. | The Big Thrill
  • Nightclubs, showgirls, gangsters, crooked officials, and expats of all nationalities, up to no good. Paul French profiles the criminal demimonde of Shanghai in the 1930s. | CrimeReads
  • Crime fiction and family: James Hankins on 10 classic thrillers and crime novels where family life takes center stage and blood ties are everything. | CrimeReads
  • Emily Temple looks at 9 Great American Novels, written by authors who were born in different countries. | Lit Hub
  • 11 crime novels, mysteries, and thrillers to read in July, recommended by the editors of CrimeReads. | CrimeReads
  • Christine Mangan and Alex Segura on female friendship, journals, and Tangier, a city “with labyrinthine streets…just as threatening as any Gothic invention.” |Los Angeles Review of Books
  • For the Fourth of July, we’re looking at 21 novels where the crimes and mysteries unfold during revolutions and rebellions. |CrimeReads
  • Paul French recreates Shanghai in the 1930s, and recounts the story of how, post Prohibition, the China to Brooklyn opium pipeline was built. | CrimeReads
  • “Unpacking the reasons why a mother kills her children can scare people.” Nancy Rommelmann on the crimes of Amanda Stott-Smith. | CrimeReads
  • A New York City high school offers a class on “True Crime,” but the students aren’t allowed to take the course books home to read. | New York Post
  • Riley Sager remembers the lost boy whose story haunted him as a child and discovers the decades long search for answers about what happened in those woods. | CrimeReads
  • Matthew Iden on the work of 8 crime authors who served time in prison, from Chester Himes to Joan Henry to E. Richard Johnson. | CrimeReads

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