Criminal Element is thrilled to welcome author Charles Finch and his longtime editor (and the host of Case Closed, our new podcast series!) Charles Spicer. The two recently sat down to discuss Finch’s newest Charles Lenox mystery The Vanishing Man, Shakespearean London, England’s class system, and the what-ifs of time… Read more

In a culture of prequels and sequels, origin stories and franchise reboots, it seems no box-office hit can be considered safe from the recycling junkies in Hollywood. Psycho, Minority Report, The Karate Kid, Fargo—all have been variously updated and rebranded for the 21st century, with wildly different results. For every… Read more

Charles Finch’s The Vanishing Man is a prequel to his Charles Lenox Victorian series in which the theft of an antique painting sends Detective Lenox on a hunt for a criminal mastermind. …His eyes returned to the much smaller, smoky painting. Number five.   It was in a wood frame, not… Read more

Murder at the Palace by Margaret Dumas is the first book in the new Movie Palace Mystery series.  Old movie buffs, fans of San Francisco, and lovers of well-done mystery series debuts will shout huzzah and encore at author Margaret Dumas. Dumas’s Murder at the Palace is witty and well-crafted… Read more

If you haven’t heard of the TV series Counterpart, you’re not alone, but it’s time to get familiar with it. The news from earlier this week that the show has been cancelled by Starz just ahead of its second season finale is immensely disappointing, but each of the twenty episodes… Read more

In Tom Hunt’s One Fatal Mistake, eighteen-year-old Joshua Mayo kills a man in a terrible accident, but the tragedy quickly becomes a hit-and-run. Not reporting the accident to the police, Josh confides only in his mother—and then everything goes wrong. One Fatal Mistake is somewhat of a misnomer because it… Read more

The cover of Faber’s reissued The Hours Before Dawn, which features glow-in-the-dark type that scared the bejesus out of me earlier this week, calls the book a “lost classic.” Doesn’t that sound like something of an oxymoron—the jumbo shrimp of literature? Books become classics because they are good, yes, but… Read more

From the critically acclaimed author Ausma Zehanat Khan, A Deadly Divide is the devastatingly powerful fifth thriller featuring beloved series detectives Esa Khattak and Rachel Getty. Esa Khattak and Rachel Getty, detectives with Canada’s Community Policing Section, are called in to the most violent crime scene they’ve ever attended—the shooting of worshippers… Read more

Miraculum is Steph Post’s new novel about a tattooed snake charmer, Ruby Chole, who works in her father’s carnival. Ruby is attracted to Daniel, a new employee of the carnival, though his timing is troubling. Arriving immediately after tragedy strikes, Daniel appears to be connected to the recent calamity and may be… Read more

I grew up in Cyprus, with an English mother and Greek Cypriot father, in a house full of books. I remember so clearly when my mother took me to the British Council library for the first time and helped me select some “proper” books. I must have been around 10 or… Read more