Beware of Darkness
My column in the Post explores one of my preoccupations: not sleeping. Night menaces the characters in these novels.
Women take on bad men in a new wave of dark-comedy crime novels
For the Post I wrote about a different kind of domestic violence: when women kill their husbands.
Crime Writers Write About Crime Writing
Me getting meta in the Washington Post.
True Crime Fiction: A Genre is Born
A new installment of my column at the Washington Post where I call a book a turducken?
Pandemic Thrillers at WaPo
Who wins in a pandemic? and other BIG QUESTIONS pondered.
What to Read & Where to Find Me
I am over at the Washington Post with some crime fiction picks for May and June.
Why Did Two Twelve-Year-Olds Try to Murder a Friend?
My first New York Times appearance is a review of Katherine Hale’s Slenderman.
Gillian Flynn Is the Real Gone Girl
A sneak peek of the book I’m writing for Fiction Advocate: What happens to Flynn and to Gone Girl if we look at them as artist and art?
Roundtables at Crime Reads
Since the world went haywire I’ve been convening roundtables at Crime Reads to dig into the issues crime writers face. We’ve talked about sex, about California, about queerness, about psychopaths, and about the Canadian dream. It’s been a blast, and there are more coming.
The Fine Grim Line Between Love and Stalking
It’s a question we have all tried to answer in casuistry and therapy: How do you know it’s love? It’s the topic of a million Sunday brunches and heartfelt drunken confessions; it keeps astrologers in business and sends self-help books flying off the shelves.
Jim Jones: Charismatic Micromanager, Gifted Preacher, Lunatic
When we talk about Jim Jones we don’t talk about the many years he spent traveling the US and preaching. We talk about the night when he and an unspecified number of his followers committed mass suicide in their settlement in the Guyanese jungle known as Jonestown. Jim Jones’s story has a stubborn teleology: we know the spectacular, horrible ending. But what about how he, and his followers, arrived there? Is there any comprehending the events that led to such a fatal choice?
The Great Hipster Mystery: Defining a Canon
In the scramble we enact at Crime Reads enact every January while putting together the Most Anticipated List I coined a neologism that I’d never seen discussed: the hipster mystery, or hipstery. The book which inspired the term is in my newly formed canon, which I present to you below. Please tweet @crimereads us if you have other hipstery suggestions! This could be a global movement, like artisanal meats and ironic cell phone covers on Etsy.
The Dead Have No Rights: Women and True Crime
As the popularity and versatility of true crime have increased, so too has awareness that women are fuelling the genre’s renaissance, in terms of being disproportionately both the victims of crimes and the consumers of their retellings. A study of reader reviews and book choices published in Social Psychological and Personality Science in 2010 found that while women are more drawn to “tales of rape, murder, and serial killers”, men are more attracted to “other violent genres”, including stories of war and gangs. Rachel Monroe’s Savage Appetites: Four true stories of women, crime, and obsession promises to explore this curious state of affairs.
The Girl in the Title of the Crime Novel: The Great Crime Fiction Disambiguation Project
It started out so innocently, like childhood itself. Instead of naming crime fiction books so people knew that’s what they were reading—sticking a word like killer or murder or even crime in the title—the words started changing. Publishing is a self-reflexive medium, so when a gargantuan hit just happens to be called Gone Girl the marketers and the authors and all of the other foot soldiers in the battle for the next bestseller latch upon the magic word: Girl.
More Girls! Girls! Girls! (In the Titles of Crime Novels)
No, we didn’t just turn CrimeReads into some kind of mystery lover’s dating site (though that is an idea I am going to stick in my back pocket—remember, you read it under my byline first, and if you want to invest let’s talk). As I explained in the introduction to the first girl list, we felt it was a public service for us to provide you, the reader, a way to keep all of those darned girl books straight. So we gave you the first cheat sheet last month, and now here is its follow-up. Perhaps you could print them out and laminate them if you are an analog type? Or bookmark them in your phone, if you are one of those tech mavens? There’s no reason to pick up the wrong girl again.
We're On A Mission To Help You Parse Through All the Crime Books With 'Girl' In The Title
Girls! Girls! Girls! Here at CrimeReads we are concerned about you, the self-isolated crime fan, who wants to download some e-books or order real books to keep you entertained (and distracted) during these trying times. Although we started our disambiguation project before the world changed it seems more necessary than ever now: people need their diversions, and I’m here to give you some guidance by telling you about another crop of girl books. Don’t worry, titles aren’t like hand sanitizer—there’s plenty more where this came from.
There Are More Crime Books With Girl In The Title Than We Ever Imagined
Hi, we’re back, with even more girl books to tell you about. Yes, this is list four, and we are nowhere near running out of titles. (You can check back on Part One, Two, and Three.) The surprising thing is that even though the word shot up in popularity post Gone Girl it’s been in the mix for a long time. But crime fiction did not just start using what can happen to girls as fodder for a twisted imagination. Girls are the most vulnerable people in our society, which makes them ideal victims for writers looking to raise the stakes. The kidnapping, say, of a grown man is a crime which the victim might be able to foil. But the kidnapping of a girl—especially a child—is a story that either has a very happy ending or a very sad one. Either way, that girl is never going to be the same. To the books!
There Are So, So Many Crime Novels With 'Girl' In The Title
What, more girls? Oh, yes, we have girls as far as the eye can see, or more than your bookcases can hold. Honestly, I’m a cynical writer type, and I was shocked at just how many books there are with girl in the title. It’s true that not all of them are post-Gone Girl, which would be the most likely explanation for the proliferation of girl books. But the facts are that crime writers have been toying with girls for much longer than that. Girls are the easiest characters to put into peril and the ones with whom the audience is most likely to sympathize—which is part of what made Flynn’s book such a landmark in crime fiction. She reintroduced us to the femme fatale, the woman—Amy is no girl—who manipulates men and circumstances to get what she wants.
Interview: Domestic Violence Homicide Is A Preventable Crime. So Why Aren't We Preventing It?
Rachel Louise Snyder on domestic violence, preventable homicide, and her work of nonfiction, No Visible Bruises
Profile: Adrian McKinty: Working-Class Hero of Irish Crime Fiction
There is a natural confusion, or conflation, among readers between a protagonist and an author. This is especially true in crime fiction series, where readers spend a lot of time over a span of years with a particular character. If a series protagonist is complex and evolves over the course of the books, and all of the good ones do, it’s like meeting an old friend again and catching up on his life.
