Best crime books for beginners are classic detective stories with clear plots, short chapters, and detectives who explain their thinking. The best starting points are Agatha Christie's "And Then There…
True crime stories grab our attention like nothing else. We want to know what happened. We want to understand why people do terrible things. And we want to see best…
People who read crime books like to guess who did it. They enjoy looking at all the clues. They like to test their own detective skills. When a book gives…
The voices of the dead tell the unhappy story of PLEASE SEE US (Gallery, 341 pp., $26.99), Caitlin Mullen’s spellbinding debut novel about a series of murders in Atlantic City.…
Editor’s note: We’re thrilled that our longtime columnist, Marilyn Stasio — who’s been recovering from a traffic accident — is finally back in our pages with her crisp, sharp, tartly…
Coming-of-age novels aren’t my particular passion — unless there’s a murder in the story. There’s a doozy of a murder in Kate Weinberg’s hypnotic debut mystery, THE TRUANTS (Putnam, 311…
Just asking: If I can’t get chosen for jury duty in a no-drama lawsuit, how come a serial killer manages to be seated in a double murder case? According to…
Here’s a gentle warning: Don’t think about the circular saw. Seriously, don’t think about it. Because it gets quite a workout in THE CHESTNUT MAN (Harper/HarperCollins, $28.99), Soren Sveistrup’s cunningly…
A little boy nicks his grandfather’s skiff and ventures out alone on Caddo Lake, a “wetland maze” of “bayous, tributaries and inlets like a tangle of snakes,” possibly haunted by…
Just listen to this: “The days march by and extraordinary things happen all around us. Small miracles, haphazard events, bursts of joy, revelations. … We hunker down in our daily…
Don’t you just love a funeral? In detective fiction, I mean. Because at a good funeral, somebody is always passing a mission of honor along to somebody else. Harry Bosch…
Martha Grimes’s novels are a hybrid of mystery forms, all of them hugely entertaining. THE OLD SUCCESS (Atlantic Monthly, $26) is a perfect example. The plot starts off as a…
