Reading
Queer Crime Fiction Coming Out This Fall
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With the exuberance of Pride Month in June, it’s easy to get excited about new queer crime fiction in the summer months. But, with shortening days, ubiquitous Pumpkin Spice…
10 Thrilling Books with Twists You Won’t See Coming
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I love trying to guess the ending. When picking up a new thriller, I’m almost immediately immersed in the mystery and the twists and turns. I greatly admire authors…
When It Comes to Solving Mysteries, Aunties Get Things Done
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Most people have aunts, but not everyone has aunties. It’s hard to explain the difference to the uninitiated–aunties have nothing (or very little) to do with blood relation or…
The Enduring Appeal of the Christiesque ‘Closed Circle’ Crime
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The first crime novels I ever read were by Agatha Christie. I was probably about thirteen at the time and I remember being blown away by how clever she…
Murder Ballads, the Original True Crime
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It’s hard to spend much time online these days without bumping into true crime of one form or another. Countless podcasts examine murders and trials, and television offers an…
Bright Young Women
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January 15, 1978 Five minutes before It must have been more than hunger pains that roused me, but at the time all I wanted was to go downstairs and…
Crime Novels Featuring Interpreters, Transcribers, and Other Invisible Law Enforcement Professionals
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It’s the detectives, the private investigators and the lawyers who are usually front-and-center in crime fiction, but there are scores of professionals working in the criminal justice system to…
Port-au-Prince: Crime Fiction as a Window into a Nation’s Soul
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Haiti has never been an easy place to live. From colonialism to liberation by the ex-slave revolutionary leader Toussaint Louverture at the start of the nineteenth century – the…
When Characters Fake Their Own Deaths
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Pseudocide, or faking one’s own death, offers a tantalizing escape from reality, and the possibility of starting fresh. There’s something thrilling about the idea of disappearing and starting over,…