Flannery O’Connor once said that all fiction is ultimately about the “mystery of personality.” I agree. In fact, I have always suspected that all good novels, genre-based or otherwise, are secretly mystery novels, if only in the psychological sense. Conversely, many so-called genre novels have just as much depth, insight, and realism as any literary work. I have read a lot of genre and literary fiction in my time, and I have long been fascinated by works that blur the line between the two. My favorite kind of book is one that feels like a genre novel (that is, it has a great plot) but also has the depth and vividness of a literary novel.
What I really love about this novel is the voice of the main character, Ezekial “Easy” Rollins. Easy is not your typical P.I. A recently fired machinist in post-war Los Angeles, he’s just a guy trying to pay his bills. But he’s also a black man from the South trying to survive in a white, west-coast world. When a white gangster hires him to find a missing girl, Easy senses that he’s in extreme danger, but he has no choice but to take the job.
Told in the first-person, this book captures all of Easy’s doubt, dread, and defiance as he unravels the mystery.
Devil in a Blue Dress honors the tradition of the classic American detective novel by bestowing on it a vivid social canvas and the freshest new voice in crime writing in years, mixing the hard-boiled poetry of Raymond Chandler with the racial realism of Richard Wright to explosive effect.
I’m a lifelong New Jerseyan married to a man whose family comes from Georgia. It gave me an opportunity to observe the white, Southern, upper-class weltanschauung, up close. To hear them talk, you’d think the Civil War had ended just a few days earlier, and if the Yankees had only respected states’ rights, none of that mess would have happened. My book is about a dysfunctional Georgia family who has far too much money than is good for them. Hijinks ensue.
The action is set in the fictional east Texas town of New Long Lincoln, where Daniel Russell returns after a long absence. He was 13 when his father tried to kill them both by driving his car into Moon Lake. Now a drought has caused the lake to evaporate and the car’s been found, with the remains of Daniel’s father inside, as well as an extra body in the trunk. Daniel teams up with a childhood friend who’s become a police officer to untangle a web of old grudges and strange murders.
Drowned towns – ones that are deliberately submerged in order to build dams and reservoirs – fascinate me. There’s one in Sussex County, New Jersey, called Walpack. It was intended to be buried under a man-made lake in the nineteen-seventies, as part of a project to build a dam across the Delaware River. It was a cause célèbre…
Daniel Russell was only thirteen years old when his father tried to kill them both by driving their car into Moon Lake. Miraculously surviving the crash- and growing into adulthood- Daniel returns to the site of this traumatic incident in the hopes of recovering his father's car and bones. As he attempts to finally put to rest the memories that have plagued him for years, he discovers something even more shocking among the wreckage that has ties to a twisted web of dark deeds, old grudges, and strange murders.
As Daniel diligently follows where the mysterious trail of vengeance leads,…
I have a passion
for writing, and whenever I can, I try to help new writers improve their
expertise so that one day they’ll complete their first book. My first book,
born from a few-hundred-word short story at my writing group, turned into a
three-book thriller series called FAVOURS. Since then, I’ve branched out by
publishing a rom/com, a humorous ghost story as well as a standalone thriller.
Agatha Christie published her first book as the result of a dare, which proves
you can do it if you really want to.
As a multi-genre author, I was interested
to see how the creator of a world-famous boy wizard was going to change her
name and turn her hand to crime writing. I relished the result: the first outing for
a new private investigator, a character called Cormoran Strike.
Known simply as
Strike, he is a P.I. with a handicap (aren’t they all?). Not just the common
ones; excessive drinking, difficult relationships, and so on, Strike lost half
his right leg whilst serving in Afghanistan. Retiring from service, the ex-MP becomes a
private investigator. He has few clients, no money, and is scruffy and unkempt
because he sleeps in his office. But he does have a motto, "Do the job and do
it well."
In social relationships, Strike isn’t a
likable character; demanding and sometimes just plain rude. He has lost his
last assistant. I warmed to him the more his traits…
'The Cuckoo's Calling reminds me why I fell in love with crime fiction in the first place' VAL MCDERMID
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Now a major BBC drama: The Strike series
When a troubled model falls to her death from a snow-covered Mayfair balcony, it is assumed that she has committed suicide. However, her brother has his doubts, and calls in private investigator Cormoran Strike to look into the case.
Strike is a war veteran - wounded both physically and psychologically - and his life is in disarray. The case gives him a financial lifeline, but it comes at a personal cost: the…
I’ve been lucky enough to have a happy childhood and enjoy a fulfilling life. Nevertheless, I’ve always been drawn to the darkness… the macabre, the sinister, and the bizarre. My selection of books has, in one way or another, helped to shape me as a writer. I’m constantly fascinated by the process of creating truly disturbed, twisted, or hideous characters. I enjoy the process of working out what makes them tick; shedding my own moral compass and experiencing the world through their eyes… wherever that ends up taking me.
This one is in my top ten books because of its “wow” factor, and its influence on me as a writer. It’s the first in the late, great Mo Hayder’s series featuring D.I. Jack Caffrey. He’s a character who is haunted by grief and guilt but driven to find out what happened to his brother, who went missing as a child, and to track down a present-day killer known as ‘Birdman’. How this maniac gets his nickname still makes my stomach churn.
This dark and disturbingly compelling thriller from bestselling and prize-winning author Mo Hayder is not for the faint-hearted. Perfect for fans of Stephen King, Stuart MacBride and Karin Slaughter, it is one read you won't be able to forget easily...
'A first-class shocker . . . a frightening mix of forensics, thrills, analytical police work and poetic images.' -- Guardian 'Wickedly constructed . . . The detail, if you can stomach it, is fascinating.' -- Daily Telegraph 'Hayder's vibrant narrative and crunchy characterisation propel the book along to its denouement with fearsome velocity' -- The Times 'WOW! This is one…
I’ve been reading Lovecraft, and those inspired by him, since I was in high school. I’ve always been fascinated by the idea that there could be a whole world just outside of sight that we never see, and once we do see we can never un-see. After I’d been writing for a few years a friend of mine suggested/demanded I write a story for him inspired by Lovecraft’s world. Mostly I started it to satisfy him but once the jar was open it all spilled out. I wove in real elements from history, including historical figures. This story ended up winning a major award, but there was still so much more to tell.
Craft’s books are not as well known as some other Lovecraftian writers on this list, but they should be.
He takes the expected details for any Lovecraft-inspired story then turns it sideways. He weaves in an atmosphere from the hardboiled mystery writers of Lovecraft’s era, such as Dashiel Hammett and Raymond Chandler.
Cthulhu’s Minions starts a series which follows the Arkham Detective as he falls deeper into a world he never knew existed. This book taught me that a writer can take an existing world that is familiar to readers and still make it their own.
Cthulhu’s Minions, in this story, are Pilot Demons. They originally came into being in my novel “The Alchemist’s Notebook” based on my screenplay for “The Cry of Cthulhu.” They are creepy little things that became such great supporting characters (in a terrible sort of way) that I thought that they deserved their own separate story.“Cthulhu’s Minions” takes place in an alternate universe somewhat like the 1930’s when H.P. Lovecraft was writing his Cthulhu Mythos and writers like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler were creating the hardboiled mystery drama. Indeed, it is as if we are being treated to a Dashiell…
I have loved crime fiction since encountering it in college. After seeing the Bogart-Bacall version of The Big Sleep, I read the underlying Raymond Chandler novel and was hooked. I devoured Chandler’s other works and moved on to James M. Cain, Jim Thompson, John D. MacDonald, and others. Later I discovered the crime novels of Charles Williams, Day Keene, Gil Brewer, and other “pulp masters.” Loving those novels led me to try my hand at writing crime fiction, and Stark House Press has now published five of my novels with another on the way. My crime-writing career is an unusual path for someone whose M.A. thesis is on Jane Austen!
I admire this novel for its seamless blend of classic noir themes and, in an unusual aspect of such a novel, racial issues.
I find the narrator to be a near-perfect blend of intelligence, determination, and the fatal flaws of lust and greed. The femme fatale shares those qualities but adds more than a touch of ruthlessness. The novel features a number of compelling, even frightening scenes—for example, a late night burial, or re-burial, in a pet cemetery.
The plot is beautifully crafted, with a number of twists and turns that on my first read I did not see coming. And the ending is pitch perfect, a satisfying mix of death, sadness, and justice but with a glimmer of hope that contrasts effectively with the noir themes and at least partially resolves the racial issues.
Ed Edwards works in the dirty, tough world of used car sales,but feels sure he is destined for more in life.Dreaming of a brighter future for himself and his plucky little sister, Ed wants to get out of the game.
And when Dave, his lazy, grease-stained boss, sends him to repossess a Cadillac, the better deal Ed has been searching for suddenly seems in reach.
The Cadillac in question belongs to Frank Craig and his beautiful wife Nancy, owners of a local drive-in and pet cemetery. Ed knows Nancy well - too well. In the throes of their salacious affair,…
I created Hard Case Crime 20 years ago to revive the look, feel, and storytelling style of the great paperback crime novels of the 1940s and 50s: slender, high-velocity tales with irresistible premises, crackling dialogue, and powerful emotions, all presented behind gorgeous painted covers in the classic pulp style. Since then, I’ve had the opportunity to publish Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates, Ray Bradbury, James M. Cain, Erle Stanley Gardner, Mickey Spillane, Brian De Palma, Ed McBain, and many more extraordinary authors.
Graham Greene’s writing has a profound moral gravity, and I found this story–of a petty criminal leading a desperate life on the rim of poverty while manipulating the woman in his life–to be a spectacle of human cruelty I couldn’t look away from.
Rose knows her man is no good but loves him anyway, unaware that he’s courted her solely to avoid prosecution for his crimes. After his death, she goes to Confession and takes solace from the slender thread of good in him–unaware that he has left a recording behind that will reveal the truth and shatter the only happiness she has left.
As a technical matter, the novel is a master class in holding back a final twist of the knife for a book’s very last lines to leave the reader reeling.
Pinkie Brown, a neurotic teenage gangster wielding a razor blade and a bottle of sulfuric acid, commits a brutal murder - but it does not go unnoticed. Rose, a naive young waitress at a rundown cafe, has the unwitting power to destroy his crucial alibi, and Ida Arnold, a woman bursting with easy certainties about what is right and wrong, has made it her mission to bring about justice and redemption.
Set among the seaside amusements and dilapidated boarding houses of Brighton's pre-war underworld, Brighton Rock by Graham Greene is both a gritty thriller and a study of a soul…
I am a pediatric emergency physician turned author, and I am passionate about sharing an insider’s view of the emergency room, as well as addressing larger health issues that should be more visible to the general public. The emergency room is a world unlike any other, filled with humor, drama, emotions, and energy twenty-four hours a day, and I like to bring that energy to my stories. I’ve worked in many different medical settings, and every day, I find a new story that is worth sharing.
It takes talent to make a forensic pathologist a hero, but Temperance Brennan is equal to the task.
This is the thirteenth book in the series and my favorite because of the complexity of the plot and investigation. Literature needs more smart female heroes, and Dr. Brennan leads the way. This is a top-notch science-nerd action-thriller at its best.
___________________________________ A gripping Temperance Brennan novel from world-class forensic anthropologist Kathy Reichs, the international no. 1 bestselling crime thriller writer and the inspiration behind the hit TV series Bones.
Dr Temperance Brennan spends her life working amongst the decomposed and the skeletal. So the newly-dead body she is called to examine holds little to surprise her. Until she discovers it is the body of an ex-soldier apparently killed in Vietnam in 1968. So who is buried in his grave?
The case takes Tempe to the heart of the American military, where she must examine the remains of anyone with a…
I teach literature, Labor Studies, and writing at San Diego City College and have written three San Diego-based novels: Drift, Flash, and Last Days in Ocean Beach, along with Under the Perfect Sun: The San Diego Tourists Never See, a radical history of San Diego that I co-wrote with Mike Davis and Kelly Mayhew. Both as a writer and as a daily wanderer on the streets of San Diego, I have a passion for the psychogeography of the city space and a deep curiosity for and love of the people I encounter there.
Jim Thompson’s novel is arguably San Diego’s greatest classic noir work.
While not a crime novel, it captures wartime San Diego through the glass darkly, and I was moved and unsettled by Thompson’s unsparing forays into the alienation of those who were the most exploited in the city.
San Diego in the years before World War II. James Dillon is barely scraping by working a menial job in manufacturing, trying to raise a family and support his elderly mother and sister Frankie at the same time. He drinks too hard -- just like his father and nearly everyone in his extended family. With so many people crammed into one home, sometimes there's so much fighting he can barely stand it. But if James can survive the chaos of everyday life long enough, maybe -- just maybe -- there's a chance it'll all get better.
I heard a Jordan Peterson interview in which he boiled down my entire life’s struggle in a single phrase. The interviewer was pushing Jordon on the subject of male toxicity. Jordon said something like, “If a man is entirely unwilling to fight under any circumstance, he is merely a weakling. Ask in martial arts trainer and they will tell you they teach two things – the ability to fight and self-control. A man who knows how and also knows how to control himself is a man.”
Valdez is a humble and quiet Hispanic living in a Texas border town in the 1870s. When a hand riding with the most powerful rancher in the valley inadvertently kills a man, Valdez assumes responsibility of asking the rancher to pay a remittance to the widow. For his trouble he’s beaten almost to death. When he recovers Valdez becomes again the man he was in his youth, a US Army scout and sets out to destroy the rancher. He kills one of the ranches thugs with a shot at 1,000 yards.
Valdez is finally captured by the rancher’s hands. The foreman looks at Valdez’s rifle and, knowing what he’s seeing, asks, “Buffalo hunter?” Valdez responds, “No, Apache.” The foreman asks, “When?” Valdez’s response marks him as a man who has learned and earned wisdom. “Before I knew better.”
If you wonder why this book has stayed with me for so many years, read…
No writer chronicles the battles of misfits, underdogs and renegades like Elmore Leonard ...
VALDEZ IS COMING is a stunning stale of morality and justice in which a simple, honest man is transformed into a killer - and begins a long journey of revenge against those who scarred his soul for ever.
Elmore Leonard's Western novels stand as some of the most vivid writing of his career. With all of his trademark sharp dialogue and set against a beautifully evoked landscape, this is a classic work that captures the wild and glorious spirit of the American West.
