crime
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Watch & Read: Ozark
Ozark is one of those shows that is just pure madness – it snakes in on itself in perpetual chaos. No breaks, no ease, just edge of your seat shenanigans the whole time. And I can’t get enough! While we wait for the next season, here are a few items in our collection that will… Continue reading
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If You Like Tana French
We librarians hear a lot about readers’ favorite writers, and some names come up over and over again. One of these is Irish mystery writer Tana French, whose gritty Dublin Murder Squad series provides the perfect blend of police procedure and intricate psychological suspense. Only trouble is, she doesn’t write them fast enough. No worries:… Continue reading
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The Year’s Best Crime Writing: The 2019 Edgar Awards
Pulitzers, Bookers, Nobels – bah! For crime fiction fans it’s all about the Edgars. Last night the winners in several categories of crime and thriller books were announced at the Mystery Writers of America’s annual Edgar Awards ceremony: here’s a full list of these titles in our catalog, including non-fiction, books for children and teens,… Continue reading
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Upcoming Thrilling Tales from our Story Time for Grown Ups.
For over a decade, every other Monday at noon listeners have flocked to Thrilling Tales, the Library’s story time for grownups, spending their lunch hour rapt in suspenseful narratives. Janice Leadingham, a local bookseller said in a recent article in City Arts: “Especially for impatient people, it’s good because it slows things down a bit. For one hour, you can… Continue reading
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Crime Comics: Fiction and Non-Fiction
Crime comics were big in the 1940s and 50s, but when adoption of the Comics Code Authority in 1954 limited the types and severity of crime cartoonists could depict, their popularity waned. In recent decades crime comics have gained in popularity and stature as several talented creators have worked to resurrect and reinvent the genre,… Continue reading
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Crime: Philip Kerr – Back to Berlin.
Way back in 1989, British author Philip Kerr published March Violets, a hardboiled mystery in which tough, tarnished private investigator Bernhard Gunther plunged into the depthless iniquities of Nazi Berlin in search of some small sliver of justice. This was followed up by two other moody period novels featuring Gunther – The Pale Criminal and… Continue reading
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Crime: 2013 Edgar Award nominees
It’s that time of year, and the Mystery Writers of America have announced their nominees for the 2013 Edgar Awards. However you feel about awards – winners, losers, what all that means – if you read crime fiction, the following titles/series are all worthy of your notice. Continue reading
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Crime: New books for the new year
Well, here we are: the world didn’t end, the fiscal cliffhanger is past, and the Library has upped the number of reserves to fifty, so let’s fill up that holds list with some stellar new crime offerings from tried and true authors. Lawrence Block started writing crime fiction over 50 years ago, (and some of… Continue reading
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Thrilling Chilling Winter Stories, Live!
This Winter, Thrilling Tales (the Library’s storytime for grownups) has got some great tales of crime and suspense lined up by masterful storytellers of today and yesteryear. We’ll have arctic adventure, unspeakable terror, hitmen, con-men, stick-up artists and librarians! Yes, that’s right – on Monday January 28 we will be having a special storytime dedicated to libraries and librarians, and coinciding with the… Continue reading
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Death Comes Knocking
Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me. The Carriage held but just ourselves And Immortality. -Emily Dickinson A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore is an edge-of-your-seat read. After seeing a man in mint green at his wife’s hospital bedside – a man he shouldn’t be able to see – Charlie Asher’s life… Continue reading
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SPL Discoveries: Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
I’m a big fan of the Hardcase Crime imprint, which has been publishing a succession of luridly jacketed vintage pulp fiction alternated with contemporary noir ever since their premiere title – Grifter’s Game by Lawrence Block – in the sultry summer of 2004. I also love Stark House, a small press publishing a steady stream of vintage crime fiction by… Continue reading
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SPL Discoveries: Craig Holden.
Okay, maybe we didn’t discover them, but here are writers, old and new, that we wish more readers knew about. Librarians have been known to carry concealed weapons; Craig Holden’s 1999 crime novel Four Corners of Night is one of mine. Continue reading
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Crime: Macavity Macavity… Award-winning mysteries.
Most crime readers are aware that there are mystery awards – the Edgars, right? – but not everyone knows just how many awards there are. There are the Agatha Awards for best domestic mystery; the Shamus Awards for detective novels; Britain’s Dagger Awards, and many, many more. And for a quarter of a century, the Mystery Readers International’s Macavity Awards (named… Continue reading
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SPL Discoveries: David Peace
Okay, maybe we didn’t exactly discover them, but here are writers, old and new, that we’d love to see more readers to discover themselves. It happens this way a lot at the library: call it serendipity in the stacks. I stumbled upon David Peace’s unsettling works quite by chance. Picking up a book titled Occupied City, I was arrested… Continue reading
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Crime: Beneath the Antimacassars
I like a dark, creepy Victorian crime novel — the real doozies – stories so strange and bizarre, nobody’s thought of them yet. The Thing about Thugs by Tabish Khair is a doozy. The Victorian mystery as we know it is turned on its head, so to speak, with a “normal” scientist, Captain William T.… Continue reading
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September Sleuthing: Women Detectives to Die For
Looking for another Stephanie Plum or Kay Scarpetta to slink into your life? Check out these lesser-known women detectives who reveal the darker underbellies of locales from coastal Florida to the Alaskan wilderness. Artifacts, by Mary Anna Evans (Faye Longchamp Mysteries) Aspiring archeologist Faye Longchamp resorts to “pot-hunting” to save her ancestral home, an island… Continue reading
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If You Like Daniel Silva… (he’s coming to the Library!)
Come see #1 New York Times bestselling author Daniel Silva in conversation with Warren Etheredge at the Central Library’s Microsoft Auditorium, at 7 p.m., Monday, July 23. I love July for the warmth and light to read a good book in the evening on the porch, and the sure and certain knowledge that I’ll have… Continue reading
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Are You Tough Enough? Derek Raymond’s Dare.
Among crime readers, there are certain qualities that serve as points on our criminal compass. For example, authors who put a scalpel to the subtle psychological underpinnings of crime contrast with those for whom swift action on every page is essential. Another scale lies between whodunnits with a humorous or “cozy” feel, and those on the darker, grittier… Continue reading