crime
A Roundtable Discussion on Dark Academia
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Darkened libraries, exclusive elite schools, looming Gothic towers, charismatic professors, illicit affairs, the tang of autumn in the air… rivalries and obsessions that lead to murder. Why is dark academia such a thought-provoking and alluring genre? That’s exactly what these six authors are trying to answer in today’s round-up. Layne Fargo, “The Ravages”: I started writing…
A Reading List of Badass Covens
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I’ve always been enamored with witches. Be it Roald Dahl’s child-hating witches, the Wicked Witch of the West, or Bony Legs with her iron teeth, the ferocity and power of witches always captured my attention. To witness a woman who was magical and powerful and not only knew it but unapologetically embraced it felt revolutionary….
The Off-Broadway Play Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors Is Cute, Not-So-Bloody Fun
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Gordan Greenberg and Steve Rosen’s new play Dracula: a Comedy of Terrors, now open at New World Stages, is production is replete with playful contradictions. Despite the presence of the word “terrors” in the title, there’s nothing too grisly to worry about. After all, the fanged teeth featured in the logo for the show are…
Michele Campbell Leans into the Truth
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Michele Campbell worked at a prominent Manhattan law firm before spending eight years fighting crime as a federal prosecutor in New York City. She launched her fiction career in 2005, writing as Michele Martinez, with the Melanie Vargas legal thriller series. Then in 2017 she pivoted, boldly shifting into a new subgenre and, perhaps even…
The Art of Writing Mysteries Featuring Real-Life Figures
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My objective is to list the six best mysteries that feature real people. Quite a challenge given all the published stories meeting this criterion. There are, for example, several series that portray famous personages as detectives. Some, like Nicola Upson’s Josephine Tey Mystery Series, are excellent; others such as Blue Suede Clues by Daniel Klein…
The Albatross of Smartphones in Young Adult Mysteries
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There’s a joke among millennials that our favorite childhood television shows would have sucked if the characters had owned smartphones. Videos of Buffy fighting vampires would have been uploaded to TikTok in a second; Joey would have spent her evenings texting Dawson instead of sneaking through his window; and Mulder and Scully could have tracked…
The Sleuthing Spinster: Why Single Women Rule Cozy Fiction
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When people talk about great fictional detectives, there are classic names that come to mind: Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot; Sam Spade; Phillip Marlowe; and Columbo trip easily off the tongue. In the modern era there’s even Batman, whose cool gadgets are second only to his skill as a deductive genius (he did debut in Detective…
Why James Patterson and Mike Lupica Came Together to Write a Thriller
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For such a hotshot lawyer who’s never lost a court case, you’re a lot younger than anyone would expect. And it’s your win/loss record, not your good looks, that’s wooed Rob Jacobson—publishing and real estate heir—to hire you. He’s accused of killing three and needs you to get him off on a murder charge. This…
10 Big Pharma Conspiracy Thrillers
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Big Pharma is an industry that touches most everyone in some way. We have connection to it on a personal level as individuals and, even more importantly to many, our families. It touches us whether we want it to or not. The first draft of The Deadly Deal was written when I worked in an…