The Fall Girl by Marcia Clark “Clark utilizes a dual narrative technique…It’s a clever, well-executed move that emphasizes the psychological aspects of the story over the procedural elements, which largely predominated earlier works…The Fall Girl shows Marcia Clark at her absolute best.” Child Zero by Chris Holm “Chris Holm’s Child Zero is one of the…
Meet Billie Webster, Mary Alice Tuttle, Helen Randolph, and Natalie Schuyler—fierce women who comprise a unique female squad of assassins in Deana Raybourn’s new thriller Killers of a Certain Age. The “Museum”—the foursome’s shadowy non-governmental employer—deploys assassins to kill those who need terminating. What started with Nazis is now focused on arms dealers and money…
Crime fiction is kinder than most genres to older women. Where they can be a little harder to find in other genres, mysteries and thrillers like to give the woman of mature years some time in the spotlight. She may be a sleuth or—less common but perhaps more interesting—a villain. Either way, the woman over…
Chapter 4 That evening, Stoker amused himself with the earl’s latest purchase for the Rosemorran Collection—an enormous walrus that had required the combined strength of numerous porters to wheel into the Belvedere, the freestanding ballroom that had been given over to the various artifacts and works of art hoarded by seven generations of earls. It…
Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests, and mines, and stone quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors. —Ralph Waldo Emerson No matter the type of crime fiction, familial relationships are often the key factor in understanding why a bad deed is committed.…
The books you read shape the books you write, and nothing has influenced me more than mysteries, right from the very start. The first books I remember reading—after the Madeline and Winnie-the-Pooh years—were mysteries. Encyclopedia Brown and Jupiter Jones were the gateway adventures leading to Trixie Belden and Nancy Drew. I loved them for the…
London, 1888. A royal scandal, a murdered madame, and the most notorious serial killer in history call Veronica Speedwell to the aide of the royal family yet again. It’s Autumn, and the intrepid, endearing, adventuring Veronica Speedwell, steps off a train from Cornwall straight into a London terrorized by Jack the Ripper. A Murderous Relation…
A Dangerous Collaboration, the fourth installment of Deanna Raybourn’s Veronica Speedwell Mysteries, has everything a mystery reader could want: a spooky castle on a shadowy isle, a missing bride, and a murderer. In their fourth outing, A Dangerous Collaboration by Deanna Raybourn, Veronica (the semi-legitimate daughter of the Prince of Wales) and Stoker (aka the Honourable Revelstoke…
A Treacherous Curse by Deanna Raybourn is the third book in the Veronica Speedwell series, where members of an Egyptian expedition fall victim to an ancient mummy’s curse. Deanna Raybourn’s A Treacherous Curse is the third book in a series set in Victorian London that features the adventurous Veronica Speedwell and her compatriot Revelstoke “Stoker”…
Every Wednesday, we here at Criminal Element will put together a list of Staff Picks of the books that published the day before—sharing the ones that we are looking forward to reading the most! This week, a new Nick Petrie Peter Ash thriller and Deanna Raybourn's third Veronica Speedwell mystery highlight a killer week of…
